Blackdogbooks 2020 - The Fire Hydrant

Gather around The Fire Hydrant all you 75'ers. I'm glad to be back again - it's my 13th year among you literary monsters. I say monsters because there's no hope of keeping up with some of you (alcottacre, comes to mind).

I've taken to doing a little bit of a year in review for the previous year, so newcomers can sniff around and see if they want to look in here. So, here's last year's list:

1. Bonfire by Krysten Ritter
2. Hemingway in Cuba by Hillary Hemingway
3. Moonheart by Charles de Lint
4. Barrabas by Par Lagerkvist
5. Lazy B by Sandra Day O’Connor
6. Pet Sematary by Stephen King
7. Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky
8. Wittgenstein’s Mistress by David Markson
9. The Water Knife by Paola Bacigalupi
10. Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
11. The Passage by Justin Cronin
12. The Twelve by Justin Cronin
13. City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin
14. The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
15. The Fireman by Joe Hill
16. Earth Abides by George Stewart
17. SevenEves by Neal Stephenson
18. Wool by Hugh Howley
19. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
20. The Glass Castle by Jennette Walls
21. Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
22. Quiet by Susan Cain (NF)
23. The Broken Girls by Simone St. James
24. Place Last Seen by Charlotte McGuinn Freeman
25. Wastelands ed. By John Joseph Adams
26. The Ivory and the Horn by Charles de Lint
27. Shadow of Thunder by Max Evans
28. Great Ghost Stories of the Old West ed. by Betty Baker
29. Robbers Rogues and Ruffians: True Tales of the Wild West by Howard Bryan
30. Nightmares in the Sky by Stephen King and f-stop Fitzgerald
31. The Earps Talk ed. by Alford Turner
32. Doc by Mary Doria Russell
33. Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horowitz
34. The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning
35. Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse
36. No-No Boy by John Okada
37. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
38. Day Out of Days: Stories by Sam Shepard
39. The Library Book by Susan Orlean
40. The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
41. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
42. The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
43. A Long Way Down by Randall Silvis
44. The Man from the Train, Discovering America’s Most Elusive Serial Killer by Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James (NF)
45. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling
46. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling
47. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling
48. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
49. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling
50. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling
51. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
52. Bad Debts by Peter Temple
53. For Writers Only by Sophy Burnham
54. Leaves of Grass, The Death-Bed Edition by Walt Whitman
55. When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd

It was an overall good reading year, and I managed about 10 more this year than the last, including a significant jump in non-fiction titles this year. In fat, I'd have to say that my favorite reads this year were mostly in the NF area. Lazy B was a revelation, learning so much about my favorite Supreme and finding so much in common with her because she was also a desert rat. Quiet was much more than expected - while it certainly details the difficulties for introverts in today's world, it was also a real comment on the shift in our culture over the last few decades. Couple of True Crime books - The Library Book, which was a wonderful crime book as well as a great book about books and libraries, and The Man From the Train, which highlights Bill James' analytical prowess in something other than ERAs and RBIs. And I had a couple faith based books that were really provocative and enlightening The Ragamuffin Gospel and When the Heart Waits - books I would recommend to anyone who is searching their own faith - both wonderful books. On the Fiction side, the standouts were Barrabas, a book told from the perspective of Barrabas, another book that highlights the search for faith and what it means; Day Out of Days: Stories, I hate that we lost Shepard's rare voice; and A Long Way Down, this guy is way to unknown, a unique literary voice in crime fiction that everyone should be reading.

Now, on the writing front. You'll see from the list that I had a significant post-apocalyptic stretch there - because I was working on a draft of a post-apocalyptic book with a writing partner. Doc Neutron was kind enough to read a draft and offer some insights on the technical aspects of the novel. So, I finished that draft up. That was the third novel I've finished. I have an agent who is shopping the first of those to publishing houses, but I haven't had a bite yet. The one she's is shopping around is a literary crime novel set in NM. This coming year, I'll be working on a fourth novel, the third in the crime novel series. So, you'll see some specific reading this year to help me with that. Additionally this year, I had two stories published -

A Creative Non-Fiction story published online in Two Hawks Quarterly - https://twohawksquarterly.com/2019/05/30/spring-2019/

And a Fiction story in Phoebe, which can be read online, as well - follow the link and then click on the area on the page that says "Available thru ISSUU" - https://phoebejournal.com/48-1-winter-2019/
The journal nominated this one for a Pushcart Prize for the year, so I'm pretty proud of that.

I have another story that looks like it may have been accepted in the final days of this year, but I'm still working out the details of that.

And I had a collection of my short fiction shortlisted for the Santa Fe Writers Project 2019 Prize, shortlisted by Carmen Maria Machado, which was pretty cool.

I'm not writing many full reviews any longer because my writing time is filled with my own projects. But for books that leave an impression, good or bad, I will usually leave a few lines to fill you all in. Thanks to all those of you who've supported my own writing over the last few years by buying journals or reading online - it's much appreciated. And, though I can't keep up with you all on posts and reading, I still hope to see a bunch of you drop in.

Happy New Year!

Welcome back, Mac! You did have a good reading year. I hope 2020 is at least as good.

Thanks, Doc - you're always the first to greet me, and it's a welcoming event.

Wishing you a successful 2020! I hope to see you around here when you have the time.

Very happy to see you drop in at the start!

Best wishes for 2020!

Another resolution is to keep up in 2020 with all my friends on LT. Happy New Year!

Thanks, Diana. Glad you’re back Paul.

Have a Happy New Year, Mac!

Happy reading in 2020, Mac!

It’s great to see all these old friends.

You caught my attention with your 2019 list. Some greats reads in that list! Best wishes for 2020, both on the reading and writing/publishing front.

Thanks, Lori. Glad you liked that list.

Happy New Year, Mac!

Very happy to see you here, Roni!

Well, look who’s back in the fold! Good to see you, Mac. I always looked forward to your reviews. Maybe you can do some mini ones of the stand-out books? Welcome back, and Happy New Year of Reading!

ETA: Oh, I see you already thought of that. 😉

Hope you have a great reading year in 2020!

Great to see you both here!

So, I realized while listening to the radio that I forgot to list a book on last year's list, and it was a good one, one that even prompted me to write a review.

Book #56 by Born to Run Bruce Springsteen

My Review on the book's home page:

Long before Dylan was unexpectedly awarded the Nobel for literature, I was thinking about Springsteen. His music is almost uniquely story driven, the albums like novels. There are other songwriters who tell stories but none so consummately as The Boss, and none with the same sensitivity to the literary concepts of story and character. Here’s what he had to say on the nature of his writing and writing in general in Born to Run:

“The precision of these types of songs is very important. The correct detail can speak volumes about who your character is, while one can shred the credibility of your story. When you get the music and lyrics right, your voice disappears into the voices you've chosen to write about. Basically, with these songs, I find the characters and listen to them. That always leads to a series of questions about their behavior. What would they do? What would they never do? You need to locate the rhythm of their speech and the nature of their expression. But all the telling detail in the world doesn't matter if the song lacks an emotional center. That's something you have to pull out of yourself form the commonality you feel with the man or woman you're writing about. By pulling these elements together as well as you can, you shed light on their lives and honor their experiences.”

The autobiography is a frank accounting of his career but also, and more importantly, his own internal life. Given the sensitivity of his music, it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that his non-lyrical writing should be so sensitive. But the quality and poetry of the writing suggests a very literary mind. With the often raucous, bar-band music, the lyrics can get lost. It’s why Reagan missed that Born in the USA was a protest song and not a feel-good patriotic romp. I dare you to listen to the lyrics of that song and not be deeply affected.

Even more amazing is that he writes about lives he’s never really had. Sure, you’ll learn in the book about his hard-nose, and often drunk, father, and the hardscrabble youth. But he even admits that he’s made all these characters and stories up out of whole cloth – listen to the Broadway show song Growing Up for the confession. Springsteen should have gotten the Nobel.

The best part of the book is easily the last hundred pages, as he writes about the death of Clarence Clemmons, facing his own mortality, and a long battle with depression. He handles these topics of loss and faith and purpose better than most anything out in the modern fiction world these days.

Bottom Line: It helps if you’re a music fan, and certainly if you’re a Boss fan, but this is a great and literary book.

5 bones!!!!!

Springsteen should have gotten the Nobel.

Really, Mac?

Quite like his stuff and he is a more than decent lyricist but just as Dylan winning the Nobel Prize made a mockery of it so would the Boss.

Have a great weekend.

You can take my comment in one of two ways -
1) If you're gonna give it to a songwriter, give it to Springsteen over Dylan;

or,

2) He deserves serious consideration for a prize like the Nobel or some such like

While I'll agree with you that it's a stretch to include songwriters, part of the purpose of that line in the review is to provoke a deeper look at his writing abilities, outside of the fame and music piece of his work.

And I don't think the Nobel needs any help being a mockery given the crap that goes on up there, especially with one of the most recent winners.

>21 blackdogbooks: Well I wouldn't argue on two points:

i) He is a good songwriter.

ii) The Nobel do a good job of bringing themselves into disrepute. Put out a press statement stating that they intend to be less Eurocentric and then give the awards to 2 Europeans.

And one with very dangerous views.

Time for an update on the new year's reading

1. The Writer’s Desk by Jill Krementz (NF)

Seeing where authors create is a real treat; how different each of them are, and how different the spaces that help nurture the narratives they create. The photography is exquisite, but the real treat is to hear each of them describe why and how they've come to their spaces, and how they fit into them. There's a fair bit about the writing life and creativity in each essay. It's a quick read, and one that I'll come back to again, I'm sure.

2. Where You Once Belonged by Kent Haruf

This is a sad book, not least because it's the last one of Haruf's work I'll ever get to read for the first time. The loss of his rare, kind voice is one that should be mourned. This is another Holt, Colorado story, the fictional town where all his work is centered. The characters he creates to populate the place are so complicated and interesting, so real. There is a heavy veil of nostalgia draped over all of Haruf's work, but it's never the saccharine kind. It's the kind that sees those sepia colored times and grieves for their loss, but with a even gaze rather than a thoughtless urge to return. I frequently recommend Haruf to anyone who has never tried him, and I do so with a heavy heart knowing there will never be anything new from him.

3. The Palace Thief by Ethan Canin

Four unconnected novellas - one was turned into a Kevin Klein film. The writing is good, though a little forced sometimes, as though Canid was urgently trying to create a literary feel. Pared down, and less symbolic, versions would have better suited the goal.

4. Indemnity Only by Sara Paretsky

A solid, workmanlike start to a career and series. V.I. Warshawski is tough but, in this first book, doesn't yet have the underlying self-doubt and complexity that Sue Grafton managed with Kinsey Milhone. There is one passage in the book where V.I. lets her guard down enough to let us into her internal world, and that's easily the best bit of the book. I had thought I wouldn't read any of the following books until I got to that passage; but she won me over with it. It's a delicate balance to detail what a person show's to the world and what is going inside, and I'm hoping that Paretsky finds it easier to achieve in the next books.

5. Black Tide by Peter Temple

This is my second Jack Irish book. The character is a wonderful creation, even if the stories are sometimes hard to penetrate. Some of the difficulty is that there is so much Australian pidgin, along with getting immersed in the world's of horse racing and cabinet making. Sometimes the narrative gets a little lost. But Irish is the perfect balance of gun metal brandish and fragile sensibility. And the writing in this second book is elevated, achieving a more literary feel than the first.

6. Oranges and Sunshine by Margaret Humphreys

This Is a really heart-rending book dealing with the UK's child migrant schemes that oversaw the deportation of thousands of children to Australia, Canada, and Africa. Humphrey's details her almost single-handed investigation, driven to reunite children with parents who they'd been told were dead or had abandoned them. On the other side, the parents were told similar lies. While the investigative narrative is compelling, and the abuses of government, charity, and religious organizations is disturbing, the issues of identity are what really stand out in the book - what makes you who you are?

And the end of the month, one with an extra day. So, here's an update:

7. Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan

There's three of us over in a private group and each year we challenge each other with a new recommendation to read for the new year. This was one of the challenge reads for me. I've never read O'Nan before, so this was something really new. A true slice of life at work, in a service job. It dripped with the mundane, close and claustrophobic, especially as a snow storm closed in around the workers on their last night at a Red Lobster before it closes. A story for the common man.

8. Climbing the Mango Trees by Madhur Jaffrey

This was anything but common, rich in colors and smells from an exotic place. Jaffrey is more well-known for her cook books, but she is an extraordinary writer. And she grew up in a tumultuous time in India, though Partition. While she's clearly from a family in the higher social castes, her perspective never fails to include everything around her, and the result is a frank and adventurous coming of age memoir. I only wish it hadn't ended so abruptly. The story was yet done.

9. The Reading Life by C. S. Lewis

Lewis is more well-known for the Narnia series and his religious thought, but this book is a pensive treat on how to read. He champions what is more often thought of as children's literature and argues that there is more there for adults, if they open their minds and hearts to it. He stands up for reading classic and difficult books to broaden the mind. What comes through on every page is a unique intelligence.

10. The Secret Place by Tana French

In French's first book, In the Woods, she layered the police procedural and mystery with an element of the supernatural, and never makes it clear whether something otherworldly is going on or whether it's just in the narrators heads. She returns to that kind of story with this novel, focusing on four girls who dedicate themselves to each other so wholly as friends that something special starts to happen around them. The book isn't as good as the previous ones, and there is some surprisingly and unfortunate negative female stuff - not what I'd expect from a female author. But I still like the series enough to keep reading.

11. The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake by Breece D’J Pancake

This was another new year reading challenge and my reading pals, as always, put me onto something rare and not well known. This is a series of stories from a writer who committed suicide early in life, so it's his only book available. Joyce Carol Oates compares him to Hemingway, and that's a stretch. But his prose does have an element of the spare, and he writes about the dark corners of his home, West Virginia. So, it's a fresh read. I think I expected too much from reading all the forewords and afterwords written by other authors. They're mostly good stories, but not as special as I think his suicide made them seem.

12. First Light by Sue Monk Kidd

I enjoyed Kidd's book When the Heart Waits more, but you can see the seeds of that book in her collected early writings here. There is less of a unifying thread - think of this more as short essays to read and put down at will. But Kidd's honest and open view on spirituality is refreshing and thought provoking.

Reading update -

13. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

This book was a darling in the literary world a couple years back, and it's a solid read, if a little meandering. Probably, the meandering feeling is due to Ng's choice to use an omniscient narrator, causing the narrative stream to shift perspective mid-chapter and take on a different character abruptly. Ng also seems to have tried so hard to focus on the female tone that the male characters all end up as cut-outs, rather than human in their own right. Still, it's a well-developed and interesting story, and Ng has some chops. Looking forward to seeing her other work to see how she builds on her talent.

14. Serial Murder: Pathways for Investigations by National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NF)

Careful statistical interrogation about serial murder cases and how to categorize the behavior to develop better investigative solutions.

15. Serial Murder: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives for Investigators by National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NF)

Less statistical, but still very informative view on the traditional thoughts about serial murder as opposed to what we've learned in the last couple of decades.

16. Lilith by J. R. Salamanca

Surprising and beautiful forgotten work by a terribly unknown author. Salamanca's unhurried and luxurious prose evokes Thomas Wolfe, and his expression of internal landscapes is reminiscent of Sommerset Maugham. Don't use the flap blurbs to decide about whether to read this one - it makes the story sound salacious where it is not. Basic story - a young man, lost in his own life, come's back from World War II and begins working at a mental institution. He is manipulated by one of the patients and embarks on a dangerous relationship. A favorite for the year.

17. Montana 1948 by Larry Watson

The richness of this tale is highlighted by the spare and direct tone. The narrator comes of age in small-town Montana. His father, the town sheriff, is placed in an untenable situation where family is pitted against an internal sense of justice. The fall-out from the sheriff's choices change the town and the family forever. Watson deserves more reading time. A true tale of the West, as can only be told by someone who understands the rhythms. Another favorite for the year.

18. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (NF)

David Grann is best known for The Lost City of Z. This new book highlights the dedicated, meticulous research that is his stock in trade. The story focuses on a near genocidal targeting of Osage Indians in Oklahoma by greedy white men intent on the Indian's oil rights. Such events would set the world on fire in today's media age, but they have almost been lost to time until this book. A fledgling FBI, under a newly appointed Hoover, uncovers the surface plots but the G-Men seem to miss the larger whole-sale targeting of the Osage. The book sometimes feels a little hurried, as some of the murders pour out in clipped paragraphs without much time spent on them. Though this may have to do with the available information some 100 years gone from the events.

Hi, Mac! Your last two books are ones that I really liked. I read Montana, 1948 years, ago, and it's still memorable. I just listened to Killers of the Flower Moon on audio this February, and was very impressed.

I wanted my message this year to be fairly universal in a time we all should be pulling together, whatever our beliefs. Happy Celebration, Happy Sunday Mac.

Thanks, Paul. Hope you have a wonderful day. And good to see you also, tymfos.

Hi, Mac. Good to see you are getting some reading done. How about the writing?

Thanks for asking Roni -

The story I had accepted for publication late last year is available for purchase here:

https://mcneesereview.mcneese.edu/the-mcneese-review/current-issue/

But I haven't received my copies yet and the journal hasn't been communicating much. To be fair, it is based in Louisiana and they have been hit hard with the virus. So, things may be going slowly for getting the publication actually shipped.

On the book front, my agent read the second in my series of literary crime novels and, though she like the first, she found the second much stronger. She's grown excited about shopping the second around and looking at the first as a prequel of sorts that we can come back to, or include in a deal if an editor likes the second. The second is called THE GLAMOUR OF EVIL. And I've been working on the third in the series these days working from home, and running out of things I can work on at home. I'm about three chapters into that one - no title on that. I have a bunch of submissions to journals and publishing house contests pending, including a collection of my short work and that first novel, and a new short story that is an Old West Ghost Story.

Sounds like you are definitely keeping busy! Good for you!

Good luck with your novel! You have a lot going on.

Thanks - a little more 'free' time these days, as I think everyone has run out of work to telecommute, no?

Doc did it - my turn

1. The Overstory by Richard Powers OWNED
2. The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin - READ
3. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco - READ
4. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
5. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - READ
6. The Witch Elm by Tana French
7. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood - OWNED
8. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
9. Little, Big by John Crowley
10. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
11. The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
12. Possession by A.S. Byatt
13. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
14. The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee
15. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
16. The Parisian : A Novel
17. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
18. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
19. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
20. Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson - READ
21. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
22. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
23. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay by Michael Chabon
24. The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
25. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
26. Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
27. A Naked Singularity by Sergio de la Pava
28. An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears
29. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
30. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
31. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe - READ
32. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
33. Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
34. JR by William Gaddis
35. Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko - OWNED
36. Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
37. Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
38. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
39. The Stand by Stephen King - READ TWICE
40. Underworld by Don DeLillo - QUIT READING
41. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
42. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
43. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry - READ
44. 2666 by Roberto Bolano
45. Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
46. Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
47. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace - READ
48. Parallel Stories by Peter Nadas
49. Women and Men by Joseph McElroy
50. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

& My Alternative 20

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon - READ
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova - READ
The Far Pavilions by MM Kaye
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman
Saville by David Storey
To Serve Them All My Days by RF Delderfield
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Sophie's Choice by William Styron
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - READ
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving - READ
The Singapore Grip by JG Farrell
Magician by Raymond E Feist
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy - READ
A Chain of Voices by Andre Brink

Well, it's long overdue for an update. You'll see from the list that I returned to some comfort reading during the pandemic, and I'm very happy I did.

19. Navaho Folk Tales: by Franc Johnson Newcomb - Really nice collection of origin stories for the Navajo people. Interestingly, written by a caucasian woman who grew up in the area connected to a trading post. But she wanted to learn about the culture and then ended up documenting folk tales that had been passed done orally for generations. If you're a fan of the new Rebecca Roanhorse science fiction books set on Navajo, these are a great corollary read.

20. Faith: A Journey For All:by Jimmy Carter - Spiritual meditation on the concept of faith and what it means in a person's life, from one of the more reviled US Presidents in our history. Whether your a fan of his politics or not, you should be a fan of his way of life and his love for people. There is a little denominational talk, but it's very minimal. The focus is on becoming a better person, living a better life, and making the world a better place - concepts that we could all use a little more of in today's world. It's not a conversion screed at all. You can't pick this book up and not be changed at least a little. Highly recommended. I've started collecting up more books by Carter.

21. Lilla’s Feast: by Frances Osborne - Interesting tale about one woman's coming of age China before the Great Way and then through World War II. The perspective is so different, because, though British, she has a real affinity for the native cultures where she lives and thinks of herself as a local - she's definitely not treated like one, though, and ends up being an outsider on every front. It's also a nice look at a woman's plight through this age told first hand.

22. The Gunslinger by Stephen King
23. The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King
24. The Waste Lands by Stephen King
25. Wizard and Glass by Stephen King
26. Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King
27. Song of Susannah by Stephen King
28. The Dark Tower by Stephen King

For some of these books, it's my 7th read, but it's my 4th time through the whole series - and it never gets old. This time, it was so much easier to pick up the clues about what the Dark Tower was for Roland, and what would happen when he reached it, entered, and climbed to the top. It helped that I recently read an academic treatise on Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Comes, Robert Browning's epic poem that inspired King. The treatise was from Negotiating with the Dead by Margaret Atwood. Her analysis of the poem unlocked some doors in the King books for me. I can't recommend these books highly enough for anyone who like epic fantasy - they're not your typical Stephen King at all. And if you're already a Constant Reader and haven't read them, shame on you.

29. The Coffee Bean by Jon Gordon and Damon West

>37 blackdogbooks: I'm not at all a fan of horror stories, so I haven't read King at all. Are the books in this series horror or fantasy?

Definitely fantasy.

Time for a little update on the reading this year:

32. The Works of Charles Dickens, Volume I, Oliver Twist, Miscellaneous, Illustrated: by Dickens

Reading through all of Dickens works might have you start here, with the first in the collected works or one of the first completed works. But I've dabbled based on personal interest, reading several others before I came back to this early work. And I'm glad I did, as Oliver Twist exposes Dickens' raw skills and the way periodical way it was written more than the later works. The early chapters drag, feeling stretched to fill columns in the weeklies where it appeared rather than getting on with the story. When the Dickens we expect comes out from the shadows, in the final third of the book, the wait is rewarded. I wondered several times when the Oliver everyone knows from the book's cultural iconography would finally appear; when would he be the unique, precocious boy we know more from culture and movies. That Oliver never really appears, but that baddy Fagin is there throughout. Surprisingly, Dickens gave us a lot of crime and crook terminology that I didn't expect to see in a Victorian novel, much of which has remained. It's a gritty book throughout, and best when Fagin and his rogues are on display. Sadly, save Oliver's early "Please, sir, may I have another" moment, he's not much of a unique or precocious character. Seems retellings extrapolated him into more than Dickens' work left us.

The additional essays collected at the back of the volume were the real surprise. Just a few pages each, Dickens imaginative and darkly tinged mind is at its peak in these. On the Town reads like a vintage Twilight Zone episode. The titular town's residents have disappeared, turned into news print, leaving Dickens to haunt the abandoned town and imagine the vacant workings. It reminded me of the Iowa town in Stephen King's The Stand, where a character rearranges things for her amusement.

33. Black Evening: by David Morrell

Morrell's early short stories and novellas are a treat for the ability to see his talent ripen over the course of the book, and see the effects of his personal life bleed into the work. The earliest works aren't of the quality you'd expect from Morrell, but you see the seeds of a keen mind and literary skill. By the end of the book, the work is up to his typical quality. The stories are rarely blood curdling, pulling the horror more from internal fear and loathing. The best part of the collection are Morrell's brief interludes to describe the story's context in his personal life, and to see how tragedy spawned the narratives. Morrell is a favorite of mine. If you're not reading him, you're missing out.

Looks like I'm averaging an update a month, and I'm a little behind here. It was a mystery month!

34. Dead Point: by Peter Temple - These books get better as Temple matures into his voice, something I'd call dark noir dripping in witty cynicism. It's hard to suspend images of Guy Pearce and Aaron Peterson as Jack and Cam in the film versions, but the casting in those was dead on for the characters so the reading doesn't suffer from the films. And the film writers were smart enough to pluck whole plots and stretches of Temple's dialog and layer them into the films. Temple's gift for dialog is on the high end of the spectrum by leagues. The best thing about the books, and this third entry shines with it, is Temple's focus on Jack Irish as a person, not a plot mechanism. His life, warts and all, are what the story is about, not the mystery. Though the mystery here, a search for a missing man, is a metaphor for Jack's endless search for his own identity.

4 bones!!!!

35. White Dog: by Peter Temple - Sadly, the best of Temple's series - sad because he passed away and there will be no more from him. Just as he had finally matured into his ability to balance all the elements of the mystery and character and Irish's life, matured into the best of his pitch black noir, he's gone. In the final installment, Jack Irish is searching for evidence to exonerate a woman accused of murder. Each layer of her life he pulls back uncovers dark veins of corruption - again a metaphor for what's happened to jack himself.

On a side note, if you're a fan of the films made from Temple's books, don't put off the books for fear they are too similar to the films. Temple casts a wide net over Jack Irish's life, and it would be impossible to recreate that on screen - so, there's a fair bit of difference. But Temple's skill is something that should draw you to the printed page. I only wish he'd stuck around a little while longer.
4 1/2 bones!!!!

36. The Trespasser: by Tana French - Sticking with Tana French isn't easy, as it feels like each book could do with a stern editor to pare the books back in one way or another - seems she is such a darling that no one is really in place to temper her yen to expand. But I keep coming back to her, and I've realized why now - her interviews, especially the suspect interviews, are unparalleled in faithfulness to the reality of criminal investigative interviewing. She takes such time to note every subtlety in the room, from what the suspect is exhibiting, what it means, and how the investigators are trying to use it to elicit more information. This book is probably the best she's written on that front, with dozens of opportunities in the mystery of who killed a young woman. Down sides for the book, however, are the actual solve, as it includes such far-fetched notions as to be almost wholly unbelievable. And a largely unlikable main character, who can't see beyond her own nose to what's going on around her. So, the book gets a higher rating for me than others less skilled at the interplay in an interrogation room would.

4 bones!!!!

37. Spy of the First Person : by Sam Shepard - This was another sad reading experience, as this was the last Shepard published, and it was published posthumously by his children. Shepard is a favorite author with his stripped-down style and keen ear for Western thought and dialog. As per usual, there is an otherworldly elemental to the narrative, as a man spies on his elderly neighbor from across the street, wondering about the man's life while the man himself is lost in thought about that life - it's unclear who either of them are, whether they are the same person, whether they are two elements of Shepard himself. Though Shepard seems to answer that question in the affirmative in the last short chapter. There are few living authors writing about the West like Shepard, and only a few deceased who could match him. The world lost a unique and vibrant mind.

5 bones!!!!!

38. No Woods So Dark as These: by Randall Silvis - Silvis is easily the best literary mystery writer you're not reading right now, the most overlooked by a long stretch. Silvis' narratives are wholly driven by the characters and not the plot, character studies of the men and women involved in the work of murder investigation - focused on their lives as they are shaped, in both positive and negative ways, by the work they do. In this fourth installment, Ryan DeMarco is helping his partner recover from a violent and life-changing loss, and they decide to put their minds into the work as therapy. The work this time is a particularly brutal murder of three people in the Pennsylvania woods. There's not a lot of whodunit here, but a lot of 'how are we going to prove' what we know. Along the way, DeMarco begins to construct a family life to fill the void left by the loss of his own years earlier. The literary quality is high, as is to be expected from Silvis, and the readability is off the charts. If you're not reading Silvis, you're missing out.

5 bones!!!!!

Nice reviews! The Peter Temple books sound good - I think you got me with those.

The bonus is that you can watch the film versions after and they're every bit as good as the books. Get 'em!

Hi, Mac. Looks like some good reading. How is the writing going?

Well you got me to put Silvis on my WL!

Roni - good to see you here, and thanks for asking. I'm about 2/3 into a third book in my mystery series, but hit a bit of a rough patch - not sure if it's the pandemic fatigue or some other malaise or just that I wanted to think through what happens next a little more carefully. In any case, I haven't written on it in a couple months now - feel the urge to start again and get it finished. The agent has been shopping the second in the series to publishers. The last story I had published was the one I posted up in . Have a new story circulating among a bunch of different contests and journals - even decided to try some more genre related magazines with it and sent it to Suspense Magazine as it is a ghost story, set in Old West Santa Fe.

mstrust - good luck with the Silvis, I think you'll enjoy it.

Hi, Mac! The reviewer who writes for our library website liked the Silvis, too. I should give it a try.

Hope you like them, I’m a huge fan.

39. The Big Sleep:by Raymond Chandler

This one is the first entry in my The Raymond Chandler Omnibus. Easily, the value of the omnibus is Lawrence Clark Powell's forewarnings which takes a deep dive into the history of early Los Angeles, and its inclusion in the literature of the time. Reading the foreword, I could taste the salty fog settling over the newly paved streets and the as-yet developed hills overlooking the burgeoning metropolis. It's the perfect scene setter for Chandler's razor sharp novel. The prose is spare, and packs a punch in every sentence. Marlowe is a character I look forward to reading again. This particular story had elements that have echoed through the literature focused on the time - pornography, madness, and petty crooks with an eye on the next rung of the criminal ladder. James Elroy owes a lot to Chandler, and has done a fabulous job of picking up where his predecessor left off.

40. The Crooked Staircase: by Dean Koontz

Let's get this out of the way - I'm a huge Dean Koontz fan. But, I'm sorry to say, writing a series is not in his tool bag. The first in this series was tight and imminently readable. But, as the books continue, it feels like he's reaching to keep the story moving. Or, maybe, stretching the story to keep the books coming. For someone unbounded in creativity, always able to come up with new and interesting cabals or creatures, Koontz seems hard pressed to keep the challenges interesting for Jane Hawk. And he devolves into something that twists even his readers to go along with in this new feature. I'd rather he had finished up Jane's epic journey with the second book. Something similar happened for me with the Odd series. I'll be sticking with his stand alone books from here on out.

41. Bluebird, Bluebird: by Attica Locke

Set in the East Texas weeds and swamps, this little debut thriller is an eye-opener. Locke takes the best of the thriller and mystery genres and turns them on their head with a hero for today - Darren Matthews, a black Texas Ranger. Suspended and in the midst of a troubled marriage, he takes on the Aryan Brotherhood, in a place where the AB and its racist notions are deeply rooted. Outside of a couple unbelievable procedural turns, the book is just about perfect. Looking forward to the sequel. The book is a great success in so many ways, not the least of which that it's author is an African-American female - not easy for a book with this kind of hero and with this kind of author to get onto the shelves.

42. If It Bleeds: by Stephen King

A little uneven for a Stephen King offering, and I'm a Constant Reader. The best reason to read this one is for Holly Gibney's solo show. Gibney, of the Bill Hodges Trilogy, is one of King's best characters. Her humanity bleeds through the page in such a relatable way, maybe more so because of her personality disorders. Interestingly, the novella called The Life of Chuck was written in a Momento sort of way, the chronology turned on its head. It's probably closest to something you might find in a literary journal - he keeps stretching his talents, whether he succeeds or not, and he largely succeeds with this one. Rat was a bit of a retread of stories Uncle Stevie has written before, a la 'what would an author do to ensure success, and to whom would he sell his soul?' Mr. Harrigan's Phone was a quirky, enjoyable story, and it had the nostalgia King is best known for, calling to mind It.

43. The Drowned World: by J.G. Ballard

The best corollary to this classic is Stranger in a Strange Land - which, for me, isn't a good thing. Way too much navel gazing and esoteric BS characterized as high, moral thought. The premise is good - the world is mostly underwater and civilization has retreated to the northern climes save for some scavenging scientists trying to figure out if the new tropical, waterlogged swamps are habitable. But the idea that everyone is somehow retreating into their own minds to earlier and more neanderthal existence burdens the boundaries of transcendental thought. It ends up being too cute for its own good, and almost unreadable.

44. Merton and Waugh: A Monk, a Crusty Old Man, and The Seven Storey Mountain: by Mary Frances Cody

Who knew Evelyn Waugh struggled with faith and his own converted Catholicism. The fact brings a new facet to his work. This collection of letters between him and Merton, an author and Trappist monk, was very enlightening from a spiritual perspective. But the collection's value is really in its comments on the writing life. Waugh offers lots of criticism and suggestions to Merton on Merton's writing; and Merton struggles with his art throughout. While you might come to the book for a look at faith, you'll go away with more on writing than faith - and that's not a bad thing at all.

45. The High Ground: by Melinda Snodgrass

Snodgrass is a favorite author, specifically for her Edge series. But this high-concept, space opera was wonderful. She's a far too little known gem in the world of science fiction. The book takes humankind into the universe as subjugators of other races and worlds, ending up as a strong social commentary for our own times. The narrative infuses much of her New Mexico culture while still maintaining the strong sci-fi concepts. There's corruption and intrigue, all laid over a coming of age story. And it's a bitRomeo and Juliet, too - born of Hogwarts, but so much better. I'm really hoping to get to the remaining novels in the series.

46. A Higher Loyalty: by James Comey

Having lived through this time, and a little bit from the inside, the details laid out by Comey finally shed a much needed light on his tumultuous tenure. That his reputation has suffered owes nothing to his own moral center, and everything to the hateful political divide in the country. Does he have an ego? Well, yeah - but it's hard to lead without one. The question is whether he's self-aware enough to temper it with good leadership. And the answer to that is also, most definitely, yes. Whatever side of the divide you're on, if you come away from the book with anything short of admiration, you need an internal re-boot. Comey is my homie!

47. Bazaar of Bad Dreams: by Stephen King

First of all, and most importantly, if you don't yet know, this collection contains a story loosely connected to The Dark Tower series. The new entry into the vastly interconnected world is called Ur, and it's one of the best in the collection. Get this book for that reason alone. But if you need more incentive, every story is preceded by a lengthy note from Uncle Stevie on the concepts or origin of the story. That kind of stuff is a hook for us Constant Readers. The only negative thing to say - Uncle Stevie is not a poet, except for that one ditty he penned for It, maybe. The shorts are worth coming for alone - but there's so much more to sink your teeth into here, if you can before the stories sink their teeth into you.

48. The Institute: by Stephen King

King goes Koontz. Children with telekinetic and telepathic abilities are being renditioned to a secret facility to be prodded and injected and tested, all for some cabal of self-appointed protectors of the world. While the story has a distinctly Koontz feel, it's classic Uncle Stevie, and Constant Readers won't be disappointed. Many great complicated and unique characters. This was one of those I couldn't quit reading.

Wow, nice update! I hadn’t thought about the Koontziness of The Institute, but yeah, now that you mention it...

But it was a good ride for me too.

Specifically thought of you with The High Ground. Think you’d like that one, doc.

On the list it goes!

I abandoned two books, rather quickly.

First, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgarov. I just didn't like the dramatic tone of the prose, almost like a play, very artificial and too cute by a mile for my tastes.

Second, The Dog Fighter by Mark Bojankowski. This one got rave reviews from the New York Times Book Review and La Times. But here's why I abandoned it - two sentences will suffice:

“Once when a dog took me to the ground and went for my neck I caught her by the hears and dragged my teeth down between his eyes to the end of its nose.”

Yeah, she, he, and its all in the same short sentence.

“The night my grandfather died from my room I woke hearing my mother run to him through the dare on bare feet after he yelled the name of my uncle from his fever and dreams.”

How strange that those sentences could get by and get published. Guess standards have slipped.

That's... odd. Somebody's editor needs to find a new job.

Definitely awful sentence structure!