53 new of 53 responses total.
I am currently reading _The Manticore_ by Robertson Davies. Can't comment much on it yet but so far it seems neat. I highly reccommend John Barth's _The End of the Road_ . Just read it. You will not be the same person afterward. I was in a bookstore today and felt swamped... I had no idea what to pick. That's why I started the item.
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. I hated to see it end. I cannot exactly put it into words, but it is a must read. I am better for reading it, and it has made me want to read more of Conroy's books. Colin Powell: An American Life This one is about Gen. Powell's life and eventual involvement in the Gulf War as the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It gives interesting views into the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Reagan, Bush and Clinton White House.
I'm currently reading "Crossing the Chasm" by Geoffrey Moore, at the recommendation of the new president/CEO of ArborText. It's a business marketing book which explains how high-tech companies need to appeal to mainstream users to "cross the chasm" between being a start-up and being an established, profitable company. It has many technical examples, which are dated (the book was written in the early 1990's). Windows 3.0 was a hot new product. Lotus 1-2-3 was still the dominant spreadsheet. Oracle had just beaten out dbase III. Most public schools still used Apple II computers. I don't know if the marketing information makes any sense. I don't know anything about marketing. I guess it's always good to learn about something new.
Try reading in the books conference, bees, for lots more book suggestions, many categorized by fiction/fnon-fiction, subject matter, etc. But new "books" activity here is always welcome so, for those that don't read agora, I will link this item to books.
Item 37 in summer 1998 agora has been linked to books item 71. The title, "Books! Books!" is a bit non-descriptive for the books cf. If you are reading this in agora, come visit books and do a browse.
Any John Grisham book is pretty good.
I'm currently reading _Keys to the City_ by Joel Kostman. They are a series of short stories based loosely on his experiences as a New York City locksmith. I got it from the library. If you like short stories, you'll like this book.
I was unaware of a books conf, but it makes sense that there would be one on Grex. My bad!
I'm meandering through a couple of Ayn Rand novels... again.
No bad! It's one of the ways the existence of cfs get notice.
Oh, btw, those novels would be _We The Living_ and _The Fountainhead_.
I have finished "Lucky You" by Carl Hiaasen. It was sort of disappointing compared to his other novels.
A lot of people seem to be fans of Tama Janowitz. Why? I have not read any of her books. Which one would be a good starter?
Anybody read up "A Pirate Looks at Fifty" - Jimmy Buffet's new book? What do you think?
It may be hard to find, as I have heard it is out of print. But, _The Shrine at Altamira_ by John L'Hereux is pretty cool and an engaging read. Be forewarned, though: You will learn more about prison life than you will ever care to know in 2 million years, although that is only a small segment of the story.
What was the name again? I found "Cell 2455 Death Row" by Caryl Chessman to be a very enlightening book about the ins and outs of death penalty law, and pre-Miranda justice. It also shows the wisdom of acting as your own lawyer, and why Mark Twain was right when he said "He who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client". I'm not going to defend Chessman. He was a criminal, but I don't think he deserved to die. I think that the state should have been satisfied with life imprisonment with parole. And I think he should have served at least 2/3s of the sentence. I don't think the state proved the kidnap case, and I am really certain that the LAPD framed him as being the "Red Light Bandit". What I think the LAPD was is lazy and inefficient.
Anyone read "The Count de Bragelonne"(or something like that spelling) by Alexandre Dumas? I'm debating whether or not to read it, I've already read the musketeer books and can't decide on this one..Help, anyone?
highly recommend _where wizards stay up late_ by hafner & lyon. oh, yes ... *those* wizards!
recently i re-read _switch bitch_ and _my uncle oswald_ by roald dahl. currently i'm working on rosemary sutcliff's _sword at sunset_.
My Uncle Oswald is on the shelf over my desk. Great story by a great writer. Yes, the Chocolate Factory author wrote a few 'adult' books as well.
you'd probably like _switch bitch_ and _kiss kiss_ too, then, bmoran. last time i was at barnes & noble i spotted a horror anthology edited by dahl which looked very intriguing.
I sujest Wiz Biz. I liked it, you will too.
I'm currently reading Dick Francis's first novel, _Dead_Cert_, from around 1962. I'd never read anything of his until my mother gave us, for Christmas, a bunch of miscellaneous mysteries. Most of them were awful, but Dick Francis's _Longshot_ was among them, & is **very** good indeed. Grace found this (actually, 3 bound together, but I'm a slow reader these days) at the library. It also is very good. Apparently his mysteries are all built around (or set in) the world of horse racing. For me, this is no attraction, the reverse if anything; but his writing is compelling. Highly recommended. (This, his first, has a couple of plot elements I'd quibble with, but England around 1960 is not my own turf, so I may be wrong. However, in general it's as well written as the other book.)
I'm rather happy for the fact that Dick Francis has managed to work past one of the more notable sports gaffs in the annals with a successful writing career. Granted, it wasn't his fault (Devon Loch, the horse he was riding, was the culprit) but still.
I don't normally contribute to this item...but... "Nimitz Class", by Patrick Robinson. GRabbed it at the library as more summer book fodder. Very Tom Clancy-esqe, with liberal bashing, military worship, etc. Reminds me vaguely of WWII era teen propaganda (See the "Dave Dawson" series sometime for a laugh), just not quite as extreme. I'm halfway through and I'm hoping for a twist at the end, but it's hard to see how the author will get himself out of an obvious, already set-up outcome. And mistakes, despite all the detail and claimed research! "No, couldn't be sabatage, those nuclear warheads are *very* hard to get to explode since you need to do [xxx] just the right way (ignoring the fact that the bomb would have to include the capability to *do* [xxx] in order to be of any use at all as a weapon), and also you'd have to have a high level pass to get past multiple guards (whoops, assuming multiple guards can't be compromised or killed)". I'd give up on this book normally, but it's like rubbernecking at an auto accident or perhaps like reading "Dondi" every week.
I've read all of Dick Francis's books - but I'm not really a 100% fan. Dick Francis is one of the rare writers who who has been able to maintain consistant quality book after book after book. Though his writing style is utterly different, he reminds me of P. G. Wodehouse, who also wrote hundreds of meticulously-crafted, highly-entertaining books, which are all so nearly identical that they all blur together in your memory. All of Dick Francis's books are set in "the world of racing." Each book has a new hero (I think only one character appears in more than one book, and then only in two), always somehow connected to horse-racing but in many different ways. Part of the charm of each books is exploring the hero's livelihood - Francis obviously loves researching these things and sometimes goes a bit overboard in trying to fit all of his research notes into the plot of mystery. But although the hero always has a new name and a new profession, it's plainly always the same guy (I don't think Francis has ever done a female hero). The hero is basically a fairly ordinary fellow, no genius or superman, dedicated to his profession, a loner, very tough, extremely honorable, and almost pathologically independent. He almost always gets beaten to a pulp by the villians (or stomped on by a race horse), but being a manly man he just wraps his wounds with duct tape and strives on ahead. (If someone drags the hero to a hospital while unconscious, he sneaks out as soon as he regains consciousness.) He never goes to the police for help (or, if he does, the police turn out to be total dummies, doing more harm than good.) The hero wins by persistance, intelligence and toughness. These books are always hard to put down, the plots are twisty. First rate entertainment. Except somehow I always feel a bit guilty about enjoying these books, because it is such a simple-minded formula: basic male ego-gratification. A world where the tough guy always wins, without needing any help from such wimp institutions as police forces and hospitals and courts and laws. It's a value system that seems much more admirable in fiction than in the real world. Still, they are much better than most guy-hero books. For example, Dick Francis never spends a whole page describing the hero's gun. He's much more likely to spend a whole page describing an artist's painting technique (paintings of horses), or details of how the textile manufacture industry works (I can't remember how that tied to horse racing). Vastly more intelligent stuff.
All the ones I have read (3 & a fraction, now) are also first person. That limits things a bit; yet he does it so *beautifully* that they're a joy to read. To an extent Jan's description seems right on target. Yet it could give the entirely wrong impression. For the ones I've read, anyway, the hero is not (aside from being a jockey or former jockey, a profession given to self-starvation, painful injuries, etc.) out there looking to be tough. Not at all. He's in one way or another pushed into the situation, pretty much. Agreed that it's more admirable in fiction than reality. We can *see* that these guys' egos aren't the problem (that's a big distinction between the heros & some of the bad guys), but that's rather more unlikely in real life. But these are very far from being the one-dimensional tough guys that a capsule summary might suggest. What Jan said about the heroes' livelihoods is indeed a big part of the attraction, for me anyway. The first one I read (_Longshot_) involves a wannabe novelist. He's till now made his living writing survival manuals, field-testing them first by having his publishers dump him in the arctic or on a desert island or whatever with minimal equipment. Having decided that he's got to write a novel instead, he's currently starving for real. Does that sound unbelievable? It's told so that it's absolutely solid & believable. I expect to read anything of Francis's that I can get my hands on, over time.
Eh?
Jan's Guide to Mystery:
I'm really more of a Science Fiction fan than a mystery fan, so I like
really good world-building. Most mystery seems like just yet another
detective and yet another dead body. Basically grim stuff. I want an
expertly guided tour though a new world, with likable characters showing
the way, a plot that is more than a throwaway, and not too much
shear nastiness.
- Dick Francis - I'm not sure if I really like his characters - they seem
a bit inhumane to me, like Ayn Rand characters. Otherwise, high scores
on all points.
- Arthur Upfield - Written in the 1930s through 1950s, these have a half-
aborigine police detective solving mysteries in Austrialia's outback.
The hero operates by completely immersing himself in the community where
the crime occurred and observing in detail, looking for the ripples
that must spread from a murder, building up a case from nothing. A
wonderful character, great plots, and an amazing background.
- Ellis Peters - Brother Caedfal is a 13th century monk in a time of war
and intrigue. A loving recreation of a time I didn't previously know
was interesting. Though the stories might appear to be murder mysteries,
they are usually really love stories in disguise.
- Joan Hess - An apathetic police chief watches over her tiny home town
of Maggody, Arkansas, which is populated by numerous eccentrics. The
plots can be a bit contrived, but the humor makes up for it.
Curiously Joan Hess and Ellis Peters each have other series of books which
I find perfectly tedious. Peters and Upfield are sadly deceased, so there
will be no more from my two favorite authors. Too bad.
I share some of Jan's interest in world-building mysteries, so
I'll pass along a list of some I have enjoyed.
You may have to dig in the used shops for some of these:
Peter Dickinson: his earliest novels all featured the same detective,
whose name escapes me; a man of decidedly average talents who
stumbles into a series of murder cases in bizarre, closed mini-
societies. THE GLASS SIDED ANT'S NEST is set in a tribe of
aboriginal people who have been uprooted and relocated to a
group of London row houses. SLEEP AND HIS BROTHER is set in an
asylum for children suffering from a strange neurological disorder.
The last in the series, ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE, begins with the
detective, confined in a nursing home and suffering from dementia,
deciding to end his life; on the way to implement his decision
he stumbles over a corpse...
Dickinson stopped writing series but continues working in odd
worlds. KING & JOKER is set among the British Monarchy in an
alternate history.
James McClure: novels mostly written in the 1970s and set in South
Africa, pairing a white policeman and a black policeman.
Exceptionally high paranoia content.
William Marshall: best known for a series of police procedurals
written in the 70s and 80s (and some in the 90s) set in colonial
Hong Kong, in the fictitious run-down neighborhood of Yellowthread
Street. Marshall's stock story structure intercuts one pretty grim
mystery with a pair of sillier ones; the sillier stories come to
happy endings and the grim story proceeds to its ending in a
cinematic explosion of violence.
Lindsay Davis: has a series featuring a "private investigator" which
is set in Rome, 70 A.D.
Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo: In a series of ten novels they set out to draw
portraits of contemporary Swedish society. I consider the
"Martin Beck" series to be the most artful mystery series I have read.
These should probably be read in order due to the slow-moving changes
in the detectives' lives which stretch through the series.
If you're looking for cheerfulness, the Martin Beck stories may not
be your cup of hemlock; I love the characters but most of the stories
are grim.
(How about Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose"?)
I recommend Kate Ross's Regency mysteries. Alas, she died earlier this year, with only four written, but they are the BEST mysteries I've read in a long time. Ken, can I borrow that alternate history mystery? /
Mysteries have always been a mystery to me. I've never really gotten into them.
I've been reading mysteries off and on for most of my adult life. In fact, I've gone through periods of extreme addiction, although nowadays I just read an occasional one. In regards to mysteries with an exotic setting, don't think anybody's mentioned Robert Van Gulik's "Judge Dee" series, in which the protagonist is a provincial magistrate in medieval China. The depiction of life and society at that time and place is fascinating. Judge Dee was an actual historical character, and the first of Gulik's Judge Dee books is a translation of an old Chinese stories about him. The rest are Gulik's own creations.
I was going to mention the Judge Dee stories, too. I find them somewhat frustrating, though. Quite interesting in many ways, a bit clumsy in others. Too much pattern in the motives, for one thing. I'd rank Tony Hillerman very high. There are lots of mysteries I like very much. In general, though, I find that the ones that mystery fans of various types like best are not all that interesting to me. What Jan said generally applies to me, I think, allowing for variations in taste ... & the fact that I haven't read most of the ones he mentioned. (Little time for reading, these last few years. Jan is due to have a lot less, shortly, too.) I think of myself as an SF fan, too, though I have to say I really haven't kept up with *that* since the early-to-mid-70s, either. <sigh> So many books, so little time ...
I haven't actually read them... So has anyone here read anything by the woman that took my name <grumbles> Anne Perry?
Tony Hillerman stories are just great. I always read them as a source of information about the Navajo people and their culture. The mystery part is just a bonus.
Anne Perry has two series out there -- one is the Monk series, with
a protagonist who starts out by being in a cariage accident and then
losing his memory, and who has to reinvent himself along the way. There
are about eight books in that series, and I like them, although she
seems to be running out of things to say, but I will continue to read.
The other series, which I don't like as well is about Inspector Inspector
Thomas Pitt, the low-born London copper with a
better-born
wife, Charlotte. Set during the Victorian era, Perry's
mysteries
usually examine the dark underbelly of aristocratic life.
Homosexuality, adultery, and pedophilia have all been
subjects of
her previous books; in Ashworth Hall she injects a new
ingredient: politics. (Yes, this last was stolen
from a blurb I had handy.)
Anne Perry is interesting as well for her involvement in a real-life
murder -- you know that movie that came out a few years ago about
the Australian girls who murdered one of them's mother? (That sounds
really icky, but I'm not cleaning up my grammar right now.) she was
the girl who actually did the head-bashing. So I think that it's
fascinating that she knows the criminal mind so well....
The movies is "Heavenly Creatures." As a joke I've been thinking about using the pen name Juliet Hulme (that's the author Anne Perry's real name) since Anne Perry is taken. <grins> And I thought it was her friend that hit her mother with the rock.. Again, bad grammar.. I can't remember very clearly, but I thought Juliet was more witness... Oh, and there is a part in the movie where Juliet finds out that her mother has been having an affair. The man's name is Bill Perry, and that happens to be my dad's name.. <grins> I just can't get away from her! ;) (Oh and it was the friend's mother that got killed. When they were released from prison- two seperate prisons- they had to promise to never see each other again)
I've seen "Heavenly Creatures". It's an early Kate Winslet film. Did Winslet play Hulme or the other girl?
Kate Winslet played Juliet Hulme.
After janc's resp:30 and my resp:31 , I got interested enough to dig my Peter Dickinson books out of storage. I reread the first of the six Jimmy Pibble stories, THE GLASS SIDED ANTS' NEST; the setting of the story is fascinating, the resolution of the mystery somewhat less so. But it was Dickinson's first novel. I'm currently trying to figure out how to simultaneously read these books and loan them to Twila. :) Just started this weekend: Greg Egan's PERMUTATION CITY, a science fiction novel which seems to have a pretty promising start. We'll see how it goes; I haven't been able to complete reading an SF novel in maybe five years.
Read "Aunt Dimity's Death" by Nancy Atherton this weekend. Am now finishing the second in the series and hoping to get the next two frm the library this afternoon. Wonderful weird wacky books, I have no idea why they're filed under mystery -- they're romances, ghost stories, and just generally great!
Ken, why not just read them to Twila?
I can't read that fast...
Browsing the poetry section at Borders I noticed a slim volume by someone named Billy Collins with the title "Picnic, Lightning." The title is a celebrated quote from Nabokov's "Lolita": "My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three." Collins uses the quote as an epigraph to the title poem, which is about how thinking about the various ways people can die suddenly tends to heighten one's perceptions of reality. A couple of the individual poem titles also caught my eye: "Lines Composed Over Three Thousand Miles from Tintern Abbey"; and "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes," which concludes: "What I can tell you is it was terribly quiet in Amherst that Sabbath afternoon, nothing but a carriage passing the house, a fly buzzing in the windowpane. So I could plainly hear her inhale when I undid the very top hook-and-eye fastener of her corset and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed, the way some readers sigh when they realize that Hope has feathers, that reason is a plank, that life is a loaded gun that looks right at you with a yellow eye." Readers of Emily Dickinson will hear a pleasant series of bells going off in their heads when they read that. Anyway, I bought the book. Highly recommended.
That slim volume sounds downright terrifying. Perhaps I'll buy it too.
I think it's your kind of poetry, John. In fact, some of it sounds like something you might have written, only this Collins guy got there first: "We have listened to their dismay, the kind that issues from poems the way water issues forth from hoses, the way the match always gives its little speech on fire."
Well, how do you know that this guy isn't one of my pseudos?
By the way, here's the remarkable complete sentence, which I'm tempted
to describe as "epic", from _Lolita_ in which the "picnic, lightning"
phrase occurs:
My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic,
lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of
warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within
the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can
still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the
sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent
remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge
in bloom or suddenly traversed by the rambler, at the bottom
of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.
Question for discussion: Why does Humbert describe his mother as "very photogenic"?
If she died when he was three years old I imagine a fair portion of his adult image of her would have come through photographs and stories related by those who knew her.. But then I haven't read the book..
I saw Joyce Maynard on TV this morning plugging her new book, "At Home in the World," which just hit the bookstores. So I went to Borders Farmington Hills and bought a copy. I've been a fan of Maynard's ever since I read her cover essay in the NY Times Magazine 30 years ago, and then the book it turned into, called "Looking Back." (She was 17 at the time.) Her most famous book is "To Die For," which was made into a movie starring Nicole Kidman a few years ago. "At Home in the World" is an autobiographical work which is making news because it tells about the affair Maynard had with J.D. Salinger that everyone was buzzing about but no one ever was able to confirm. The early reviews are mixed -- the good news is it isn't a tell-all sleaze bio; the bad news is it isn't a tell-all sleaze bio. We'll see.
You have several choices: