Reader’s Notebook, 8/8/24

City in Ruins – Don Winslow
The final entry in Winslow’s Dan Ryan trilogy. Like the first two, it moves briskly. Also like the first two, that briskness makes it feel only partially formed. It was an interesting writing exercise, especially when compared to his Mexican cartel trilogy, cutting the story to the bone and eliminating anything that didn’t swiftly move the plot forward. It probably took me six or seven combined days to read this trilogy, about the same effort to read one of his cartel books. I think I prefer the cartel books.

Tales of a Vagabond DXer – Don Moore
I’ve mentioned a few times over the years how one of my weird, middle school hobbies was spending many hours listening to radio stations from all over the world on shortwave, an activity called DXing. Don Moore was famous in that sphere for living and traveling extensively in Central and South America in the 1980s and 90s, visiting these little, community radio stations that us weirdos up north would attempt to listen to at strange hours.

This book is a collection of reflections from that era and revised versions of articles he published 30 and 40 years ago. Even if you aren’t into radio at all, the travel aspects of his tales are pretty interesting. He began as a Peace Corp volunteer and kept a similar philosophy about his other travels, preferring hostels and other affordable lodging options to more luxurious locales. There are also good lessons about being a respectful visitor and how to make connections with people who have very different lives than you.

Old King – Maxim Loskutof
A story about people who run to our country’s most remote areas in hopes of escaping the pressures of mainstream life. One man runs to get away from his divorced wife and the memories of their marriage. Another in an effort to try to save animals as humans destroy their habitats. And a third to get as far away from all the modern aspects of society as possible while plotting his battle against modern technology.

That final one may sound a little familiar if you are of a certain age. That’s because it just happens to be Ted Kaczynski. Or at least an extrapolated story of his life in Montana’s wilderness in the 1970s and 80s. The other two main characters are people who run across Ted, and even have uneasy relationships with him while dealing with their own stuff.

Loskutof’s story is well written and engaging, but I’m not exactly sure if all those parts worked together. I found it strange that there wasn’t much of Ted, but a lot of the US Postal Service investigator who was tracking him. It seemed like perhaps this should have been just a novel about that, with the others used as color for what rural Montana was like at the time. Or, if this was to be a novel about people who reject modern, urban society and flee to our deepest interiors, the part about the postal investigator should have been scrapped.