Reader’s Notebook, 10/14/25

A bit of a slog lately, as I’ve worked through a group of books that I did not love. These are the risks you take when you grab suggestions from many different sources.

Swag – Elmore Leonard
Last month I came across an article that was an appreciation of some of Leonard’s lesser known works. I’ve read several of his most famous novels but never really dove into his deep catalog. This was one of the books highlighted in that piece. I was not prepared for how it lacked in so many of the elements that made Leonard a great writer.

The book takes place in Detroit in the 1970s. A car thief and a serial scammer come to an uneasy partnership and begin robbing small businesses all over the metro area. They aren’t super flashy with their money, but they live a life of casual hedonism, laying out by a pool all day with the younger women who also live in their apartment complex while planning their next score. Eventually they slip up and get caught. The good times end.

I honestly found the book kind of boring. It was soooo dialogue based, and those words weren’t nearly as sharp as in books like Get Shorty. It felt like the two men were having the same conversation over-and-over. There also wasn’t any of that spark and humor that propped up Leonard’s best work.

Oh well, I guess it was interesting to see where one of the greats got his start, and how he did not always have his fastball.

Finna – Nino Cipri
A weird-ass book. Actually, it’s a novella so I’m not even sure it can be called a book.

A wormhole between worlds opens in what is basically an Ikea with a different name and an older woman who was shopping with her granddaughter disappears into it. Two employees, who used to be romantic partners, are tasked with going into the wormhole and finding her. Some very odd shit happens while they are in the other world.

The story is brisk. Probably too brisk. It felt more like a draft where Cipri was fleshing out ideas that really should be in a much longer book. Because of that it felt half-baked, or maybe three-quarters baked.

Cipri got their MFA at the University of Kansas, so I salute their work even if it didn’t do much for me.

The Red Tree – Caitlin R. Kiernan
And finally this, which was suggested as a spooky book appropriate for the season.

I should have known I wasn’t connecting with the book when I kept losing focus and thinking about other things the first few evenings I read it. However, I made it past the magic 100 page mark still hoping it would turn into something good so I had to finish it. I thought seriously a couple times about breaking my rule and giving up.

The book is presented as the posthumous work of author Sarah Crowe, the leftovers of a journal she kept while residing in an isolated home in rural Rhode Island before she killed herself. Her journal reveals the strangeness of the house, its basement, and a very creepy and apparently powerful oak tree that sits near it. In her journal she also shares excerpts from a manuscript she found in the basement that details the long history of death and general horror centered on the oak tree. Turns out the man who wrote that manuscript hung himself, just as Crowe eventually did.

The Red Tree felt like it was building towards a classic horror payoff, where the source of evil is revealed. That reveal never happens, though. This big honking question the entire book is built upon never gets answered, which seems like a ripoff after a week of reading. There was just so much work and building then nothing happened as a result. Maybe I sensed that was coming, and that’s one reason I didn’t enjoy this book. I also kind of hated Crowe and her relationship with the painter who was also renting space in the house.

Hopefully I pick my next few books better.