Reader’s Notebook, 8/15/24
Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic – Jason TurbowMy brother in books David V handed me a copy of this on my visit to Kansas City in June. It took me some time to work through my stack of virtual books to crack it open, and once I did, I realized I had read it before, back in 2017. Looking back, I loved it so much then that I read it in two days. It’s not like this was Infinite Jest and I would be taking weeks and months away from books I had not read. So I continued, finishing it in three…
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…
Reader’s Notebook, 6/27/24
Chain Gang All-Stars – Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah I almost stopped reading this book twice, despite the critical acclaim it has received. The opening chapters seemed repetitive as Adjei-Brenyah slowly introduced a series of characters through similar sets of events. They are all convicted felons working to earn their freedom by participating in the Chain Gang All-Stars, a competition where inmates fought each other in a gruesome, ramped-up, American Gladiators-style competition. Survive long enough and your record gets expunged and you go free. The catch is each battle is to the death, so the odds of winning enough fights to be…
Reader’s Notebook, 6/18/24
The Charm School – Nelson DeMille I had never heard of this 1988 book before. I was pleasantly surprised that despite its age, it held up pretty well. In fact, its age was one of the best things about it. The book is split into two halves. In the first, an American student traveling through the Soviet Union in the late ‘80s stumbles upon a secret that could take the Cold War to a new, more intense level: a secret camp holds hundreds of American POWs from the Vietnam war, and they are being forced to teach Russians how to…
Reader’s Notebook + Thoughts On Cassettes
High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape – Marc Masters A single-book focus for this entry, less because of the book’s quality than what it got me thinking about. The book itself wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be. Masters begins by laying out the history of the cassette tape and tape players. Then he dives into areas of music that were most affected by the popularity of the cassette: underground genres that found traction thanks the the easy production and distribution of tapes; copying and sharing licensed music; recording and collecting live performances; international music;…
Reader’s Notebook, 5/14/24
Reckless – Chrissie Hynde While doing my research for the recent RFTS post about The Pretenders, I came across several references to Hynde’s memoir. As soon as I completed that post, I checked and, LO!, the ebook was available at the library. I got it onto my Kindle and knocked it out over the next 36 hours. It is a great, if limited where it really counts, rock memoir. Hynde shares pretty much everything she experienced in life, good and bad. From her traditional childhood in Ohio to her discovery of music and the alternative lifestyles available on college campuses…
Reader’s Notebook, 5/2/24
The Bullet Swallower – Elizabeth Gonzalez James This book has gotten crazy praise in literary circles, landing on numerous Best Of lists already. With good reason. It is a very well-told, fictional story of three generations of Mexicans and their family history. One is a bandit in the late 19th century border territory, who is forced to bargain for his life after a raid on an American train goes off the rails (so to speak). The other two are his son and grandson, living in 1960s Mexico City, with the third generation uncovering the secret family history the middle generation…
Reader’s Notebook, 4/4/24
My reading pace has slackened a bit. I’m actually taking a day or two off between books, which is likely a good thing. Because of that I only finished three books in March. Nettle and Bone – T. Kingfisher I famously don’t read much Fantasy fiction, yet something about the genre always holds an allure. I occasionally search for something that can reignite the magic of reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time when I was 12, only to be disappointed by another impenetrable story. This book isn’t strictly Fantasy. It does take place in a mythological…
Reader’s Notebook, 3/6/24
I might be reading too fast. This is the 10th week of the year and I’m about to finish my 14th book of 2024. Because of that they are running together a bit. I apologize, as these summaries aren’t the most detailed of my writing career. The World We Make – N.K. Jemisin Jemisin’s Great Cities series was supposed to be a trilogy. Between the pandemic, US politics, and some other things that got her down, she decided to cut it off at two books. Because of that, this book felt rushed and incomplete. Her story about the avatars of…
Reader’s Notebook, 2/13/24
Sing Her Down – Ivy Pochoda I read this book while I was sick. Maybe the infection or virus or whatever was plaguing me combined with a lack of sleep and cold meds kept me from appreciating it. Because I did not get this book at all. It is the story of two women who are released from prison during the Covid lockdown and travel from Arizona to LA. They run into some troubles and get the attention of an LA cop who has her own issues she’s dealing with. And, well, I’m not sure what else to say about…