Books Should Be Free

Lots of free audio books at http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/.

Thanks, Orin.

Recent Reading

In an effort to try to at least keep up the record, here are some things I've been reading lately:

• The Simeon Chamber, by Steve Martini - An early one, involving some California history, WWII, and the Hearst Castle.

• Time Bomb, by Jonathan Kellerman - these never fail.
  

• The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison - her first novel, and really excellent

• A Monstrous Regiment of Women, Laurie King - second in the series started by Beekeeper's Apprentice

• Fight Club, Chuck Pahlaniuk (read online, probably bootleg) -- Wow. Now I've started to read Survivor, another novel by Pahlaniuk.

• A Year in Provence, Peter Mayle - this is a surprisingly enjoyable book written by an English journalist who moved to Provence with his wife, their adventures establishing a home in this singular area of France. I suppose the book could also be entitled How Two Rich People Managed to Survive France, and it did recount an embarrassing number of drunken driving episodes, but I did enjoy it nonetheless.

Black Money, by Ross MacDonald

Vintage Crime 1996, copyright 1965. ISBN 0679768106. 238 pages.

I recall being introduced many years ago to Ross MacDonald's work by someone who said MacDonald was a latter-day Raymond Chandler. I suppose that was true, latter day being the 60s rather than the 30s, but that was a long time ago. (Incidentally, the author's real name was Kenneth Millar. Click on the title of this entry for a link to a detailed article about Millar/MacDonald's life and work.)

In Black Money, Lew Archer is hired by a wealthy young man who has lost the girl of his dreams to a man who appears to be some kind of a scoundrel. Martel claims to be from France, a political refugee unpopular with the DeGaulle regime. Young Virginia Fablon is very much taken with Martel, and cannot be persuaded to see him as anyone other than who he claims to be.

Virginia's father died in what was judged a suicide about seven years before this story takes place. Her mother is beginning to find it difficult to maintain a lifestyle such as that enjoyed by her neighbors in this seaside country-club community of the rich.

When Archer begins to investigate Martel, he is met with threats, and soon senses a greater mystery than the simple seduction of young Virginia by this mysterious and unlikely man.

As one always expects in MacDonald's work, there are great characters, a deviously complicated plot, and plenty of gritty observations from the narrator, Lew Archer. This is the hardboiled detective formula at its very best, and every page is a pleasure.

The lobby of the hotel was the mouth of a tourist trap which had lost its bite. There were scuff-marks on the furniture, dust on the philodendrons. The bellhop wore an old blue uniform which looked as if he had fought through the Civil War in it.

The Beekeeper's Apprentice, by Laurie R. King

Picador Books, 1994. 346 pages. ISBN 978-0-312-42736-8

A wonderful novel in which we are introduced to young Mary Russell, a British orphan of some means, who meets Sherlock Holmes. Holmes has become a retired gentleman living in the country and keeping bees. Russell becomes, as one would guess, his apprentice.

This sort of thing could be done very badly. The Apprentice is done extremely well, and is an absolutely delightful read. There are more books in this series, this is the first, one wonders if they will be as good.

Holmes and Russell have several adventures together in this book, culminating in one enormously complicated effort to identify and capture a master criminal who attempts to kill Russell, Holmes, and Watson (yes, Dr. Watson lives, too) during the course of events.

Bone Rattler, by Eliot Pattison

A Mystery of Colonial America. Counterpoint. 2008. 460 pages. ISBN-10: 1593761856 ISBN-13: 978-1593761851

When we heard that the author of the many Inspector Shan mysteries had written a new novel set in the American Colonies in 1758, we were eager to find out what that would be like, and were not disappointed.

Duncan McCallum is a prisoner aboard a convict ship bound for the New World. He is a Scot, unfriendly to the British king, whose life and family have been destroyed for his treason to the Empire. During the voyage, there are some strange and actually surreal events that set the stage for what transpires when he lands in New York, indentured to Lord Ramsey as a teacher for his children.

Ramsey's children include an elder daughter named Sarah, who seems afflicted with some great sadness from a past about which no one will speak. As events unfold in the New York wilderness, her story and character are revealed to be quite fascinating.

Native American lore and culture play an important role in the plot of this complex mystery. As we move deeper into the fabric of the story, the Iroquois characters increase in number, depth, and function. It is hard to read this without thinking of Pattison's obvious love and respect for the ancient culture of Tibet reflected in the Inspector Shan series. The parallels between China's invasion and destruction of Tibet and that of the British and French invasion of America and destruction of its native culture and people are unavoidable.

Pattison explores the spirituality of the natives of America in the face of the European invasion, and lays upon that the tapestry of England's exploitation and domination of Scotland and its culture and people. Scots allied with Indians against the English oppressors in this story make the point clear if not obvious. The history of our world is one of domination, disrespect for indigenous culture, and the trampling of religion and tradition in the name of whatever power has the upper hand.

With all this history and moralization included in the text, one might think this would be a dull read, but Pattison's masterful writing and plot delivery keeps us involved in this excellent mystery and more or less painlessly feeds us a great deal of factual information about the Colonial period and the deeds of those who founded what became the United States of America.

this big fake world, by Ada Limón

this big fake world, a story in verse. Ada Limón
66 pages. Pearl Editions, Long Beach, California. 2007.

I don't think I've ever read anything quite like this before. The story is as complicated as any novel, but conveyed in the terse, precise language of poetry. I know this concept isn't new, it's probably just the first time that I've read anything so contemporary, accessible, so readable done this way.

In fake world we have Our Hero, a man who feels at odds with life. We are introduced to him in "On a Lunch Break Our Hero Accidentally Leaves the Office:"

"...the traffic lights kept turning
green and green again.
He began to complain to them
about being rushed, always
getting the "go ahead..."

and

"when he returned to the conference
all the men in suits looked
like barbed wire."

The second poem is entitled "There is a Woman at the Hardware Store," and later on we meet Our Hero's wife in a poem entitled "His Wife Was Not Something He Could Hang on the Tree:"

"... He knew she was
angry, but had given up on talking, her mouth
turned down like a fish's mouth awaiting
the hook..."

Our hero has a friend named Lewis, who writes letters to Ronald Reagan.

In this little book of just about fifty poems, we can follow these four lives as they change and interact, and understand the feelings of these somehow familiar people. We are given a rich and detailed story, laced with whimsy (as any love story must be), and told with great skill.

This is a wonderful work, and one that I shall continue to enjoy. Ms. Limón is a poet of great promise, and I look forward to reading more of her work. I have another collection of her poems, Lucky Wreck, which I'm reading, and hope to write about here soon.

Two poems by Ada Limón may be read in the 19 December 2008 edition of InDigest, a web publication.

I found her books at Amazon.com:

this big fake world

Lucky Wreck

The House on Fortune Street, by Margot Livesey

Harper Collins 2008 311 pages. ISBN 978-0-06-145152-2.

Margot Livesey has written five other novels, according to the dust jacket on this book. Further information from that source tells us that while she is from Scotland, she is presently living near Boston, and is a writer in residence at Emerson College.

This novel is written in four major parts. Each part deals with a different point of view, but with the same story. Now, this is not simply a retelling of the story from four vantage points. That doesn't sound very interesting or original to me, and this book is both. As a matter of fact, this is easily one of the very best books of any type that I've read.

The principal characters are Sean, Abigail, Dara, and Dara's father Cameron. Sean is a scholar who gave up a business career to return to school and study Keats. Abigail is the woman who stole Sean away from his idealistic, nearly-idyllic marriage -- only to disappoint him with coldness and infidelity later on. Dara is Abigail's close friend from college, who lives in the flat downstairs from Sean and Abigail, in the house of the title, which is Abigail's by virtue of an unexpected inheritance.

Cameron is the older person in this group of four, and his part of the novel flashes back in time to when he was the age of the other characters, in order to tell the story of his uniquely problematic life. Cameron is the older of two boys, but his younger brother Lionel was killed in an accident at age fourteen.

There are many other people involved in this story, including Abigail's parents, who provided her with a great deal of uncertainty and insecurity, moving her all over Britain during her childhood. Dara has, of course, a mother -- divorced from her father when his secret becomes apparent to her. Sean has a brother to whom he turns when his life becomes a morass of betrayal and despair.

The characters in The House on Fortune Street are complicated. No one is excessively good, nor is anyone supremely bad. At times, Abigail seems to qualify as the Evil one of the cast -- but her story is more complex than that. We get a good background on all these people, who they are, and why they behave as they do. Character development is extremely complete and believable in this book.

The story itself is fascinating, and I won't reveal any more of it here. I encourage you to read this novel -- I think nearly anyone would enjoy it. The plot is neatly done, thoroughly fascinating, and perfectly wrapped up at the end. This is not a particularly happy story, dealing with some of the saddest aspects of human experience, but there is much about it that is attractive and warm -- it is not completely pessimistic about the resilience of human spirit.

This is the first book I've read by Livesey's, I'm glad there are others.