kurtwombat's reviews
883 reviews

Sharp, taut and deceptive describe Elmore Leonard’s SWAG. The story follows a pair of seemingly mismatched hold up men who convince themselves that a cool hand and a businesslike approach to robbing liquor stores and supermarkets, complete with idiot proof guidelines, can lead to a steady influx of cash and the good life. And throughout much of the book, life makes nice and their strategy pays off handsomely. Leonard follows the characters but does not really reveal them. They settle into their new lifestyle without much reflection. Along with the characters, the reader is lulled into that same comfort zone. At one point I realized that I too had stopped looking beyond the next robbery. Then the opportunity for something bigger comes along. This is when the business façade falls away and Leonard pumps blood into his characters. The main characters break from their relative safe path stepping up among people they only think they know. The supporting characters stop floating about the periphery and land with heavy feet. Everyone becomes more alive. More threatening. And certainly a whole lot more interesting. The last third of the book, after Leonard deftly shifts gears, leaps almost out of the readers hands.

I have wanted to try a selection from the HARD CASE CRIME pulp novel series for most of the decade that they have been around. For the uninitiated, this imprint created in 2004 prints new (including the most recent entry by Stephen King) and reprints classic examples of crime thrillers ( so far including Lawrence Block, Earl Stanley Gardner, Donald Westlake, Ed McBain & Harlan Ellison. My first foray into the series was LITTLE GIRL LOST by Richard Aleas who created the imprint. The story moves well and is fairly well populated with interesting characters. The main character is of course a detective but unlike most novels of this genre where virtually everyone is world weary, Aleas’ PI John Blake is still wet behind the ears. His lack of experience is why he takes on a case that more than likely will just lead to heartache. His relative youth allows for the reader and the detective to learn certain life lessons together as the plot unspools. This was played with at first but was not followed up with very successfully the rest of the way. The plot has sufficient twists and turns to keep the pages turning but about half way through I knew who the killer was. Was kinda waiting around to see how the situation would be wrapped up. Some similarity to a classic, THE MALTESE FALCON. On the whole it was a solid read but it wasn’t always the story that drew me back. Sometimes it was just the feel of the book and the lurid quality to the cover. The HARD CASE CRIME series creates original pulp inspired art for the covers…art work that I relish. Even the shape of the book seems smaller on the whole than other paperbacks…a reminder of the basic blue collar ready to discard nature of the books the series wishes to emulate. I will be collecting new covers.

I am delighted that KENNY & THE DRAGON by Tony Diterlizzi happened to fall into my lap. Not in the habit of reading fantasy aimed at a younger market, there is certainly something in the cover illustration that catches the eye and the heart just a little bit. A definite childish glee inhabits the features of Kenny Rabbit and Grahame Dragon as they race along a country road. The illustrations that pepper the length of the book capture the characters comfortably living their lives and are more like etchings that give the book an elegant timeless quality. While aimed at children, there is a classical allusion to St. George & the dragon as well as Grahame dropping Elizabethan bon mots here and there encouraging children just a little to think beyond what they might be used to. The story involves the classic children’s story trope of the importance of friendship, but does so in a fresh way. Kenny is a bit of a loner and really only has two friends—both of whom he bonds with through reading. When during the course of events his two friends are forced to face each other on the field of battle, one friend being a dragon and the other a retired knight, Kenny uses his love of reading to imagine a way out of their predicament. It is a slight tale but one told with a warm and gentle touch.

This is my first reading of anything by Chuck Klosterman and for the most part I enjoyed it. He displays his vast knowledge of pop culture in ways that amuse, sometimes going for more laughs than others. Whatever he gloats over (Saved By The Bell, Mr. Kellogg, Axl Rose & more) he breaks down in inventive ways to reveal the mechanics of their power. My favorite essay involved his hanging out with a Gun’s N’ Roses cover band, pointing out the silliness of their dream but nicely managing never to make fun of it. Thankfully he admits to not being above the pull of pop culture otherwise the reader would have had the taste of a lie on their tongues essay after essay. I disagreed as much as I agreed with his conclusions but he made his points well enough that I could live with it. Personal tastes have to be lived with and can be as long as there is reciprocation. Sometimes the hipster veneer covers us all—that gloss of pretentious self importance composed of pop culture touchstones and being part of an advertisers favorite demographics—but it gets thinner the more you open your eyes. Youth and the misapplication of importance often go hand in hand. Some essays didn’t seem complete—specifically his take on breakfast cereals and his take on the Lakers/Celtics rivalry but on the whole the essays and their sharp introductions will provoke some laughs and thoughts. I’d be curious to read more…but I am not running out right this minute to find it.

THE GOLEM’S MIGHTY SWING snuck up on me. Despite being aware of some glowing reviews before my reading of the story, my expectations were subdued--I could not imagine that something so spare with its dialogue and relatively few frames for its hundred pages could wield such power. As I read though I began to feel the slights suffered by the almost all Jewish baseball team barnstorming 1920s America. Despite baseball’s laconic nature, the turns of fortune are usually sudden and thus hitting with all the more power. So it is for these characters. Race and religion should not impact the rules of baseball but they do. They should have no place on a ball field, but are carried onto it every time cleats cross the chalk lines. I felt the smooth wood of a bat and the rough hewn benches of the visitor’s dugout—Blacks and Jews are often still in the visitor’s dugout. Each character is indelible after just a few words so you have little choice but to feel what they feel. All of this sharpened the disappointment I felt at the conclusion. While I understood that realistically the final game couldn’t be completed, we are waiting for the finish of that game still, but ending the book so suddenly with an odd and detached “and many years later” little addendum left me flummoxed. I actually checked the binding of my copy to make sure there weren’t some pages missing. Aside from that unfortunate choice, still highly recommend this wonderful work.

Inspired to purchase this book after visiting the Aviation wing of the Smithsonian. Over one of the entry ways was a breathtaking painting splendidly capturing a moment of history. This book does the same thing albeit on a smaller scale. Each painting in the book is accompanied by a terse background on the action depicted in the painting. This book does not glorify war--it pulls no punches when detailing the lives lost, the careers derailed and what if any impact on the war effort resulted from that action. Good if you like history and certainly a feast for the eyes if you just like art.

Since the theatrical releases of Blade Runner in 1982 and Total Recall in 1990, more people have probably discovered Phillip K. Dick through the movies than his books. It helps too when Dick’s infinitely superior titles (DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP & I CAN REMEMBER IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE) are teased in the credits or ad material. Of the movies, Blade Runner has achieved a particular cult status. Having seen the movie several times before reading the book, I was somewhat concerned that my enjoyment of the book would be diminished…I needn’t have been. While I enjoyed the movie, Blade Runner merely takes a layer of frosting off the top of the book’s cake. Like most of his works, Philip K. Dick not only makes his point but circles around and makes it again from several different angles. The movie and book actually co-exist wonderfully—the slice Blade Runner took is clean and self contained—hunting the artificial humans is virtually the whole show. This thin slice is padded by groundbreaking visual effects and a future/tech noir packaging. Any style or noir in the book is incidental. The hunt for the “Andys” (nickname for androids) is the engine that drives the story but the real show of the book is identity. Dick applies layer after layer of the ways an identity is shaped and defined and erased—drugs, religion, work, consumerism, marriage, intelligence and the self regard that is alternately squashed and inflated by the manipulation of these elements and more. Simply being on earth vs. living off earth might be the strongest identifier of all. Because of a few too many wars, earth is contaminated and decaying and the low rung on the ladder. The title became more brilliant as the book progressed, moving from an amusing play on words to a sharp assessment of how Andy’s might self-identify and be manipulated like anyone else by desperate acts of consumerism and the pursuit of status. This climbed up to my second favorite book by Philip K. Dick—the first being THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE—and helped cement him as one of my favorites.

One of my favorite books is Melville’s MOBY DICK because for me it seems to be a book that is at once of it’s time and yet exists outside of time. The same for Cervantes DON QUIXOTE—a book that clearly represents its world but at the same time does so in a fashion that is forward thinking and from which the future will draw grand inspiration. Both books can be read as straightforward adventure stories. Beyond being a saga of the sea, MOBY DICK is the first techno-thriller with amazingly detailed evocations of whale hunting and DON QUIXOTE not only created the novel but brilliantly blurs the lines between reality and an unreliable narrator. I AM LEGEND by Richard Matheson joins this category. At first blush a straightforward monster story, it becomes so much more as it moves along. Robert Neville is the last conversational man on earth. There are other people around but they have all been transformed into vampires which makes Neville’s life a bit of a struggle. Published in 1954, this story echoes through many of the thrillers that would follow it. Even the current spate of zombie dramas owes a dept to Matheson. At once a new breed of vampire story, it is also a medical thriller, social critique and personal drama. As he did with another of my favorite stories, THE SHRINKING MAN, Matheson gives a wonderful sense of normalcy to his setting before gradually revealing something more bizarre. The day to day grind of a life lived alone and the thin margin of his survival are felt from each page. My concern when I began reading was that such a promising beginning would likely dwindle down to nothing as many thrillers or horror novels tend to do. Near the end it turns in a direction that I did not expect and ends wonderfully with the main character making a decision he has actively avoided for reasons that he could never have imagined. A short novel who’s brevity works to its advantage, this edition also includes several short stories including his classic PREY about a very active doll and single woman with mommy issues. All the stories are good to great and fit well with the sense of isolation inherent in the title novel.

The subtitle of this book is a little misleading. The "Detective" ostensibly refers to an actual Police Detective involved in only a very small portion of the book and/or a zealous book seller who mainly just publicized the thief of the title. The true detective of the piece is the author who puzzles together a nice character study of THE MAN WHO LOVED BOOKS TOO MUCH. The book thief runs the gamut from mysterious man of intrigue to pitiable fool then back somewhere in the middle where his is really just a self deluded jerk. How and why he so easily runs-amuck in the tender world of book collectors and book sellers unfolds gradually revealing as much about the victims as it does the thief. Before reading, I was expecting more of a cat and mouse game across international borders. It is instead a very domestic affair with Book Sellers members of an insular family embarrassed about any wrongdoing among their brethren. They suffer from an old school honor system--seemingly drawn from the antique books they handle--that makes it difficult for them to see the world in terms of strict capitalism. The author touches on a rich history of people loving books too much but show how only recently the sky-rocketing values and slick modern fraud/purchasing possibilites are dragging this world into a new glaring light. Very interesting stuff and worth the journey.

First I will have to cop to a certain proclivity for top ten lists and also for the tabulation of points based upon an item’s appearance on those lists to make other top ten lists. Then if you make those top tens the favorite books of 125 contemporary authors, you have me hooked. This is a nice book to pick through at your leisure over time, otherwise reading list after list could become rather maddening. After the author’s lists, a synopsis of each book appears in the order of its popularity from the top tens. There are 544 books listed which let me know two things. First--many books appear on multiple lists and second-- despite that, I still found a treasure trove of books that I have never heard of and am now crazy curious to find. For example, MAN’S FATE by Andre Malraux, IMPRESSIONS OF AFRICA by Raymond Roussel, THE WAR OF THE NEWTS by Karel Capek, AUTO-DA-FE by Elias Canetti and several more. The somewhat redundant appearance of certain books reflects that most of the authors were Western, white and predominantly male—that is a drawback. I would also have liked some archival work referencing writers no longer with us and the books they liked and referenced during their careers. Possibly another book. And of course it is quite difficult to read this book and not be inspired to create my own list:
WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
MOBY DICK by Herman Melville
TWICE TOLD TALES by Nathaniel Hawthorne
THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD by Zora Neale Hurston
DEAD SOULS by Nicolai Gogol
CATCHER IN THE RYE by JD Salinger
SHIP OF FOOLS by Katherine Anne Porter
GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck

And of course I cheated by putting eleven. Before you judge me, try it yourself.