A Bit of Fiction

Finished three more.

First up was Sycamore Row by John Grisham. This is a sequel to A Time to Kill and gives us the further adventures of Jake Brigance. In this book a cancer riddled local entrepreneur kills himself after mailing Jake a letter asking him to act on his behalf in probating his handwritten will (also enclosed in the letter) explicitly disinheriting his two children and leaving 90% of his 20 million dollar estate to his Black housekeeper. The children, of course, sue and we’re off to the races. The book is vintage Grisham, very snappily written and engaging, if not great literature. It was especially fun seeing some of the supporting characters from Clanton, MS again including Harry Rex, Lucien, and Judge Atlee. If you like Grisham, you’ll like this, if you haven’t read any Grisham, this is as good a place as any to start.

Second was The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell. This is sort of a Da Vinci Code knock off about a purported fifth gospel which proves authenticity the Shroud of Turin involving a murder, the Vatican and a trial under Canon Law. You can safely skip this one.

Finally there was another of Ellis Peter’s Brother Cadfael mysteries The Raven at the Foregate. This one is about the murder of the village’s new parish priest who in a few short weeks has managed to alienate pretty much everyone in the village before he’s found floating dead in a millpond on Christmas morning. Luckily we have everyone’s favorite monk to sort things out.

99 for the year.

Good and Bad

First was a biography of G.H.W. Bush Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush by Jon Meacham. This is an excellent biography of the 41st president and gave me new insights into a guy I voted for twice, but didn’t really know very much about. Meacham starts with Bush’s ancestors and moves pretty seamlessly through to the current day. The general theme throughout the book is that Bush’s family, especially his mother, inculcated in him a sense of humility and, I guess you’d call it noblesse oblige that affected him throughout his life. I quite enjoyed the book, so much so that I actually wrote President Bush a brief snail mail letter (If you can imagine that). Anyway, it was a good book and I recommend it.

Second was Half Way Home by Hugh Howey. This is a somewhat half-assed sci-fi treatment of Golding’s Lord of the Flies. In Howey’s universe planets send out automated colony ships which carry hundreds of frozen human embryos. The ship lands on a likely planet and begins mechanically extracting resources, building facilities and preparing the infrastructure for human habitation. While its establishing a viable settlement, it thaws the embryos, and begins gestating them while simultaneously training them through brain stimulation. After 30 years or so, the colony is finished, populated by hundreds of fully trained adults and ready to begin its prime task of preparing another colony ship.

That’s how things usually work. In this case, the colony ship landed on the planet, warmed up the humans and spent fifteen years raising humans and building infrastructure when an dearth of metals in the planet’s crust cause it to suddenly change its mind about the future viability of the colony and abort the project by incinerating the completed infrastructure and vats where the humans were being raised. Halfway through the process of destruction, the computer changed its mind again and stopped the destruction. This resulted in about 100 half trained fifteen year olds wandering around a half built settlement that had been largely destroyed. As we read we discover why the computer aborted the colony and why it aborted the abortion and solve the mystery of the planet.

I said in my intro that this is a half-assed version of Lord of the Flies. What I meant was that Golding’s book was about the perils of misrule by testosterone soaked teenagers with no judgement or impulse control. This book seems to follow the same theme, but its really the computer controlling the kids imposing hardships on them in pursuit of its “mission” without regard for the costs to the kids. Anyway, it was short and interesting, but I don’t really recommend it.

96 for the year.

 

Three More Spensers

I’ve finished three more of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels, this time it was Back Story, Hundred Dollar Baby, and Rough Weather. This makes a total of five of them I’ve read and they’re quite interesting. Although they still have the voice problem I mentioned earlier, all of his characters seem to talk the same, the interesting thing is that they’re not really formulaic, which is quite remarkable for a series that runs to thirty-something books. Each one, at least all the ones I’ve read, is new and fresh, which interesting and original plot twists. Another thing is that they each seem to be fairly self-contained. Often a series of this type should be read in order to keep up with the ongoing story. Starting in the middle will result in confusion. The Spenser books don’t seem to be that way. The books I’ve read have come from the end of the series (#s 30, 34, 36, 38 and 40 out of 40) and I’ve not run into anything like that. Anyway, I’m quite enjoying them, and look forward to reading the rest of them as I can find them at the library. A top of the hat to my sister, Pixie Pilon Dasher for recommending them to me.

94 for the year.

 

Two More Done

The Professional by Robert B. Parker is the 37th Spenser novel and this one was quite good. Spenser is hired by a group of four married women who have all had affairs with the same man, who is now blackmailing them. It was a tight, interesting story that was more or less resolved along about the middle of the book, but which served as springboard for plot of the second half of the book. I still have issues with Parker’s characterizations and dialog. All his characters still speak with the same laconic/sarcastic voice. But I still enjoyed the book and will undoubtedly read more of them if I find them in the library.

Battleship , by Peter Padfield is nothing less than a fairly comprehensive history of armored warships starting with Gloire and Warrior in the late 1850s and ending with the battle of the Surigao Strait in 1944. The book traces the development of armor, guns, ammunition and fire control, and provides short accounts of all the major battles during the 90 odd years when battleships (pre and post Dreadnought) ruled the waves. Surprisingly, it was pretty well written and consistently engaging. It is the perfect book to give anyone interested in naval affairs a grounding in this period, but might be a bit too superficial for real experts.

91 for the year.

One More Stephen King

Next up was Bag of Bones a nifty little horror book about a novelist who loses his wife to an aneurysm, develops writers block, moves to his lake house in the wilds of Maine and discovers, first, that his late wife had been “up to something” when she died, second, the lake house is haunted, and thirdly, there’s an evil old man attempting to screw over his son’s poor but wonderful widow and steal the grandchild. It is pretty straightforward Stephen King, if you like his other stuff, you’ll like this. If you’ve never read any, this book is very self-contained and a pretty good place to start.

89 for the year.