2 weeks Ago
Responses to my column on books indicate that many people agree with a recent letter in the Wall Street Journal: “The joy of reading will last a lifetime.” Probably women do more reading, but nearly all who responded to my rambling about authors were guys! And they had great suggestions. I buy only books rated 4.
3 stars and up on Amazon.com , and all titles I will mention today qualify. First, the most absorbing book I’ve read this year is Chris Whitaker’s “All the Colors of the Dark.
” This compelling story features endearing characters and is hard to put down. I dislike books with despicable characters. It’s easy to pull for the characters in “Colors” as they face lifelong challenges.
Do not miss this book. I tried “The Oligarch’s Daughter” by Joseph Finder, but quit 80 percent in when it became implausible. I much preferred Finder’s “High Crimes,” featuring a woman attorney played by Ashley Judd in the subsequent movie.
Greg Cozad recommended David McCloskey, who writes about intrigues of the CIA, his former employer. I started with General David Petreaus’ favorite, “Damascus Station”: excellent. Next, I tried the recommended Darcy Hunt series by Eva Sparks, starting with “The Girl in Room 16.
” I struggled through it; the writing simply wasn’t very good. When I started a second McCloskey book, writing quality vaulted two notches. That novel was “The Seventh Floor,” for me even better than “Damascus Station.
” The wrenching story details how the arduous spycraft business can sometimes bring failure and pain. This book introduced me to one hard-boiled, foul-mouthed protagonista whom I continued to follow as I plunged into a third McCloskey novel, “Moscow X.” How could I not be drawn to a woman named for my two favorite Greek goddesses, Artemis and Aphrodite? Heading up the “Moscow X” project, Artemis dispatches two neophytes into Russia in the most gripping mission imaginable.
That the barely trained female agent does not like her male colleague, but has to pose as his lover, made me wince. I once wondered if CIA agents must sleep even with the enemy in pursuit of their covert missions. Several thrillers, including “Moscow X,” have answered me: yes.
My daughter suggested “The Overstory” by Richard Powers, an amazing book she found constructed like no other. I totally agree. The book is brilliant, and its message important.
For this, his 12th novel, Powers won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. Forty years ago, this author joined the University of Illinois English Department, boosting its prominence overnight. He did a stint at Stanford, won a MacArthur fellowship, and in 1996 was named Swanlund Professor of English at the UI, where he is now emeritus.
Before “The Overstory,” I had purchased the 2024 Library of America edition of 1927-32 Hemingway works that include “Men Without Women” (13 short stories); his novel, “A Farewell to Arms;” his treatise on Spanish bullfighting, “Death in the Afternoon” (with 30 photos and 68-page glossary!) and fascinating letters a young Ernest wrote to his lifelong Scribner’s editor, Maxwell Perkins, and to friends F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Dos Passos. I have never embraced the short-story art form.
Often a story has no denouement, it just stops, leaving the reader to wonder “Is that it? Am I supposed to imagine what happens?” As much as I admire Hemingway’s prose, I do not love these stories. I did reread “A Farewell to Arms,” dreading the sad conclusion. Hemingway’s letters alone are worth the purchase price.
He repeatedly complains to Perkins about deletions of expletives commonplace in today’s novels, as well as criticisms of his early work by people like Virginia Woolf. His discontent, need for money and all contents of this 1,000-page book came two decades before his Pulitzer and Nobel prizes. Why do I admire Hemingway? Because no one else connects so directly to the reader.
Places come alive, we are there; people are portrayed so vividly that we know them. Quoting a reviewer, “Hemingway’s stark, unadorned prose cuts to the core, rendering every moment vivid and deeply felt. He weaves a narrative .
.. that illuminates the tenderness and vulnerability of two people daring to love in an unforgiving world.
” Oh yes, I am fond of love stories. One of the strangest involves Jesse Stone, the hero of 22 novels, the first nine by Robert M. Parker before his 2010 death.
After Parker died, his family authorized the continuation of four of his series, the most popular featuring Private Eye Spenser. Steve Ingold suggested the Stone series and I’m now on No. 14, seriously hooked.
Books 13-19 are by Reed Coleman, and few differences in writing are detectable. His characters do more introspection and consequently his novels run longer, but I find all Stone novels to be quick reads. Jesse Stone, a reforming alcoholic fired from the LAPD, is rebounding as the over-qualified chief of a small-town police force on the opposite coast.
Apart from too many murders, situations are credible. Stone is a man of few words but a magnet to the opposite sex. Beautiful women throw themselves at him, and he catches most of them, all while incurably in love with his unfaithful ex-wife.
These novels deal with gripping crimes, but occasionally the droll exchanges at police headquarters leave me laughing out loud. Some police procedurals get tedious or talky, but the Stone books fairly race along. The dialogue is realistic in that exchanges reflect how we actually talk; only in movies do people converse in paragraphs.
All authors keep Stone’s responses similarly terse, if not monosyllabic. I’m taking a brief break from Stone with “The Boomerang,” a thriller by Robert Bailey. The jury is out on this one.
Soon enough, I hope to read more recommended writers: John Sandford, William Kent Krueger, Vince Flynn and Jack Carr. However, arriving in my Kindle in a few weeks are preordered thrillers by Saul Herzog and Brad Thor, so it’s “one of these days” for many authors. Should I share more Comfort and Joy? Same time next year?.
