Betcha can’t guess why we were there…
(Obviously, it was the large Magic Tree House display in the kids’ section that drew us)
Category: Authors Page 122 of 123
“Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhh!”
Deathly Hallows cover released (a wrap around!).
Click here for a full image, and non-US covers.
I’ve set aside most of my current reading because Robert Crais just released his latest, The Watchman. I will admit that I was very nervous about this book heading into it, because this is being billed as “The First Joe Pike Novel.” I just didn’t think the idea would work. Instead of the focus being on his partner, Elvis Cole, this time we’re treated to seeing things from Pike’s POV (thankfully not told in first person, because I really don’t think that’d work at all). I’m glad Parker has decided to not write a Hawk novel, Stout writing from Wolfe’s perspective wouldn’t have been the same (we need Archie in order to like his boss), LeHane having Patrick and Angel play second-fiddle to Bubba would just be scary.
But so far, I’m really enjoying this book. I could easily have finished it in one sitting–but am forcing myself to take a week or so to work through it. Lovin’ this thing. Mr. Crais, sorry for doubting you.
from Sci Fi Wire:
J.K. Rowling announced on Dec. 21 the title of her upcoming seventh and final Harry Potter book: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, according to her British publisher, Bloomsbury. The publication date has not been set, though it’s expected in 2007.
Deathly Hallows? uhhh. oookay. If you ask me, it doesn’t have the ring of and the Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone; …and the Chamber of Secrets; …and the Prisoner of Azkaban; or …and the Goblet of Fire.
Ah well…who cares what it’s called? It’s one step closer to being here!!
Was playing around on Chabon’s website and read his essay, “Our Nabokov” I would give just about anything (short of my kids) to be able to write a sentence like this (much less like the writer he’s describing):
It’s a conundrum that for me approaches the absurd opacity of a Zen koan to try to imagine how English written by a Russian sounds to Russians reading in English, but to our ears, Nabokov’s English combines aching lyricism with dispassionate precision in a way that seems to render every human emotion in all its intensity but never with an ounce of shmaltz or soggy language.
This, btw, is probably the best description of what draws me to Nabokov,
“He has an amazing feeling for the syntactic tensility of an English sentence, the way an ironic aside or parenthesis can be tucked into a fold with devastating effect or a metaphor can be worked until it is as thin as gold leaf.”
I can distinctly remember telling my friends (engineering, educatation and architecture students) around the dorm’s dining room table about Lolita, and the joy and wonder I was experiencing. They all (without exception) reacted with horror and revulsion to the premise of the novel and couldn’t understand what was wrong with me. Maybe if I could’ve expressed myself like Chabon just did, they’d have not written me off as insane. At least not that day.
Doing a little reading this morning while the boys do schoolwork and the Princess is hopping around on gymnastic equipment…read this paragraph from Jim Butcher’s Summer Knight. Just struck me as the kind of thing a writer should be able to do, should be great at. This is a paragraph that Dan Brown could never write. Me either. Which bugs me more than I can say.
I leaned against my door with my eyes closed, trying to think. I was scared. Not in that half-pleasant adrenaline-charged way, but quietly scared. Wait-on-the-results-of-medical-tests scared. It’s a rational sort of fear that puts a lawn chair down in the front of your thoughts and brings a cooler of drinks along with it.
Little bit of humor to create/maintain the tone, gives insight into the character, and you know exactly how the narrator feels–even if you haven’t felt that way yourself–and if you have felt that it resonates with you in such a way that you are in the moment.
Okay, Midway to Denver–hoped I could make it. Had a bunch of time in the airport before my flight, but I tried to do sermon prep and fuss with papers, so I don’t finish it too early into the trip. Was really looking forward to this one. 
I wasn’t disappointed at all.
In retrospect, I’m not certain this is the best of the Harry Bosch series–but as I read it, I was convinced it was–maybe not the best written, but most effective of the batch to this point. This particular L.A. murder is committed and investigated with the OJ trial and Rodney King case in the back of everyone’s mind. The city was portrayed as a tinderbox waiting to burst into flames again–black officers and detectives were used as a PR tool, white/black and in between showed their prejudices, and every character in the book waited for the other shoe to fall–it wasn’t a case of if there’d be another riot, just when.
There’s a few other aspects I’d like to touch on–and have got 3 or 4 paragraphs waiting to go, but I can’t write them without spoilers. This is one to read, folks.
Since I mentioned it below he dealt well with bringing back another character from the previous Bosch novel. An FBI agent that Harry’d clashed with is brought back to work the case with him–Harry now sees him as an ally (and vice versa) and the two quickly work together, allowing Harry to do exactly what needs to be done. Good to see him not fight with every single law enforcement type outside of his circle. Hope that’s a trend that continues.
Oh, and the references to the book/movie Blood Work were probably the funniest things I’ve read from Connelly (not a lot to compare it to–dude’s no Parker/early Crais)…a touch heavy handed the 2nd time, but well done.
Trunk Music was clearly not going to get me to Midway airport, so I had to do something–wandered around some bookstore in the Denver Airport for awhile, seeing a few things I’d been meaning to buy and a few I added to that list–but all more money than I was willing to fork out at the time. Thankfully, I spied Robert B. Parker’s Appaloosa before plunking down full cover price for some hardcover I was mildly interested in. 
It got me to Midway, and even gave me a few minutes of pre-sleep reading while at GA.
This is Parker’s second western novel–he did a western film for TNT (I think), too. While I wouldn’t call his previous western, Gunman’s Rhapsody (a retelling of the Wyatt Earp/Doc Holiday story) a complete waste of time, I did spend too much time thinking “they got this better in Tombstone.” But Parker’s been hitting his marks better lately (particularly with Double Play), so I had hope for this.
This was certainly better than Gunman’s Rhapsody. And better than, say, Potshot or Perish Twice. This isn’t Parker at his best. It’s him at his comfortable mediocre.
Basically we have two guns for hire–the veteran gun, Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, his junior partner–men who travel from bad town to bad town, hiring on as peace officers, laying down a Draconian law, until the town gets cleaned up. Then they move on to the next town. Hmmm, sound like someone that Kurt Russell and Sam Elliott have played? They get hired on in Appaloosa to do just that.
So Cole and Everett drink a little, shoot a little, be tough, talk in obscure phrases, spend time with women of questionable repute…town gets cleaned up ‘cept for one man and his outfit…you can pretty well finish it all from there. There are a couple of twists to the story I hadn’t seen a million times–but I’m not a big western guy (tv, film or print), so I can’t say for certain how much of a cliché it is.
The most jarring thing about the story to me–and maybe the thing that keeps me from giving it a C+–is the dialogue. I have no problem with historical novels using contemporary language. I recall a handful of writing teachers telling us we had to make a choice when writing historical fiction–modern dialogue or vocab and diction proper to the time. Pick one and stick with it. Parker didn’t. He tended towards “Western” sentence structures (think Mal and Jayne in Firefly), with the occasional malapropism thrown in to make sure that Cole sounds uneducated. But he used contemporary jargon, contemporary attitudes. Parker’s given himself a reputation for being lax on the research front, and this confirms it for me.
I’ll give it a C- because it kept me occupied, didn’t feel entirely cheated out of my money, and I liked the horses–even if the metaphor there was heavy handed. (think Spenser coming out of the theater after seeing Empire Strikes Back)
Oh, just noticed on IMDB that Appaloosa’s going to be a movie directed by Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen’s attached. I could buy him as Cole. Honestly think it’d make a better movie than a book.
I’m not exactly sure how this happened, but Michael Connelly has become my go-to guy for airplane reading. I’m guessing the way he writes keeps me distracted from what’s going on around me (y’know the whole hurtling through the air at hundreds of miles an hour and way too many feet off the ground).
I picked up the next two Harry Bosch novels on my list to read to and from GA. I took care of most of Trunk Music by the time we hit Denver–and was able to finish the rest along the way to Chicago.
This was a really good read. Harry’s well, Harry. Tough, smart, cynical. His partner, Jerry Edgar, is back and more competent than before. Kizmin Rider is the new teammate–I like her a lot. The new lieutenant, Grace Billets adds a different dynamic to the series–I was tired of the antagonism between Harry and Lt. Pounds.
Of course, Internal Affairs gets in the middle of this–Harry’s in hot water with them again. When isn’t he? I get that this is a sure-fire way to add drama, but puh-leez, can we please get through a novel without these jokers getting involved?
Given recent discussion over at spensneak about Parker’s penchant for bringing characters back time and time again, I thought that one of the strong points of this book was the way that one particular character was brought back into Harry’s life. The same person, in a very different set of circumstances, and very clearly changed due to their previous encounter. Handled very well.
The action keeps hopping back and forth between LA and Vegas, with our intrepid detective in the center of it. Rider and Edgar do their share of the work, too. Probably see more good police work out of them than I remember from anyone else Harry worked with up to this point. Hope to see more examples of other good cops in the future.
The twists and turns are delivered well. After you read a few books by Connelly and you know he’s going to be pulling fast ones on you, changing the what you’re sure is the inevitable conclusion several times–but even knowing that, you can’t help but be thrown by them the way he does it. The action scenes play out well, vividly described, but not overburdening in detail.
Ending was quite satisfactory–a very subtle move for ol’ Harry. Good to see him do it.
This is the kind of book that Dan brown needs to study before he inflicts another dose of Langdon upon us all.
Great read. Better pacing than Rowling’s done in awhile. That’s all I can say for now.
Thanks for the idea Ransom, hope this isn’t too much of a rip off….