Southern Man by Greg Iles, a late addendum to the Penn Cage series.
It’s risky to infer an author’s political leanings from their fiction, but there are exceptions. This was written and set in the 2024 election season, and is bluntly critical of Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters. No, I don’t think Iles got invited to Trump’s inauguration party.
I’ll claim 18 titles for 3 bingos: Row 1, Column B, and the main diagonal.
(This should duplicate what I submitted through the form and should be final. I cracked open a long one that I don’t expect to finish this month.)
Saving fish from Drowning. Dead Bibi Chen’s ghost was a charming tour guide through SE Asia, patiently and omnisciently watching unheard as her living charges do everything wrong. I thought it was beautifully written and culturally informative.
Alice in Sunderland is a non-fiction comic book with a bibliography. My only complaint is that it should have had an index too. But mainly, I recommend it because it’s clearly not the sort of thing you write just to fulfill a publisher’s contract. Talbot must have strongly believed that such a book should exist, and that nobody else was going to make it. Moreover, it’s a better fit for the category than I initially expected because in the middle of the book, he writes about the cover art, thus making it integral to the content.
Both of these have re-read potential.
Three of these, I think are old enough to be considered classics. Steinbeck’s wasn’t nearly as funny as the cover blurbs said it was. Maybe political satire has a shorter half-life and it hit harder when it was fresh. While Bradbury uses some dated tropes typical of SF from that era, they don’t detract from a central plot that is still disturbingly relevant today. Tey’s was both old and British, and assumes the reader knows British history better than I do. It’s still rather informative, but harder for me to properly appreciate.
I have two in progress.
Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue: English and how it got that way. Some of it more dated than I expected (The opening page mentions a sign in Yugoslavia.) Some of it I already knew (or at least had already been told, even if I’d forgotten the details). But linguistical trivia can be interesting and informative, so it’s worth the read.
Louis Sachar’s The Cardturner. This is a blatant propaganda novel. The author is a bridge player and hopes to popularize the game among younger audiences (perhaps inspired by the million weaboos who took up Go inspired by Hikaru no Go.) At least it’s a nobler cause than some of the propaganda I’ve been exposed to. The old, rich, blind bridge expert hires a kid to escort him to tournaments, look at his cards, tell him his hand and play it as he directs. The previous kid fucked up and got fired for learning enough bridge to question his decisions, but this new cardturner knows nothing. The book is intended for YA audiences and has the usual scenes of teenagers acting like teenagers, often while their parents act like toddlers, neither of which appeal to me, but they can be skimmed to get back to bridge scenes more comprehensive than I’d expected.
The Cardturner would be a great fit for the 4E (Game, Gamble, Contest) bingo square. This would also break a beautiful symmetry on my card. Not counting the central square, all 12 of my my scoring lines have an odd number of books completed. (2 lines are 1/5 completed, 8 are 3/5, and 2 are 5/5.) I don’t think that specifies a unique arrangement (even up to rotational and reflectional symmetry), but it was surprising.
Since I enjoyed Relic last year, I decided to read the next two Pendergast novels, Reliquary and Cabinet of Curiosities since my last update here.
The Middleman by Olen Steinhauer. This is a new author to me. It’s about a group of left-wing activists who suddenly disappear and go off-grid. A lady FBI agent has been monitoring them for a while, even though there’s no evidence they intend violence. Well, things happen, people die, and the surviving members are officially labeled terrorists. Anyway, I have about 100 pages left and some very suspicious characters haven’t yet had their involvement adequately explained. If it finishes strong, I’ll add Mr. Steinhauer to my list of authors I would read another book by.
Finished Josephine Tey’s Daughter of Time. Supposedly ranked the best crime novel of all time. I’m not sure I agree with the ranking, but can understand how it made the list. Detective Alan Grant, hospitalized from his previous case, investigates the historical murder of the Princes in the Tower, allegedly committed by Richard III. Grant’s research brings this into dispute and he labels this narrative Tonypandy, after the Tonypandy Massacre where Winston Churchill ordered the British Calvary to violently put down a Welsh miners’ strike. Which isn’t at all what happened, but is repeated anyway because it’s more politically expedient than the truth.
Moving on to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. I intend to claim this one for the Late to the Party square as it’s a classic that people who know my literary tastes would have expected me to have read at least twice by now. I have the 60th anniversary edition with a preface by Neil Gaiman, 100 pages of supplementary end commentaries, and extensive margin notes contributed by an anonymous previous owner.
This week I’ll mention John Grisham’s The Brethren.
The Brethren are three ex-judges in a low security federal prison who should have been in a harsher one because they’re using their time catfishing (though the book predates that term) and extorting closeted gay men who answer pen pal ads. In another thread, I think it was @misericordiae@literature.cafe who conjectured that the LGBTQ hard mode was easier than the easy mode. I’m therefore pleased to report that The Brethren contains mail fraud, wire fraud, bribery, tax evasion, embezzlement, legal malpractice, and even some light treason, but very little romance of any sort. Having seen the result of Grisham trying to write romantic scenes, this is probably for the best. He’s much better at these sorts of characters.
Just finished Bone Yard by Jefferson Bass. Found a copy autographed by Bass at a Habitat For Humanity thrift store.
My other recent acquisition is Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot. I don’t usually seek out graphic novels, but got a good deal on this one because it was (mis-)classified as children’s lit. It looks interesting, broad in scope, and a candidate for the ‘beautiful cover’ bingo square.
Finished Ireland by Frank Delaney, who fittingly, is himself Irish which I’m claiming solves the top row of my bingo card.
This book follows one of the last traditional itinerant storytellers in Ireland who visits a home in 1950 and has a lasting impact on the young boy there. It’s about this mysterious Storyteller, the boy, and Ireland. It includes a decent summary of Irish history from Newgrange to the Easter Rebellion of 1916, which I did need a refresher on. I suspect it’s not a very academic history of Ireland and that some of the Storyteller’s versions are probably embellished if not fabricated, but it’s good enough for me.
No bingo yet, but if I finish the book I’m about 30% through, I can claim the top row*. That one seems to be easy mode for my reading strategy (I read what I want, at the pace I want, and think and occasionally comment about if and where it fits.) A few other squares scattered about, and some unscored reads that if applied to free space or alt prompt gets close in other directions.
*Considering the content of his novels, I’ve deemed it within the spirit of the rules to call Frank Delaney an Irish author, even though he eventually moved to my continent.
Finished reading 5th Wave by Rick Yancey, because last month someone here reminded me about it and said it didn’t suck. He’s right. It’s not a best in breed of the alien invasion genre, and some of the YA themes weren’t intended to captivate guys who’d cross the street to avoid overhearing teenage girls gushing about dreamy teenage boys. But it’s good enough that I can donate it to a neglected little free library and not feel guilty about shortchanging whoever takes it. I think the reason I passed over it earlier was that I thought it was the 5th in the series, not the first.
Now I’m re-reading Bone Collector by Jeffrey Deaver. I’ve read some of his Lincoln Rhyme mysteries, but couldn’t remember which ones. I’m only about 50 pgs in, but it looks familiar. I expect it to end with some unrealistic coincidences, but can’t remember what, so I’ll continue.
From a little free library, just finished Burn by Nevada Barr, part of her Anna Pigeon series. Normally these are all set in a national park, where the natural geology plays a major role in the mystery. This one happens near the New Orleans Jazz Historical Park, but doesn’t have anything to do with the park, or jazz, or even New Orleans and could have taken place anywhere there’s a black market for certain illicit services. I liked some of the more outdoorsy ones a bit better, but this was worth the read. I have to think about whether Anna Pigeon qualifies as an E5-caliber grump for bingo card.
It’s Banned Books Week, so I downloaded a pdf of The Turner Diaries. I’m told this book is considered inspirational by those who think having a race war would be fun and glorious. It might also be of interest to non-racists with morbid curiosity about White Nationalist ideology. Otherwise, I do not recommend it for its literary value. I read this so you don’t have to.
What do you think about 5th Wave? You reminded me that I have a copy on the bottom of a stack, still unread. I’m currently about halfway into Red Sparrow (I like it so far; the author seems to know his stuff), and I’ll finish that first, but I could re-sort my piles to make it more visible if given a reason to.
They changed quite a bit, but yes, The Meg (2018).
Jonas Taylor is the human protagonist and megalodon expert. Mac and Heller are approximately the same character as in the book. Most of the Japanese characters got changed to Chinese. The (ex-)Mrs. Taylor got completely remade. There are some other major plot adjustments.
MEG by Steve Alten
The titular megalodon qualifies it for the 1C bingo square. Unfortunately, the human characters were all disappointing, and some of them survive long enough to appear in sequels which I won’t bother with.
Asimov’s Breeds There a Man …?
A suicidal genius figures out the relationship between his brilliance and his mental health.
Recently finished Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan.
It starts off by confusingly introducing a large number of characters at the narrator’s funeral, but gets good once 12 of them arrive in China for the Burma Road trip she organized for them. She joins them in spirit, but can only observe cultural misunderstandings she would have saved them from had she been alive, culminating in 11 of them going missing without explanation when their lake excursion never returned.
It’s surprisingly funny given the subject matter involving oppressive regimes and human rights abuses. It’s also entertaining and informative and gets a positive recommendation.
I scored it under Minority Author for bingo as she is Chinese-American. However, I think Amy Tan’s more interesting affiliation is as vocalist with the Rock Bottom Remainders, who I learned about after reading a good book by their guitarist.
Finished Southern Man by Greg Iles. This is the final book in the Penn Cage series. I wouldn’t recommend it for someone new to this author, and if you have read other Penn Cage novels, you already know what you’re in for. It features the usual levels of racism, violence, and arson. The author had some things to say about politics, and did. It wasn’t quite a hit piece on Republicans generally, but more about the political environment that made a candidate like Trump electable, and how that could be exploited by a smarter and more competent independent candidate.
Up next is The Eagle has Landed by Jack Higgins. Someone said I should read this even though I’d already seen the movie and lent me a copy. Since I mostly know what happens, it should go more quickly.