I found The Banker in Montreal, I think, but can't remember. It looked very middling but I had to pick it up. I'm glad I did. It was middling but never boring and surpassed itself by the end, with a fun and satisfying but not simplistic conclusion. Woods Palmer is a reluctant midwestern banker, dragged into the role of president of his father's bank. The beginning of the book is him sailing with the president of America's biggest commercial bank who recruits him as the second-in-command. Right from the beginning, the internal monologue shows Palmer as a disinterested strategist of his own life.
He moves his family from Chicago to New York and starts the job, which is already odd because his main responsibility seems to be the interface with the freelance strategist/PR flak the bank hired to fight a state bill that would give the savings banks more power. He doesn't really do much else until he starts to get it on with his own PR person, the widow Virginia Clary. I don't know how much of the conflict between commercial banks and savings banks was or is a thing, but I was able to follow along so I hope it has some basis in reality. The narrative advances very slowly, taking a while to settle on the main financial and business intrigue, involving the savings banks bill and a big aerospace company that wants a super-generous loan.
By the time it all comes to a head, his affair also playing a significant role, the heroic narrative reveals itself and Palmer has to finally step up and kick ass on all the New York slick city types who tried to pull one over on the country newcomer. There is a good theme of white protestants old boys oppressing all the other groups and the conclusion was both satisfying and somewhat nuanced. Even the love dialogue about the affair between Palmer and Virginia was mostly not cringey. This was a fun and satisfying read. It also helped me reinforce some feelings about improving how to behave with others I've been thinking about for 2025.
2024 Year-End Wrap-up
But we aren't quite ready for 2025! Let's look back at my reading for 2024. It was a solid year, until the end, when I dived naively and ambitiously into The Life and Death of Ancient Cities which was just too hard for my simple narrative-dependent brain. I got about halfway through and had been reading sporadically and without enthusiasm for the last several weeks and finally decided to put it it down and pick up something fun to read. I lost over a month on that book and half of it is still waiting for me, sword of Damocles style.
I read 20 books by female authors out of 61. I only read one person of colour (The Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah)! Yikes, that's bad. I could say 3, but of the other two one was Chinese and the other Japanese from Japan. Need to diversify in 2025.
I guess my favourite reading this year was with my daughter. We read The Blue Sword, Watership Down (her favourite now) and The Hobbit (my favourite). I do most of the reading, but she'll do it for quite a few nights as well now, so it's a lot of fun.
Other than that, there were no real highlights for me this year. I really enjoyed the book about the Ottoman Empire which was readable and informative, giving me a deeper understanding of the forces behind the current conflicts in the Middle East. I was also pleased at how I was able to get through it pretty steadily (though this led to my over-confidence with the ancient cities). 2024 was also the year that I discovered Riad Sattouf, thanks to my neighbour putting out beautiful hardbacks of several of his books. Every Man a Menace stood out for me in its operational complexity and coldness. Duncan Kyle once again comes in strong with Green River High. That guy does not disappoint.
Sadly, the David Morrell Victorian period mystery did disappoint. It lacked subtlety and killed my motivation to follow up on what I had thought might be a rich vein of reading. The Tribe that Lost its Head was also quite a bummer, as I had high hopes for an adventurous Trevelyan epic.
Overall, 2024 was a mixed bag, but I was broadly enjoying it most of the time, until hitting the non-fiction ceiling. My on-deck shelf has also gotten near to full so I am going to try (probably futilely) to read and not buy/pick up any more books. Happy reading in 2025 y'all!
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