7. Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

I'd been looking for this used for a while.  It's pretty new and probably being reprinted since it was fairly successful.  I did find a used copy in this bloated trade paperback format (although to be fair, slightly easier to read for me as the pages go by so much quicker).  I was intrigued by the dystopic sci-fi concept with animal companions.  Unfortunately, when I was about a quarter of the way through, Meezly noticed it and was surprised that I was reading it as she had read two of her books and found them consistently badly written!  This was dismaying as I was already feeling somewhat distanced from the story, but I tried to put aside any bias and plow through.

Zoo City does at first have a cool concept.  It takes place in a ghetto for "the animaled" in Johannesburg.  For reasons that aren't at first clear (and actually were never clear for me until I read some other reviews), certain people suddenly find themselves attached to a single animal of a variety of species.  They are corporeal and real animals but seem to initially appear magically and if you are separated from them it is like agony.  If your animal dies, you get swallowed up by some weird darkness.  You also gain a magical skill.  The heroine has a sloth and she can find lost things.

The story begins with her finding a lost ring in the sewer for a client only to find the old lady brutally murdered when she returns with the ring .  She is on the scene with her fingerprints (she touched things to get a bead on the lost ring) and so gets accused of the murder.  This triggers her being engaged to also find a lost pop star twin, even though she swears she will never look for lost people (we are never really told why this is and it doesn't seem to matter as she takes the job).

I didn't find the writing as bad as Meezly did.  There are a lot of short sentences and really wild metaphors (which I didn't mind as they were kind of fun in a dystopic sci-fi Chandleresque manner).  The problem is that she is trying to do subtle inference instead of just telling you what is going on and many times, especially in the action scenes, I couldn't figure out what actually was going on.  The real problem with this book, though, is the overall plot and for lack of a better word, its intention.  It felt like Beukes went out and did an inventory of as many tropes she could find under the dual headings of "dystopic near-future" and "contemporary issues" with a particular appeal to young, woke readers.  So we have refugees, exploitation, discrimination, ghettoization, trauma and on and on.  These things are fine but none of it feels heartfelt here.  The plot goes all over the place so that by the time it all does come together, I really didn't care.  Another reviewer pointed out something I hadn't explicitly noticed, that the protagonist has zero influence in the big final climax.  She rescues the man she was sleeping but is basically an observer to the quite violent and nasty revelation of the plot secrets.

There is a nice little side piece that is an academic study of the notion of wandering spirits and how they will possess pigs and if you don't sacrifice the pig properly they will take over a human.  I guess this is some real tribal folklore from that region and it ties in really nicely to the animal companions in the book.  But that's about as far as it goes.  I can see how many readers got their fix of dark near-future detective world but Zoo City did not work for me.

6. Roughing it in the Bush by Susana Moodie

I picked this one up at Chainon with reservations.  Canadian history is notoriously boring and this looked very much to have that potential. The trade dress (I'll get into this more later) is from the absolute nadir of Canadian boringness, the late 60s and 70s and I sort of expected a way less charming but perhaps more realistic portrayal of 19th century settlers coming to Canada.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.  This book isn't boring at all.  It's actually quite funny at times.  Even better, it really blows away the myth of hard-working Europeans cooperating to tame the savage land.  Holy shit, the people are just awful!  I mean I know we all know that settler colonialism was awful to the people already living here and the environment.  In Roughing it in the Bush, they are also totally shitty to each other!  Moodie was of the fallen gentry, educated but poor.  She's quite a snob and naive about what she and her husband are getting into.  So you are prepared for some class conflict when she comes to a "republic".  Even taking that into account, these people are just scumbags.  Her neighbours constantly steal from her and presumably each other.  They just walk into her house and take stuff and she accepts unwanted guests for months and months.  Community barn-raising parties seem to end in drunken brawls and deadly accidents before any barns get built.  There is a bizarre tradition of gathering outside newlywed homes and making tons of noise all night long that can go on for weeks and weeks.

This all takes place around Peterborough, which is wild to think of as an untamed wilderness.  My sister calls the Onscarions and after reading this book, you can see how the descendants of these yahoos voted for Doug Ford.  

The story itself is not really a narrative of championing the elements and getting their lives established in the new world.  They do make some progress, but in the end, the husband gets a job as a sheriff in town and they move away into civilization.  Moodie became a succesful writer at the time.  It's more a collection of anecdotes.  They are quite good and entertaining.  I recommend this book for anybody who wants an eye-opener on the origins of our great nation.

On to the trade dress, I am sure Frank Loconte was a talented artist, but god this is just the most boring, meaningless and safe book design.  It's just so Canadian.  Hey we wouldn't want to create any kind of excitement (nor sell any books), as that is what uppity Americans do.  This is reflected even more annoyingly in the jumbled and anodyne introductory essay by Western's Carl F. Klinck, which also shows the worst of Canadian academia: smug, safe and undeservedly superior.  What's particularly vexing is that he starts out by saying the book is too long and that Moodie stuffed it for a British audience.  So this genius makes his own decisions and cuts a bunch of stuff out, including all the chapters discussing her relationships with the First Nations!  He's desperate to make the argument that she fancified her experiences but gives neither evidence nor analysis beyond that she wrote it several decades after the experience.  And this guy got an Order of Canada!  I apologize for my lack of nationalism at this time when all Canadians need to be pulling together to combat fucktard Elon Musk and his little butt boy Trump, but honestly we should not forget our own sins even in these times!

5. King of the Vagabonds by Colin Dann (re-read)

Got a proper photo this time

Colin Dann has been on the top of my hunting list and my favourite animal adventure author based almost entirely on this single book.  I found it years ago and have been looking for his books with no success since then.  My buddy found two of them recently on a trip to England and that got my daughter and I to choose it as our reading book for bedtimes.  At this point, she is reading more to me than vice versa and I got to sit back and listen to the second half of this book for a second time.  It didn't feel quite as amazing this time, but still very enjoyable and the episode with the bird bone in the throat was as harrowing as ever.  I found the stereotypicallness of the gender roles to be limiting to my now more-woke eyes.  The female characters are limited to mothers, sisters and lovers.  The Pinky character is a manupilatrice. Both my daughter and I were quite disappointed that Sammy ended up with her.

We have since started on In the Grip of Winter, about which I am quite excited.  It is actually a continuing story about the Farthing Wood gang in their new domicile.  Stay tuned!

 

 

4. Boomerang by Andrew Garve

I discovered Andrew Garve due to this post on Twitter* from April 2024, put his name on my list and have been keeping any eye out for him since.  I found 3 of his books in Berkeley (2 at Moe's, I think and one at Walden Pond Books) over Xmas.  My on-deck shelf has reached its limit and I am not supposed to be buying too many new books, but these were all thin and more importantly, attractive Pan editions.  I have to say, now that I have completed Boomerang, I ask myself the same question as Paperback Papa:  why have I only heard about Andrew Garve now?

Boomerang starts with Peter Talbot, a young and successful but risk-taking financier in London.  He has his own loan corporation that has done well but is now over-extended. After a fight with his starlet girlfriend, he crashes his car into a store front and ends up losing his license and doing some time.  In prison, he meets an Australian miner who is in for punching out a cop and a radio operator who got caught smuggling.  The three hit it off and their characters and experience inspire Talbot to come up with a scheme involving an Australian mine to make them all rich.

The bulk of the book is the preparation for the scheme.  All three travel separately to Australia to carry out their part of the operation, with the bulk of the narrative focusing on Talbot who is being himself, pretending to scout the region for a potential motel chain investment.  We as the reader do not what the plan is until very late in the book.  Hints are dropped here and there that it will involve explosives and the monsoon season.  Garve must have travelled to Australia because much of the book is entrancing descriptions of the varied and powerful landscapes of the outback.  It really made me want to go there.  

What was neat about the book was how pleasant and conflict-free the bulk of the story is.  You know it's got to go wrong somewhere but most of the time, the three conspirators are quite happy with each other and enjoy the work they have to do.  When it does go wrong, it is much more about the elements and the forces of law than any internal conflicts.  The likable characters aren't unnecessarily stressing with each other, which I appreciate.  There is a great slog through the monsoon-flooded desert that really had me gritting my teeth.  The ending was the teeniest bit pat, though with a nice dash of humour.

Great find!  I can only speculate at this point that perhaps Garve was somewhere between crime and men's action that he is not more well-known among 20th century paperback book nerds.  I am grateful to Paperback Papa for the discovery and psyched that I already have two more awaiting me.

*I am off Twitter for the most part now and primarily on Bluesky, though I still have kept my account active as there are a few people there that I follow that I check on from time to time.  Why?  Because fuck Elon Musk.  I hope I or someone else can look back at this post from a place in the future where the internet is actually clawed back from the trolls and shitbirds.

3. A Civil Affair by Lois McMaster Bujold (#11 in the Vorkosigan Saga)

I picked this one to coincide with the end of my vacation and flight back, because I have learned that I struggle with focus on a flight and need fun and easy to digest page-turners rather than something that requires concentration.  The Vorkosigan saga has proven to be always enjoyable and fun to read, even when it does delve into some deeper issues.  I suspect we are nearing some kind of end of Miles' narrative, as here the big struggle is if he can successfully woo the woman of his dreams, with the implication that he will settle down and stay on Barrayar.  Though I guess he can have other adventures in his role as Imperial Auditor, it feels like his arc has reached a certain maturity.

After the events on Komarr, where Miles uncovered a conspiracy to destroy the solar satellite crucial to terraforming and accidently discovered the love of his life, he is now back on Barrayar, preparing for the imperial wedding.  Ekaterin Vorsoisson, the other important character from Kommar, is now a widow living with her aunt and uncle in the capital.  Miles desperately wants to marry her, but recognizes that she is still recovering from decades of psychological abuse in a stifling marriage.  More practically, he has to avoid anything that would encourage speculation that he had murdered her husband (the truth is buried in ImpSec censorship).  This is the main storyline, a very romantic adventure as Miles tries in his typical way to manipulate the situation to get his outcome, which of course blows up in his face.

Meanwhile, his clone-brother Mark returns from Beta where he was working out his own psychological issues and starting to nurture his gifts at business success.  He comes back with two major complications:  first, he is going out with Kareen Koudolka the daughter of a very conservative Vor family and second he has brought "butterbugs" and the brilliant but utterly impractical Escoban scientists who developed them.  The butterbugs are disgusting to look at it, but produce a very rich food from vegetable scraps.  Both these complications lead to lots of funny hijinks.

I think this is the book that got the comparison to Georgette Heyer. It is truly a romantic comedy and quite enjoyable.  There were just so many fun threads (the Lady Donna/Lord Dono battle for succession is so great) and it is fulfilling to get more depth in Bujold's rich world building of Barrayar society and history.  All the stuff with cousin Ivan and his mother and aunts is quite hilarious.  I can see why nerds would love this, because the male characters that get the best partners are not the jocks at all, but the deformed strategic genius and the overweight business genius.  Really fun and now I am torn whether I should take a break or jump right into the next one!

2. Calibre by Irving Shulman

Continuing my exploration into the Amboy Dukes literary universe, I found this non-canon Irving Shulman somewhere that I can't remember (note to self: note where I find books when I get them!). At it's core, it is basically a post Civil War western, but layered with rich melodrama and tortured Shulman characters. Had it been longer, I might have grown impatient, but the first half where we learn about the various characters ends just before it wears out its welcome. And the second half is full of great action and a satisfying conclusion. So overall a fun read. 

 Dave Shannel is a confederate soldier returning to the home of his colleague Ben, who died in battle. Ben spoke all about his family and Dave, rootless and shell-shocked with nowhere else to go, visits them at their failed desert inn. When he gets there, he discovers that three roughnecks and an alcoholic woman have taken over more or less. Their leader, Barlow, is a wealthy war racketeer on the run and they are waiting for some other men to make an escape to the north. Ben's family is his mother, his wife and his uncle (who believes there is treasure on the land and is always out prospecting). You know there has to be a showdown and Dave the hero, but we get there via lots of tension and conflict between and among the bad guys and the family. The historical context adds depth to the standard set-up. Dave is really suffering and lies to the family about Ben's bravery. The bad guys all represent different types of players in the Civil War and its aftermath, especially Barlow the war profiteer. 

Dave struggles with his role.  He's not a coward per se, but just so broken that he simply wants to keep moving.  The men aren't all even that bad, except Barlow and we learn that even he has a somewhat legitimate reason for stopping at the inn.  Turns out Uncle Darcy was a hunter of confederate deserters and murdered Barlow's brother.  The final battle is quite good and intense.  

1. The Banker by Leslie Waller (and 2024 year-end round-up)

Happy new year!  I hope you are all doing well.  2024 wrap-up will follow below.

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!