52. Red Ketchup Integrale vol 3 (books 7-9)

7 Echec au King
This time Red Ketchup gets a new boss as his old is demoted after not being able to contain Red Ketchup.  The new boss is supposed to be one of the best, but it becomes clear quite quickly that he is too ambitious as he uses Red to get dirt on his superiors to gain more power.  He also is desperately in love with a fat trailer park woman and will do anything for her.  This is a theme we have seen a few times in Red Ketchup, the powerful man with the weakness for a woman far down on the social status.  Her thing is reading Amazing Facts, basically a News of the World tabloid and she uses her FBI boss lover to investigate the things she reads about (bigfoot, giant moles and eventually Elvis coming back from the dead).  He in turn sends Red to investigate who does so much damage that these fake stories start seeming real.  It all traces back to an alcoholic writer in the Florida Keys who is behind all the stories.  In some ways, this book is more his story and Red Ketchup is really just the catalyst, although there is also the grad student who comes down to interview the writer and the gallant next-door neighbour of the fat trailer park lady who seems vaguely familiar...

A lot goes on here.  This book reminded me a bit of one of the Parker stories where Parker is a vehicle for other character's narratives.  Come to think of it, you probably could do an interesting Parker/Red Ketchup comparison.  Echec au King doesn't capture the manic chaos of Red Ketchup at his best but it is still an entertaining story and another fun poke at American excess.

8 Red Ketchup en Enfer

(read May 12, 2020 during pandemic) This one was awesome, getting back to Red Ketchup stirring all kinds of shit up, this time literally in hell.  Red Ketchup dies saving some kids from a crazed cult leader in the bayou.  He takes an atomic bomb and runs with it on his back where it explodes.  He wakes up in hell, welcomed by the devil and all his demons.  Satan is so pleased to have Red Ketchup with him, he makes him the head of security for hell, where his extreme mania for order drives demons back to earth.  Meanwhile, Red's sister is sure he is calling to her and her search leads her to Dr. Beaudelaire Hyacinth, a Haitian professor of anthropology at the University of Montreal.   Dr. Hyacinth, it turns out, used to be a power voudou shaman but renounced his use of magic to study science.  Together the two of them head back to Haiti to try and find Red Ketchup and send the demons back to hell.  Even though we get classic Red Ketchup extremism, this is also just a really good story, well-structured and fun.  Dr. Hyacinth is an excellent side character, great NPC for anybody's modern occult campaign.

 

9 Élixir X

(read August 31, 2020, end of the pandemic summer) This final chapter (at least for now) in the Red Ketchup saga is an enjoyable story with some nice character development. However, it feels restrained and never achieves the chaos it sets up.  The main story centers on the insane Nazi doctor Otto Kunst who develops an elixir of life, which gets released into the public by his young model wife (who looks exactly like his true love the inflatable sex toy).  It makes people young, but also violently aggressive and addicted.  We really had the potential for some Red Ketchup mayhem but the storyline emphasizes Red Ketchup's attempt to find the assassins trying to kill his sister.  There are lots of nice touches and a pretty interesting development with the possibility of his sister becoming a second red ketchup.  A good read, but a bit mellow for Red Ketchup.

51. Mad Ship (The Liveship Traders Book II) by Robin Hobb

Wow!  This has been the least productive reading month for me for a long time.  Still two days left, but pretty clear that I will fail to achieve my 5 books a month goal.  The last time I went below 5 books was May 2019.  I have many excuses.  The biggest factor is the NBA playoff bubble which was running 4 games a day for almost three weeks in August.  I also allowed myself to fall back into a lot of wasted time on Twitter.  Things will tighten up in September.

My lack of reading forces me to question my phat fantasy strategy.  Mad Ship keeps up all the good stuff from the Ship of Destiny, and because I am so deep into it now, I can read it in snippets.  She packs so much story in each chapter that sometimes I have to take a break.  So it would seem an ideal companion to the NBA playoffs. The problem is that about halfway through the month, I start to feel the pressure of not meeting my monthly goal (and slipping away from the ultimate goal of restoring my monthly average to 50).  It makes it hard for me to truly sit back and enjoy this deep fantasy universe and the enjoyable unraveling of its mysteries.

In Book 2, we get a lot more of the pirate Kennit.  He becomes almost mythical, though it is hard to tell if it is his own insane ego or that he may actually be an important, fated piece in all the machinations going on around him.  He takes Wintrow, the ex-monk to Sa, under his wing and with his consort Etta and their pirate crew, they set in motion several important triggers that will rock the world of Jamailla, Bingtown and the Rain Wilds.  Their piracy of slaveships accelerates the confrontation between Bingtown and the Satrap (with the Chalced States behind him).  On the big magical picture, Kennit pushes Wintrow into a situation where he releases a sea serpent that is key to the story of the tangle in the prologues to each chapter.  There seems to be a lot of destiny going on.  We also follow the storyline of the rest of the Vestrit family as they put the mad liveship Paragon to sea to rescue the Vivacia and her captain.  

The political conflicts in this second book were great, complex enough to make them interesting but not get lost.  Most of the magical backstory is revealed here and it is really cool.  At first, the mythology seemed so different than that of the first trilogy, that I thought they were going to be basically two separate storylines.  Here, at the end, the reveal connects them in a really interesting way that gives you a totally different understanding of the dragons in the Assassin trilogy.  It's very cool.

I overally really enjoyed it, but there is still some balance with Robin Hobb that sometimes makes me have to put the book down in frustration.  Her characters are often relentlessly pessimistic and whiny.  Sometimes it makes sense, but it always seems to get pushed too far.  And you know something bad is going to happen to them before any good stuff, so it can be demotivating.  She also relies on people's stubbornness and stupidity as a plot device and sometimes it really doesn't work. It's a small part, but when Reyn is drinking himself to sleep to avoid the dragon dreams and his brother and mom come to him and he tells them to find Malta, they just ignore him and treat him like a baby.  Yet, they all were raised understanding the danger and power of the old city.  They also know the situation is super dangerous.  They would at least have checked on Malta. I found that really unbelievable and frustrating and it threw me out of the book.

50. Out of Control by G. Gordon Liddy

I found this in one of the free book kiosks in the Mile-End.  I actually hesitated over it for quite a while.  This late summer, my thirst for book hunting knows no quenching.  However, my cup (as in my on-deck shelf) runneth over and I am reading quite slowly because of the NBA bubble.  I was not really feeling very enthusiastic about watching sports this year as it feels like we have much bigger issues in the world right now, but the condensed and accelerated season with all the teams quarantined in Disney World has actually made for some super entertaining basketball.  There are games on from 2 in the afternoon until 11 at night and it really cuts into my reading time.  So I hemmed and hawed on this book and finally took it because I mean come on a spy adventure novel written by one of the Watergate conspirators  How can I say no?  

And during the first chapter, I was rejoicing for my choice.  It starts in media res with a professional thief and safe cracker hiding in the custodial closet at the top floor of a NY office building.  We get a nerdy but very entertaining blow-by-blow of his break-in.  Liddy does not spare the technical details, right up to the brand of the cylinder being different than the brand of the rest of the safe.  Unfortunately, this is a peak and it kind of comes down to earth for much of the middle of the book, rising back up again for a crazy finale.  

Out of Control is an odd mix of almost dull technical and business procedure and then over the top situations and craziness.  There is a lot of 1970s orientalism, most of it made up and wildly inaccurate (though not disrespectful or belittling; just kind of fantastic) which is off-putting.  However, my grade 10 self would have loved it, as there are martial arts masters, secret Tong societies and even a climactic kung fu fight.  The hero is an absurd fantasy, the son of a Nazi Luftwaffe ace (and a pilot himself who still flies a messerschmidt recreationally, which of course figures in the finale), whose dead wife was from a powerful mafia family and whose current girlfriend is connected to a super powerful Tong enterprise.  He is also an expert financier.  The sexual and romantic banter between him and his girlfriend is tiresome and dated, but felt genuine.  We are failing all Bechtel tests here, but he does make her a real person.

I can not recommend this as a good book, but I found it likable, wanting to entertain and succeeding at many points.  There is a lot of self-congratulating business manipulations that went way too far into detail for me, but there are also a lot of great and creative action moments. And it does get genuinely crazy.  If you are a fan of 60s and 70s American crime and espionage fiction, you should check this out.

[Also minor golf clap for having reached 50 books.  My real goal for 2020 is 59 as I will then have achieved an average of 50 books since I started this challenge.  Then we'll have a real celebration!]

49. The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester

I picked this up for $5 at S.W. Welch in my first post-pandemic book shopping.  A really nice old paperback edition of a book I believe is considered a classic.  I'll research that after writing my review.  I struggle with these Golden Age science fiction books. I want to keep my mind open and try and approach them without the baggage of all the great sci-fi they spawned (in one way or another).  I remind myself that times were very different and we are still today unpacking deeply buried cultural assumptions.  Despite all that, I found myself struggling to enjoy the Demolished Man. 

It's the story of Ben Reich, big-time corporate leader in the 24th century future.  He decides to murder his business rival, D'Courtney.  However, murder is almost impossible in this age, thanks to the existence of espers or peepers.  They are people with esp, organized in a guild with strict ethis and rankings.  The book is about Reich's plan to commit this murder and then the investigation and hunt by esper detective Lincoln Powell.  So underneath all the science fiction stuff, it is basically a cat and mouse detective story.  Some parts of that story were kind of fun to read.  Likewise, as an early imagining of a how a society with psychics in it would work and the mechanics of planning and detecting murder in such a world were somewhat interesting.  However, there were lots of little logical flaws (like on Reich commits the first murder, which is supposed to be so impossible, he suddenly seems to have no trouble committing several others to cover up the first) that took me out of the reality.  The Ben Reich character seems almost hysterical in his desire to murder; his motivations are not convincing.  The final big psychological reveal at the end didn't have enough weight to it because there was nothing in the character to connect to the ending, nor to the reader.  So sort of fun, but I mainly read it to get through it. 

Apologies to those with the perspective that made this book enjoying.  I guess if I were in my 20s in the 50s, this may have been quite mind-blowing.  And it was Bester's first book.  Now to go find out how wrong I am.

48. TV Noir: Dark Drama on the Small Screen by Allen Glover

When I first graduated from college, there was a period where either I was between jobs or working a retail job where I had some weekdays off.  In any case, I remember that The Fugitive was on some local channel everyday at noon.  I got to watch quite a few episodes.  It surprised me how dark and pessimistic it was, for a show from that time.  Twitchy-faced, hunted David Janssen always trying to do the right thing while keeping one step ahead of the relentless, amoral detective chasing him down for a crime he didn't commit.  I suspected at the time that The Fugitive was only one of a number of cool old TV shows that were no longer on the air.  TV Noir confirms it.  It came up on my twitter feed and I bought it for myself at Dark Carnival after nobody got it for me for xmas.  I've been reading chapters between completing other fiction books and just finished it today.

It's a beautiful coffee table book, with a long introduction about the transition from radio to TV and the many threads that connect the well-known world of noir in film to the lesser-known one in TV.  The big distinction in the early days of TV was that it was live and used really big cameras that would only work in a studio.  Many of people from the B studios that cranked out film noirs were used to produce the television shows.  Right from the beginning of television, crime was the main subject for fictional content.  That really hasn't changed today!

After the introductory essays, the bulk of the book is a review and analysis of noir and noir-adjacent TV shows, from the obvious ones like The Fugitive, to less obvious but convincingly connected by these essays, such as The Twilight Zone and Dragnet.  The real pleasure for me (and danger) is discovering many series that I had never heard of that sound really cool.  I Led 3 Lives (about a suburban husband who is actually an agent going undercover as a commie) and The Invaders (a guy who stumbles on a vast UFO conspiracy) in particular got me drooling.  Sadly, most of the live teleplays were never recorded and are gone forever and some of these sounded absolutely incredible.  The author found stills and scrips and reviews.  Many of them were evolutions of old time radio shows and I would love to have seen the dark, live television versions of them.

Physically, the book is beautiful with tons of photos.  Would look great on a coffee table if we had one.

47. Night Dogs by Kent Anderson

I had been looking for this book for quite some time and finally gave in and bought it new.  I was under the impression that it had been written more recently and this was colouring my view of it as I read it. It had some minor narrative elements that felt a bit passé and even cliché (the partner on the verge of retirement who gets killed).  I was surprised to find that it was written in 1986.  Knowing that, I gave a lot more credit to the writer.  This is a book that was in many ways quite ahead of its time.  I am also annoyed that I gave in and bought it new.

It's the story of a vietnam vet, Hanson, who is now a patrol officer in early 70s Portland, Oregon.  You sympathize with him. He is not a racist, but he is a brutal, asshole abusive cop and African Americans get the majority of his asshole behaviour.  He works the North district, which is (or was) the industrial and poorer corner of Portland.  The cops who work there tend to be mavericks, action junkies or failures from the other districts.  Night Dogs walks a fine line with the protagonist.  He is brutal but also has a sense of fairness.  His behaviour is posited as a given, that this is what cops do.  It reminded me tons of The Wire and I wonder if David Simon had read this book.  It is pretty brutal and "unflinching" as they say and a strong argument for changing the way policing is done in America (even before police departments got massive budget increases, gifts of military hardware and an increasing radicalization in their culture).  Hanson is an asshole, though, and it is painful to see what he does to the people in the community he polices.

There is some minor plotlines that run through it, but ultimately this is much more about being a vietnam vet and a cop and what the day to day life is like.  I don't know if he exaggerated, either in the language or just the facts, but this book is pretty relentless: murdered dogs, abused children, rape, even a snuff film.  At times I had to take a break.  It's a well-written, engaging book, but not for the faint of heart.  Because plot is not the priority here (there is even a cop antagonist who is investigating Hanson that ends up fizzling away), the criticisms about the storylines didn't carry as much weight. I like that.

One criticism I did have is that Portland comes across as pretty generic. We spend most of the time in the poor parts of town, with some brief contrasts with the white liberals (including a college girl who is into kinky violent sex and is turned on by Hanson's aggression).  Portland is a really interesting city with a vibe all its own, on many levels.  Witness the huge protests going on right now against the cops.  This is more than just safe liberals who didn't see reality in 'Nam. 

46. The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart

I guess this is or was considered a real-classic, at least according to the hype on this Canadian Pocket Books version I found at S.W. Welch.  I went in there after they had been re-opened for a couple of weeks and found this and two other paperbacks, for which I paid $25!  This pandemic has changed everything.  I needed something shorter before I get back into the second book of the Liveships trilogy. 

I was quite looking forward to a nice little murder mystery, written by a woman.  It started off in an entertaining fashion, with a dry, self-deprecating humour from the narrator and protagonist/detective, the old patrician aunt, Mrs Innes, who takes a large summer estate in the country.  Things go bad and scary right from the beginning as the help doesn't want to stay, they hear strange noises and wake up in the morning with a dead man in the billiard room. 

Unfortunately, early on too much of the mystery was maintained by main characters having secrets but refusing to talk. And these were clearly sympathetic characters, such as the niece and nephew of Mrs. Innes. There were also quite a few characters, many of whom appeared all of a sudden but were presented as if we should know who they were.  This all led up to me not feeling like making much of an effort to try and figure out what was going on. When the solution was finally revealed, it was convoluted, with several backstories that were filled out.  The ending was somewhat adventurous and there were a couple of good moments. The tone throughout of this mannered upper-class lady was entertaining, but not enough to make this "the most significant single advance in American crime and detective fiction since Edgar Allan Poe" as it says on the back.

There is also some casual yet pretty painful to read racism.  It is always in the dialogue of the characters and the black characters themselves are portrayed no better or worse than any of the other side characters, so I think it is fair to say that the racism here is very much a product of its time.  There is likewise a passive classism as well, but it is nowhere near as ugly and jarring.  Be aware.

As an artifact, the book is particularly cool and I will keep it.  The address for Pocket Books is 6306 Park and I rode my bike by there yestrerday.  That actuall address no longer exists, but I suspect it was in the same building that is currently 6300 Park avenue (which takes up the entire block; the next block jumps to 6522).  I am not sure if those were just the editorial offices or the actual production and distribution warehouse, but tantalizing to imagine the building was full of brand new Pocket Books less than a century ago.

45. Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb (Book 1 of the Liveships trilogy)

Crazy book-finding story about this trilogy.  As was my plan, I decided I was going to stay in the Robin Hobb universe and jump into her next trilogy.  Her books are hard to find used anyways and stores were still closed due to the pandemic, so I decided to just buy the trilogy new.  I had ordered the previous trilogy online from a big used book seller in the US but it took 6 weeks to get the books to me.  There is no equivalent store for used books in Canada. I like Bakka-Phoenix in Toronto and they had all 3 in stock so I ordered them new.  They came quite quickly and sat on my shelf for a week.  The day that I decided to start reading the first book, my wife said that she noticed several boxes of books in the alley behind our house.  "Mostly trade paperbacks, I don't think there will be much there."  Well any box of books in an alley starts me drooling and there has never been any in our actual alley so I rushed out.  It turned out to be an insane treasure trove of fantasy and horror paperbacks, amongst somebody's entire life of stuff.  It was moving day in Montreal and this often happens when somebody is evicted or died or just had to leave to  a smaller place and they dump their stuff in the alley or the sidewalk.

They were in quite poor shape, well-read but also discarded haphazardly, many covers ripped and pages folded.  They were also a bit musty and some smelled like cigarettes.  I ended up spending two days going through it, pulling out 10 books or so to keep and organizing all the rest in boxes that I put out on a busy corner for people to take.  I just couldn't bear to see the rest just tossed.  There was a lot of mainstream fantasy that I am not so interested in, like David Eddings, most of Game of Thrones, Piers Anthony.  And of course, you guessed it, the entire Liveships trilogy by Robin Hobb in way nicer earlier paperback editions than the one I ordered!  I was walking around the house with my mind blown while wife and daughter rolled their eyes at me.  I was seriously wondering if by ordering the trilogy new I had created some quantum overlap in the timelines.  There were no other Robin Hobb books.  Just the exact three that I had ordered two weeks earlier and just started reading that very day!  I will keep you all posted.

So on to the book itself.  Ship of Magic is the first book of the Liveship trilogy. It takes place in the Pirate Isles to the south of where the Farseer trilogy unfolded and just a little bit later chronologically.  So far in the first book there are no direct connections, but you hear rumours about the northern lands and their customs.  The war there affects trade in this region which has greater social and political ripples.  This is the kind of immersion I was looking for.  The story here is about an old Trader family who patriarch is sick and dying.  The Trader families have made generations-old deals to procure living ships made of magical wood.  When the third generation dies, the ship "quickens"and becomes conscious, with all the memories of its past voyages and the three generations of captains who steered him or her (they are gendered).  The mast head can talk and they are super badass trading ships, whose intelligence and rapport with the captain and the crew makes them far superior to a normal ship.  

Unfortunately, the widow decides to give the captaincy to her son-in-law, rather than a member of her family as they consider her daughter too wild, even though she has great potential and was super close to her father and the ship.  The son-in-law turns out to be a total bastard, ignorant and unwilling to learn the old Trader ways.  Shit goes bad and we then get to follow the storylines of all the different characters impacted by the situation.  There are several main characters in this first book and more threatening to become major: Althea the daughter, Kennit the pirate (no relation), Wintrow the son who wants to be a priest but forced to sale are the main three.  We get lots of suffering and hardship and character-building but it does not seem to be as consistently down as in the Farseer trilogy which started to get me down.  There are ups and downs and some satisfaction in this first book.

The worldbuilding is also really cool here.  The set up around the liveships is rich and interesting, going beyond just how they work but touching on generations of trade agreements, settlers and a complex mesh of politics between the old traders, the new traders, the faraway decadent Satrap and the Chalced States to the north, the market for slaves.  Slavery is a big factor here as well and the portrayal is brutal.  There is also lots of great sea stuff, piracy and ships in storms and that, which is extra fun when there is also magic.

While the bad guy is sort of extremely bad and beyond stupid, it is not as pervasive and annoying as it was in the Farseer trilogy.  The family that gives him the captaincy does it all right at the beginning and quite quickly realize their mistake and start trying to fix it.  So while it was really stupid to have done that (and not super convincing that they would have given the power of blood with the Old Trader families), the stupidity is over quickly and the rest of the book the characters are pretty rational.  I want to jump right into the second one, but this one was over 800 pages and took me almost three weeks to read, killing my book count.  So I need to take a little break and go with some shorter books to try and meet my 5 books a month goal.

A tale of two trilogies (or is it two timelines?)

44. Soft Touch by John D. MacDonald

I had decided to give the John D. MacDonald non-Travis McGee's a break because I was getting too used to his style and less patient with his social philosophizing, especially about women.  However, I was heading out to a cottage in Lanaudière and felt like something easily digestible for relaxed lakeside reading.  I also wanted to bang out a few more books before June is over as I will probably be heading back to the Robin Hobb phat phantasy world in her next trilogy, each of whose books is in the 400-700 page range.

As always, I enjoyed the set-up right away and JDM gives it to you straight and quickly.  Jerry is a construction exec in his father-in-law's badly run company, his wife is a shrewish alcoholic.  His old army buddy (OSS behind enemy lines stuff in India) comes to visit and proposes a surefire caper: rip off a diplomat carrying 3 million dollars to buy arms for an uprising in his banana republic.  JDM presents everything in this one in a very lowkey and straightforward style. At first, when he and the wife start to go at it, I thought we were in for a lot of bad period dialect, but it was kept short and effective.

We get on with the story.  Things go bad, in quite interesting ways.  This is a heist gone wrong tale, a JDM morality tale and a man losing it tale all mixed together for a very enjoyable ride.  It is quite dark at the end, though because so much has gone on, it's not a downer.  I can safely say that Soft Touch is so far my favourite of the non-Travis McGee novels.  I also love the edition I have.  Just a lovely layout with space allowing a busy illustration to express itself.

43. Incident at a Corner by Charlotte Armstrong

I read this as the shorter half of a Giant Double Ace Novel Book.  I can't figure out what year this was published.  Actually, it isn't even clear when these stories were actually published.  Both have two copyrights on their respective frontispieces: 1946 at the bottom and 1956, 1957 at the top.  Confusing.  The other book is Unsuspected and the typeface looks to be from the 80s.  

Incident at a Corner is more of a dramatic suspense story than a true thriller.  There is almost no crime.  An old crossing guard is anonymously accused of being perverted with the girls and is fired from his job.  His daughter and son-in-law refuse to allow it to blow over quietly to save his reputation.  They investigate and start ruffling feathers.  Right at the beginning, the reader knows who sent the note, so the suspense if more if the forces for truth will overcome fear and suspicion.  The note spurs rumours and parents question their children in such a way that they are convinced the old man is a pervert. It is a very prescient portrayal of that kind of accepted community fear that is utterly irrational.  We see it exert itself to much worse affect in the satanic panic in the 80s.  The stakes are much smaller here, but Armstrong nails it with clarity and gentleness.  

A common set-up in Armstrong's books is the young man and woman, often a couple or with the potential to be one, overcoming social obstacles and a mystery together.  In the process of their investigation or search, they know each other better and end the book usually ready to get married.  I particularly liked the couple in Incident: Pat the artistic and strong metalworker and Jane the empathic but also firm teacher.

Ah, pretty interesting.  I found some info on this edition.  It is the G series of Ace Doubles, which was all women authors.  This is the first one and as noted in the website I linked to "The copyright dates are often included, but not the publication dates..."  This one was actually printed in 1962.  So I was a bit off about the cover typefaces on Unsuspected!  Anyhow, wow this looks like a line right up my alley.  Several Elisabeth Sanxsay Holding doubles and several other intriguing ones with amazing covers all by women authors.  Will need to keep my eyes open.

42. A Hero Ain't Nothing but a Sandwich by Alice Childress

I found a nice paperback copy of this book on a bookshelf on the sidewalk in my neighbourhood. It was full of mostly french books, some of which had the stamp of the library of my local elementary school.  I also found a Pokemon book for my daughter, which she had specifically asked me for.  So a nice little find in a time when the free closet on St-Viateur is still locked!  

This book plays a big role in the memories of my childhood.  I grew up in California in the '70s and we used to get these book catalogues.  As you got older they had different names and each had a selection of books you could buy.  I don't remember if they were subsidized or who actually paid.  I remember getting a few.  The teacher would receive a big book and hand them out.  Your books would be wrapped together in a rubber band with the receipt inside.  I remember it being quite exciting and it seemed to me at the time, that every kid got one.  I hope that was the case, as there several kids from less well-off families in my class.  

A Hero Ain't Nothing but a Sandwich was part of the heavier and so intriguing books that were offered to the older kids.  I remember The Chocolate War and The Outsiders.  I moved to Canada before puberty so never actually got the opportunity to order them and I only read a few, but the titles and cover images are still very evocative to me of the mystery of teenagers struggling with social issues in a very 70s way.

Actually, it was very timely to read this book.  At first, I was a bit put off as it is written in text in the language a 70s ghetto teenage boy would use with his peers.  It is written well, though, and each chapter is a different character, in their unique voice.  It moves very quickly.  The core story is of 13-year old Benjie who is on the road to becoming a junkie.  We start out with him, but then meet his stepdad, his teachers, his grandmother, his mom and others, each in their own voice.  It's short and tight and super clearly and strongly lays out the reality of the generational trauma the black community in America has suffered.  I knew this, but the recent chorus of seemingly educated white voices on social media makes me wonder what happened to our education and collective understanding of history.  This is the kids born 5 years before me, so early Gen-Xers or late, boomers who was reading books like this.  It just hammers home how little we have done about racism when you see how a mainstream book like this is basically laying out all the problems and it is from almost 50 years ago!

Another interesting comparison is the story of Bubbles and that young kid whose name I forgot who goes on to become a junkie and basically the next Bubbles.  A Hero Ain't Nothing but a Sandwich has a climax of hope, but a denouement that leaves the outcome anxiously undecided (funny that the previous book I read, Marianne Dreams, also ended with an ambiguous will-he won't he ending, though it seemed more optimistic).  I guess it is a story told all too many times in the ghetto.

One criticism I will make is that I didn't get a good understanding of Benjie's relationship to heroin.  There was very little that explained how the way the drug made him feel would make him want to keep doing it. It was elided and I didn't leave understanding how a 13-year old boy would become hooked.

Still, a great book, really well-written, tight and moving.  It's not preachy at all, but you will be reminded of urban black history and that the struggle is fucking real.  Black Lives Matter.

41. Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr

This book is a family milestone.  My wife discovered it and was reading it and my daughter picked it up. She is 7 and to my disappointment has not enjoyed me reading chapter books to her.  We did the first two Beverly Cleary books, but it was really mostly due to my insistence.  I had dreams of reading all kinds of kids classics to her, but it may not end up happening.  She seems to strongly prefer me to only read picture books and comics.  On the other hand, she does love reading by herself and she just devoured this book, to our surprise and pleasure.  I had just finished the phat phantasy Farseer trilogy and was waiting for the next trilogy to come in the mail and thought a quick, well-written, British children's book would be a perfect in-between read.  And my daughter insisted.  So this is the first book the entire family has read independently, all within the same week.  

I had never heard of it, but it does seem reasonable to suggest it was once a children's classic.  Marianne gets sick and must stay in bed for two months.  They never explain what specifically is wrong with her but it is not super serious and she seems basically fine except she must rest.  Her struggles are emotional as she gets bored and frustrated, even leading to some pretty bad temper tantrums (nice to see this behaviour is universal).  One day, she discovers a nice old pencil in her mother's old jewelry case and draws a house with it.  That night, she has a dream that takes place in the house and she meets a boy.  Neither of them know how they got there or what they are supposed to do.  The rest of the story is about her and the boy figuring out the relationship between her drawing and what goes on in the dreams.  It becomes a mix of her own personal growth as well as their adventure to get out of the house.  The boy turns out to be another pupil of her governess, a boy named Mark who has polio and may or may not be able to walk again.

It is well-written and fast-paced with its own engaging internal logic, even if not all the questions are answered.  The ending was hopeful but ambiguous, which leaves you wanting to find out what was going to happen but also probably the best way it could end.

40. Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb

Epic!  Whew, that was definitely a deep fantasy trilogy dive.  I've been reading this for most of the month of June and my 50 books pace is going to take a hit because of it.  It's okay because this is what I was looking for reading-wise this summer (and it is so far a scorcher, in the 30s in June).  I have even already ordered Hobb's second trilogy (and not used copies!) which is in the same universe as the Farseer trilogy, but a tangential story about living ships. 

The final book in the epic saga of FitzChivalry and the fight against traitorous Regal and the Red Ship Raiders is made up of two major sections: Fitzs' journey to the Mountain Kingdom to try and find Verity and then he and a small party discovering the mysteries of the Elderlings.  The first part is really enjoyable because it is just Fitz and his wolf, Nighteyes. They are both on the run and exploring new parts of the world, which makes for a lot of fun.  The second part is much more mystical and magical and reveals many layers of backstory both about the history of the world and all the various characters.  I wouldn't say this section bogged down, but it definitely took a while.  The pages left to read were getting thinner and thinner and we still didn't seem to be nearing any kind of climax or conclusion.  However, it gets there and it is very satisfying.

Fitz still does a lot of pouting and there is a lot of people not telling stuff for vague reasons that don't really feel justified.  There is also one really obvious moment where Fitz is so stupid [see the spoiler below if you are interested].  Again, this threw me a bit though wasn't as prevalent as in the first two books (and the other characters finally stopped being stupid). Overall, super absorbing and satisfying.

SPOILER:  When the Fool asks him to name the town his wife and child live and asks twice in a totally uncharacteristic way after they have been warned multiple times that the Fool was susceptible to the bad guys' skill attacks and Fitz tells him completely unsuspectingly and then also has a total spaz-out because the fool doesn't answer him when he asks if the prophecy tells him he will survive.  It is just so obvious that it was not the Fool asking the questions.  I think the idea was that Fitz being so upset on assuming he wasn't going to survive distracted him that he had been deceived, but it all felt super obvious and out of character.  I excused Fitz' spaziness in the earlier books because he was quite young but by the time we get to the third book the dude has seen and done a lot, lived a full, learning life and should not be acting this babyish way. 

39. Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb (part 2 of the Farseer Trilogy)

I finally got my package from Thrift Books.  I think it took over two months!  Whatever method of mailing they are using, I will ask them to try something else, even if I have to pay a bit more.  I suspect the pandemic only played a small role in the delay, because I received several other packages from the States during this time and they were all quite prompt.  This reeks of Canada customs to me.

When I decided to start reading this trilogy, my goal was to immerse myself in a fantasy or sci-fi series and even try to read them consecutively.  I did a bit of reading around on the web and Hobb's work came up several times.  I can say that for the most part, I am happy with my choice.  Her world-building is rich and absorbing, with plenty of mystery that makes you want to keep reading.  She has an excellent balance of detail that gives the world weight and interest without ever bogging down.  And in these two books, the scope of the conflict is very gradually being revealed to be much bigger than the immediate issues of the red-ship raiders on the coasts of the Six Duchies and the internal conflict of the royal family.  I am motivated to read on to the third book and am seriously considering jumping into another one of her series or trilogies.  My understanding is that many if not all of them take place in the same world and one narrative may brush against or even interact with another that reveals more depth about each.

The Farseer trilogy is centered on FitzChivalry, bastard son of an abdicated and murdered prince who is molded as a spy and assassin for his grandfather, the king.  He is an underdog right from the beginning, treated like shit at first because he is a bastard and then worse later because he is considered a threat to Prince Regal, his decadent, ambitious half-uncle, who is clearly the antagonist.  FitzChivalry gets to do all kinds of super cool stuff.  He has The Skill, basically psychic powers in this world.  He also has The Wit, the ability to bond with an animal that is considered a heresy in the culture here, with some very interesting parrallels to communism or homosexuality in the way it is persecuted and the way Fitz handles the guilt and fear associated with the natural pleasure it brings him.  The Wit brings him an awesome Wolf partner and enables him to berserk in combat.  He learns to sneak, to spy, to poison, to fight with an axe. 

So there is some great fantasy wish fulfillment here.  The trouble is that Fitz can't enjoy any of it. He is such a bummer, always fretting and stressing and making up all these reasons why he can't just kick ass and solve his problems. His problems are manifold and many of them truly beyond his power.  One of the frustrations with this book, as I felt with the last one, is that some of them are not beyond his power.  He and other characters around him seem sometimes artificially ignorant and passive.  It is just so clear who the bad guys are and what they are up to. For instance, the king for some reason loves Regal and favours him, but is other wise super savvy.  Why does not all the good guys just explain to him that his favoured son is deliberately undermining their security?  Another example is when out fighting these mysteriously powerful and destructive red ship raiders, Fitz sees a strange white ship coming out of the fog and it fills him and the others with incredible dread and pessimism.  He is the only one who saw it and he never tells anybody about it.  Hello, it is obviously some greater evil force directing the red ships.  He has the complete trust of his allies.  Why would he not say "hey there is some greater conspiracy here, we need to find out about these white ships and go after them"?

There is enough character development and depth of situation that a lot of Fitz's fretting and passivity makes sense, so I definitely kept reading.  And I get that you need resistance and conflict so when there is a climax, it is satisfying (and this one is here).  It's just that at times I got too frustrated to keep reading and had to take little breaks.  I am hoping the third book will have a bit more of him gaining confidence and skill and whooping ass on the badguys.

38. Titus Groane by Mervyn Peake

The Gormenghast series has been on my radar for a long time, but I have always hesitated because it looks so daunting.  It is one of meezly's favourites and I took advantage of her having a reading copy when my books that I ordered a month ago still haven't arrived and nothing interests me on my on-deck shelf.

My trepidation was accurate.  This book was a bit of work for me.  As the vast multitude of my readers knows, I am lazy-minded and driven forward by the narrative of a book.  Titus Groane is almost 400 dense paragraphed, narrow-margined pages and what actually happens in the book could probably be condensed down to maybe 100 pages and that would be pushing it.  As Anthony Burgess says in his introduction, Titus Groane is "architectural".  Gormenghast castle and the surrounding bleak landscape take up the bulk rest of the pages. It is incredibly rich and evocative world-building, a fantastic evocation of an epically decadent aristocracy, manifested in the few remaining members of the House of Groane and their servants, but mostly in the place itself.  It is good and I would say it deserves the title of a modern classic.  It's just for me, this kind of reading can be a bit of a grind.  I just get distracted too easily.

The story too is compelling, though perhaps ultimately lacks some weight as the characters are so crazed and almost entirely unlikable.  It begins with the unexpected birth of Titus Groane, next in line to become the Early of Gormenghast.  We meet the cast of characters around him: his check-out, book-obsessed father, his lonely older sister, his mother who lives for her cats and birds only, the self-obsessed and victimized nanny, the class-jumping doctor and the sort-of protagonist, Steerpike the young kitchen aid with a machiavellian drive for power that risks to bring change to Gormenghast.  There are others and though each is quite unique, they are all almost entirely self-centered and utterly disconnected from any reality other than their role in the castle.  There is also Keda, a woman from the mud towns that live at the foot of the castle walls, who seems to have a larger role in the later books. She is actually decent, so far.

The geography of the castle is amazing. It would be literally possible to get lost on the rooves and die of starvation.  The twin sisters of the Early, total freaks, live in a room with the roots of a giant dead tree whose network is so complex that you can get stuck and not be able to leave the room without them guiding you out.  It looks like I will have to read the entire trilogy, but not right away.  Need something with some pace to it next.

37. In the Teeth of the Evidence by Dorothy L. Sayers

This book makes me feel slightly sad. It is the last book I found in the free shelf outside of Latina supermarket on St-Viateur which is currently chained closed, I guess by some stupid overreaction in the time of the Coronavirus. I think the way we freaked out here about surface cleanliness instead of wearing masks will prove to be a big mistake, driven by cultural assumptions in the face of incomplete information. We defaulted to our North American obsession with sterility and physical purity and the result is unecessarily locked free shelves. The other thing I liked about this book is that it was already in such bad condition, I did not have to worry about damaging it further and could throw it in my bag or jacket pocked without any care.  Because it was a book of short stories, it has mostly been read while waiting in line, which has been pretty rare, so it took me almost two months to complete.

It begins with a few Lord Peter Wimsey short stories (the first one involving a dentist, thus the title), then several Montague Egg and finally by random little mystery vignettes.  It is kind of amazing to me how not only could she come up with multiple mystery scenarios for novels, she had so many extra they could also be used in short stories.  Many of these are enjoyable but not super satisfying.  I did like the Monatague Egg ones, not so much for the mystery but for the cultural context. He is a travelling salesman of fine alcohols and each story starts with him in a different location, usually at a pub, meeting up with other salesman and reminiscing about past sales.  His life philosophy and detection techniques are based on Salesman's Handbook and it is quite clever and funny how he applies some quotation from it to each mystery.  I could definitely read a few more Montague Egg stories and perhaps even a novel. 

I told you it was beat up.

36. The Long November by James Benson Nablo

Despite myself, I ended up quite enjoying this book.  I say that because it is written rather poetically and has a lot of philosophizing (though always in small bites), elements that tend to get in the way of the story for me.  Fortunately, there is a story here and I agreed with much of the philosophy and found the stream of consciousness not too distracting.  Reading the forward (which started out as a blog post that attracted the attention of Nablo's daughter and eventually led to the book being reprinted) by the crucial Brian Busby made me appreciate it much more. He argues strongly that this was a much-read book that has since been passively or actively rejected by the Canadian literati and public, most likely because he left to work in Hollywood.

The story is framed by the narrator Joe Mack who is lying on the floor in a ruined house in Italy, just shot in the shoulder by a Nazi sniper.  As he lies there, different smells come to him and each smell recalls a memory from his past. It is basically a picaresque journey of a young working class boy in Ontario in the depression and his path to life and love that led him to become a soldier in WWII.  The through line is his love for upper class Steffie Gibson.  He starts out in high school, going to the dance with her and getting in a fight with the farmboy who was picking on her gay cousin.  We then follow him through interesting episodes as a rum-runner, hobo in Chicago, miner and eventually succesful businessman before he goes off to war. This quick summary does not do justice to how well each of these vignettes captures a period in history.  Even better, the whole thing is infused with a truly Canadian idealistic political perspective: a belief in giving a hand up to the little man, a suspicion of excess wealth, an appreciation of a state that doesn't let that wealth get too excessive.  Ultimately, the theme here is that despite the rough edges, in the end one has to try and do the right thing, no matter the cost.  It's a neat, touching book and I am glad Ricochet press brought it back. 

35. Pied Piper by Nevil Shute

I really am in the mood for epic escapist fantasy but must continue to wait because the books I ordered from Thrift Books have been sitting somewhere in the Canada Post void since April 20th, most likely with those extortionist scumbags at Canada Customs.  Fortunately, I found this book in a box by the side of the road and though I have read too much British WWII fiction in recent months, the subject appealled to me and the first few paragraphs totally sucked me in.  Pied Piper is a quiet, touching at times tense story about a 70-year old British man, Mr. Howard, who naively takes a fishing trip in Switzerland just before the Nazis invade France.  He is less naive than sort of stunned, finding himself unable to contribute in England due to his age and also just learning that his son, a bomber pilot, was shot down over Heligoland Bight.

The book is framed in a neat way.  It starts out with the narrator collecting his mail at the club and noticing the old man stumble over a rise in the carpet.  He and the porter discuss how the carpet needs to be fixed and the narrator ends up in the quiet reading room with the old man.  They get to talking and continue to talk even when the air raid signal is sounded and the placed blackened.  They both agree that they are as safe on the top floor as in the basement. The old man then reluctantly and diffidently starts to tell his tale.  The introductory stumble and the way the old man tells the tale, suggesting that he really did nothing and just sort of made his way back from a vacation suggest the real theme of this book: British humble stoicism and heroism.  With Howard in the mountain resort in Switzerland is the wife and two children of a British attorney at the League of Nations. The parents feel that they must stay on in Geneva and do their jobs at the League but ask Howard if he could take the children back to England with him to stay at their aunt's.  What at first appears to be a simple train ride across France and a ferry trip across the channel soon falls apart as the Nazis advance right into Paris.  Howard finds himself on foot in a parade of refugees with two children in tow.  As they make their way via various means trying to get to the coast, he slowly accumulates more and more children, victims of war. 

The journey is more tense and worrisome than outright thrilling.  The man must constantly make ethical decisions weighed against his and the childrens' survival.  His age, though physically a disadvantage, gives him the patience and wisdom to always benefit the children.  It's really sweet.  Furthermore, we the readers get an informative and rich perspective on France in the first days of the invasion and takeover.  Fascinating and scary as hell.  This was a great read.  Strongly recommended.

34. A Time To Be Born by Dawn Powell

My on-deck shelf is not inspiring me these days, so I asked meezly if she had anything interesting on hers.  She passed me this one, which I first was quite interested in, then slightly turned off by the prose on the first page.  However, I decided to commit and was happy to find that the style in the beginning was deliberately flourid, representing the state of mind of an introductory but secondary character.  The rest of the prose is certainly not sparse, but much more digestible.  Actually, it's extremely well-written, with funny, scathing metaphors and vivid physical descriptions capturing New York City in the 40s and briefly the environs upstate.  The main stuff though is about the people, their personalities and their relationships.  And wow, what people!  The sympathetic characters are weak and insecure and the rest are absolutely loathsome.  Yet it is all portrayed in such a rich and enjoyable way that you love to loathe them.  Powell portrays upper-class New York (and striving upper middle class) as utterly devoid of any principles in their constant quest for status.  They are almost inhuman.  I mean just really awful people.  I mean I have a strong contempt for the American class elite, especially in  New York City but even I found this portrayal pretty extreme.  She is just scathing.  Perhaps she is not wrong in portraying powerful people as being completely without any empathy, given what we are seeing from the nouveau dotcom billionaire class of today.

The story revolves around two main female characters, the unterfrau of Amanda Keeler, now a celebrity author and married to a media tycoon and her old "friend" Victoria Haven, who comes to NYC to get away from heartbreak in their shared hometown in the midwest.  Keeler is ruthless and only accepts Vicky into her world because it gives her a justification to set up a love nest where she can have an affair. The narrative is really about poor, wounded and so insecure Vicky as she navigates the sophisticates around her and Amanda's power over her.  There are several other threads as well and it is all quite enjoyable, though one has to suspend some disbelief at the extremity of the characterizations.  In Powell's depiction, there is only class striving.  It is not until the end that we get a glimpse of an actual counterpoint, of a character being a little bit normal and real and not making every decision based on how it will be perceived by those of higher status.  It's like adult Heathers.  I did find the ending slightly jarring and simple, as once you pierce the ridiculousness of status (especially with America joining WWII), it pops like a balloon, putting all the previous behaviour in question. 

Since she lent me the book, I will share a link to a review by meezly of another Dawn Powell book, with a nice summary of Powell's career.

33. A Sour Apple Tree by John Blackburn

My opinion of this book was thrown by misleading expectations.  This amazing cover suggested dry political espionage or perhaps an office murder.  The language and setting was very much in the British mold, with the protagonist being a high-ranking security officer and his top agent and they do dryly discuss past affairs of state.  Then things got a bit too colourful for my taste with a bizarre murder attempt and the agent going full Bond on the first woman he meets.  As I read through, I realized that this is more of a horror, semi sci-fi potboiler that should have had a much more garish cover.  The cover, to be fair, does symbolically represent what goes on in the book.  It begins with the resurgence of an old adversary, a British traitor named John Glyne who went over the Nazis in WWII and did english-speaking radio propaganda against the British.  His method was much nastier and less open to ridicule than the infamous Lord Haw-Haw and there were rumours that he later went into POW camps and somehow brainwashed British prisoners and turned them into traitors as well.

From the beginning, Glyne is described as having this tremendous charisma, so powerful that people feel compelled to follow him after being around him for a few minutes.  The way it is described in the book, it sounds not unlike Steve Jobs famous reality distortion field.  However, as the book progresses, the reader starts to suspect that we are moving into the supernatural territory.  More and more murders are being committed by subjects in insane asylums, ones that had shown no previous signs of wanting to do violence.  What starts as a hunt for an ex-Nazi traitor turns into a potential national murder crisis as the killing starts to infect the sane.  Much of the action is still an investigation and there are some really good regional inquiries and a discovery of a downed german sub.  A very fun, super-pompous old school Navy minister called Admiral Vane adds some fun to it all as well.  By the end, we are in full on Saturday morning matinee telepath battle and I had let go of my previous disappointment.  There were some minor annoying flaws, like one of the characters not phoning in what they were doing in order to make for a more suspenseful ending, but overall it ended up being quite enjoyable.

 

Nazi eyes make you dead!