Recommended reads, one non-recommended, and some commentary

First, leaf blowers and weed whackers are the Spawn of the Devil. I am so sick of hearing them buzzing and whirring. The emblem/symbol of this town where I live should be the two implements crossed on a background of yellow vests, straw hats, then encircled by a sweat drenched bandana. Whatever happened to rakes and brooms and, dare I say, other manual, not motorized tools? Why can’t there be fallen leaves in the street? Why does everything have to be so pristine and ordered? It’s all so…well…Anal…and annoyingly noisy too.

And by the way, also remember (this from a bumper sticker in a basement bar called The Sump in the tiny southwest crossroads of Sheridan, Montana): Minivans are manifest evidence of Evil.I think that needs no further clarification.

Can you tell, boys and girls, that I am cranky and crabby today? It’s from Noise Torture and some really bad drivers over here in the ‘burbs. Inattention and indecision are their hallmarks.

And before I give you six, count ‘em, Six Reads, the first of which I am going to pan but good, also keep this kind of Moment of Bad Manners in mind.

I’m in an adult sort of restaurant for lunch today, at the bar having a sandwich, watching some Olympics, reading my newspapers. The place is half full, 25 or so people and that number includes 2 women and 3 small children, the latter being chronically horrible, loud, screaming, screeching, wailing brats whose Mommies (You Know Who You Are!) think they are oh so cute while they sip their Mimosas, smile indulgently at these easily able to walk throwers and slammers of silverware and toys and bury themselves into their cell phones awaiting the latest, so very important vapidities and selfies.

Rude. Inconsiderate. Ill-mannered. Grating.

What in the Hell is wrong with these people?

On more than one occasion, my brother and I were quickly and efficiently removed from any public place upon the second outburst; one chance was it.

On more than one occasion, my most recent former wife and I would remove any or all of our children in similar fashion as a result of behaviors so noted above.

As I paid my check and took my leave, I saw one of the mommies sitting alone at the table, the other mommy having perp walked the gang of three to the can.

She looked up, waved to the server (whatever happened to waiter or waitress…?)for another day drinking round of bubbly and juice (for the record, no teetotaler here-not on a bet!) and caught my evil eye staring a hole in her.

She made the I Don’t Understand quizzical face.

I never said a word but I did think, ‘What an oblivious dunce!’

Evil mean man that I am…felt good too.

And So, here you go. And I am trying to broaden up my fiction reading, looking for some boundary benders and paying attention to writing styles and plot structures, etc.

UNCIVIL SEASONS by Michael Malone

This thing was recommended to me by a good and trustworthy friend and I will continue to pay attention to her proffers but by time I finished it, I had come to detest it. Why did I keep reading in it? Why didn’t I just put it aside, give it away, throw it away, shove it in the neighborhood ‘Little Library’ a la bird feeder box for the next sucker...?

Well, I was in a bit of a self-made trap. I was heading out to Montana and Wyoming for some weeks and I wanted of course to take enough reading to last me without over weighting my carry-on. (I did just that last summer and I can promise you that Andrew Robert’s massive CHURCHILL and Tom Wolfe’s A MAN IN FULL gave me tilted sciatica for a week-and I did not bring them back with me-just re-ordered them once I got home. Those tat know me understand books and few other things are my opium.). So instead, I gathered three slimmer, lighter books and this was one of them.

It had all sorts of positive, glowing reviews from The WaPost and Atlanta Constitution, lots of them. The author lives in the quasi-writers’ colony of Hillsborough, N.C. and clearly has snappy connections. I learned this after I had finished it and read the author’s bio in the back. More on that in just a minute.

This is a murder mystery in a little North Carolina town in the Piedmont. The protagonist is a fellow who has eschewed his textile family’s money and prominence for a career as a small town detective so there’s the angst and self-doubt angle.

He is a sloppy bachelor living in a dump.His has a married, don’t give a damn, vixen rich mistress, a shitty diet, a regally pompous and dotty family and a quirky partner who is his hick boy antithesis. There are killings and strange deaths and so forth. You get the picture.

It starts out interestingly enough but begins to flop about and gag and start and stop like a jalopy engine seizing up on a bag of sugar in the tank. The plot gets bogged down, goes off in a thousand directions (It’s supposed to be ‘mystery’ dumb ass, not a cliche ridden swamp.) and the twists and turns are agonizingly contrived, difficult to thread and the sidekick becomes a pronouncing soliloquy machine who I wanted to strangle before I’m halfway through the damn thing. The partner guy is a first class bloviator and the treacle blossoms forth from him like a petrie dish of bacterium. Oh, and weather is always a big feature here. Clouds, rain, sunshine, snow-all Mother Nature’s climate props all here, all the time.

By time I finished it and I did cause I had to have ‘enough’ to read out in the west and there was no spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down (But some tequila did help), I had grown to detest the book and vowed to rip it once I got home. And now I have.

Now out of curiosity, you may go get the damn thing and ‘see for yourself’. Have at it. You may just like it in spite of of my deprecations here. Fine. Just don’t bother me about it. I’ll think you shallow and wonder about you.That’s all.

And oh yes, about the author’s notes.

I did not learn this until I had finished. I swear and promise. The author teaches English at Duke. I should have known it. His black and white (au naturalment) picture, semi-reclining in his chair on the back cover oozes his smarmy, supercilious 'better than you/ know it all’ Duke’ish superiority. This book sucks. End of story. Next!

THE BOMBER MAFIA by Malcolm Gladwell

Yes, that Malcolm Gladwell, the author of so many best sellers, THE TIPPING POINT, BLINK, WHAT THE DOG SAW and many others. All about decision making and what moves the needle and that sort of thing. And his stuff is interesting but I think he’s getting to be Johnny One Note and a pretty mushy one on this deciding which side to be on thing. Basically, if his name is on the cover, it’s going to sell and I did indeed buy it, intrigued by a title that summoned up war and history and God knows I am an inveterate reader of war and military history.

And yes this was on my ‘out west’ travel as well.

So here’s the summing up. It’s about the history of wartime aerial bombing from its substantive infancy (see World War One) to and through World War Two and onto to today’s laser guided bombs and missiles. He presents two schools of purpose.

One is that precision bombing (i.e. the Norden Bombsight-not the miracle it was knocked up to be) will shorten wars with many, many fewer deaths and casualties, thus making war ‘more humane’.

The other is the “Bomb them back to the Stone Ages” school which culminates with the carpet firebombing of Tokyo and the dropping of the A Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He extols the virtue and goodness of Position One. He roundly laments the active history of Position Two.

The absolute fact that the bombings in Japan culminating with the use of two nuclear weapons ended the war without a necessary, massive invasion of the Japanese mainland which would have cost hundreds of thousands in deaths and casualties on both sides gets short shrift here.

And he celebrates the latest laser guided world of today. Obviously, he has not spent much time studying Hamas and Hezbollah. I found him to become increasingly moralistic and unrealistic. Sherman summed it all up very succinctly. “War Is Hell.”

The Confederates' politically incorrect and yes of course, rabidly racist Nathan Bedford Forest noted as a corollary to Sherman’s view the following. When asked how it was that he won so much, and did he ever!, his replay was simple and eloquent.

“I get there firstest with the mostest.”

An interesting little book with some good history but it got pretty whiney and naive. I read it. It was interesting but overwrought. I’ll be careful next time I see his name on a cover. And remember, as the late Don Imus often said, “Don’t be stupid. When the criminal is breaking into your house, don’t use a pistol or a rifle. You’ll probably miss and hit your neighbor’s house or your neighbor next door. Use a scatter gun. You want to hit the fool and take him out, simple as that.”

Hmmmmm….

Now, at least for me, it gets better

THE LAW OF INNOCENCE by Michael Connelly

Connelly has been at the law and crime trade for a long time. I believe I’ve read some of his things in the past but have no specific recollection. If this genre is appealing to you, then I think you will enjoy. I found this to be a damn good book.

Quick, precise, fresh and tight, this is a story of a hot shot, hot shit lawyer who represents himself when charged with murder. There are, of course, twists and turns and blind alleys but not too many to slop up the efficient and substantive pace and course of the book. Criminal procedure and the realities of the world of criminal prosecution and defense are spot on. The author knows what he’s talking about.

The cast of California characters is well created and drawn. The finish is a good one.

This is a fast read and that’s not a bad thing. After the first two noted above, reading it was like brushing your teeth and having a good, cold glass of water with a white whisky chaser. Enjoy. I recommend.

ON A STREET CALLED EASY, IN A COTTAGE CALLED JOYE by Gregory Smith & Steven Naifeh

A fun read with lots of laughs. And since it’s set in Aiken, one of my all time favorite places, I am easily pulled to it. This is easy, comfortable, summertime reading. It’s the true story of a pair of fellows from New York City who are on the verge of winning the Pulitzer for their acclaimed biography of the mercurial, erratic artist, Jackson Pollock. They both love houses, elegant houses and homes. They have since they were children. They draw them out, talk about them, design them, dream about them.

They tire of NYC and their back of the house Upper West Side apartment and its dismal, narrow, chain link view. They find in a Sotheby’s Real Estate Catalogue a sprawling place in Aiken, South Carolina. It is but a few blocks from my beloved Willcox Hotel, just off Whisky Road in the City of Trees (not to mention money, polo, celebrities by the score, horses and more trees.) They drive down to see it. They find it. They fall in love with it. It has sixty!! rooms, was built by one of ultra rich Whitneys in the days of the Robber Barons and it has fallen into despair and near-collapse.

They don’t have much money…yet. But they do manage to buy it. Later they will win the Pulitzer and while not ever mentioned, I expect that’s what funds its restoration.It is a funny book, a sweet book with much self-deprecation and devotion.It’s their story as to what they had to go through, what they had to do to pull this beautiful dowager, a giant, nearly ruined ship from her neglected past. It was also a close call with the wrecking ball in the beginning.This was truly a prodigious effort.And along the way, there is a bountiful bunch of stories and tales and history from The Gilded Age and plenty of wise and observant and funny comment about the ways of The South. It is still a private home, overseen by Mr. Naifeh. Both he and Smith became abundant and substantive supporters of the arts in Aiken and became completely and happily transplanted. Sadly, Smith died of cancer but not until the restoration was completed. I have been by the place many times before but never in it. I would love to see it; house tours maybe? Will inquire.In the meantime, grab this little gem. It’s heartfelt.

WIDESPREAD PANIC by James Ellroy.

From the masterful, creative author of THE BLACK DAHLIA and L.A. CONFIDENTIAL comes his most recent bombshell.It seems to me he writes with a combination of Flaming Fury, Grim Fierceness and Joker-Like Black Humor. A review from somewhere out there noted that, “Ellroy is the greatest American crime novelist of all time." Another says, “He just doesn’t write; he ignites and demolishes.”No argument there. He knows Los Angeles and Beverly Hills and Hollywood down to every nook and cranny.The time is the early 50s with the Red Scares, Black Lists and Casting Couches preeminent.Movie Stars and Politicians are word battered by the score and more.This one features former defrocked cop and now top trash private dick, Freddy Otash and the book is crammed with alliterative patois and patter true to the day.This is captivating reading with arresting characters and dialogue out of every Grade B movie script and bar and drug house, just all done up better.This is not a small or light book. It has plenty of depth and substance . It would have been all too easy for someone lesser than Ellroy to lose his way in the maze he has constructed.But no such thing happens. From page 1 to page 320, he holds all lines and reins in his hands and guides all things home.This is a ‘You have to dig in and pay attention!’ book and to do so is to savor some great writing.This is a Big Boy. Go Get it. You dig, Daddy-O? Yo!

THE NIX by Nathan Hill

This is The One I should have taken to Montana!I had but barely started it before I headed west and is 800-plus heft was not a good fit in my carry-on.When I returned a few weeks ago, my reunion with itl was seamless.I am but in the middle of it as I type but I am convinced that its second half will be as good as its first if not better.It’s as good and captivating as any fiction I have ever read. Remarkable. I need to go back and read Salinger’s CATCHER IN THE RYE and John Kennedy Toole’s A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, indeed two true classics (which I have just re-ordered to subject them to my already-stated subjective assessment) but I swear this is better.Samuel Anderson is a frightened, cowering, scattered, small time academic hermit in the midwest, scarred and twisted by lost parenting and manipulative, vapid and often just stupid friends. He is in love.He is trying to find out why his mother deserted him and is trying to write about her.The descriptions of people and situations and mores and the psychology of life are genius and the wordplay is elegant.There is plenty of humor here and too, plenty of pathos.I think this is five star, top shelf stuff.Two (at least to me) interesting side notes:This book was brought out in 2016. The author Hill when recently researched has written nothing else according the world wide web. I’m wondering about that. A guy this good a one hit wonder?AndI somewhere read a good review on it soon after it’s release so I ordered it. And for a reason long ago lost to me, it sat in plan view in one of my reading boxes here in the house and I never picked it up. For years!Every now and then I will gather up a few books that I really did not love or enjoy and give them away to the county library or Goodwill. I know I almost did that to THE NIX. I shudder to think…that would have been a terrible loss to me that I would have never known or understood. That’s a mystery right there, isn’t it?Once I was lost, now I’m found. A Great Book! I’m looking forward to enjoying the next 400 pages.

And stand by: I’m also currently reading ALLEGORIZINGS by Jan Morris and also a book about a fellow who has played golf in all fifty states, both books are travelogues and so much more. And too, there is one about the life of Crazy Horse and another titled AMERICAN CHEROKEE both of which I did start out in Montana, left there and which are being shipped to me now.Plus I’ll take receipt of two or three more in the next few days.Yes, I am a reading fool! A Happy Habit!

Lastly, please always try to order from your local, independent bookseller whenever you can. Amazon is OK in a fast pinch, but they don’t need our support. Those in our communities surely do! Stay safe out there,

All the best,

Vernon