I read my last library book, The Nearest Exit by Olen Steinhauer, and enjoyed it very much.  This is the second Milo Weaver book, and is even better than The Tourist.  Good backstory about meeting his wife years before, and a well worked out plot.  I usually don’t like flashback books that much, but these flashbacks are really well done and serve the story.  I’ll try some of Steinhauer’s East European novels next.

Christmas Stalkings was a seasonal selection, a good anthology of new (in 1991) and classic mystery stories, all set around Christmas.  This is my book, and I’ve read it before, but it was in storage for several years and the stories seemed fresh, as well as very good fun.

I also skimmed through Bloody Kin, by Margaret Maron.  This is the first book she wrote with the Colleton County NC setting; Deborah Knott, who later got her own excellent series, is a secondary character in this book.  Deborah’s brother-in-law. his wife Kate and her extended family are the main characters in Bloody Kin, and their family has an important role in the latest Deborah Knot mystery, The Buzzard Table.  It has been a very long time since I’ve read Bloody Kin and I wanted to refresh my memory of these characters’ story.  Good book, worth digging it out of my paperback stacks.  It also inspired a fit of nostalgia about two other favorite writers, Dorothy Gilman and Helen MacInnes.

Dorothy Gilman wrote some good stand-alone novels, but she is best known for the Mrs. Pollifax books, another favorite series of mine.  Mrs. Pollifax is an elderly lady who spies for the CIA from time to time: feisty, open-minded, not as twee as she sounds.  Gilman does a credible job of researching the people, geography and current political issues of the times and countries where Mrs. Pollifax has her adventures, which makes them informative as well as fun.  Although the author and her character have both sometimes been gushily positive over foreign political movements that look less attractive in retrospect, Mrs. Pollifax is an endearing, honest and moral character and I always enjoy spending time with her.  Amazon had the last three Pollifax books – Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled (set in Syria); Mrs. Pollifax, Innocent Tourist (Jordan); and Mrs. Pollifax and the Lion Killer (the imaginary but credible African country of Ubangiba) - in inexpensive paperback editions, so I bought them to complete my Mrs. Pollifax series.  I also bought the second Madame Karitska book, Kaleidoscope, for my Kindle, reasonably priced and the only version currently available in print.  Kaleidoscope, and the first book, The Clairvoyant Countess, are episodic novels that are almost like individual short stories, so great for picking up, putting down and picking up again later.  I have read all of the new purchases except Lion Killer; I got sidetracked by one of my old Pollifax books, Mrs. Pollifax and the Second Thief (set in Sicily). 

All of Helen MacInnes’ books are currently out of print, and the library doesn’t have them, so I bought North from Rome (1958) and The Venetian Affair (1963) from two of Amazon’s used booksellers – one even had free shipping through Amazon Prime.  Both are in good condition considering their very reasonable prices; I’ve had good luck so far in all my Amazon used bookseller purchases.  The books are two of MacInnes’ best Cold War thrillers; rather earnest and prim, which I suppose fits the time in which they were written, but good, exciting, well-written novels.  A publisher will start issuing reprints of the MacInnes books in both paperback and Kindle editions starting with Above Suspicion and Pray for a Brave Heart at the end of January, with more following every four to six weeks.  Very glad to see this author’s books on the market again and available to new readers.   

I also bought a used copy of Crime through Time II through Amazon – the book cost 1 cent, and 3.99 for shipping, which is a pretty good deal for a paperback in good condition.  The book’s short stories are a mixed lot as far as quality, and too many are set in Ancient Times, the most boring and un-credible settings for me.

Last, I read two books from the monthly senior lunch book swap:  Lie Down with Lions, by Ken Follett, and The Jackal’s Head, by Elizabeth Peters.  I have never enjoyed any of Follett’s books as much as I did The Eye of the Needle and The Key to Rebecca, and I’m no more enthusiastic about Lie Down with Lions.  The setting in Afghanistan during the Soviet Russian occupation is interesting, but the characters and plot are clunky and over familiar.  I know Follett wrote a lot of books, so I’ll keep trying, as long as I don’t have to pay any money for them (keep checking the library).  The Jackal’s Head has Peters’ (too) familiar Egyptian archaeology setting, but in modern times for this one.  Libraries always seem to have lots of Elizabeth Peters’ books, and they turn up often in book swaps, so I can easily indulge this guilty pleasure (they are fun), and then take the books back where they came from, or pass them on to another book swap. 

Library trip #1

I checked out The Jury Master, a ”lawyer mystery” by Robert Dugoni; Death Comes to Pemberley, a fake sequel to Pride and Prejudice by P.D. James; The Wild Blue, a non-fiction book by Stephen Ambrose about bomber crews based in World War II Italy; and 1861: The Civil War Awakening, a non-fiction book by Adam Goodheart.

I enjoyed The Jury Master; lawyer David Sloane is an interesting protagonist and the plot had a great twist.  The writing is a little clunky, but the good story makes up for it.  The best thing about this book, though, was my epiphany about reading light fiction:  you don’t have to read every word to get through the story without cheating and flipping to the end.  It’s better to skim through the middle of the book, and get more fun out of the character and plot high points while making a fairly orderly progression to the end of the book.  This method has greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the library novels I have read since the epiphany.  The method was especially useful in getting through Death Comes to Pemberley.  I was looking forward to this book by the great mystery novelist P.D. James, with Elizabeth Bennet Darcy as detective, but it was a letdown.  P.D. James came up with a pretty good plot and some cute details about the post-Pride and Prejudice lives of the Bennet sisters, but I thought it was a skim-through-the-middle book.  Better writing and a better effort than A Presumption of Death, the fake Lord Peter Wimsey sequel, but still disappointing.  Once again, I’m grateful that the library had a copy and I had a chance to read it without buying it. 

There’s a back story to my choice of The Wild Blue, a book I hadn’t heard of before finding it in the library.  The story starts with “The National World War II Museum” in New Orleans: Alan and I were fascinated and moved by its detailed exhibits about the D-Day landings in Normandy and the amphibious landings in the Pacific war theater.  I had never read anything by Stephen Ambrose, the popular historian who was one of the people instrumental in establishing the museum, but we did have the blu-ray edition of the TV series Band of Brothers, based on Ambrose’s book of the same name.  The series is excellent, but some of the details about the men of Easy Company got lost in the action on the screen, and I wanted to know more about them, so reading Band of Brothers was the next logical step.  I am trying to make the library my first stop in looking for books – my bookshelves are already overcrowded, and I still prefer reading real books over e-books.  No Band of Brothers at the library, but they did have The Wild Blue.  The book is about the training and bombing missions of B-24 Liberator crews flying out of Italy in World War II, and the main focus of the book is George McGovern and his bomber crew.  George McGovern had recently passed away and there had been many obituaries and articles about his life and career, so this was a timely choice and a good way to check out whether I like Stephen Ambrose’s writing style.  Yes!  Good choice by a talented writer with a gripping writing style.  Ambrose interviewed McGovern, members of his crew, and other fliers, then put their stories together into a compelling narrative.  It’s a history of Army Air Force training methods, aircraft production, and bombing missions over Germany, told through the skillfully interwoven recollections of the men and families who lived through the story.  Very readable, very informative.  I’m looking for space on the bookshelves for Band of Brothers, which is, I understand, written the same way.

Bringing me to 1861.  I was pleased and a little surprised to find this well-reviewed, well known book just waiting for me on the library shelf.  I was really looking forward to reading it, but decided to read The Wild Blue first.  As noted above, my reading speed for non-fiction is slow, even for interesting, well-written ones.  So I found myself with two days left until 1861 was due, started reading it, decided it was terrific, and crossed my fingers that I would be able to renew it.  Success, I renewed it for three more weeks, as well as another book called The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared.  To keep my focus on these two books, I didn’t check out any more; no distractions.  (to be continued)

1861, The continuing saga of.  Or, Library trip #2

After library trip #2, I set myself to reading 1861 with a will.  It’s about the months leading up to the beginning of the Civil War, largely from the point of view of those dedicated to preserving the Union.   Goodheart structures his history around the stories of individuals in places like Ohio, St. Louis and San Francisco, although the book starts, as many Civil War histories do, at Fort Sumter.  However, this Fort Sumter narrative has many more details about the thoughts and motivations of Major Anderson and the other, lesser known, officers and men holding the fort, and much more about the impact of their heroic efforts on public opinion in the north and the mid-west.  Goodheart continues with variations on this narrative model:  individuals act with conviction, their actions are catalysts for changes in public opinion, which then feeds an ever-widening determination to save the Union.  Some names of the individuals Goodheart highlights are mentioned in passing in more conventional histories of the Civil War, but in this book people and events and places, usually lying well outside the main Civil War narrative, reveal a new and exciting perspective on the communities that answered Lincoln’s call to preserve the Union.  I get excited just writing about this book, and savored every word I read; so much so, that I didn’t finish the book before its second due date.  This time, I was out of luck; somebody had a hold on the book so I couldn’t renew it.  Only one chapter to go once I get the book back in my grasp (to be continued).

Library trip #2.5

 Since I couldn’t renew 1861 on this trip, I decided to check out more books of a less demanding nature, just to get back in the habit of reading new things and practice my skimming technique.  I also decided to hang on to The Reading Promise, since it was available for renewal. 

I’ve already finished Bodily Harm, another David Sloane mystery by Robert Dugoni.  Not as good as The Jury Master, but still entertaining.  Next I finished Christopher’s Ghosts, by Charles McCarry.  I understand that McCarry wrote a series of spy thrillers about Paul Christopher, then retired from writing.  In 2004, he came out of retirement to write a book called Old Boys; Paul Christopher is a character in this book, but isn’t one of the main protagonists.  I read Old Boys (bought at a used bookstore) a couple of years ago, and thought it  was great, with a genuinely thrilling story and wonderful exotic locations.  Christopher’s Ghosts was written after Old Boys, and is about 16 year old Christopher, his parents, and his first love in 1939 Berlin, with the events of that time coming to resolution in 1959.  Sort of a prequel to the main Paul Christopher series, none of which I have read.  It’s a pretty good, well written book, but it doesn’t have the punch of Old Boys.      

I just started a book called The House at Sea’s End, by Elly Griffiths, from yet another forensic archaeologist series; this character is named Ruth Galloway.  It’s pretty good so far, I like the slightly off beat writing, and the mystery about six bodies revealed in a cliff fall seems interesting.  I have the first book of the series, The Crossing Places, on my Kindle, but haven’t read it yet.

The fourth novel I checked out is a spy thriller, The Nearest Exit, by Olen Steinhauer.  I read Steinhauer’s The Tourist, an earlier book also featuring the spy Milo Weaver, a few months ago.  I wasn’t overwhelmed, but it was entertaining enough and I think this one will be too.

The Reading Promise is short and looks like a sweet book, but I can’t quite get started on it.

Keeping count of the eight books I read in eight weeks:  in this post so far I’ve written about five library books I finished and 1861, the library book I almost finished.  Two more to go.

Old book, new book.

My only mystery short story book for this time period was Crime through Time (the first one – my book).  Good stories, better collection overall than Crime through Time III (also my book).  There must be a Crime through Time II, I’ll have to see if I can track down a copy.

The new book is, hooray hooray, The Buzzard Table, the latest Deborah Knott mystery by Margaret Maron.  I bought it for my Kindle the day it was released.  The Kindle is fine for books like this; I knew I was going to zip right through and read every word.  I liked this book more than the last one, Three Day Town; Deborah is back in Colleton County NC with her exuberant extended family and the mystery plot is better.  New York detective Sigrid Harald, from Maron’s other series, is also in this book, on a family visit with her mother.  Margaret Maron’s switches between her characters’ points of view get a little frantic in this book, and Deborah’s first person narrative, the best feature of the series, gets too lost at times.  But any Deborah Knott is better than no Deborah Knott, and right now books in this series have the distinction of being the only ones I buy as soon as they come out.  

Pending books

I’m working through Eats, Shoots and Leaves (my book) one delightful chapter after another.  I just finished the one on the apostrophe, its distinguished history and its use, misuse and abuse in contemporary times.

The Scramble for Africa (my book) went into hiatus and probably won’t come back out for a while.  I read 380 of 680 pages and after the exciting exploration and derring-do parts I got stuck in the important but depressing and intricate details of the full-fledged European colonization of Africa.  Pakenham carefully describes the bumbling and manipulation of clueless governments floundering into poorly planned adventures while doing great damage to the Africans, and it got me down.

It’s better to have a book of my own on hiatus, and know I can start it back up any time I want.  I’m still a little bit in shock from the 1861 forced hiatus, which I admit is mostly my own fault.  Maybe I should put myself out of my misery and just buy the book.