fourth hand

I picked up John Irving's The Fourth Hand at a library book sale. Not because I was looking for it--or even knew about it--but rather, I've read a few of Irving's books and I expected a treat. Irving writes a carefully plotted, intricately woven novel, typically about normal American folks dealing with normal American stresses, typically through the clarifying lens of some abnormality. A typical Irving character is challenged in some way, or possibly challenged by living with other folks who may be challenged more than they are. Irving characters may be physically or intellectually challenged, located somewhere personally lonely on the gender or sexuality spectra, furries, addicts, insane, a farmer or a wrestler.

Maybe all of those things.

But Irving uses these perceived abnormalities to accentuate and elevate the human feeling in a way that clarifies the story of their struggles for us, and allows us to see inside those issues like our our. It bother mirrors and magnifies our own thoughts and feelings as human beings, and draws us into the story deeper than we might have otherwise. But only if we are willing. As an author, John Irving does his job, but we need to do ours as readers and bring our understanding and empathy to the mixture in order to get out of his writing what Irving puts in.

Patrick Wallingford is a TV journalist who loses his hand during a report from India, and the accident is caught on film. Wallingford then become known as the guy who lost his hand, as the clip is watched hundreds of thousands of times worldwide. A hand surgeon in Boston would like to be the first to successfully perform a hand transplant, and a Wisconsin truck driver and Green Bay Packer fan wants to be the donor, or maybe its his wife that wants him to be.

Where these three people, and those around them, come together, each wanting something from the others, is where this story comes together. A small slice of the bizarre, served à la sexe, gives this story the juice which powers it forward, and makes it such a delight to read.

Read this book, and everything else John Irving writes.

bloodsucking fiends

Christopher Moore you crazy bastard!

My wife got me this book when we were away for the weekend a few weeks ago. I haven't read a Christopher Moore book in a little while, so I was looking forward to it. I read it right after another book with the sub-title A Love Story, but this one is completely different.

My oldest saw me reading this and said, I think Moore wrote another one about vampires. I took a look on Amazon and found two books that had Bloodsucking Fiends in parenthesis after the titles: You Suck, and Bite Me.

Thinking that there may be more I went to my favorite series tracking site FictFact, only to find that they have been shut down! By Amazon! For what they describe as an inadvertent "infraction of their terms." yeah, clickedy-click on the link and read the sad news for yourself. looks like I'll be providing links to a competitor's book site for all of the links on this post!*

Based on what I've found, it seems as though the Bloodsucking series is just these three books, all sub-titled A Love Story, by the way. adorable Lucky for me, it seems like Bloodsucking Fiends is the first in the series, so I can enjoy them in order, given the chance. According to Chris Moore's page, You Suck is next, and then Bite Me.**

Christopher Moore is a master at retelling a story in a whole new (read crazy) way. This is his take on the Dracula story but he's not trying to retell Bram Stoker's story, this is a modern story with a completely different story arc, and chock full of zany characters, sarcasm, comedy, and crazy situations. Moore is a treat to read, and a balm for hardworking soul who needs a little break from the norm.

Read this book. Read the whole sucking series!


* In an attempt to do this, I went to Barnes + Noble, and rather than them being happy to see me, they auto linked me to a splash page offering me a discount. Not a pop up, but a whole new page, in the middle of my typing in the search bar. I exited out of that, resumed typing and what did a get, another window, a pop up this time floating right over what I was doing. Nope! All done, never again. Barnes + Noble's website is now dead to me.

** You could always ask Moore the reading order if you see him... Might go something like this...
You: Hey Chris, what's next after Bloodsucking Fiends, bro? 
Moore: You Suck, Bite Me.
You: Aw.

red thread

The Red Thread is sub-titled "A Love Story." Its a sweet, melancholy book with a beautiful, romantic, and historical sweep. With a twang of that timeless love in Jitterbug Perfume; one of my favorite books. you can see it over on the right of the page, down just a bit with my favorites. read it prior to this blog, so maybe its time to read it again  It doesn't rise to that level, but I did enjoy it, and basically pounded it over two days, this beautiful first weekend of summer, mostly sitting in the yard.

I read the hardcover, which is bound with a thin red ribbon to use as a bookmark which I thought was a nice touch. I'm pretty sure I picked this book up at a library book sale, but not at my own library. I think I got it in Dracut, Mass. at their ongoing book sale.

Young auctioneer Shen comes across the first four chapters of a centuries old memoir of a Chinese author with a similar name to his; Shen Fu. Shen soon discovers that Shen Fu's story has parallels to his own. When he meets Ruth, they read together and the two of them find similarities to themselves, and how they begin to feel about one another.

When Shen and Ruth meet Han, the sexy singer and free spirit who is so unlike themselves, they are both enthralled, but also see reflections of the woman that Shen Fu and his wife meet in 1700s China. The stories weave back and forth along with their pursuit of the remaining two chapters of the book which have been missing since the first four chapters was originally published just after Shen Fu's death.

The story is a wistful, sweet, and sometimes heartbreaking look at how things stay the same, no matter how much they seem to change. People's feeling for one another, and perhaps even their destinies, are unchangeable.

A quick look on the interwebs presented a little surprise for me. The really was a Shen Fu who wrote an autobiography called Six Records of a Floating Life, which includes four chapters. I haven't read it, but I suspect that Nicholas Jose has, and this may be a retelling of that story from the Qing Dynasty writer, also known as Sanbai.



On a side note, its interesting that the book I'm reading now, is also sub-titled "A Love Story" but it is sooo different than this one.

havana room

I'm pretty sure this is the first I've read of Colin Harrison; I'm going to have to keep an eye on this guy.

The Havana Room is a story about a lawyer in New York, and the things that happen to him as he tries to lead his simple, normal, boring life. Things that definitely aren't simple, normal, or boring.

This is a story John Grisham would write if he could. Now, if you're a big fan of John Grisham, that's great. I'm not saying he's a bad writer, what I AM saying is that this is a book that John Grisham would probably like, but its more gritty, honest, dark,--and two steps outside the mainstream--than what Grisham is writing; which I think is a good thing.

That all being said, this story doesn't hinge on our boy Bill Wyeth being a lawyer, but his expertise does help with the plot lines. The Havana Room doesn't take long to get rolling either. We meet our guy, living that normal life, which then gets unnormal pretty quickly. By page 20 its all gone to shit. Then as Wyeth blows around New York like a ghost of himself, he stumbles upon the Havana Room, and life promptly goes to Shinola.

Harrison has put together a well paced, thoughtful, mysterious and modern noir. Its a look at how far a guy will go when he feels like he may have lost everything anyway, all the while hoping that he hasn't and that there may be a way back. Or perhaps forward and through, which is maybe better anyway. Harrison's characters do and say things you assume some folks do and say, but you've never witnessed. Or at least, not to this degree. It adds a sharpness to the story that pulled me in and along for the ride in much shorter order than I usually finish a book.

Read this book.

And you keep an eye out for Colin Harrison too. And if he writes something, drop me a note in the comments below. In the meantime, I'll be checking out some of his earlier stuff. you know, at some point

rasputin's shadow

Rasputin's Shadow is a Sean Reilly novel by Raymond Khoury. I may have read another Sean Reilly novel, but I don't remember. Sure enough, the internets knows when I don't: Reilly was in the Templar books, with a different partner, maybe? yeah, you can look that one up yerself

Reilly is unlike a lot of book cops, in that he is younger, mostly undamaged, has a family, and isn't stomping around in an old rain coat chewing on cigars and struggling with addiction of whatever variety. His partner is kind of a wise ass, and more of a sidekick. He doesn't figure much in the story, and is a little two-dimensional.

Khoury is usually writing about some old-timey, mysterious thing that has found its way down through time to now... and needs some solvin'!

Enter Sean Reilly.

This time Reilly is working on a mystery that seems to tie back to how Rasputin was able to ingratiate himself into the very laps of the Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, when he was reportedly an unkempt scoundrel with little or no training, education or bathing, apparently. Khoury's take: perhaps its was a magical, modern technology, invented a hundred years ago, then forgotten.

Or was it? sounds legit

the drop

Harry Bosch is back at it in The Drop by Michael Connelly. I've read a few of these, and I usually get them from my wife, but this one came from a used book sale at the library. I know, you can get books for free at the library, but I usually take a little longer to read, and end up renewing, AND, when I buy them I can crank a little back into the library, both when I buy them, and potentially again when I return them to the book sale donation box. just works for me

Bosch is dealing with a variety of things in this one, from his personal relationships, to department politics, to city politics, to corruption, cold cases, and crazy DNA evidence. There is a lot going on and Connelly does a good job in this one keeping the balls in the air and walking us through this story.

The Drop is a double entendre, referring to both Bosch's position and an element in the case he's working. Crafty. I think this is a good addition to the Harry Bosch series and if you've enjoyed thus far, this is a good one too.

spook country

Spook Country is a novel by William Gibson, the grandfather of CyberPunk. I only say that because I bet he hates hearing that by now. I've read me some William Gibson in the past, and this one was a little...meyh, for me. The biggest problem was that this book took a while to get rolling... like, a hundred pages. Once I got past that and had a pretty good idea what this thing was all about, then I enjoyed the rest of it.

After taking a quick look around, I found (to my surprise) that Spook Country is actually the second book in Gibson's Blue Ant series. The first was Pattern Recognition, and it apparently shares some of the same characters, and I guess there may be some other connections.*

This one has little cyber edge to it, there's some virtual reality bits, and some tinkering around on the interwebs here and there, but its mainly weird, warmed-over cold war players and some shading money dealings. The strangely SPECTRE-esque quality of Blue Ant is a little campy, and that along with the cold-war taint, does give this whole book a throwback quality that I assume was the intent.

If you're a Gibson fan, I guess you'll enjoy this. If you've got a pal who can summarize the first hundred pages for you, even better. Crack it open there and give it a go. I can do that for you, if you'd like, just add a comment and I'll be happy to. hint: nothing happened.



* Take a look at my review of Pattern Recognition, by clicking on the link in the text above, or here. I wrote that the story didn't gel until about halfway thru, and then I enjoyed the rest. Maybe thats something else this series has in common? Not really sure I want to read the last one now...

artemis

Andy Weir wrote The Martian--big book, big movie; didn't read, did see--so I figured I'd give this book a go. Artemis is also space oriented, and I guess you could call it SciFi, where I guess you'd probably say that The Martian was more Speculative Fiction. I know they're both SF, nerds can fight it out over here-->

Artemis takes place a little further in the future, at a space station on the Moon, that has a civilian population, so I guess you'd call it a colony. The moon colony, Artemis, is a little like the early European colonies in that they are remote enough that the folks that really should be controlling them (Earth folks) are really too remote to actually control squat.

That fact, along with our gal Jasmine "Jazz" Bashara, are the engine that drives this story. Weir does a great job putting together a world that is both familiar and foreign, futuristic, yet totally grokable. yeah, I'm looking at you Robert Heinlein, you crazy, dead bastard

Artemis is fun, well written, easy to read, and a little hard to put down. Jazz Bashara is a great character, and I don't know Andy Weir very well, but if I was a betting man, my money would be on see her again in another installment.

Read this book. 

And I guess I'll have to look up the first one at some point. 

Note: According to one source I found, they may also be making a movie out of this book too.

razor girl

Razor Girl is a 2016 novel by Carl Hiaasen. I haven't read Hiaasen's stuff before, but he reads like a cross between Elmore Leonard and Tom Robbins (who shows up in my 'Favorites' list on the right.) Yeah, like that, so strap in and hang on.

Razor Girl, who is better known in the text as Merry Mansfield (that's "Merry, as in Merry Christmas!" and Mansfield, as in va-va-voom!) runs into our man Lane Coolman early on in the story, which makes me think that these two will be the main characters moving forward.

Nope.

That ends up being a guy named Andrew Yancy, who was also  in Hiaasen's Bad Monkey. Yancy is an ex-cop, living in Key West, trying to stay out of trouble--but not too hard--when Merry Mansfield drops into his life. Things start out as a simple misunderstanding, but quickly spin out of control. Throw in some petty crime, some wannabe, back-woods, racist, reality TV folks, members of the Calzone crime family from New York, a 1-800 lawyer, and some imported super-sized rats, that may or may not be intelligent, and you got yourself a romp!

This book reminds me of those frenetic, ensemble cast movies of the 60s and 70s. Movies like Its a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and What's Up, Doc? Actually, Merry Mansfield reminds me of Streisand's character Judy Maxwell, in What's Up, Doc? I'm also reminded of things like Get Shorty, and Pulp Fiction (both movies based on books by Elmore Leonard.)

This book was a blast. I'll be looking for Bad Monkey, and others by Carl Hiaasen.

Read this book.