Frighteningly enough, I haven't had time in the past week or so to go bookstore browsing, instead spending my time going to they gym and, oh, working. But thanks to the pre-existing stacks of books that already await me, plus the joy of an Amazon free-shipping account, I still have some items to move to the top of the pile.
Last week I mentioned Dennis Lehane's Gone Baby Gone, hoping that it would make up for my disappointment with Shutter Island. It certainly did that -- after tearing through Lehane's Boston-noir, mystery thriller, I ordered the next book in the series (I hadn't realized that Baby was the third or so book in a series), Prayers for Rain. Generally these aren't the types of genre books that draw me in, but Lehane is a smart and talented writer. At its core, it's simply a greatly told and plotted store -- the strong writing is a big bonus. Honestly, I'm consistently amazed by how much demonstrably bad writing gets published every week -- unlike those others, Lehane's work is well worth killing a few trees.
A few weeks back, I finally got around to Natsuo Kirino's Grotesque, a bizarre tale of women, prostitution and high-pressure high schools in Japanese society. And I'm waaaay oversimplifying. In short, Kirino's Tokyo is as noir as Lehane's Boston -- but from a different universe. So now I have to read her prior big-spash-in-America novel, Out, about a woman who kills her abusive husband and recruits the women she works with to dispose of the body. Nifty!
Not so nifty, and undoubtedly not worth killing a few trees, is Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg's contribution to the ever growing category of conservative books that provoke liberals by calling them names. I grabbed it because I wanted to read it before I complained about it. Goldberg doesn't seem to be batshit crazy like Ann Coulter -- or at least he didn't until he put this book out. I'm still stuck in the introduction, which establishes he wanted to write the book because liberals like to call conservatives fascists and it's wrong and it really hurts their feelings.
I wish I were joking.
I'm not sure at this point if I'll get around to it because I'm not sure the world needs more commentary on it. Excellent take-downs from both the left and right are here and here.
Other than that, still working my way through War and Peace. I will get there, I tell you. I will get there.
Comments