Elmore Leonard is one of those authors that I almost can’t go wrong with. I haven’t read more than half a dozen of his books but they’ve all been pretty good. This one is too. Basically a western transplanted to Cuba. The main character is a cowpoke who just got out of jail for robbing banks (he was just trying to get the money he was owed though) who gets involved with a scheme to ship horses from America to Cuba and sell them for a handsome profit.
Things go awry though when he falls for a gal and then ends up in prison and war breaks out. And $40,000 on a train too.
A schoolteacher with a secret life as “Allison Murrieta”, modern day outlaw. She robs from everybody, keeps some of it and gives some away to charities. But she gets involved with some bad dudes when she steals some diamonds and ends up with a very badass ex-gang member after her.
She hooks up with a young deputy just back from serving in Iraq and they try to get through it all alive.
Pretty fun book. I’ll keep an eye out by more from the same author.
If you get a big tax refund check because you’ve got kids, don’t go around gloating about all the money you are getting back because there are plenty of people like me that have chosen not to have any kids but yet we still get to pay for your kid’s education and shit like that. And let me make this clear, I don’t mind paying for other people’s kid’s education. Not at all. I think it is very important. What pisses me off is when I am paying for it and the people who had the damn kids are not paying for it. That really frosts my goat.
I know kids are expensive to raise. That’s why some of us don’t have any. I know they are all cute and shit and you got that maternal instinct telling you to drop a couple of screaming meatsacks into the world but you are a human being. You have a brain. Use it to evaluate your life and figure out if you can afford to pay for those kids. If you can’t (and many of you can’t) then don’t have em ffs.
Joseph A. West – The Silver Arrowhead A mystery Western, of sorts, with a Chinese-American detective and his helpful sidekick. It wasn’t bad but something about it just didn’t click with me for some reason.
Larry Doyle – I Love You, Beth Cooper A comedy by a former writer for The Simpsons. I only read it because the girlfriend read it and thought it was hilarious. I didn’t think it was as funny as she did, but it’s not bad. Better than the movie.
Charles Willeford – New Hope For The Dead Another Hokey Moseley book by Willeford. A fun mystery with a neat character.
Chris Moriarty – Spin State Mystery/military science fiction about an elite female soldier that goes to a mining colony to find out who killed a famous scientist. Was pretty good. I think this is the author’s first book and I’ll keep an eye for his next one.
Richard Stark – The Outfit A Parker novel from Stark. That’s really enough said for me. Parker gets pissed at ‘The Outfit’ and goes about making em regret they ever heard his name.
Richard Stark – The Mourner And another Parker novel. This time he’s sort of hired to steal an old statue, but of course things aren’t nearly as easy as they sound.
Darwyn Cooke – Richard Stark’s Parker Book: One The Hunter This is a graphic novel based on the first Parker novel, the same one that has been made into a movie twice. I liked it.
Jeff Lindsay – Dexter in the Dark I’ve been digging the Dexter tv show so I thought I’d check out the books. Not bad, but the characters are quite a bit different than they are on the tv show, and I like em the way they are on the tv show. In other words, I think I prefer the tv version to the books at this point.
Jeff Lindsay – Darkly Dreaming Dexter I think this is actually the first in the series. Same as above.
Jeff Lindsay – Dearly Devoted Dexter Another one in the series.
Richard Kadrey – Sandman Slim Dude is involved with a magical group that ends up betraying him and sending him to Hell. While there he becomes an absolute badass, basically by fighting in Hell’s version of gladiator games. Then he escapes, along with a few items he picked up along the way and goes looking for revenge. I liked it.
Eleanor Davis – The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook A graphic novel for younger readers. I got it to give to my niece eventually. It’s got cool art and is about a nerdy kid who finds out two less nerdy kids are also really into science and they for The Secret Science Alliance and hang out in their secret workshop inventing stuff. I look forward to handing it over to the niece when she gets down to reading.
Jason Little – Shutterbug Follies Another graphic novel, but for an older audience. About a gal that works in a photo developing place who gets involved in a mystery when she develops some pictures of dead people. I liked it. You can check out some of Little’s work here.
Paul Pope – 100% And another graphic novel from one of my favorite comic book artist guys around. This one is a strange tale of the future that I’m not even going to try to describe. I really dig Pope’s art. Check him out here.
Joe Haldeman – The Accidental Time Machine Time travel story about a grad student that accidentally invents a time machine. It only goes forward in time though. And he doesn’t have much control over it. I liked it.
Jeff Somers – The Electric Church Set a bit into a future that really sucks. The rich have really cool lives and the poor have really shitty ones. The main character is one of the poor people. He makes his living as a Gunner, an assassin. Gritty action, I liked it.
Jeff Somers- The Digital Plague Sequel to the above book. I didn’t think it was quite as good as the first one, but it didn’t suck.
Rick Riordan – Big Red Tequila Private eye book, first in a series. Set in Texas, the main character is a master of some martial art and he has a cool cat. In this book he investigates his father’s death. Fun read, I’ll pick up the rest of the series over time, I’m sure.
Steve Perry – Matadora A sequel to The Man Who Never Missed. This book is about the training compound set up to train Matadors (super body guards) and one woman that goes through the training. I liked it and have a couple more books in the series waiting to be read.
Ed Gorman – Lawless Western about a dude trying to get his life together, but of course things don’t go as well as he might have hoped. Something about this book just didn’t appeal to me, though I did finish it.
C.J. Cherryh – The Paladin Though it’s never stated as such, the setting of this book is very much like Medieval Japan. The story is about a young girl who goes to a legendary Lord that lives in exile on a mountaintop and begs him to train her so she can avenge her family. Pretty good book.
Charlie Huston – Caught Stealing Bad dudes want something from the main character and he has no idea what. And then some other bad dudes want that something too. And then they all start doing bad things to the main character. Fairly gritty crime novel. I liked it.
Charlie Huston – Six Bad Things Same character as the above book. He’s managed to get out of the bad situation he was in and is living comfortably in Mexico, but then a Russian tourist stops by and starts asking questions. Oops. Shit hits the fan again.
Charlie Huston – A Dangerous Man Same character again. He’s doing what he has to to get by but soon he finds out he can’t anymore.
Charlie Huston – Already Dead A new series. The main character in this one is sort of a detective guy, but not exactly. Plus he’s a vampire. I read this entire series too (see below) and liked it well enough, my only problem was that some of the various groups of vampires seem a bit too stereotyped to me.
Charlie Huston – No Dominion Joe Pitt, the vampire from the above book, continues to cause trouble and get beat up, while also kicking ass himself.
Charlie Huston – Half the Blood of Brooklyn More Joe Pitt.
Charlie Huston – Every Last Drop And Joe Pitt again. You just can’t keep him down for long.
Charlie Huston – My Dead Body The final Joe Pitt book. He gets to ride off into the sunset. Sort of.
Jeff Carlson – Plague Zone Third book in this series about the world after a nanomachine plague has wiped out most of the life on earth. I liked the first one and the second was ok, but I just didn’t get into this one too much. Ended up skimming it a lot. The cool thing is, I won a contest and the author named a character in the book after me. Sweet.
Richard Sala – The Chuckling Whatsit Strange graphic novel about a serial killer, bizarre geegaws and a bunch of weirdos trying to figure out what is going on. I liked it.
Warren Ellis, Raulo Caceres – Crecy Graphic novel about the battle of Crecy in The Hundred Years War. I liked it.
We recently switched from the used-to-be-local ISP that we had been using for nearly 10 years to AT&T for our internet. When we signed up, they told us we needed a new modem. I thought this was odd, because our old ISP was basically just reselling AT&T service to us, after adding a cut for themselves, so why wouldn’t that modem continue working with AT&T? But they said that even though the new modem would cost 100 bucks, they would give us a $100 credit so it would be free. Ok, whatever then.
The other day we get our first bill. The extra $100 charge is on the bill, the $100 credit is no where to be seen.
Doro calls AT&T. The lady she talks to tells us we should have gotten a postcard in the mail that would have had a webaddress that we could have went to and filled out an online form in order to get our $100 credit.
I shit you not. That is what she said. What kind of fucked up, round about, stick it to the customer bullshit is that?
Doro perservered though and the lady said she could do it for her on the phone. After 20 minutes on hold we find out that soon we will get an automatic phone call telling us that our Visa gift card has been shipped.
A Visa gift card. Not $100 off our bill, like the guy said when we signed up, but rather a Visa gift card. Whenever that arrives. If it’s not stolen in the mail.
And what really annoys me is there basically is no viable alternative. This sort of fuck-the-customer mentality is how pretty much all corporations do business these days. We could pay a hefty ‘early cancellation fee’ and quit AT&T, but I doubt Comcast would treat us any better.
We drove down to Berkeley for a day trip of visiting book stores on Veterans Day.
Dorothea loves Berkeley and would like to move down there but I don’t think so for me. Too many people.
Right now, especially, my mental filters are tuned too highly for walking down the busy streets.
My brain was broadcasting orange alerts constantly. So many people that, for whatever reason, set off some sort of mental pattern recognition in my head which tried to demand my attention and point out a possible threat.
And the beggars along the street. Not used to that many. Reached the point of just ignoring their pleas rather quickly.
There was one though, a very old and filthy man, with raggedy long hair, who was sitting on the ground near an intersection, and as people passed he’d say ‘hello’ and look at them with these eyes of his. They looked like the eyes of somebody that wasn’t quite sure what was going on. Almost a child’s eyes.
We walked past him several times and each time he managed to bust through my walls and stab me with those eyes and that plaintive ‘hello’ but I kept walking, even though part of me was trying to get me to stop and give him some money or just ask him if he needed some help.
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I bought many books.
When I was younger I had tried to read some P.K. Dick book but it just didn’t appeal to me and I never tried him again. Recently I got the notion, for some reason, of giving him another try.
In one of the stores I found a paperback copy of Radio Free Albemuth, a book that was basically found after Dick died.
I opened it up and read the first page. The first page was about a guy who lived in Berkeley. And after reading that first page I wanted to keep reading, so I bought the book, thinking that it was an odd synchronicity that I had this hankering for reading this author and the first book of his I pick up, while in Berkeley, is about Berkeley.
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Later in the car, I am waiting for Doro and I pull out the book again to read a little more. I see that it has a prologue that I had missed when I looked at it in the bookstore.
This is the prologue:
In 1932 in April a small boy and his mother and father waited on an Oakland, California pier for the San Francisco ferry. The boy, who was almost four years old, noticed a blind beggar, huge with white hair and beard, standing with a tin cup. The little boy asked his father for a nickel, which the boy took over to the beggar and gave him. The beggar, in a surprisingly hearty voice, thanked him and gave him back a piece of paper, which the boy took to his father to see what it was.
“It tells about God,” his father said.
The little boy did not know that the beggar was not actually a beggar but a supernatural entity visiting Earth to check up on people. Years later the little boy grew up and became a man. In the year 1974 that man found himself in terrible difficulties facing disgrace, imprisonment, and possible death. There was no way for him to extricate himself. At that point the supernatural entity returned to Earth, loaned the man a part of his spirit, and saved him from his difficulties. The man never guessed why the supernatural entity came to rescue him. He had long ago forgotten the great bearded beggar and the nickel he had given him.
I now speak of these matters.
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I wish I had stopped to help that old beggar in Berkeley.
This is book two of the Acacia Trilogy. I enjoyed the first one both times I read it and this one is good too.
The world he creates is pretty original but it’s still comfortable to visit and read about, if that makes sense. Sometimes an author goes so far out into left field that they lose me along the way, but Durham keeps his creation accessible to me without following the well worn path that so much fantasy fiction travels along these days.
My only problem with the book is that I gotta wait for the third book to end the story
According to Wikipedia, Jennings wrote this book based on a film treatment he had sold, which was made into a movie with the same name, starring John Wayne. That happens to be one of my favorite movies, I’ve watched it many times and the book follows the movie pretty closely (or vice versa).
Also on wikipedia it says the book “caused a lot of controversy among publishers due to its glimmers of homoeroticism”. I’d say those few glimmers are the main things that pop out as not being in the movie. And they aren’t major things, just glimmers, like the article says.
If you are a big fan of the movie, you’ll probably enjoy reading the book too.
The Final Solution - Michael Chabon A short little book about a certain famous British detective, in his twilight years, investigating a mystery during WWII involving a young Jewish boy, a parrot and strange numbers. I liked it, but I’ve been a Holmes fan for a long time.
Bust – Ken Bruen & Jason Starr A book from the Hard Case Crime publishers. A rich guy hires a dude to knock off his wife so he can marry his hot secretary. Things go very wrong all over the place. I don’t think there is a sympathetic character in this book, but I still liked it for some reason.
Mammoth – John Varley It’s been a while since I read a Varley book but I seem to recall them being better than this one. Not that this book sucks, it’s just I was expecting better. Mammoth is basically about the richest guy in the world and his efforts to clone a mammoth. It’s got time travel too, so if you don’t like that sort of thing, avoid it.
Acacia – David Anthony Durham A reread because the second book in this trilogy had just come out and my memory isn’t good enough on it’s own. I liked this book the second time too.
Dancing Aztecs – Donald E. Westlake Another funny crime book by the master. This one was published in 1076 and it has a definite 70’s vibe to it. I don’t remember watching the movie It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, but this book reminded me of it. If you’ve read and enjoyed other Westlake books, you’ll like this one.
The Walking Drum – Louis L’Amour A non-Western by L’Amour. This was also a reread, but it’s been a lot longer since I read this one the last time. We had a thread going on the jakedog forums about books and L’Amour came up and made me nostalgic. I don’t know that I’ve read every book he’s written, but I certainly have read most of them. This one is set in the 12th Century and involves a fellow named Kerbouchard and his adventures across Europe and into Asia. I liked this book a lot more when I was younger, but it’s still a fun read.
The Man Who Never Missed – Steve Perry A science fiction book about a single guy trying to bring about a revolution against a ‘Galactic Confederation’. I’d never heard of it before, which is kind of odd, but it’s actually pretty good. I picked up the sequel recently and will start on it soon.
Cold In July – Joe R. Lansdale Another gritty crime book by Lansdale. A guy shoots and kills a burglar in his house and soon after, the dead burglar’s father is released from prison and comes visiting. Shit happens. Lansdale has a special way with writing redneck badass characters This is a another good one.
The Big Sky – A.B. Guthrie, Jr Published in 1947 and the first in a loose trilogy of novels set in the early West (the second book, The Way West, won the Pulitzer in 1950), the main character in this book is Boone Caudill, who runs away from his home in Kentucky and heads West to become a mountain man. I generally liked the book and plan on reading the second book at some point.
Elmore Leonard is one of those authors that I almost can’t go wrong with. I haven’t read more than half a dozen of his books but they’ve all been pretty good. This one is too. Basically a western transplanted to Cuba. The main character is a cowpoke who just got out of jail for robbing banks (he was just trying to get the money he was owed though) who gets involved with a scheme to ship horses from America to Cuba and sell them for a handsome profit.
A schoolteacher with a secret life as “Allison Murrieta”, modern day outlaw. She robs from everybody, keeps some of it and gives some away to charities. But she gets involved with some bad dudes when she steals some diamonds and ends up with a very badass ex-gang member after her.
If you get a big tax refund check because you’ve got kids, don’t go around gloating about all the money you are getting back because there are plenty of people like me that have chosen not to have any kids but yet we still get to pay for your kid’s education and shit like that. And let me make this clear, I don’t mind paying for other people’s kid’s education. Not at all. I think it is very important. What pisses me off is when I am paying for it and the people who had the damn kids are not paying for it. That really frosts my goat.
This is book two of the Acacia Trilogy. I enjoyed the first one both times I read it and this one is good too.
According to Wikipedia, Jennings wrote this book based on a film treatment he had sold, which was made into a movie with the same name, starring John Wayne. That happens to be one of my favorite movies, I’ve watched it many times and the book follows the movie pretty closely (or vice versa).