Today’s TTT is top ten books that involve…….blank. I am also drawing a blank, so I’ll just do the tease unless another TTTer’s post gives me inspiration.
“When you’re sneaking up on somebody, you might consider keeping your voice low,” Wacey hissed as McLanahan apparoached. “It’s an old, sly Indian trick.” – OPEN SEASON, C.J. Box
ON THE THIRD DAY OF THEIR HONEYMOON, infamous environmental activist Stewie Woods and his new bride, Annabel Bellotti, were spiking trees in the forest when a cow exploded and blew them up. Until then, their marriage had been happy. – SAVAGE RUN, C.J. Box
Let me put it another way. Suppose you say to someone, “Would you like to hear an epigrammatic passage of dense prose, broken up ad hoc into lines on a page, with the occasional interior rhyme or alliteration or assonance, seasoned with a figure of speech or two?” That would describe the great majority of free verse poems in English. The answer would be ambivalent at best. If your friend is kind and patient, he will tell you to go ahead, while he rubs the back of his neck and glances toward the door. But suppose you say, “Would you like to hear a song?” Then he smiles and says, “Sure!” That is because people like songs, just as they like beautiful old Victorian houses, or a spray of flowers on a rosebush—and for many of the same reasons, which have to do with form, repetition, variation, subordination, coherence, luminosity, and the capacity to arouse wonder. People are happy to hear a true folk song, even if it is a silly song. I’ve never met anyone whose heart warmed to epigrammatic passages of dense prose broken up ad hoc into lines on a page – THE HUNDREDFOLD, Anthony Esolen
Joe Pickett has encountered a lot of strange stuff in his so-far brief tenure as a game warden, but exploding cows is a first. The culprit here was a cow strapped with explosives, making players of Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 prime suspects, but since none present themselves it’s probably eco-terrorists. Joe is asked to accompany the sheriff to find the source of the strange explosion, and they are horrified to find the forest bedecked with bloody carnage — and some of the remains are human. A notorious environmental activist was known to be in the area for some kind of mischief, and he’s missing — but the bits and pieces are those of a woman, not a man. Although the sheriff initially thinks the activist hoisted himself and the girl on their own petard, the reader knows what Joe suspects: there’s more to the story.
Savage Run uses a split narrative to follow two older men doing wet work for an unknown party, work that is targeting environment activists and whistle-blowers. While Joe rides the ranges and ponders the anomalies in this case over coffee and pronghorn-gazing, he stumbles upon another little something to get his teeth into: one of the local big shots has a massive elk head in his mansion that could only belong to an un-stripped corpse of a bull found shot last summer, well outside hunting season. It’s one thing to poach, but to kill an animal and leave hundreds of pounds of meat to rot? Joe takes that personal, as he does the fact that the man brazenly lied to him and is smugly confident that his wealth and pull in the government will not only shield him, but make things difficult for Joe — as they nearly did last time when Joe was nearly suspended for looking into a man with political friends. Although the intensity here doesn’t hit Open Season‘s peak, the way Box did that in the first book can’t be replicated without losing its effect, and this novel’s culmination still kept me reading at redlights and in line. In addition to the high points mentioned in my last review — the charm of the western wilderness setting itself, the way Box makes the reader realize that environmental and social issues are far more complex than people on either side of an issue want to admin — I’d also like to comment on how strong a character Box makes of Joe’s wife Marybeth and their daughter, Sheridan. I didn’t mention this in the last review because they were so connected to the endgame, but both of Joe’s ladies are memorable personalities in their own right, especially now that Marybeth is no longer ‘great with child’ and can be more active in the plot.
And yes, I’m already knee deep in the next novel, Winterkill, in which plot happens with 40 inches of snow being dumped by a severe snowstorm.
It’s been a long time since I actually thrilled by a thriller — so emotionally charged up by it that I wanted to will the clock to slow down so I could finish the final chapters at lunch and not have to wait a long afternoon of work to find out what is about to happen. C.J. Box’s Open Season introduces Joe Pickett, a newly-minted game warden in rural Wyoming. Although Joe knows his business, science-wise, he’s still growing into the role as quasi-lawman, with rookie mistakes trailing him and a growing realization that this job has a lot more dirty politics than environmental stewardship. When a mortally wounded man staggers into Joe’s yard and dies on his woodpile, Joe’s desire to find out the truth of what happened puts him at odds with other lawmen and his bosses, who are fine with the write-off explanation that presents itself — and his digging puts both himself and his family into severe peril, resulting in a genuinely nail-me-to-the-seat thriller I enjoyed so much I’ve started on my third Box book in a week’s time.
A huge part of Open Season’s appeal for me was how different it is compared to most police thrillers: it’s rural. It would be hard not to be rural, given that it’s set in Wyoming, but this is especially rural because Joe is a game warden and as such spends a lot of time out in the open country, building elk fences and counting herds and investigating in-country hunting camps on horseback to make sure everyone has proper licenses and aren’t bagging more animals than the herds can contain. This is a book filled not with suits and hoods, but working-class men who wear old jeans and scuffed boots and probably keep homemade beef jerky in their pockets. As someone from a rural area, it’s wonderfully refreshing. The rural-ness is a key part of the plot, too, because there’s a potential development that could bring a lot of jobs into the area and save the dying town of Saddlestring, buuuut the woodpile corpse and what Joe’s investigation of him brings out could threaten that. This introduces another strong aspect of the book — and the second book which I read immediately thereafter — in that this is not a “lecture the reader” type book likeGray Mountain: there’s both moral and consequential ambiguity here, without sacrificing a truly hatable antagonist. I love how Joe has to weigh real consequences either way he goes: it makes his character, by which I mean his moral core, salient in a way I don’t see that often in modern fiction.
As mentioned, I’ve already read this book’s sequel and have the series’ third title in my bag, so…yeah, CJ Box is going to be something I remember 2025 for, I suspect.
Attorney Mickey Haller hasn’t been practicing law the last year or so, having been recuperating from being shot and a subsequent addiction to pain meds that could have destroyed his life. On the verge of getting back in the game, he receives a summons from a judge and is told that forget wanting back in, he’s been thrown in. One of his legal colleagues has been shot dead in a parking deck, and the man’s cases were all directed by the victim, Vincent, to Haller’s practice. Although the cases are a mixed lot, one of them stands out: a prominent movie producer stands accused of the double murder of his wife and her lover, the “interior decorator”. The fees from this case are a windfall, but when Haller arrives to take possession of the files, he finds that cops investigating the murder are trying to beat him to the punch. One of them, Harry Bosch, is particularly aggressive — but he and Haller figure they can help each other out: Bosch wants to take down the murderer, and Haller wants to know that whoever knocked Vincent off won’t come for him next. With the court date looming, the boys both scramble to work. The result is a superb thriller with multiple twists: I don’t know why it’s been long since I read Connelly, but I’m delighted at the return.
The Brass Verdict opens with the statement that everybody lies, and the book definitely bears that out: our main character was introduced in The Lincoln Lawyer as someone who viewed the legal system as a machine, one that he took pride in manipulating to his client’s advantage: not that he’s unethical or immortal, merely pragmatic. Haller has a good heart, if one weary and wounded: one of his new clients is a bankrupt ex-surfer who lives out of his car, and Haller offers him his first foot forward by hiring him as a driver. The story has an instant hook, of course — the Hollywood exe charged with double murder, the mysterious killing of the lawyer that may or may not be related — but the way a multitude of characters here are continually playing one another keeps it compelling. Even the good guys try to manipulate the other: while Haller and Bosch develop a grudging respect for each other throughout the book, they both want to fish more information out of the other than they’re willing to give, and Bosch is particularly adept at playing a few moves ahead in pursuit of justice. Morality is another strong element of this novel, as Haller has a gut instinct that his client is guilty as sin even as he builds a strong case in the man’s defense, incorporating factors that his predecessor and the prosecutor had overlooked or dismissed. Combined with the physical peril and mystery of the murdered lawyer, this made for a great read. Will definitely be reading more Connelly this year.
WHAT have you finished reading recently? Camino Ghosts, John Grisham.
WHAT are you reading now? The Brass Verdict, Michael Connelly.
WHAT are you reading next? Will probably return to the Romanov book.
Note: I scheduled this post on Tuesday, given that we’re expecting severe thunderstorms, quite possibly producing tornados. Selma was ravaged by one two years ago in January 2023, so I hope the prediction fizzles out. If I don’t respond to comments, though, assume I’ve lost power or possibly been thrown into Oz.
More like “first top ten things characters said that I remembered”. But first, the Tuesday tease.
“Do you have a birth certificate?” “No.” “May I ask why not?” “I was a baby. I wasn’t in charge of the paperwork.” (Camino Ghosts, John Grisham)
Yes, this was going to be his best novel so far, although sadly it was drawn directly from life – his own. It was about a failing poet, Gordon Comstock, in his early thirties, working in a dusty bookshop and living alone in an attic bedsit – halfway to the workhouse already. Good prose, he believed, should be like a windowpane, but in this case it would have to be a mirror. (The Last Man in Europe: A Novel)
And now, some quotes that have taken up long-term residency in my head. (Believe me, it was hard keeping Cornwell restricted to two.)
“They’ll hang the fellow at Tyburn, and there will be an end to it.” “If he is found Guilty.” “Indeed. Your legal acuity never ceases to amaze me.” “I do not intend that he shall be found Guilty.” “A commendable position for the Counsel for the Defense. Bravissimo.”
“An’ right here I want to remark,’ Bill went on, ‘that that animal’s familiarity with camp-fires is suspicious an’ immoral.’ ‘It knows for certain more’n a self-respectin’ wolf ought to know,’ Henry agreed
”What I don’t understand,” Sharpe persevered, “is why she ran away.” “She’s probably in love,” Hogan explained airily. “Nineteen-year-old girls of respectable families are dangerously susceptible to love because of all the novels they read.”
‘You are a wart,’ the sub-lieutenant of the gunroom had told him firmly. ‘An excrescence. An ullage. A growth. You probably imagine that when signalled “House your topmast”, you should reply, “fine, how’s yours?” and doubtless the only time you’ll show any enthusiasm for the navy will be on full-belly nights when we’re entertaining visitors.’
“Where’re your papers?” “My what?” “Your I.D. — draft card, social security, driver’s license.” “Don’t have none. Don’t need none. I already know who I am.”
One Saturday evening, while Troy was waiting his turn in the chair, [he said] “They ought to round up every one of them [war protesters] and put them right in front of the communists, and then whoever killed who, it would all be to the good.” There was a little pause after that. Nobody wanted to try and top it. I thought of Athey’s reply to Hiram Hench. It was hard to do, but I quit cutting hair and looked at Troy. I said “‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.’” Troy jerked his head up and widened his eyes at me. “Where did you get that crap?” I said, “Jesus Christ.” And Troy said, “Oh”. It would have been a great moment in the history of Christianity, except that I did not love Troy.
“Oh, lord, I am so many things! A scholar, a priest, an eater of cheese, and now I am chaplain to Lord Uhtred, the pagan who slaughters priests. That’s what they tell me. I’d be eternally grateful if you refrained from slaughtering me. May I have a servant, please?”
This is my password,” said the King as he drew his sword. “The light is dawning, the lie broken. Now guard thee, miscreant, for I am Tirian of Narnia.”
In The Guardians, readers were teased with a voodoo-cursed cabin that..ended up never being visiting again, causing me to wonder why on Earth it had been included to begin with. Camino Ghosts revisits not that cabin, but the general premise of voodoo curses. The hurricane that savaged the area in Camino Winds has so changed some of the barrier islands near Camino that one of them, “Dark Island” is now an attractive option for development. Centuries ago, it was home to a population of escaped slaves, whose numbers were especially bolstered after a slave-ship was destroyed by a severe storm and its survivors washed up there. Fiercely independent, they resisted any attempts at the American government at bringing them under DC’s control, and rumors are that the island is cursed to kill any white man who steps foot on it. The island was abandoned by the mid-20th century, but its last resident to leave is still alive and alleges ownership of the island. As development companies appear to go to war in court to claim title to it, Mercer decides to write the survivor’s story. (Mercer is the generally forgettable main character of the Camino books.) The result is an unusual thriller story for Grisham, one with an initially eerie air that gradually evaporates in favor of legal drama and padding (ye gods, the padding) before returning in an flimsier way. It’s one of Grisham’s vanishingly rare stories with a genuinely happy ending: usually we’re left with endings like The Rainmaker or The Brethren, when the baddie is stopped but escapes justice, or worse endings like that of Sooley, which Grisham’s house should have been egged over.
My chief gripe with this book was also the thing that made it most interesting: the premise of a extralegal community whose sovereignty was maintained by a voodoo curse. I’ve been reading Grisham long enough to know he’s a lazy writer, frankly, and I was not surprised at the lack of worldbuilding on the island, resulting in the survivor-heir complaining that the federal government had never tried to build schools or water or yadayadayada on the island while at the same time being all proud and spooky over the curse that would make any whites drop dead, regardless of their intent. (The ‘curse’ even claims some pilots who flew too low over the island taking photographs.) The original islanders literally made a habit of killing anyone who came to it, and those who visited even after the islanders had all died or left also died because of the black magic, so why on earth is she angry that…no one wanted to come to the island? Grisham never touches on what kind of interactions the islanders had in the 20th century with mainland Florida, government or commercial, so it’s like their isolation exists only to the degree that it’s relevant for the survivor’s ire, or for the general spookiness. And speaking of, Grisham never touches on whether the curse is real or not, though he writes it as though it were: the survivor, in order to expedite an attempt to find her people’s cemetery and prove her claim of residence, “Lovely” uses the voodoo she learned from her forbears to dispel the curse. Personally I would’ve brought in an exorcist rather than Miss Cleo, if you’ve got ‘spirits’ killing people for trespassing.
In short, this was a book with afun premise, one that someone like Stephen King could absolutely hit a homer on, but one which is frankly wasted on Grisham given his dislike of research, his absent worldbuilding, and the amount of padding present in the book. If it were reduced to actual story, we’d have 150 pages or so: fruitless sidetracks like Mercer and her Dumb Husband’s Inability to Paint a House, as well as The Never-eending Commentary on Lovely’s Robes and Turbans give it more extra baggage than a serial divorcee.
Nathaniel Perry survived the Battle of Waterloo, despite the odds: two thirds of his unit have answered the last post and call, but he got through with just a bullet through the calf. Newly promoted to Major, he’s contemplating his future: with peace breaking out there’s no place for him in England, and he can’t survive on a major’s pension: if he stays with the Army, the only opportunity for advancement is India. Enter the lawyers, though, with interesting news: Perry’s grandfather, a man he never met, is close to dying and wants to see his son. Turns out Pops is a lord, the 11th of something-or-other, and while his estate is poor he’s worth nearly a million pounds and has numerous business interests, including the opium trade. No more Indian fever for the major, here, now he has another battle: gorse and high society.
The Half Blood Heir is an odd book for me: I’ve read Andrew Wareham’s military fiction and enjoyed them, but this is a much different story. It’s …..extremely low key. We follow Nat as he learns of his inheritance and begins tending to practicalities: finding a valet, kitting himself out in a fashion that won’t offend his new peers, thinking about the upcoming season and finding a wife, assessing issues with the land, meeting tenants, etc: think of the sort of thing Robert, Matthew, and Lady Mary do when they’re tending to estate matters and you’ll have the idea. A plot does happen eventually, as Nat discovers that there are some legal issues with debt and dodgy loans, but mostly the attraction here is the sheer amount of historical details crammed in — the vagaries of seasonal fashion, of matters, the different types of horses. If you’re a history nut, that’s interesting: if you’re here for story, though, ehm…there’s not all that much. There’s not even any romantic drama: Nat literally marries his cousin and doesn’t even go to the Season to enjoy being fussed at by great lords’ daughters who want to reel him in! The main reason I kept reading, to be honest, was that I enjoyed the language — which you can preview in the quotes below.
Highlights:
“Marry inside the realms of nobility would be my advice, Major. Look for a clever young lady. Brains will outlast beauty, in my experience.” “I might even look for love, my lord.” “Don’t recommend that, Major. Your father did so, and look where that landed him!”
“I see a number of articles arriving from Scott, Samways.” “Country wear, sir. The colours and cut are a little different. It will be wise, I suspect, to be better dressed than my lord, and perhaps to match Lord Alderley, who will likely be a Town Smart. Not in terms of height of fashion, I am sure, but simply in quality, Major, we should be the equal of any.” “If that is so, should we not turn up in a phaeton, as is the habit of the young men of the Ton?” “No, sir. We are not to imitate the foolish idlers, those who habitually dwell in Town the year round, unable to face the so-called hardships of country existence. We do not have to go to great lengths in our attire and behaviour to draw attention to us. It is already the case that we are known to be born to a title, and to possess wealth that places us within the upper one hundred of Society. When the Season commences, sir, you will be inundated with invitations. You are the most eligible bachelor in England, sir, courtesy of inheritance and birth. As such, we may ignore the habits of other, lesser mortals.” “I stand rebuked, Samways. Are you serious in that last statement, by the way?”
She preferred coffee but there were those who thought it unsuitable for a young maiden, the bean apparently liable to inflame the passions.
“She enquired whether I was yet with child and if she should produce maternity wear! I did explain we were less than a fortnight wed!” “Possibly she is used to rural habits among her clientele, my love. Not at all uncommon for the lesser mortals to show an excess of enthusiasm in such matters.”
“He is a rigorously honest gentleman.” “Makes a change, Lawyer. Not too many of them about, these days.”
Well, hello to the end of another month. I for one welcome March, tornadoes and all: I am very ready for spring! This was an unusual month for me personally because I had no computer for most of it: mine abruptly stopped powering on after only a month and a half of use, and while it was under warranty getting free repairs meant mailing it off to California. That meant more time reading, though I also fell into a homesteading hole on YouTube and discovered a new-to-me favorite channel, Anne of All Trades. I was also interviewed for an hour over Selma history for some kind of documentary: I’m not sure what kind, but I’m happy to yak about the Hotel Albert or Benjamin Sterling Turner, even if on camera. (Fun fact, if you click that Hotel Albert link you can see a digital library I’ve been developing the last few months.) February was also black history month for all the kids, so the library has been overwhelmingly busy the last few weeks with kids doing poster projects and the like. (It’s still going today: I had five requests in fifteen minutes.) Whenever someone came in requesting Mae Jemison I made a point of mentioning she did a cameo on Star Trek and suggesting it would be fun to include a still from that. I also greatly enjoyed watching speeches from the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, a compelling international conference that featured an interesting mix of religious leaders, historians, artists, scientists, journalists, etc. There were familiar personalities and authors there (Bishop Robert Barron, Mary Harrington, Niall Ferguson) as well as a lot of new names that I’ll be digging into. I must say, a conference that includes Coptic archbishops, country/folk singers, and charts about global energy sounds like my kind of party.
New Acquisitions: Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel. Technically this isn’t “new”: I read it back in November 2008, and count it as one of those books that altered my worldview, destroying the facile Victorian nonsense about the medieval era being one of intellectual stagnation. Technopoly, Neil Postman. Another worldview-maker from 2008 that I want to revisit. The Ends of the Earth, Neil Shubin. My only new purchase (the rest were used copies) and it was using gift card loot. One No, Many Yeses, Paul Kingsnorth. Paul’s visits with people resisting…not globalization, per se, but something broader. Would be an interesting one to pair with Jihad vs McWorld, which I’ve meant to read for years. Real England: The Battle against the Bland, Paul Kingsnorth. Will save for April and Read of England.
All of these save for Shubin are used paperbacks. I’m trying to heed Kingsnorth’s admonition that “matter matters“.
The Grand Tour: Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light (Portugal) The Mature Flâneur (Portugal)
I also read a third of Spain: Trials and Triumphs of a Modern European Country and am…figuring on continuing, but frankly it’s not all that interesting. It’s been more about party politics and less about culture, but I’ll keep pecking at it.
Coming up in March:
Lent begins March 5, and Opening Day is March 27: my baseball reading may start before that, though, since April is Read of England. I also plan to post a review today
My movie-watching buddy is going out of town this weekend, and I anticipate being wholly absorbed by The Sims 2 Legacy Edition Friday night, so I think I’ve watched my last movie for this month. Interestingly, all of my movies this month were watched with either my main cinema buddy or the ladyfriend (2).
FEBRUARY
Nights of Cabiriai, 1957. An Italian lady of the night is thrown into a river and her money stolen by her last john – or should I say, her last giovanni? – and nothing good happens.
Blow Out, 1981. John Travolta is a sound engineer who accidentally records evidence of a politically explosive murder. Thriller with a downer ending, but if you’re into ‘70s & ‘80s audiotech it’s promising.
The Baader Meinhof Complex. 2008. Obnoxious young activists pretend to be socialists and steal and blow up stuff. Most of them get shot. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
The Illusionist, 2010. A beatiful but melancholy animated film, the screenplay of which was done by Jacques Tati (Mon Oncle), about a musician in the 1950s whose work is being supplanted by rock and roll and blockbuster movies. While performing in Scotland, he meets a young woman who has a childlike wonder about his illusions and believes him to be a real magician she follows him as he pitches his tent in Edinburgh, sleeping in the bed he rents while he makes do on the couch. Her belief in him seems to give his career a little new life, but as time passes, they both ‘put away childish things”. There is an amusing Mon Oncle cameo in the film.
Saturday Night, 2024. A dramatization of the chaos leading to SNL’s first-ever episode. The cast is solid, especially the guy playing Akyroyd who was eerily good.
Tammy and the Bachelor, 1957. A sheltered young woman who was raised by her granddad, Walter Brennan, discovers the survivor of a plane wreck in the rver, and nurses him back to life. She develops feelings for the man, Pete,, despite his being a bit older than her, and is crushed when he leaves. However, Walter Brennan is arrested for bootlegging and tells her to go to Pete’s family house. There she discovers him to be the scion of a wealthy southern family with a failing estate, which he is applying experimental farm techniques in hopes of reviving.
Better Man, 2024. A young boy with a talent for showmanship and a lust for fame achieves stardom by joining a boy band before setting out on his own, but his egoism and inner demons see him alienate his friends and get caught in a cycle of self-destructive drug abuse; his self-loathing and abusive behavior grow even as his fame does. Said pop star is portrayed by an anthropomorphized chimpanzee because the real-life pop star whose story this is based on viewed himself as ‘less evolved’ than other people.
Lunatic Farmer, 2025. Part-biopic, part documentary about Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farms, which is organically and traditionally oriented.
Silence of the Lambs, 1991. An FBI trainee with a promising background is asked to profile a notorious serial killer and cannibal, only to realize she’s been sent in to convince said cannibal to help the FBI profile another serial killer currently at large. Great character drama and thriller: I’m a Jodie Foster fan and enjoyed her West Virginia accent. It sounded like she’d worked on it.
Pixote, 1980. This was described to me as “Oliver Twist, but set in Brazil”. After a man is pushed into the street, the police scoop up as many street kids as they can, including young Pixote: from there we witness abuse after abuse, and Pixote become ever more drawn into violence. This is an odd film to describe: as drama it was extremely successful, but it was a horrific film to watch.
Reading Freely 