My favorite writer these days is Kate Atkinson. I bought “A God in Ruins” on the strength of a favorable mention via NPR, then tried a couple of her detective novels: “Case Histories” and “When Will There be Good News?” All are superb. This woman reminds me a lot of Ruth Rendell: so literate, so much incisive wit, so adept at creating distinct characters and interweaving their […]
Potpourri … and Palin
These days I never have strong enough opinions to write a whole blog post, so here’s a grab-bag of stuff that has caught my attention over the past couple of weeks: What I’ve been reading: “The Girl on the Train,” by Paula Hawkins. I liked it a lot. It deserves all the hype it’s been getting. It probably also deserves the incessant comparisons with “Gone Girl” — […]
A vote for the Nazis
You may have heard that Amazon, in its bid to dominate even more of your life than Facebook, is now soliciting audience opinions on which shows it should develop. Right now there are about a dozen pilots, available here for free. To be honest, most of them look dreadful, but I did take a look at “The Man in the High Castle” and decided to vote for […]
A murderous crew and their motorhomes
I've been reading Stephen King’s latest novel, Doctor Sleep. It’s about what happens when the paranormal kid in The Shining grows up and discovers that all the supernatural horror of his childhood didn’t burn up with the creepy Overlook Hotel. It’s still out there, in a somewhat different guise, old wine in new bottles. The new bottles in this case are a group of outwardly middle-aged RV […]
Long nights with Dostoyevsky
I've been reading Crime and Punishment, a crime novel by this Russian kid named Fyodor something. It’s not bad. I look forward to seeing more of his stuff. Ha ha. Actually, ever since The Gulag Archipelago, I’ve tended to steer clear of the great Russian writers. Not that they’re not great; they are. But Russian writers in general do not believe in brevity. Just when you think […]
So long, Mr. Bradbury.
Everybody has their favorite Ray Bradbury books. Mine are Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and The October Country. But he never wrote anything that wasn’t pure magic. I never read anything by him that didn’t make me want to go out and write something myself. Of course, it’s never as easy as he made it look. Now he’s dead at 91. Just wanted to acknowledge […]
Just don’t call it a mystery novel
I love mystery novels, to the extent that for quite awhile I read nothing else. I was a little embarrassed by it, too. People would talk about the serious books they had on the nightstand and then ask what I’d been reading. They’d mention something like Anna Karenina and I’d cough into my fist and mutter something like Kiss Me, Deadly. But then I realized that all […]