A good month for heavyweights
From Austen’s Emma to Stephen King to Mike Tyson
49. Emma, Jane Austen
50. Double Barrel Bluff, Lou Berney
51. King of Ashes, S.A. Cosby
52. The British Are Coming, The War for America, Lexington to Princeton,
1775-1777, Rick Atkinson
53. Never Flinch, Stephen King
54. The Great Alone, Kristin Hannah
55. Baddest Man, The Making of Mike Tyson, Mark Kriegel
The Fourth is fast approaching, and I have company coming and chores to complete, so I will make this brief.
Seven books in June, bringing the total for the year to 55.
It was a good month. I’d recommend any of the seven books, depending upon personal taste (of course).
The humor in Emma was delightful and unexpected. If you want to explore the classics, but have held off because you feared the book would be a slog, just hard to read, this is the perfect book. It is warm, funny and accessible.
New books by Lou Berney, S.A. Cosby and Stephen King went right to the top of my reading list. Berney’s Double Barrel Bluff, features Shake Bouchon who is off to Cambodia to rescue an ex-girl friend. King of Ashes demonstrates the truth of the axiom that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
If you enjoy crime noir these books won’t disappoint. On a final note: Cosby references the Ship of Theseus, which AI tells me is “a philosophical thought experiment that explores the concept of identity over time. It asks whether an object that has had all of its original components replaced remains the same object.” This isn’t a subject you often see raised in a thriller, but then Cosby is plowing new ground which each subsequent book.
Horror was a genre I seldom explored. Exceptions have been:
Short stories by Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson,
Bestsellers by Ira Levin (Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives).
Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft
Harvest Home by Thomas Tyron (who else remembers it)
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (still the scariest book this Kansas boy has ever read)
And then I stumbled on Stephen King. The first book I read by King was Under the Dome. The ending was both unnerving and, in its way, hilarious. Other books quickly followed, including The Stand and The Shining.
I believe King is going to be read years from now. Yes, he writes horror novels, a genre that doesn’t receive much in the way of critical acclaim. In book after book King uses horror to examine human behavior. What would you do? How would you act? If ___fill in the blank____? In King’s books nothing supernatural is ever quite as frightening as humanity.
Never Flinch is directly in that mold and there’s just a tiny frisson of fear, of the unknown, of the supernatural, in the book’s final pages.
As an added draw, Never Flinch features P.I. Holly Gibney, who is King’s favorite character.
I cried at the ending of Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone. I think this could be a pattern with me and this author. She’s a closer.
June was an especially good month for non-fiction. A trend that is continuing in July.
The British Are Coming, The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777, by Rick Atkinson is the first volume in a trilogy. It is extremely detailed, with lots of maps, yet, for all that, it’s a smooth read. Volume two is available now in hardcover.
Baddest Man, The Making of Mike Tyson by Mark Kriegel is a compelling read. The book ends with the conclusion of the Tyson-Spinks bout. It’s not a spoiler to say that Tyson wins and is crowned heavyweight champion of the world. The how of how he got there is the story and Kriegel tells it well.
Now reading:
Saint of the Narrows Street by William Boyle
Cooler Than Cool, The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard by C.M. Kushins.
Cooler Than Cool has to be the best book title of the year, and it’s not bad advice.
Stay cool!