I was starting to think that nobody would invite me to take part in the latest Facebook meme. Finally, though, my friend (and January Magazine editor) Linda L. Richards tagged me. The challenge is to name 10 books that have “stayed with you” in some way. You shouldn’t think too hard on the matter, and the books you choose don’t need to be great works of literature, just those that you hold a little piece of in your heart. Well, here goes my list:
• Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry (1985)
• Lincoln, by Gore Vidal (1984)
• The Underground Man, by Ross Macdonald (1971)
• The Little Book, by Selden Edwards (2008)
• Homer & Langley, by E.L. Doctorow (2009)
• Riven Rock, by T.C. Boyle (1998)
• Mohawk, by Richard Russo (1986)
• Never Cross a Vampire, by Stuart M. Kaminsky (1980)
• The Steam Pig, by James McClure (1971)
• Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt, by David McCullough (1981)
As I said, I put these picks together quickly, without over-thinking the exercise. That my list features only three crime novels shouldn’t be terribly surprising; they represent my early experiences with the genre, back when I was still trying to decide whether it offered the storytelling scope and writing quality that would keep me interested in the long run. (Obviously, it did!) I am more surprised to see that only two of the books I mention were published within the last 15 years.
Even extending this tally to 22 titles (I couldn’t bear to trim any more out of it) adds only two 21st-century works:
• The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, by Oscar Hijuelos (1989)
• Ringworld, by Larry Niven (1970)
• The Theory of Everything, by Lisa Grunwald (1991)
• The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld, by Herbert Asbury (1933)
• The Eighth Circle, by Stanley Ellin (1958; more here)
• All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren (1946)
• The Blind Man of Seville, by Robert Wilson (2003)
• The Big Sky, by A.B. Guthrie Jr. (1947)
• Looking for Rachel Wallace, by Robert B. Parker (1980)
• Leavenworth Train: A Fugitive’s Search for Justice in the Vanishing West, by Joe Jackson (2001--more here)
• Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, by Steven Millhauser (1996)
• Angel in Black, by Max Allan Collins (1981--more here)
Have I become increasingly critical of books over time? Was I more open to new works during the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s--is that why those decades are best represented here? Perhaps my standards for excellence have risen over the many years I’ve been reviewing books, and it’s harder now for a new yarn to win my adoration. That seems as good an excuse as any others.
On Facebook, participants in this meme were asked to tag others, who would then feel pressured to submit their own book choices. I am declining to do that here. But if you’d like to share your top-10 lists in the Comments section below, that would be cool.
Showing posts with label Memes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Memes. Show all posts
Sunday, September 07, 2014
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Does My Nose Look Longer Now?
I’m apparently a better fibber, or at least a more subtle one, than I thought. Eight days ago, I accepted a challenge posed by blogger-author Patti Abbott to see if I really qualified for the Bald-Faced Liar 
(aka “Creative Writer”) Award. The task was to “Tell up to six outrageous lies about yourself, and at least one outrageous truth - or - switch it around and tell six outrageous truths and one outrageous lie.”
I decided to feature half a dozen of what I thought were fairly remarkable truths about myself, and add a single incredible falsehood to that mix. Then I turned the whole thing into a contest, asking Rap Sheet readers to see if they could finger the phony “fact.” Finally, I promised to send two lucky people who answered correctly free hardcover copies of Kelli Stanley’s terrific new historical crime novel, City of Dragons, supplied by her publisher, Minotaur Books.
Just to recap, here are the seven “facts” I presented:
1. I once dined with Buckminster Fuller.
2. My father’s boyhood pal grew up to be George Bush’s spy chief.
3. One night, many years ago, when my apartment building caught on fire, I escaped through the flames clutching the manuscript I was working on at the time--but forgot to put on shoes.
4. I once helped to send a friend to prison.
5. I once sat beside Amy Adams on a cross-country flight.
6. I once fell asleep right in the middle of interviewing a famous English economist.
7. A cabbie in Tijuana offered to sell me his sister. Cheap.
Interestingly, the statement that the majority of folks entering this contest thought was false turned out to be No. 7. “Cabbies’ sisters are never that cheap,” one guesser maintained. I must differ. Actually, that statement is true. A cab driver did in fact offer to sell me his sister--or somebody he claimed to be his sister--during the only trip I’ve ever taken to the Mexican border town of Tijuana, back in the late 1970s. My recollection is that he was asking $40, but maybe he really just wanted to “rent” the woman for a little lascivious folly. I don’t know; I didn’t take him up on the offer.
So let’s go through those other six assertions I made about myself and my often entertaining past.
Nobody was willing to declare me a liar when I said I’d once shared a meal with architect, author, and futurist Buckminster Fuller--which is good, because that’s true. I took part in a speaker selection committee in college, and Fuller was somebody we invited to address the student body as part of an annual lecture series. I joined him and several other students and faculty members for dinner following his speech. All I remember is that I talked with him about the architecture of geodesic domes.
The statement I made about my father’s boyhood buddy eventually going to work for George Herbert Walker Bush was also true. My dad grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, just a stone’s thrown away from the home of William H. Webster. They were both born in March 1924 (16 days apart), and my late father was proud to describe “Billy” Webster as “my lifetime friend.” Webster was a U.S. Court of Appeals judge when, in 1978, President Jimmy Carter tapped him to become the sixth FBI director. From 1987 to 1991 Webster served as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency under both Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush. My dad used to love telling the story of how he was invited to attend some formal dinner for Webster in Portland, Oregon, to which mostly high-ranking politicians had been invited. He chuckled about the fact that, while the city’s mayor and other officeholders he’d tussled with on governance issues in the past were relegated to tables far distant from the podium, he--an architect with no obvious political connections--was seated right beside his old pal from the St. Louis suburbs.
Not one person picked No. 3 as a lie. It’s true: I did flee from a fire in my apartment building without remembering to put on any sort of footwear, but was careful to pack along the story I had most recently been composing. Hey, what do you expect from a writer?
However, several entrants were absolutely convinced that statement No. 4 has to be a prevarication--that I couldn’t possibly have “once helped to send a friend to prison.” As one wrote: “Come on, you’re on a crime fiction blog, surely you’re not a stool pigeon?!!” Well, I have to confess that No. 4 is true, and I wasn’t actually a stool pigeon. Somebody I considered a good friend, a fellow newspaper employee back in the early ’80s, stole my checkbook--along with the checkbooks of other people he knew--and used them to buy a number of things before he was caught. I had no idea what was going on, until my bank called me one day and asked whether I’d written a check for some commodity or other; I had no idea what the guy was talking about, and was thus alerted to the fraud. Later, I was subpoenaed to testify against my friend in court, and he was convicted and imprisoned--I do not recall for how long.
Curiously, the only person who called me out on No. 6 was the aforementioned Patti Abbott. “As dull as economists are,” she wrote in the Comments section of my original post, “I don't think you would have nodded off.” Thank you for the character endorsement, Patti, but you’re wrong; No. 6 is true. The economist in question was Kenneth E. Boulding, who was also a British educator, peace activist, and “interdisciplinary philosopher.” My memory is that he, too, spoke at my college years ago, though subsequent to my graduation, and I was invited to interview him during his visit. After digesting (if not fully comprehending) a couple of Boulding’s books, I sat down to question him. But that day was particularly warm, I was tired from a few long workdays, Boulding’s answers to my queries were extensive ... and at some point during our conversation, I suddenly realized that I had no idea what he was talking about. Furthermore, I could tell that my eyes had just snapped open after what might have been a few seconds, or even a couple of minutes. Embarrassed, I looked at Boulding to determine whether he was insulted by my slumbering, only to realize that he hadn’t stopped talking the whole time! Whether he even noticed my lack of attention, I couldn’t say, but he didn’t mention it, and I finally managed to complete the interview.
That leaves us with statement No. 5, which is of course false.
Only four people out of the more than two dozen who entered this book-giveaway contest figured that out. As one of them wrote, “These would all make great lies,
but I’m guessing the one about plane tripping with Amy Adams is more fantasy than truth. But if it’s true, I can only say, ‘You lucky dog, you.’” I would have been a lucky dog, indeed, to have spent a few quiet hours sitting in the company of the comely and effervescent young star of Junebug, Julie & Julia, and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. I have never found myself perched beside Amy Adams (shown at left). Or at least I haven’t yet. (Why give up hope?) To show you what a sneaky deceiver I am, I’d originally intended my false statement to read, “I once sat beside Halle Berry on a cross-country flight” (speaking of wish fulfillment!), but ultimately decided that nobody would believe me. So I went for a lesser-known actress, instead.
Now, what about those free books I had promised? A completely random drawing among the names of the four people who guessed correctly brings up two winners: Louis Burklow of Los Angeles, California, and Alison Scarrow of Parry Sound, Ontario. My congratulations to both of you. I’ve passed your names and street addresses along to the fine folks at Minotaur Books, and they should send you each a copy of Stanley’s City of Dragons without delay.
My thanks to everyone who participated in this little guessing game. Sorry if you didn’t win, but rest assured that there will be more giveaway opportunities in the near future.
(aka “Creative Writer”) Award. The task was to “Tell up to six outrageous lies about yourself, and at least one outrageous truth - or - switch it around and tell six outrageous truths and one outrageous lie.”I decided to feature half a dozen of what I thought were fairly remarkable truths about myself, and add a single incredible falsehood to that mix. Then I turned the whole thing into a contest, asking Rap Sheet readers to see if they could finger the phony “fact.” Finally, I promised to send two lucky people who answered correctly free hardcover copies of Kelli Stanley’s terrific new historical crime novel, City of Dragons, supplied by her publisher, Minotaur Books.
Just to recap, here are the seven “facts” I presented:
1. I once dined with Buckminster Fuller.
2. My father’s boyhood pal grew up to be George Bush’s spy chief.
3. One night, many years ago, when my apartment building caught on fire, I escaped through the flames clutching the manuscript I was working on at the time--but forgot to put on shoes.
4. I once helped to send a friend to prison.
5. I once sat beside Amy Adams on a cross-country flight.
6. I once fell asleep right in the middle of interviewing a famous English economist.
7. A cabbie in Tijuana offered to sell me his sister. Cheap.
Interestingly, the statement that the majority of folks entering this contest thought was false turned out to be No. 7. “Cabbies’ sisters are never that cheap,” one guesser maintained. I must differ. Actually, that statement is true. A cab driver did in fact offer to sell me his sister--or somebody he claimed to be his sister--during the only trip I’ve ever taken to the Mexican border town of Tijuana, back in the late 1970s. My recollection is that he was asking $40, but maybe he really just wanted to “rent” the woman for a little lascivious folly. I don’t know; I didn’t take him up on the offer.
So let’s go through those other six assertions I made about myself and my often entertaining past.
Nobody was willing to declare me a liar when I said I’d once shared a meal with architect, author, and futurist Buckminster Fuller--which is good, because that’s true. I took part in a speaker selection committee in college, and Fuller was somebody we invited to address the student body as part of an annual lecture series. I joined him and several other students and faculty members for dinner following his speech. All I remember is that I talked with him about the architecture of geodesic domes.
The statement I made about my father’s boyhood buddy eventually going to work for George Herbert Walker Bush was also true. My dad grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, just a stone’s thrown away from the home of William H. Webster. They were both born in March 1924 (16 days apart), and my late father was proud to describe “Billy” Webster as “my lifetime friend.” Webster was a U.S. Court of Appeals judge when, in 1978, President Jimmy Carter tapped him to become the sixth FBI director. From 1987 to 1991 Webster served as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency under both Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush. My dad used to love telling the story of how he was invited to attend some formal dinner for Webster in Portland, Oregon, to which mostly high-ranking politicians had been invited. He chuckled about the fact that, while the city’s mayor and other officeholders he’d tussled with on governance issues in the past were relegated to tables far distant from the podium, he--an architect with no obvious political connections--was seated right beside his old pal from the St. Louis suburbs.
Not one person picked No. 3 as a lie. It’s true: I did flee from a fire in my apartment building without remembering to put on any sort of footwear, but was careful to pack along the story I had most recently been composing. Hey, what do you expect from a writer?
However, several entrants were absolutely convinced that statement No. 4 has to be a prevarication--that I couldn’t possibly have “once helped to send a friend to prison.” As one wrote: “Come on, you’re on a crime fiction blog, surely you’re not a stool pigeon?!!” Well, I have to confess that No. 4 is true, and I wasn’t actually a stool pigeon. Somebody I considered a good friend, a fellow newspaper employee back in the early ’80s, stole my checkbook--along with the checkbooks of other people he knew--and used them to buy a number of things before he was caught. I had no idea what was going on, until my bank called me one day and asked whether I’d written a check for some commodity or other; I had no idea what the guy was talking about, and was thus alerted to the fraud. Later, I was subpoenaed to testify against my friend in court, and he was convicted and imprisoned--I do not recall for how long.
Curiously, the only person who called me out on No. 6 was the aforementioned Patti Abbott. “As dull as economists are,” she wrote in the Comments section of my original post, “I don't think you would have nodded off.” Thank you for the character endorsement, Patti, but you’re wrong; No. 6 is true. The economist in question was Kenneth E. Boulding, who was also a British educator, peace activist, and “interdisciplinary philosopher.” My memory is that he, too, spoke at my college years ago, though subsequent to my graduation, and I was invited to interview him during his visit. After digesting (if not fully comprehending) a couple of Boulding’s books, I sat down to question him. But that day was particularly warm, I was tired from a few long workdays, Boulding’s answers to my queries were extensive ... and at some point during our conversation, I suddenly realized that I had no idea what he was talking about. Furthermore, I could tell that my eyes had just snapped open after what might have been a few seconds, or even a couple of minutes. Embarrassed, I looked at Boulding to determine whether he was insulted by my slumbering, only to realize that he hadn’t stopped talking the whole time! Whether he even noticed my lack of attention, I couldn’t say, but he didn’t mention it, and I finally managed to complete the interview.
That leaves us with statement No. 5, which is of course false.
Only four people out of the more than two dozen who entered this book-giveaway contest figured that out. As one of them wrote, “These would all make great lies,
but I’m guessing the one about plane tripping with Amy Adams is more fantasy than truth. But if it’s true, I can only say, ‘You lucky dog, you.’” I would have been a lucky dog, indeed, to have spent a few quiet hours sitting in the company of the comely and effervescent young star of Junebug, Julie & Julia, and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. I have never found myself perched beside Amy Adams (shown at left). Or at least I haven’t yet. (Why give up hope?) To show you what a sneaky deceiver I am, I’d originally intended my false statement to read, “I once sat beside Halle Berry on a cross-country flight” (speaking of wish fulfillment!), but ultimately decided that nobody would believe me. So I went for a lesser-known actress, instead.Now, what about those free books I had promised? A completely random drawing among the names of the four people who guessed correctly brings up two winners: Louis Burklow of Los Angeles, California, and Alison Scarrow of Parry Sound, Ontario. My congratulations to both of you. I’ve passed your names and street addresses along to the fine folks at Minotaur Books, and they should send you each a copy of Stanley’s City of Dragons without delay.
My thanks to everyone who participated in this little guessing game. Sorry if you didn’t win, but rest assured that there will be more giveaway opportunities in the near future.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Lies, Damn Lies, and a Contest
Patti Abbott, the Derringer Award-winning short-story writer and creator of the Friday “forgotten books” series, has challenged me to participate in the latest meme wending its way around the crime-fiction blogosphere. This Bald-Faced Liar (aka “Creative Writer”) Award meme was kicked off last month by Arizona library manager and book critic Lesa Holstine. Since then, an assortment of clever and crafty bloggers have participated, including Evan Lewis, Keith Raffel, Laurie Powers, Bill Crider, the pseudonymous le0part13, Randy Johnson, Paul D. Brazill, and Loren Eaton.
The rules are pretty simple:
• Thank the person who gave this to you. (Merci, Patti.)
• Copy the logo and place it on your blog. (OK, done.)
• Link to the person who nominated you. (Check.)
• Tell up to six outrageous lies about yourself, and at least one outrageous truth - or - switch it around and tell six outrageous truths and one outrageous lie. (See below.)
• Nominate seven “Creative Writers” who might have fun coming up with outrageous lies of their own. (Check the end of this post.)
• Post links to the seven blogs you nominate.
• Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know that you have nominated them.
Most folks who’ve tackled this meme so far have chosen to conceal one true statement about themselves within six falsehoods. Being the maverick that I am, I’ve decided to go in the opposite direction--to deliver six truths about myself, plus one fabrication. Think you can tell the difference? Keep in mind that what sounds like an obvious misrepresentation of fact might in fact be true: I have led an often interesting life.
Which one of these statements is not true?
1. I once dined with Buckminster Fuller.
2. My father’s boyhood pal grew up to be George Bush’s spy chief.
3. One night, many years ago, when my apartment building caught on fire, I escaped through the flames clutching the manuscript I was working on at the time--but forgot to put on shoes.
4. I once helped to send a friend to prison.
5. I once sat beside Amy Adams on a cross-country flight.
6. I once fell asleep right in the middle of interviewing a famous English economist.
7. A cabbie in Tijuana offered to sell me his sister. Cheap.
To make guessing at the correct answer just a wee bit more fun, I’m going to turn it into a contest.
Author Kelli Stanley’s publisher, Minotaur Books, has offered to send two free hardcover copies of her wonderful new historical crime novel, City of Dragons, to Rap Sheet readers. If you would like to win one of those, you must first decide which of the aforementioned seven “facts” is a phony, and then send your response (along with your mailing address) to jpwrites@wordcuts.org. And please write “You’re a Liar” in the subject line. You can make only one guess, but you have until next Wednesday, February 24, to make it. At that time, I’ll collect all of the right answers (presuming anyone gets it right), and randomly choose two people to receive free copies of City of Dragons.
If you’d like to take a stab at identifying my one true statement without entering the giveaway contest, you can do that, too. Simply leave your response in the Comments section of this post.
One final thing: I’m supposed to tag seven other bloggers to take up this challenge themselves. So here goes (no hard feelings if you would prefer not to play):
Dan Fleming of My Year in Crime
Art Taylor of Art & Literature
Linda L. Richards
Declan Burke of Crime Always Pays
Ali Karim of Existentialist Man
Paul Bishop of Bish’s Beat
Mike Dennis
Don’t forget to check back here next week to see how good I am at lying, and who wins those free copies of Kelli Stanley’s new book.
Liar (aka “Creative Writer”) Award meme was kicked off last month by Arizona library manager and book critic Lesa Holstine. Since then, an assortment of clever and crafty bloggers have participated, including Evan Lewis, Keith Raffel, Laurie Powers, Bill Crider, the pseudonymous le0part13, Randy Johnson, Paul D. Brazill, and Loren Eaton.The rules are pretty simple:
• Thank the person who gave this to you. (Merci, Patti.)
• Copy the logo and place it on your blog. (OK, done.)
• Link to the person who nominated you. (Check.)
• Tell up to six outrageous lies about yourself, and at least one outrageous truth - or - switch it around and tell six outrageous truths and one outrageous lie. (See below.)
• Nominate seven “Creative Writers” who might have fun coming up with outrageous lies of their own. (Check the end of this post.)
• Post links to the seven blogs you nominate.
• Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know that you have nominated them.
Most folks who’ve tackled this meme so far have chosen to conceal one true statement about themselves within six falsehoods. Being the maverick that I am, I’ve decided to go in the opposite direction--to deliver six truths about myself, plus one fabrication. Think you can tell the difference? Keep in mind that what sounds like an obvious misrepresentation of fact might in fact be true: I have led an often interesting life.
Which one of these statements is not true?
1. I once dined with Buckminster Fuller.
2. My father’s boyhood pal grew up to be George Bush’s spy chief.
3. One night, many years ago, when my apartment building caught on fire, I escaped through the flames clutching the manuscript I was working on at the time--but forgot to put on shoes.
4. I once helped to send a friend to prison.
5. I once sat beside Amy Adams on a cross-country flight.
6. I once fell asleep right in the middle of interviewing a famous English economist.
7. A cabbie in Tijuana offered to sell me his sister. Cheap.
To make guessing at the correct answer just a wee bit more fun, I’m going to turn it into a contest.Author Kelli Stanley’s publisher, Minotaur Books, has offered to send two free hardcover copies of her wonderful new historical crime novel, City of Dragons, to Rap Sheet readers. If you would like to win one of those, you must first decide which of the aforementioned seven “facts” is a phony, and then send your response (along with your mailing address) to jpwrites@wordcuts.org. And please write “You’re a Liar” in the subject line. You can make only one guess, but you have until next Wednesday, February 24, to make it. At that time, I’ll collect all of the right answers (presuming anyone gets it right), and randomly choose two people to receive free copies of City of Dragons.
If you’d like to take a stab at identifying my one true statement without entering the giveaway contest, you can do that, too. Simply leave your response in the Comments section of this post.
One final thing: I’m supposed to tag seven other bloggers to take up this challenge themselves. So here goes (no hard feelings if you would prefer not to play):
Dan Fleming of My Year in Crime
Art Taylor of Art & Literature
Linda L. Richards
Declan Burke of Crime Always Pays
Ali Karim of Existentialist Man
Paul Bishop of Bish’s Beat
Mike Dennis
Don’t forget to check back here next week to see how good I am at lying, and who wins those free copies of Kelli Stanley’s new book.
Monday, November 23, 2009
The First Reads Club
Last year at about this same time, I took up a interesting challenge posed by Baltimore scribbler and BSCReview contributor Brian Lindenmuth to compile a list of authors whose work I had read for 
the first time in 2008. I hadn’t realized until going through that exercise just how many wordsmiths I’d unintentionally “discovered” during the preceding 12 months. While the number was smaller than the quantity of books I had read by previously familiar authors, it was nonetheless significant.
So I decided to repeat the exercise this year. Not all of the novels inventoried below were published over the course of 2009 (in fact, many were released before I was even born), but they all come from authors I had never read before last January 1. Author debuts appear in boldface, and the asterisks denote works of crime or thriller fiction.
• David Alexander (Shoot a Sitting Duck)*
• William Ard (Deadly Beloved)*
• O.G. Benson (Cain’s Woman)*
• Rebecca Cantrell (A Trace of Smoke)*
• M.E. Chaber (A Hearse of Another Color)*
• Roy Chaney (The Ragged End of Nowhere)*
• Richard Deming (Anything But Saintly)*
• Thomas B. Dewey (The Case of the Chased and the Unchaste)*
• David Ebershoff (The 19th Wife)
• Stanley Ellin (The Eighth Circle)*
• Roy Huggins (The Double Take)*
• E. Howard Hunt (House Dick)*
• J. Sydney Jones (The Empty Mirror)*
• Frank Kane (Stacked Deck)*
• Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin)
• Rafe McGregor (The Architect of Murder)*
• Stefanie Pintoff (In the Shadow of Gotham)*
• Talmage Powell (Corpus Delectable)*
• A.E. Roman (Chinatown Angel)*
• Dan Simmons (Drood)
• Robert Terrall (Kill Now, Pay Later)*
Of course, my reading appetites aren’t confined exclusively to crime fiction. In addition, I enjoyed a variety of non-fiction works during the last year that were penned by authors new to my bookshelves:
• Karen Abbott (Sin in the Second City)
• Adam Cohen (Nothing to Fear)
• John C. Fredriksen (Honey West)
• Greg Grandin (Fordlandia)
• Laura James (The Love Pirate and the Bandit’s Son)
• Jill Jonnes (Eiffel’s Tower)
• Charles Lachman (The Last Lincolns)
• Simon Read (War of Words)
• Martha A. Sandweiss (Passing Strange)
When last I undertook this task, it was as part of a meme and I was supposed to ask five other bloggers to catalogue their own year’s worth of author discoveries. I’ll pass on repeating that aspect of the assignment. But if you feel inclined to try this exercise on your own, simply send me a link to your list and I shall post it here. Or drop a note about your “first reads” rundown into the Comments section at the end of this post.
All of this makes me wonder what new writers I shall “meet” through their prose in 2010. I look forward to those encounters.
READ MORE: “New Authors: 2009,” by Ben Boulden (Gravetapping).
the first time in 2008. I hadn’t realized until going through that exercise just how many wordsmiths I’d unintentionally “discovered” during the preceding 12 months. While the number was smaller than the quantity of books I had read by previously familiar authors, it was nonetheless significant.So I decided to repeat the exercise this year. Not all of the novels inventoried below were published over the course of 2009 (in fact, many were released before I was even born), but they all come from authors I had never read before last January 1. Author debuts appear in boldface, and the asterisks denote works of crime or thriller fiction.
• David Alexander (Shoot a Sitting Duck)*
• William Ard (Deadly Beloved)*
• O.G. Benson (Cain’s Woman)*
• Rebecca Cantrell (A Trace of Smoke)*
• M.E. Chaber (A Hearse of Another Color)*
• Roy Chaney (The Ragged End of Nowhere)*
• Richard Deming (Anything But Saintly)*
• Thomas B. Dewey (The Case of the Chased and the Unchaste)*
• David Ebershoff (The 19th Wife)
• Stanley Ellin (The Eighth Circle)*
• Roy Huggins (The Double Take)*
• E. Howard Hunt (House Dick)*
• J. Sydney Jones (The Empty Mirror)*
• Frank Kane (Stacked Deck)*
• Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin)
• Rafe McGregor (The Architect of Murder)*
• Stefanie Pintoff (In the Shadow of Gotham)*
• Talmage Powell (Corpus Delectable)*
• A.E. Roman (Chinatown Angel)*
• Dan Simmons (Drood)
• Robert Terrall (Kill Now, Pay Later)*
Of course, my reading appetites aren’t confined exclusively to crime fiction. In addition, I enjoyed a variety of non-fiction works during the last year that were penned by authors new to my bookshelves:
• Karen Abbott (Sin in the Second City)
• Adam Cohen (Nothing to Fear)
• John C. Fredriksen (Honey West)
• Greg Grandin (Fordlandia)
• Laura James (The Love Pirate and the Bandit’s Son)
• Jill Jonnes (Eiffel’s Tower)• Charles Lachman (The Last Lincolns)
• Simon Read (War of Words)
• Martha A. Sandweiss (Passing Strange)
When last I undertook this task, it was as part of a meme and I was supposed to ask five other bloggers to catalogue their own year’s worth of author discoveries. I’ll pass on repeating that aspect of the assignment. But if you feel inclined to try this exercise on your own, simply send me a link to your list and I shall post it here. Or drop a note about your “first reads” rundown into the Comments section at the end of this post.
All of this makes me wonder what new writers I shall “meet” through their prose in 2010. I look forward to those encounters.
READ MORE: “New Authors: 2009,” by Ben Boulden (Gravetapping).
Monday, October 12, 2009
Getting a Read on My Reading
I think Scott D. Parker was the first crime-fiction blogger I saw tackle this meme. Randy Johnson followed suit, and now here I am, explaining my own quirky reading habits. Anyone else who’d like to take up the challenge of answering the questions below is encouraged 
to add a link in the Comments section of this post. That way, we can all find and enjoy your responses.
Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack? I never eat and read simultaneously. I might wind up soiling the book in my hand, which I wouldn’t hope to do. However, I do often drink coffee, soft drinks, or water while reading.
Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you? Just thinking about writing in books gives me the shivers. I have a reputation for treating my books like kings. It’s said that a book looks better after I have read it than it did before. When I need to mark passages or bits of information for use in reviews, I do so with removable adhesive tabs.
How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? I have a thick stack of bookmarks, some collected from stores I’ve visited in other parts of the world, and those serve nicely to remind me where I last left off.
Laying the book flat open? No, I prefer to hold the book in my hands, and I never open it enough to crack the spine.
Fiction, non-fiction, or both? I read about half and half. The majority of novels I consume annually are drawn from the crime fiction/mystery/thriller category, and easily 80 percent of the non-fiction comes from either the history or politics stacks.
Hard copy or audiobooks? I’m of the opinion that it takes me much longer to listen to a book than it does to read one. So 99.9 percent of the books I enjoy every year come handsomely packaged between hard or soft covers. The only time I ever resort to audiobooks is when I’m driving long distances in my car. And then, I have to take into account the fact that my wife isn’t as much a fan of crime fiction as I am. So if she’s accompany me on my journey, I can’t listen to tales containing much violence.
Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point? I don’t have too much trouble remembering where in the action I left things, so I can stop at any point within a chapter.
If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away? Generally, words are comprehensible by their context. However, whenever I come across a term that’s unfamiliar but interesting, I will make a note of it so I can look it up later--and maybe employ it in my own writing sometime.
Are you the type of person who only reads one book at a time, or can you read more than one at a time? I am usually in the midst of enjoying five or six books. And I have different books for different uses. I generally have a vintage paperback (right now, one of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Bertha Lam and Donald Cool novels) stuck away in my car, which I take with me as I walk around my local lake three or four times a week. I have other books that I read in bed, more that I read in the bathroom, and still others that I cart out with me to my favorite front porch chair. In theory, these should all be interchangeable, but they’re not really.
What are you currently reading? Crime fiction: Mark Coggins’ The Big Wake-up, Max Allan Collins’ Quarry in the Middle, Thomas B. Dewey’s Deadline (1966), Peter Lovesey’s Skeleton Hill, and of course that aforementioned Cool and Lam novel. Non-fiction: Timothy Egan’s The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America and John Buntin’s L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Sole of America’s Most Seductive City.
What is the last book you bought? Homer & Langley, by E.L. Doctorow, a beautiful, character-rich tale based on the true and weird story of New York City’s reclusive, hoarding Collyer brothers. I also recently laid down real money for copies of Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, by Greg Grandin, and A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.’s Scandalous Coming of Age, by Richard Rayner.
Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read? I can, and do, read anytime, anywhere. However, my favorite reading spot is on my front porch, in one of the Adirondack chairs situated there. If I’m planted there long enough, my cat, Monkey, likes to come up and investigate my reading choices. I think he usually approves, though he prefers to be close-mouthed on the subject.
Do you prefer series books or standalone books? Probably two thirds of the novels I read come from series, but of course the non-fiction works are standalones.
Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over? My tastes change, but right now the books I most often recommend are Doctorow’s Homer & Langley, Selden Edwards’ The Little Book, the Academy of Chicago’s reissued Charlie Chan novels, Philip Kerr’s If the Dead Rise Not (his latest Bernie Gunther adventure), and Ross Macdonald’s The Instant Enemy (one of his Lew Archer detective novels). Perennial favorites: Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s Shadow of the Wind.
How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?) They’re shelved by category, and within those categories by author’s name. The largest section of my library is given over to crime fiction. But after that I have substantial collections of history, travel-related literature, general fiction, western fiction, and even science fiction. Of course, I am desperately in need of more bookshelf space. Maybe in my next house, I won’t need to pack any volumes away in boxes. At least until their number exceeds the expanded bookcase room ...
READ MORE: “Reading Habits,” by James Reasoner (Rough Edges); “Reading Habits,” by Evan Lewis (Davy Crockett’s Almanack); “Reading Habits,” by Bob Napier (The Capt’n’s Blog); “Reading Habits,” by Max Allan Collins (F.O.M.A.C.).
to add a link in the Comments section of this post. That way, we can all find and enjoy your responses.Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack? I never eat and read simultaneously. I might wind up soiling the book in my hand, which I wouldn’t hope to do. However, I do often drink coffee, soft drinks, or water while reading.
Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you? Just thinking about writing in books gives me the shivers. I have a reputation for treating my books like kings. It’s said that a book looks better after I have read it than it did before. When I need to mark passages or bits of information for use in reviews, I do so with removable adhesive tabs.
How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? I have a thick stack of bookmarks, some collected from stores I’ve visited in other parts of the world, and those serve nicely to remind me where I last left off.
Laying the book flat open? No, I prefer to hold the book in my hands, and I never open it enough to crack the spine.
Fiction, non-fiction, or both? I read about half and half. The majority of novels I consume annually are drawn from the crime fiction/mystery/thriller category, and easily 80 percent of the non-fiction comes from either the history or politics stacks.
Hard copy or audiobooks? I’m of the opinion that it takes me much longer to listen to a book than it does to read one. So 99.9 percent of the books I enjoy every year come handsomely packaged between hard or soft covers. The only time I ever resort to audiobooks is when I’m driving long distances in my car. And then, I have to take into account the fact that my wife isn’t as much a fan of crime fiction as I am. So if she’s accompany me on my journey, I can’t listen to tales containing much violence.
Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point? I don’t have too much trouble remembering where in the action I left things, so I can stop at any point within a chapter.
If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away? Generally, words are comprehensible by their context. However, whenever I come across a term that’s unfamiliar but interesting, I will make a note of it so I can look it up later--and maybe employ it in my own writing sometime.
Are you the type of person who only reads one book at a time, or can you read more than one at a time? I am usually in the midst of enjoying five or six books. And I have different books for different uses. I generally have a vintage paperback (right now, one of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Bertha Lam and Donald Cool novels) stuck away in my car, which I take with me as I walk around my local lake three or four times a week. I have other books that I read in bed, more that I read in the bathroom, and still others that I cart out with me to my favorite front porch chair. In theory, these should all be interchangeable, but they’re not really.
What are you currently reading? Crime fiction: Mark Coggins’ The Big Wake-up, Max Allan Collins’ Quarry in the Middle, Thomas B. Dewey’s Deadline (1966), Peter Lovesey’s Skeleton Hill, and of course that aforementioned Cool and Lam novel. Non-fiction: Timothy Egan’s The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America and John Buntin’s L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Sole of America’s Most Seductive City.
What is the last book you bought? Homer & Langley, by E.L. Doctorow, a beautiful, character-rich tale based on the true and weird story of New York City’s reclusive, hoarding Collyer brothers. I also recently laid down real money for copies of Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, by Greg Grandin, and A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.’s Scandalous Coming of Age, by Richard Rayner.
Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read? I can, and do, read anytime, anywhere. However, my favorite reading spot is on my front porch, in one of the Adirondack chairs situated there. If I’m planted there long enough, my cat, Monkey, likes to come up and investigate my reading choices. I think he usually approves, though he prefers to be close-mouthed on the subject.
Do you prefer series books or standalone books? Probably two thirds of the novels I read come from series, but of course the non-fiction works are standalones.
Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over? My tastes change, but right now the books I most often recommend are Doctorow’s Homer & Langley, Selden Edwards’ The Little Book, the Academy of Chicago’s reissued Charlie Chan novels, Philip Kerr’s If the Dead Rise Not (his latest Bernie Gunther adventure), and Ross Macdonald’s The Instant Enemy (one of his Lew Archer detective novels). Perennial favorites: Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s Shadow of the Wind.
How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?) They’re shelved by category, and within those categories by author’s name. The largest section of my library is given over to crime fiction. But after that I have substantial collections of history, travel-related literature, general fiction, western fiction, and even science fiction. Of course, I am desperately in need of more bookshelf space. Maybe in my next house, I won’t need to pack any volumes away in boxes. At least until their number exceeds the expanded bookcase room ...
READ MORE: “Reading Habits,” by James Reasoner (Rough Edges); “Reading Habits,” by Evan Lewis (Davy Crockett’s Almanack); “Reading Habits,” by Bob Napier (The Capt’n’s Blog); “Reading Habits,” by Max Allan Collins (F.O.M.A.C.).
Sunday, August 23, 2009
A Load of Scrap
Independent Crime’s Nathan Cain has tagged me to participate in the latest Internet meme, “Honest Scrap,” which calls on folks to “spit out 10 honest things about yourself.” Although this is quite reminiscent of an earlier meme that asked bloggers to reveal “16 random things” about themselves, I guess I can play along.
1. I didn’t have my first date until college. (Thanks, Cindy, you were a real trooper.) Blame this as much on the fact that I attended an all-boys Catholic high school as on any natural introversion.
2. When I was a teenager, I distressed my mother by watching what seemed like endless hours of TV game shows (Hollywood Squares, The Match Game, Password, etc.). Nowadays, you’d have to pay me to waste time in front of Deal or No Deal, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? or series of that ilk.
3. I can’t stand to have flies in my house, and will swat the little bastards at any and every opportunity. On the other hand, I graciously usher spiders out the door unmolested.
4. I almost never read books recommended to me. Even by friends.
5. To the best of my recollection, I’ve only ever voted for one Republican in my life, and he’s no longer living. I grew to distrust members of the GOP during Richard M. Nixon’s Watergate scandal, and there’s nothing the party has done since to give me more confidence in its honesty. Trying to convince the country that President Bill Clinton was unfit for office and should therefore be brought down by what was effectively a coup attempt in the 1990s? Selling the media a bill of goods about “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq that justified breaking the Treasury to pay for George W. Bush’s war on Islam? Promoting the idea of privatizing Social Security, but then lying about their intentions? Propounding one falsehood after the next to try and stop President Barack Obama’s efforts to reform health care and save the U.S. economy? Republicans think that Americans are stupid or uninformed enough to fall for their crap ... and the sad thing is how often they’re right.
6. On the other hand, and much to my shame, I used to think that Barbara Bush (the younger one, of course) was pretty hot.
7. My favorite number has always been 73. I don’t know why.
8. I almost never answer the telephone. The only people who get through to me directly are those whose names appear in my cell phone’s rather short list of contacts; otherwise, I let incoming calls go to voice-mail. I much prefer e-mail, which allows me to receive messages, consider them, and then get back to people as I am able.
9. I would rather eat breakfast than any other meal of the day. When I’m working hard on something interesting, I can go all day long without eating, no problem.
10. I’ve always preferred the company of women to that of men. I find women more interesting and, thankfully, less prone to making a competition out of everything. I used to have more female friends than male ones, but since I got married 18 years ago, that imbalance has tipped in the opposite direction to maintain domestic harmony.
And a bonus #11: The first person I was ever assigned by a professional newspaper to interview was former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, who had been invited to speak at my college as part of its annual lecture series. During the course of our discussion, we talked about the limits of the press’ intrusion into the private lives of public figures. (Q: “If [President] Carter was sleeping with someone [other than his wife], would it be a story?” A: “Depends on who.”) And I asked whether former first lady Betty Ford’s alcoholism should be considered fair game for reporters. Bradlee responded:
1. I didn’t have my first date until college. (Thanks, Cindy, you were a real trooper.) Blame this as much on the fact that I attended an all-boys Catholic high school as on any natural introversion.
2. When I was a teenager, I distressed my mother by watching what seemed like endless hours of TV game shows (Hollywood Squares, The Match Game, Password, etc.). Nowadays, you’d have to pay me to waste time in front of Deal or No Deal, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? or series of that ilk.
3. I can’t stand to have flies in my house, and will swat the little bastards at any and every opportunity. On the other hand, I graciously usher spiders out the door unmolested.
4. I almost never read books recommended to me. Even by friends.
5. To the best of my recollection, I’ve only ever voted for one Republican in my life, and he’s no longer living. I grew to distrust members of the GOP during Richard M. Nixon’s Watergate scandal, and there’s nothing the party has done since to give me more confidence in its honesty. Trying to convince the country that President Bill Clinton was unfit for office and should therefore be brought down by what was effectively a coup attempt in the 1990s? Selling the media a bill of goods about “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq that justified breaking the Treasury to pay for George W. Bush’s war on Islam? Promoting the idea of privatizing Social Security, but then lying about their intentions? Propounding one falsehood after the next to try and stop President Barack Obama’s efforts to reform health care and save the U.S. economy? Republicans think that Americans are stupid or uninformed enough to fall for their crap ... and the sad thing is how often they’re right.
6. On the other hand, and much to my shame, I used to think that Barbara Bush (the younger one, of course) was pretty hot.
7. My favorite number has always been 73. I don’t know why.
8. I almost never answer the telephone. The only people who get through to me directly are those whose names appear in my cell phone’s rather short list of contacts; otherwise, I let incoming calls go to voice-mail. I much prefer e-mail, which allows me to receive messages, consider them, and then get back to people as I am able.
9. I would rather eat breakfast than any other meal of the day. When I’m working hard on something interesting, I can go all day long without eating, no problem.
10. I’ve always preferred the company of women to that of men. I find women more interesting and, thankfully, less prone to making a competition out of everything. I used to have more female friends than male ones, but since I got married 18 years ago, that imbalance has tipped in the opposite direction to maintain domestic harmony.
And a bonus #11: The first person I was ever assigned by a professional newspaper to interview was former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, who had been invited to speak at my college as part of its annual lecture series. During the course of our discussion, we talked about the limits of the press’ intrusion into the private lives of public figures. (Q: “If [President] Carter was sleeping with someone [other than his wife], would it be a story?” A: “Depends on who.”) And I asked whether former first lady Betty Ford’s alcoholism should be considered fair game for reporters. Bradlee responded:
Oh, sure. She made it [a story]. She was spaced out all the time, Betty Ford; she really was. It was plain. And I’ll tell you when I noticed it most at the [1976 Republican convention]. Her seat was at right angles to the press box where I was sitting, and she was obviously out to lunch. Remember than scene where she was kind of swaying to the music? And the camera would go off to what’s-her-face [Nancy] Reagan in the corner and back to her? She was flying.Rather than obeying the rules and tagging 10 other people to add their own “honest things” to the pile, let me instead just point Rap Sheet readers to a few other bloggers who have already made these sorts of lists: Randy Johnson, Darius Whiteplume, and the wonderfully named Max the Severed Head. If you would like to contribute your own self-revealing facts in the Comments section of this post, please feel free.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
The Fantastic Fours
My suggestion yesterday that crime-fiction bloggers take up “the four play meme challenge” has already produced some interesting responses. So far, I’ve spotted posts by Patti Abbott, Scott D. Parker, Cullen Gallagher, Bill Crider, James Reasoner, David Cranmer, Randy Johnson, Donna Moore, Rhian Davies, George Kelley, and Uriah Robinson. I also just received a list from crime-fictionist, western novelist, and founder of the Private Eye Writers of America Robert J. Randisi (right), whose most recent books, of many, are You’re Nobody ’Til Somebody Kills You (a Rat Pack Mystery) and Dial Emmy for Murder (a Soap Opera Mystery), written with Eileen Davidson. I am posting Randisi’s responses below.4 movies you would watch over and over again:
• Harper
• Chinatown
• Eddie and the Cruisers
• Jaws
4 places you have lived:
• Brooklyn (born there)
• Florida
• St. Louis, Missouri
• Clarksville, Missouri
4 TV shows you love to watch:
• Harry O
• Secret Agent
• Stargate: SG1
• Burn Notice
4 places you have been on vacation:
• Deadwood, North Dakota
• Las Vegas, Nevada
• New Orleans, Louisiana
• Sanibel, Florida
4 of your favorite foods:
• Pizza
• Chinese
• Pasta
• Fried Chicken
4 Web sites you visit daily (there are none, but if I had to pick ...):
• The Rap Sheet
• Ed Gorman Blog
• Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine
• Brisnet
4 places you would rather be right now:
• Las Vegas
• Tuscany
• New Orleans
• Sedona, Arizona
4 things you want to do before you die:
• Go to the Kentucky Derby
• Go to the Breeder’s Cup
• Tour Europe
• Sing with an orchestra on stage
4 books you wish you could read again for the first time:
• Replay, by Ken Grimwood
• Dune, by Frank Herbert
• The Moving Target, by Ross Macdonald
• Death of a Citizen, by Donald Hamilton
Tag 4 people you think will respond:
• Ed Gorman
• Bill Crider
• Paul Bishop
• Max Allan Collins
UPDATE: This “four play” meme continues to rumble through the blogosphere. Corey Wilde has posted his own list in The Drowning Machine. Ed Gorman has his say on these matters here, while Todd Mason presents his picks in the Sweet Freedom blog. Weighing in elsewhere are Keith Rawson, Patrick Shawn Bagley, and the mysterious Iasa. Oh, and Peter Rozovsky decided to modify the categories to fit his idiosyncratic tastes (you radical you!). We’ll keep watch on the spread of this meme over the next few days.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Four Play
Shot in 1923, this fading photograph shows my paternal great-grandparents, Lillian and Alexander Pierce (perched on the leftmost two camels), before Egypt’s Great Sphinx and Pyramid of Khafre during their round-the-world journey.With an unusual bit of extra time on my hands, I’ve been playing around with this meme during the last week. I discovered it on the group blog Inkspot, and though I wasn’t actually invited to join in, I thought it might be fun. There were originally eight categories, which--because there’s no rule against this--I have expanded to an even 10, adding “4 things you want to do before you die” and “4 books you wish you could read again for the first time.” At the end, I have tagged a quartet of bloggers I’m pretty confident will enjoy tackling these questions themselves. But anybody can play at this game. If you have your own blog and post your responses there, please let me know, so I can tell Rap Sheet readers about it. If you would prefer to deposit your answers in the Comments section of this post, don’t hesitate to do so. And if you’re a regular contributor to The Rap Sheet, feel free to have your say on this page.
Anyway, here goes nothing ...
4 movies you would watch over and over again:
• Casablanca
• Chinatown
• The Aviator
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
4 places you have lived:
• Portland, Oregon (born there)
• Detroit, Michigan (unfortunately, I didn’t live there long
enough to really appreciate the place)
• Boulder, Colorado (where I occupied part of a carriage house across
from a mansion filled with party-loving sorority girls)
• Seattle, Washington (my home ever since the mid-1980s)
4 TV shows you love to watch:
• The Rockford Files
• The West Wing
• Deadwood
• In Plain Sight (just so there’s a current series here)
4 places you have been on vacation:
• New Orleans (ah, the beignets)
• Broome, Western Australia (the only place I’ve ridden camels)
• Quebec City, Canada (especially appealing in the winter)
• Barcelona, Spain (certainly one of the liveliest and most beautiful cities I have ever seen)
4 of your favorite foods:
• Tacos
• Chocolate-chip cookies
• Pizza
• Corn on the cob
4 Web sites you visit daily:
• Political Animal
• Salon
• Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine
• Do You Write Under Your Own Name?
4 places you would rather be right now:
• Browsing the bookstores around Charing Cross Road, London
• Sipping a rum punch while surreptitiously watching topless lovelies on the beach in Negril, Jamaica
• Having lunch in an outdoor café on Maiden Lane, San Francisco
• Buying cheese, bread, and wine on rue Cler in Paris
4 things you want to do before you die:
• Climb the Eiffel Tower
• Cruise down the Amazon River to Manaus, Brazil
• Finish writing, and see published, at least one novel of my own• Visit Egypt’s Great Sphinx of Giza and re-create the photo topping this post
4 books you wish you could read again for the first time:
• The Underground Man, by Ross Macdonald
• Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry
• Around the World in 80 Days,
by Jules Verne
• The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson
Tag 4 people you think will respond:
• Patti Abbott
• Donna Moore
• My fellow Spinetingler Award winner, Peter Rozovsky
• Nathan Cain
Monday, April 06, 2009
Chapter 11 Structuring
Central Crime Zone’s Jon Jordan suggests that, “in honor of the wonderful world of high finance,” bloggers should post “the first line of Chapter Eleven in the book you’re reading.” This turns out to be a more difficult assignment than I would have imagined, as the book I just began, Jonathan Rabb’s new historical crime novel, Shadow and Light (the sequel to Rosa, one of January Magazine’s favorite books of 2005), doesn’t have an easily identifiable Chapter 11. Its numbering only goes up to Chapter 5.
I’ve also just started reading T. Coraghessan Boyle’s wonderfully composed new novel about architect Frank Lloyd Wright, The Women. But that has no Chapter 11, either. Its Part I ends with Chapter 9, and then the numbering commences again in Part II. However, if I count the second chapter of Part II as the 11th chapter, then this is its first line (on page 208):
Better to refer back to two other books that I just finished over the weekend. The first completed was Devil’s Garden, Ace Atkins’ brand-new novel about Dashiell Hammett’s involvement, during his time as a Pinkerton detective, in the evident 1921 frame-up of big-screen funny man Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle for the murder of a wannabe actress in San Francisco. Chapter 11 in that story begins with the entrance of Arbuckle’s estranged wife:
Feel free to apply this test to your own latest reads. I’m not sure it tells you much about them, but it may give you the chance to discover--or rediscover--some fine prose.
I’ve also just started reading T. Coraghessan Boyle’s wonderfully composed new novel about architect Frank Lloyd Wright, The Women. But that has no Chapter 11, either. Its Part I ends with Chapter 9, and then the numbering commences again in Part II. However, if I count the second chapter of Part II as the 11th chapter, then this is its first line (on page 208):
She was sunk in the sofa in Norma’s sitting room--or living room, as they call it here--taking a cup of tea and idly shifting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle round the end table for lack of anything better to do, when Norma came in with the mail.Having not read anywhere close to that far in The Women, I don’t know who Norma is yet, or who the “she” reclining on her sofa happens to be. I look forward to finding out.
Better to refer back to two other books that I just finished over the weekend. The first completed was Devil’s Garden, Ace Atkins’ brand-new novel about Dashiell Hammett’s involvement, during his time as a Pinkerton detective, in the evident 1921 frame-up of big-screen funny man Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle for the murder of a wannabe actress in San Francisco. Chapter 11 in that story begins with the entrance of Arbuckle’s estranged wife:
When Minta arrived at the Hall of Justice it was early morning and Roscoe had been asleep on his bunk, dreaming of the dusty town where he’d lived as a boy in a little hotel closet alone, scrubbing floors and cleaning spittoons and falling in love with this nineteen-year-old singer who smelled of lilac and taught him to harmonize and dance.The second novel on which I just turned the final page yesterday, The Ignorance of Blood, the fourth and apparently final installment of Robert Wilson’s series about Spanish Inspector Jefe Javier Falcón (a series that began with The Blind Man of Seville, another January Magazine favorite, back in 2003), kicks off its own Chapter 11 in the middle of a kidnapping:
“I’m not going to talk to anybody except Javier,” said Consuelo, not loudly, but with such an edge to her voice that all the men stood back from her, as if she’d just unsheathed a sword.The speaker, by the way, is Falcón’s on-again-off-again lover, restaurateur Consuelo Jiménez.
Feel free to apply this test to your own latest reads. I’m not sure it tells you much about them, but it may give you the chance to discover--or rediscover--some fine prose.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The Fab Five
Houston technical writer and aspiring novelist Scott D. Parker, who also pens a terrific, self-named blog celebrating the range and promise of crime fiction, was kind enough to tag The Rap Sheet as part of the current Five Fabulous Blogs meme. This meme has been making the rounds, 
and though I haven’t yet made any new discoveries among the recommendations, I’m glad to see so many creative bloggers being heralded so prominently.
The rules of this game are simple:
• You must include the person that gave you the award, and link it back to them. (OK, consider that assignment done already.)
• You must list five of your Fabulous Addictions in the post. (That means five blog addictions, plus five other addictions of a personal nature.)
• You must copy and paste these rules in the post.
• Right-click the award icon and save it to your computer, then post it with your own awards. (Also understood, and done.)
As you can see by the lengthy blog links list on the right-hand side of this page, I follow many more than five of these Weblogs. So narrowing my list down requires severe restraint. My choice is to list five that I have not already seen mentioned elsewhere, just so readers enjoy the widest assortment of possibilities.
Here are my Five Must-Follow Blogs:
• Thrilling Days of Yesteryear
• Noir of the Week
• Lies! Damned Lies!
• Gravetapping
• Caustic Cover Critic
Yeah, yeah, I’m cheating, but here’s a sixth blog: Political Animal.
The next thing is to list five addictions. Understand, the things that interest me most tend to change on a weekly basis, if not a daily one. I’m a near-unquenchable consumer of news, history, literature, television, and trivia. But focusing only on my five latest addictions leads to this list:
• Erle Stanley Gardner’s Bertha Cool and Donald Lam novels
• Pulp paperback covers
• Historical photos of cities (I wrote two photographic histories last year--of San Francisco and Seattle--and haven’t yet lost my fascination with long-gone cityscapes)
• Nonpareils
• Reading on my front porch (which will be a whole lot more comfortable, once spring finally arrives in Seattle)
Let me express my thanks again to Mr. Parker, for recommending The Rap Sheet to his loyal readership.
and though I haven’t yet made any new discoveries among the recommendations, I’m glad to see so many creative bloggers being heralded so prominently.The rules of this game are simple:
• You must include the person that gave you the award, and link it back to them. (OK, consider that assignment done already.)
• You must list five of your Fabulous Addictions in the post. (That means five blog addictions, plus five other addictions of a personal nature.)
• You must copy and paste these rules in the post.
• Right-click the award icon and save it to your computer, then post it with your own awards. (Also understood, and done.)
As you can see by the lengthy blog links list on the right-hand side of this page, I follow many more than five of these Weblogs. So narrowing my list down requires severe restraint. My choice is to list five that I have not already seen mentioned elsewhere, just so readers enjoy the widest assortment of possibilities.
Here are my Five Must-Follow Blogs:
• Thrilling Days of Yesteryear
• Noir of the Week
• Lies! Damned Lies!
• Gravetapping
• Caustic Cover Critic
Yeah, yeah, I’m cheating, but here’s a sixth blog: Political Animal.
The next thing is to list five addictions. Understand, the things that interest me most tend to change on a weekly basis, if not a daily one. I’m a near-unquenchable consumer of news, history, literature, television, and trivia. But focusing only on my five latest addictions leads to this list:
• Erle Stanley Gardner’s Bertha Cool and Donald Lam novels
• Pulp paperback covers
• Historical photos of cities (I wrote two photographic histories last year--of San Francisco and Seattle--and haven’t yet lost my fascination with long-gone cityscapes)
• Nonpareils
• Reading on my front porch (which will be a whole lot more comfortable, once spring finally arrives in Seattle)
Let me express my thanks again to Mr. Parker, for recommending The Rap Sheet to his loyal readership.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
A Gumshoe’s Multiple Guises
A couple of weeks ago, I picked up on a meme started at the Web site Weekly Geeks that asked bloggers to search out multiple covers for a particular book, 
those that have appeared on that work over time. I targeted covers from Turn on the Heat, the second installment in the classic Bertha Cool and Donald Lam detective series, written by novelist Erle Stanley Gardner under the pseudonym “A.A. Fair.”
Well, with all the recent hoopla surrounding the publication of Joe Gores’ Spade & Archer--an accomplished, if not perfect prequel to Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel, The Maltese Falcon--I decided to engage in a bit more sleuthing, this time searching out old Falcon jackets. In addition to the front of the September 1929 edition of Black Mask magazine (shown at left), in which the first part of Hammett’s original Sam Spade yarn was published, I tracked down 10 different covers from the United States and Britain, as well as (third row) Germany, and Italy:
Personally, I like the 1930 Alfred A. Knopf hardcover edition (top row, left) the best. However, the two covers in the fifth row down are definite rivals. My own library features the 1972 Vintage paperback shown in the fourth row, on the left. And the one just to the right of that (published in 1975 by Pan Books), which features a hand reaching for a falcon statue behind corrugated glass, boasts considerable style, too. The others--including the 1945 Pocket edition, with femme fatale Brigid O’Shaughnessy seen waiting behind a curtain, while Spade searches her clothing--are merely passable.
But wouldn’t you know it: Shortly after I finished compiling this collection of handsome covers, I discovered a page of Mike Humbert’s excellent The Dashiell Hammett Web Site where an abundance of other Maltese Falcon covers can be found.
those that have appeared on that work over time. I targeted covers from Turn on the Heat, the second installment in the classic Bertha Cool and Donald Lam detective series, written by novelist Erle Stanley Gardner under the pseudonym “A.A. Fair.”Well, with all the recent hoopla surrounding the publication of Joe Gores’ Spade & Archer--an accomplished, if not perfect prequel to Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel, The Maltese Falcon--I decided to engage in a bit more sleuthing, this time searching out old Falcon jackets. In addition to the front of the September 1929 edition of Black Mask magazine (shown at left), in which the first part of Hammett’s original Sam Spade yarn was published, I tracked down 10 different covers from the United States and Britain, as well as (third row) Germany, and Italy:
Personally, I like the 1930 Alfred A. Knopf hardcover edition (top row, left) the best. However, the two covers in the fifth row down are definite rivals. My own library features the 1972 Vintage paperback shown in the fourth row, on the left. And the one just to the right of that (published in 1975 by Pan Books), which features a hand reaching for a falcon statue behind corrugated glass, boasts considerable style, too. The others--including the 1945 Pocket edition, with femme fatale Brigid O’Shaughnessy seen waiting behind a curtain, while Spade searches her clothing--are merely passable.
But wouldn’t you know it: Shortly after I finished compiling this collection of handsome covers, I discovered a page of Mike Humbert’s excellent The Dashiell Hammett Web Site where an abundance of other Maltese Falcon covers can be found.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Putting Up a Good Front
I hope I’m not establishing a trend here, but I have chosen to participate in my second meme of 2009. The first one required that I post 16 random facts about myself. This time, I am tagging onto a meme that started at a Web site called Weekly Geeks. The assignment is to 
“pick a book--any book, really--and search out multiple book cover images for that book. They could span a decade or two (or more) ... Or they could span several countries. Which cover is your favorite? Which one is your least favorite? Which one best ‘captures’ what the book is about?”
One of the half dozen or so works I’m currently reading is Turn on the Heat, the second installment of the classic Bertha Cool and Donald Lam detective series, created by novelist Erle Stanley Gardner under the pseudonym “A.A. Fair.” That series began with The Bigger They Come in 1939 and continued until 1970, when the 29th Cool and Lam novel, All Grass Isn’t Green, was published.
Turn on the Heat originally went on sale in January 1940. It finds obese private eye Bertha Cool and her “half-pint runt” of an operative, former attorney Donald Lam, being hired by a mysterious “Mr. Smith” to track down Amelia Lintig, the wife of an eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist who disappeared from the small town of Oakville, California, 21 years before. That disappearance followed a marital scandal involving Dr. James Lintig’s young nurse; neither Mrs. Lintig nor her unfaithful hubby has been spotted since. However, when Lam visits Oakville, he discovers that--by apparent coincidence--Amelia Lintig has also just dropped into town for the unexpected purpose of dismissing her long-ago divorce case, leaving her still married to James Lintig. Before Lam can get a handle on all of this, Amelia Lintig vanishes again, he’s given a thorough beating by parties unrecognized, he falls for and gains the assistance of an Oakview reporter, and a link is sought between the Lintigs’ troubled past and a political campaign in the present--a race that could be seriously jeopardized by revelations about extramarital dalliances of yore. As with most of Gardner/Fair’s Cool and Lam stories, clients are deceptive, Lam cleverly manipulates suspects toward a satisfying resolution of the case, and Mrs. Cool begrudgingly goes along with her op’s illegal connivances, because she knows there’s a guarantee of financial reward in the long run.
Searching carefully through the Web, I was able to come up with six different covers that have featured on Turn on the Heat over the years. The first two come from the 1940s; the rest were published at various times in the 1960s and ’70s:
Honestly, none of these jackets does a perfect job of representing Gardner/Fair’s tale, though the second one in the top row--showing a naked woman being strangled with a cord--was at least inspired by an event in this novel. The first jacket, with what looks like a vintage blow torch, signals the escalating tensions of Turn on the Heat, but the other fronts seem intended to draw the eyes of male book buyers, rather than capture anything about the plot on offer in this work. The two jackets on the bottom are particularly worthless--examples of what book designers of the “make love, not war” era thought was cool, but having only scant connection to Turn on the Heat. Those covers could have been featured on any number of ’60s detective novels, and worked just as well--or just as poorly--as they do on this one.
As far as I can tell, there hasn’t been another American edition of Turn on the Heat since the last one shown here (bottom right), which came out from Dell Publishing in 1972.
If you would like to see what other bloggers have been doing with this “judge a book by its cover” meme, click here.
“pick a book--any book, really--and search out multiple book cover images for that book. They could span a decade or two (or more) ... Or they could span several countries. Which cover is your favorite? Which one is your least favorite? Which one best ‘captures’ what the book is about?”One of the half dozen or so works I’m currently reading is Turn on the Heat, the second installment of the classic Bertha Cool and Donald Lam detective series, created by novelist Erle Stanley Gardner under the pseudonym “A.A. Fair.” That series began with The Bigger They Come in 1939 and continued until 1970, when the 29th Cool and Lam novel, All Grass Isn’t Green, was published.
Turn on the Heat originally went on sale in January 1940. It finds obese private eye Bertha Cool and her “half-pint runt” of an operative, former attorney Donald Lam, being hired by a mysterious “Mr. Smith” to track down Amelia Lintig, the wife of an eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist who disappeared from the small town of Oakville, California, 21 years before. That disappearance followed a marital scandal involving Dr. James Lintig’s young nurse; neither Mrs. Lintig nor her unfaithful hubby has been spotted since. However, when Lam visits Oakville, he discovers that--by apparent coincidence--Amelia Lintig has also just dropped into town for the unexpected purpose of dismissing her long-ago divorce case, leaving her still married to James Lintig. Before Lam can get a handle on all of this, Amelia Lintig vanishes again, he’s given a thorough beating by parties unrecognized, he falls for and gains the assistance of an Oakview reporter, and a link is sought between the Lintigs’ troubled past and a political campaign in the present--a race that could be seriously jeopardized by revelations about extramarital dalliances of yore. As with most of Gardner/Fair’s Cool and Lam stories, clients are deceptive, Lam cleverly manipulates suspects toward a satisfying resolution of the case, and Mrs. Cool begrudgingly goes along with her op’s illegal connivances, because she knows there’s a guarantee of financial reward in the long run.
Searching carefully through the Web, I was able to come up with six different covers that have featured on Turn on the Heat over the years. The first two come from the 1940s; the rest were published at various times in the 1960s and ’70s:
Honestly, none of these jackets does a perfect job of representing Gardner/Fair’s tale, though the second one in the top row--showing a naked woman being strangled with a cord--was at least inspired by an event in this novel. The first jacket, with what looks like a vintage blow torch, signals the escalating tensions of Turn on the Heat, but the other fronts seem intended to draw the eyes of male book buyers, rather than capture anything about the plot on offer in this work. The two jackets on the bottom are particularly worthless--examples of what book designers of the “make love, not war” era thought was cool, but having only scant connection to Turn on the Heat. Those covers could have been featured on any number of ’60s detective novels, and worked just as well--or just as poorly--as they do on this one.
As far as I can tell, there hasn’t been another American edition of Turn on the Heat since the last one shown here (bottom right), which came out from Dell Publishing in 1972.
If you would like to see what other bloggers have been doing with this “judge a book by its cover” meme, click here.
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