And now comes the second half of the list of the most recently read hundred books, books numbers 251 to 300. You may peruse the first half of the list here. This latter half-century has slightly more variety than the first had, though the mystery genre still has the lion’s share.
Book read #251 is The Elements Of Style in the 2nd edition. Most of us are more familiar with the 3rd, and most of us probably refer to the slim volume just as “Strunk and White” after the authors (much as we might call the Handbook Of Chemistry And Physics the “CRC” after its publisher (although I suspect that most of us do things that you personally would never do)). Perhaps I’ll attempt to read the 4th edition in the next century of books, although the ‘slim’ volume has begun to expand a bit, and has its girth is at least twice the size of the 2nd edition, due perhaps to obsoleting accretions about computers and what we used to call ‘word processing’, though that term has fallen out of favor as we now speak of ‘content’ and words cease to have meaning. Ah, well, Frederick Robertson preached and warned us about this.
I also must read another volume by Gavin Black, the author of book #253 on the list. You Want To Die, Johnny? was that rarest of things, a non-formulaic thriller. Some readers may be turned off by the Cold War politics or the background radiation of colonialism that ticks over on the sensitivity geiger counters, but the story of the expatriate who loves his adopted land, the fictional Sultanate of Bintan (read Brunei) is fast and intriguing. Black never lets his polemic against commies or hippies get in the way of the challenging plot. I hope I like the next book as much.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 251 | 10/14/18 | William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White | The Elements Of Style (Second Edition) | Language & Linguistics |
| 252 | 10/15/18 | M.C. Beaton | Death of a Prankster | Mystery |
| 253 | 10/16/18 | Gavin Black | You Want To Die, Johnny? | Mystery |
| 254 | 10/18/18 | Tony Hillerman | Skeleton Man | Mystery |
| 255 | 10/19/18 | Francis Clifford | Amigo, Amigo | Mystery |
| 256 | 10/21/18 | Tony Hillerman | The Shape Shifter | Mystery |
| 257 | 10/24/18 | Hannah Dennison | Thieves! | Mystery |
| 258 | 10/27/18 | Cara Black | Murder in the Marais | Mystery |
| 259 | 10/30/18 | Dorothy Simpson | The Night She Died | Mystery |
| 260 | 11/1/18 | Arthur C. Clarke | Reach for Tomorrow | SF/Fantasy |
The Higgins thriller was a self-indulgent nostalgic pleasure — as was the Stainless Steel Rat omnibus, if truth be told. There is a reason that The Eagle Has Landed was a hit movie, and that reason is the source material which is very, very good. Here’s another candidate for further reading, as Jack Higgins wrote over seventy books using a variety of pseudonyms (Higgins is his real name).
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 261 | 11/11/18 | Steven Saylor | Catilina’s Riddle | Mystery |
| 262 | 11/16/18 | Gordon R. Dickson | Necromancer | SF/Fantasy |
| 263 | 11/16/18 | Michael Avallone | Boris Karloff Presents Tales of the Frightened | Horror |
| 264 | 11/18/18 | Harry Harrison | Adventures of Stainless Steel Rat | SF/Fantasy |
| 265 | 11/20/18 | Jane Langton | Divine Inspiration | Mystery |
| 266 | 11/25/18 | Lawrence Block | The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart | Mystery |
| 267 | 12/1/18 | Alden H. Norton, ed. | Horror Times Ten | Horror |
| 268 | 12/1/18 | Jack Higgins | The Eagle Has Landed | Mystery |
| 269 | 12/2/18 | Allen Ginsberg | Reality Sandwiches | Poetry |
| 270 | 12/10/18 | Valhalla Rising | The Reaper | Mystery |
The Fly On The Wall is pure and simple wish fulfillment for newspaper reporters, pure and simple. The desert scenery on the cover tries to conceal the fact that most of the action of this novel takes place in the ‘capital city’ of a ‘Midwest state’. It also serves to fool the prospective buyer into thinking that Hillerman’s famous Leaphorn and Chee are present between its pages; they are not. In spite of the cover’s deceptions, this is a good mystery, if somewhat formulaic. It was published the year after the first Joe Leaphorn novel, so Hillerman had probably been carrying this one around various press rooms while writing newspaper copy before he caught the attention of Joan Kahn over at Harper Books. (She also championed Gavin Black.) Never forget that it was Ms. Kahn who convinced Hillerman to make the protagonist of his first Navaho mystery Lieutenant Leaphorn; originally it was the white archaeologist who did the heavy lifting in the novel.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 271 | 12/13/18 | Jake Page | The Stolen Gods | Mystery |
| 272 | 12/18/18 | C. S. Harris | Why Kings Confess | Mystery |
| 273 | 12/24/18 | Steve Berry | The Patriot Threat | Mystery |
| 274 | 12/27/18 | Gordon R. Dickson | Dorsai! | SF/Fantasy |
| 275 | 12/29/18 | Tony Hillerman | The Fly On The Wall | Mystery |
| 276 | 12/31/18 | Alan Burt Akers | Manhounds of Antares | SF/Fantasy |
| 277 | 1/3/19 | Alan Burt Akers | Arena of Antares | SF/Fantasy |
| 278 | 1/6/19 | Alan Burt Akers | Fliers of Antares | SF/Fantasy |
| 279 | 1/7/19 | The Daughters Of St. Paul | I Pray With Jesus | Spiritual |
| 280 | 1/14/19 | Alan Burt Akers | Bladesman of Antares | Humor |
At this point I shouldn’t have to tell you how great I think the Dray Prescot series is, but I won’t let that stop me. This period found me completing the Havilfar Cycle of Prescot’s adventures, as he tries to learn the secrets of the flying boats which are known only to faraway Hamal. The book illustrated here is book five in the six book cycle. C’mon, give ’em a try!
Also of note in this ten-book slice is the amazing noir book Violent Saturday by W.L. Heath. I often say that I don’t read Southern literature, but I would read more if it was as perfect and potent as this slice-of-life thriller. Though you moderns may object to the racism of several of the characters in this slim novel of small town life in Alabama, let me assure you that each word is just right, each piece of dialogue pitch perfect. I’ll be searching for Heath’s Ill Wind, also published in the early days of the terrific Black Lizard imprint (before it was bought by The Man, in this case Random House).
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 281 | 1/17/19 | Alan Burt Akers | Avenger of Antares | SF/Fantasy |
| 282 | 1/21/19 | Kenneth Robeson | The Czar Of Fear | SF/Fantasy |
| 283 | 1/27/19 | Alan Burt Akers | Armada of Antares | SF/Fantasy |
| 284 | 1/30/19 | Kenneth Robeson | The Secret In The Sky | SF/Fantasy |
| 285 | 2/2/19 | W.L. Heath | Violent Saturday | Mystery |
| 286 | 2/4/19 | Mladin Zarubica | The Year Of The Rat | Mystery |
| 287 | 2/11/19 | Jules Verne | Les Forceurs de blocus | Foreign Language |
| 288 | 2/15/19 | Isaac Asimov | Asimov’s Mysteries | Mystery |
| 289 | 2/20/19 | E.C.R. Lorac | Murder by Matchlight | Mystery |
| 290 | 2/21/19 | Michael Berenstain | The Sorcerer’s Scrapbook | Children’s |
Voltaire’s genius was in seeing things as they are, and in dying before the French Revolution got underway and fomented excesses seemingly designed to put paid to the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment forevermore. Ah, well. These charming stories with fanciful woodcut illustrations show how Candide’s sense of wonder appears when viewed through Monsieur Arouet’s cynical eyes. Have we changed at all since Voltaire took up his acid pen?
I finally got around to reading some graphic novels in this last century of books just at the very end of the hundred books. Volume #[not numbered] is Les Cigares du pharaon, the fourth volume in the Tintin series (if you want to count it that way), and the prequel to The Blue Lotus, which I pulled down from the shelves before realizing I had to read this one first. I love all of Hergé’s Tintin books (even that one), and this story grabbed me with its hallucinatory Egyptian tomb sequence. The tiny sarcophagus for Snowy — sorry, Milou — was also a nice touch.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 291 | 2/22/19 | Hugh Walpole | Fortitude | Fiction |
| 292 | 2/26/19 | P. C. Doherty | Satan in St. Mary’s | Mystery |
| 293 | 2/27/19 | Erle Stanley Gardner | The Case of the Lucky Loser | Mystery |
| 294 | 3/3/19 | Edward S. Creasy | The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World | Militaria |
| 295 | 3/4/19 | Alfred Hitchcock, ed. | Alfred Hithcock Presents: Slay Ride | Mystery |
| 296 | 3/5/19 | Voltaire | The Shorter Writings of Voltaire | Fiction |
| 297 | 3/14/19 | Fridrikh Neznansky | The Body in Sokolniki Park | Mystery |
| 3/18/19 | Hergé | Les Cigares du pharaon | Comics | |
| 298 | 3/19/19 | Robert A. Heinlein | The Past Through Tomorrow | SF/Fantasy |
| 3/19/19 | Kamala Chandrakant | Abhimanyu: The Valiant Son of Arjuna, The Pandava | Comics | |
| 299 | 3/22/19 | William Shatner | TekLab | SF/Fantasy |
| 300 | 3/26/19 | Roy J. Cook, ed. | One Hundred and One Famous Poems | Poetry |
So we have caught up with the most recent hundred books, deep into March of 2019, when I started book read #301 — of which more anon. Right now I will just say “Goodbye!”, and get ready for an iTunes milestone that is rushing up upon me. Thanks for your attention, and Happy Reading!
The lists of previously read books may be found by following the links:
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