As I told you almost six months ago, I finished book #700—that is, the 700th book since I began tracking my reading back in June of 2015. At that time I foolishly mused that I’d be getting you the full list and perhaps even an analysis of the books read in a matter of “days” or maybe “weeks”. Well. How time flies, whether you’re having fun or not. So, without further do or even further undo, here’s the list of Books #601 through #700. As is usual, comics and graphic novels are not included as ‘books’ in my count, though they are listed below.
The 700th book I read was the mostly okay collection of surrealist writing I mentioned before in my initial note. The book that kicked off the most recent full tranche of a hundred books was the middle volume of an Asimov trilogy outlining the basics of physics, Understanding Physics Volume 2: Light, Magnetism, and Electricity. As is usual with his writing, Isaac Asimov manages to make clear some pretty complicated ideas, and helped me recall my basic understanding of electromagnetism even as I learned a whole lot of stuff I’m pretty sure I didn’t know before. (Such as how strange it is that the Earth has a magnetic field at all, and just why (and why not) it might have such.)
Also read during this first decade of the last hundred (I can hardly believe that I was reading these books over a year ago now), was the next cycle in the Dray Prescot series which I do so irrationally love, the Jikaida Cycle, where our hero is forced to become a living chess piece (Jikaida is a game similar to chess on the planet Kregen, where these adventures take place) and fight for his life in the arena once more. The volume pictured here, A Fortune For Kregen, is the penultimate book in the four-book sub-series of the much longer set of adventure tales set on the strange world beneath the suns of Antares. The author, Kenneth Bulmer writing under the nom de plume Alan Burt Akers, is really an incredible wordsmith, and the series is actually well worth checking out, even setting aside my own prejudices in the matter.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 601 | 1/8/21 | Isaac Asimov | Understanding Physics Volume 2: Light, Magnetism, and Electricity | Science |
| 602 | 1/10/21 | R. B. Thieme, Jr. | Armageddon | Wacko |
| 603 | 1/11/21 | Arthur Conan Doyle | Sir Nigel | Fiction |
| 1/13/21 | Milton Caniff | In Formosa’s Dire Straits- A Complete Steve Canyon Adventure | Comics | |
| 604 | 1/18/21 | Brian Bates | The Real Middle-Earth: Magic and Mystery in the Dark Ages | History |
| 605 | 1/21/21 | Hugh Ross | Fingerprint of God: Recent Scientific Discoveries Reveal the Unmistakable Identity of the Creator | Religion |
| 606 | 1/27/21 | Lin Carter | Imaginary Worlds | Literary Criticism |
| 607 | 1/28/21 | Alan Burt Akers | A Life For Kregen | SF & Fantasy |
| 608 | 1/29/21 | Alan Burt Akers | A Sword For Kregen | SF & Fantasy |
| 609 | 1/30/21 | Alan Burt Akers | A Fortune For Kregen | SF & Fantasy |
| 610 | 1/31/21 | Alan Burt Akers | A Victory For Kregen | SF & Fantasy |
I read quite a few good mysteries in the next set of ten, including Donald Hamilton’s rough hardboiled book Night Walker, which—unlike the Dray Prescot books—isn’t quite as good as I think it is. Still, it’s a pretty taut thriller from the 50s that manages to work in spite of its heavy layering of anti-Commie sauce. Some of the plot is easy to guess, only you’ll find out that you were wrong. It’s one of the better offerings from Hard Case Crime, who made their mark by publishing forgotten stories of yesteryear and new works from (mostly) famous names, the former sometimes better forgotten and the new works seemingly unsold before for pretty good reasons. But this one is definitely on the plus side of their ledger.
I also got a chance to read in this set of ten the wildly funny Northanger Abbey. Jane Austen is always great, always amusing, and in this short novel she really cuts loose as she sends up all the books she must have been reading to inspire her that she really could write it better. The heroine’s morbid fantasies are hilarious and compelling, Austen’s writing is some of the strongest in English, and …. Well, the book is just a delight, is what I’m trying to say.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 611 | 2/1/21 | Robert A. Dahl | A Preface to Democratic Theory | Social Science |
| 612 | 2/2/21 | Jane Austen | Northanger Abbey | Fiction |
| 613 | 2/4/21 | Simon Worrall | The Poet and the Murderer | True Crime |
| 614 | 2/7/21 | Sheila Rowbotham | Friends of Alice Wheeldon | Social Science |
| 615 | 2/10/21 | Lloyd Alexander | The High King | SF & Fantasy |
| 616 | 2/10/21 | Donald Hamilton | Night Walker | Mystery |
| 617 | 2/13/21 | John Dickson Carr | Most Secret | Mystery |
| 618 | 2/14/21 | Erle Stanley Gardner (as A. A. Fair) | Owls Don’t Blink | Mystery |
| 619 | 2/15/21 | R. Golubeva & L. Gellerstein | Early Russia—the USSR: Historical Sketches | History |
| 620 | 2/17/21 | Michael Francis Gilbert | The Queen Against Karl Mullen | Mystery |
The next ten books I read saw a few too many clunkers for my taste, though I usually don’t name check those tomes that made me wrinkle my nose, preferring to mention my favorites, and figuring that there’s no accounting for taste, particularly my own. One of the highlights of the set was another in the great Donald Lam & Bertha Cool series by Erle Stanley Gardner, Bats Fly At Dusk. But even this entry in that habitually wonderful series somewhat telegraphed the plot, and the absence of Lam (he’s joined the U.S. Navy to help fight World War 2) is a sore point, as Ms. Cool can’t quite sustain the usual breakneck pace of these cleverly constructed mysteries. Still and all, it’s one in the win column, unlike some of the meh mysteries and histories I read during this stretch.
But the standout from these ten books is the set of short stories by J. D. Salinger, who needs no introduction from me. Of course it includes my favorite Salinger story of all time, “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor”, so I’m prejudiced, but this collection has a few that I don’t recall reading before, and each story is among his best, which means that they are among the best short stories in English. Period.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 621 | 2/17/21 | J. D. Salinger | Nine Stories | Fiction |
| 622 | 2/17/21 | Erle Stanley Gardner (as A. A. Fair) | Bats Fly At Dusk | Mystery |
| 623 | 2/19/21 | Nancy Atherton | Aunt Dimity Slays The Dragon | Mystery |
| 624 | 2/21/21 | Robert Manson Myers, ed. | The Children Of Pride | History |
| 625 | 2/25/21 | Michael Francis Gilbert | The 92nd Tiger | Mystery |
| 626 | 2/27/21 | John Creasey | Gideon’s Fire | Mystery |
| 627 | 2/28/21 | Charles Bukowski | Pulp | Fiction |
| 628 | 3/1/21 | Jonathan Vankin & John Whalen | The Fifty Greatest Conspiracies of All Time: History’s Biggest Mysteries, Coverups, and Cabals | Conspiracy |
| 629 | 3/5/21 | John Dickson Carr | Poison In Jest | Mystery |
| 630 | 3/7/21 | Rex Stout | The Last Drive: And Other Stories | Mystery |
And here I go, contradicting my negative assertion about too many of the Hard Case Crime books published, by lauding yet another in the imprint, the terrific Blackmailer, a send-up of the New York publishing world by George Axelrod, screenwriter for Breakfast At Tiffany’s and The Manchurian Candidate. Though the book is admittedly flawed, with a few ridiculous moments, it is also a ridiculously fast read, and we should never overlook just how hard it is to write fiction of any stripe so compelling that a book is worthy of the designation ‘pageturner’, as this is. Anyone who enjoyed the famous Vanity Fair takedown of Hemingway will find plenty to love in Blackmailer.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 631 | 3/8/21 | Karin Fossum | Bad Intentions | Mystery |
| 632 | 3/11/21 | Michael Gilbert | Death In Captivity | Mystery |
| 633 | 3/14/21 | Colin Dexter | The Riddle Of The Third Mile | Mystery |
| 634 | 3/15/21 | John Le Carré | The Constant Gardener | Mystery |
| 635 | 3/18/21 | Dorothea Buckingham | Poisoned Palms: The Murder of Mrs. Jane Lathrop Stanford | Mystery |
| 636 | 3/19/21 | Edmund Crispin | Swan Song | Mystery |
| 637 | 3/22/21 | Colin Dexter | The Secret Of Annexe 3 | Mystery |
| 638 | 3/26/21 | John Brunner | Total Eclipse | SF & Fantasy |
| 639 | 3/29/21 | Arthur Conan Doyle | The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes | Mystery |
| 640 | 3/31/21 | George Axelrod | Blackmailer | Mystery |
And now I come to yet a third paperback from Hard Case Crime that I quite liked, and have to admit that perhaps it isn’t the bulk of the books published that I didn’t care for, but only those of a particular author. In this case, it’s the books of the publisher himself, who seemingly used his significant paperback printing operation to promulgate his own second-rate attempts at a noir sensibility. (Much as I turn my nose up at books from Soho Press, simply because of Cara Black, even though I know they’ve published one of my favorites, Peter Lovesey.) And truth be told, A Diet Of Treacle by Lawrence Block isn’t actually a great work, but it rings true in its naïve earthiness. The book seems almost a skeleton key to all of Block’s later work, and it opens up a rarely found door into Bohemian life. There were scenes I couldn’t ‘get behind’ (notably that party sex on the floor), but it still spoke to me in a pretty deep way, even the slightly too pat ending.
Another book I loved from this last set of ten before I hit the midway mark of the previous hundred, was the wonderful pastiche from Loren D. Estleman, Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula, or The Adventure of the Sanguinary Count. Writing as the Dr. John Watson made famous by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Estleman crafts a splendid mash-up of two of the Victorian Era’s greatest works of popular culture. Doyle and Bram Stoker were, in fact, good friends, so it’s only fitting that the two authors get put in their place in this brilliantly constructed book, and listening to Estleman’s Watson railing at the injustice of letting Stoker claim for Van Helsing the triumphs which should rightfully have gone to Holmes is …. Well, you’ll just have to read the book.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 641 | 4/5/21 | Jerry Pournelle | The Mercenary | SF & Fantasy |
| 642 | 4/7/21 | Julián Marías | History Of Philosophy | Philosophy |
| 643 | 4/12/21 | Guy de Maupassant | Mademoiselle Fifi and Other Stories | Fiction |
| 644 | 4/12/21 | Lissa Rankin | The Fear Cure: Cultivating Courage as Medicine for the Body, Mind, and Soul | Self-Help |
| 645 | 4/15/21 | Loren D. Estleman | Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula, or The Adventure of the Sanguinary Count | Mystery |
| 646 | 4/17/21 | Lawrence Block | A Diet Of Treacle | Mystery |
| 647 | 4/18/21 | Julian Hawthorne, ed. | Classic French Stories | Fiction |
| 648 | 4/25/21 | Andre Norton | The Jargoon Pard | SF & Fantasy |
| 649 | 4/26/21 | Oswald Wynd | The Blazing Air | Fiction |
| 650 | 5/3/21 | Piers Anthony | Centaur Aisle | SF & Fantasy |
Speaking of Doyle, I finally read some of his works besides Sherlock Holmes and Brigadier Gerard in the last hundred books, including The Lost World, Sir Arthur’s classic tale on the boundary of adventure and science fiction. Though it’s been made into film several times (not yet successfully, in my opinion), once again the book is better than the movie. With many shades of Verne, the tale was full of many surprising (to me, at least) moments, and is perhaps as plausible—if not moreso—than Jurassic Park, which has now taken this title as a subtitle in the never-ending series of movie sequels.
I still haven’t decided how I feel about And The Ass Saw The Angel, Nick Cave’s frankly bizarre tale of backwoods meanness and the worst impulses of the religious spirit. Honestly, I think Cave misses the very real power of religion in the South, and gives a little too much credence to the worst excesses of cultish behavior, in this case featuring a bona fide cult owning a company town. Mebbe. But on the other hand, the promethean language on each page is wondrous, and I always give extra credit to authors who have the endless vocabulary on display here. I’ve promised myself to read it again to see what I think, and can only encourage y’all to do the same. (And if you figure out what I think, please let me know.)
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 651 | 5/4/21 | Mickey Spillane | The Snake | Mystery |
| 652 | 5/6/21 | Jacques Futrelle | Great Cases of the Thinking Machine | Mystery |
| 653 | 5/16/21 | Arthur Conan Doyle | The Lost World | SF & Fantasy |
| 5/17/21 | Hergé | The Black Island | Comics | |
| 654 | 5/23/21 | Jonathan Gash | The Sin Within Her Smile | Mystery |
| 655 | 5/24/21 | Nick Cave | And The Ass Saw The Angel | Fiction |
| 656 | 5/30/21 | Erle Stanley Gardner | Dead Man’s Letters | Mystery |
| 657 | 6/3/21 | Ellery Queen | The Greek Coffin Mystery | Mystery |
| 658 | 6/5/21 | Sigmund Freud | Wit And Its Relation To The Unconscious | Psychology |
| 659 | 6/6/21 | Morris K. Udall with Bob Neuman & Randy Udall | Too Funny To Be President | Humor |
| 660 | 6/13/21 | Tony Hillerman | Finding Moon | Mystery |
Was surprised by how much I liked the odd quasi-sci-fi work Wordbringer, by Edward Llewellyn. Perhaps because I often like genre novels which feature a protagonist who isn’t of the usual stripe—such as the Paul Harris anti-commie thrillers of Gavin Black. Or maybe it was the odd macguffin of a plot, which kept me (at least) guessing up to the very end. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not a ‘staggering work of genius’ (I’m always suspicious of those anyway), and I’m leary of reading more of his work, fearing that perhaps the rapture I found here may not be present in another book. But I found it well worth reading, a surprise showing the power of imaginative Science Fiction from the silver age, or perhaps the bronze age—it was published in 1986, if that helps at all. As the nerds and lawyers say, your mileage may vary
Of course, Jim Thompson is almost always worth reading, even when the work is flawed, as was South Of Heaven. The book is excellent, full of the incredible inner monologue that is Thompson’s specialty, and the plot is taut and inevitable, with the usual foreshadows of doom—right up until the very end, when the book seems to just stop suddenly, with an ending almost tacked-on to an otherwise terrific book. Ah, well. Whether Thompson just hit his word count, or whether he ran out of steam just steps from the finish line, I cannot say. Still, the book is a better read than so many other books out there, and you just might learn a whole lot about the world of hard work in the pipe-laying industry before the days of Social Security cards and homelessness, when hobos might be itinerant workers between gigs. I know I did.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 661 | 6/16/21 | A. Bertram Chandler | The Road to the Rim / The Hard Way Up | SF & Fantasy |
| 662 | 6/20/21 | Richard Aleas | Little Girl Lost | Mystery |
| 663 | 6/27/21 | Simon Winder | The Man Who Saved Britain: A Personal Journey into the Disturbing World of James Bond | Literary Criticism |
| 664 | 6/28/21 | William F. Nolan & George Clayton Johnson | Logan’s Run | SF & Fantasy |
| 665 | 6/30/21 | Charles Ardai | Fifty-to-One | Mystery |
| 666 | 7/3/21 | August Derleth | The Chronicles of Solar Pons | Mystery |
| 667 | 7/4/21 | Charlotte B. Herr | How Punky Dunk Helped Old Prince | Children’s |
| 668 | 7/11/21 | Edward Llewellyn | Word-Bringer | Books |
| 669 | 7/14/21 | Jim Thompson | South Of Heaven | Mystery |
| 670 | 7/16/21 | Rev. Onan Canobite | The Dobbstown Mirror Vol. II No. 3 – July 1, 2021 | Subgenius |
Perhaps the main reason I am so tardy in releasing this book list (besides my habitual procrastination and predilection for distraction) is the fact that I have hoped for months now that I would sit down and write a review of The Cotton Kingdom for my blog. This work by Frederick Law Olmstead—yes, that Frederick Law Olmstead, the designer of Central Park in New York City—is actually a distillation of three larger volumes he’d released in the 1850s, detailing several journeys he made through the slave states of the United States in the decade before the Civil War. It is truly a staggering work of genius, all the moreso because Olmstead so effortlessly uses the words of his subjects to make his case, which is essentially this: The institution of slavery in the Southern states has degenerated both the masters and the slaves, as well as those whites who occupy the interstitial space between the two. The land has been used up and ruined by the slavery-driven agriculture, and there is precious little culture or development in those lands, which compare very unfavorably to even the worst of the northern areas, either rural or urban. And I do not do justice at all to his argument. His book is a wonder, his reportage has every ring of truth, and he even seems a reluctant convert to some of the positions he finally takes. Every citizen of this country should read at least extracts from this work, just as every man, woman, and child should be familiar with de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. I can’t recommend this work strongly enough, and you should go out and read it; such reading would redound to your benefit much more than any paltry précis I might write about it, eventually.
The version of The Continental Op that I read in this next set of ten books was the 1975 Vintage paperback collection, but even the inferior compilations assembled by 1/2 of ‘Ellery Queen’ are still worth reading, as is anything and everything by Dashiell Hammett. For taut, plausible, and satisfying noir, there’s precious little that even comes close to Hammett’s stripped-down prose and action without morals. The stories we tell ourselves and the stories we tell to each other are the foci of all of his works, and in the tales of the anonymous detective of the Continental agency we get all meat and no mayonnaise. Perhaps an unrelenting diet of this would be too much, but I think I still will have to read some Hammet every few hundred books or so, just to keep my patriotic thoughts from becoming too idealistic, just as I have to reread Lewis Carroll to keep my jaded thoughts from becoming too cynical.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 671 | 7/18/21 | Richard Aleas [Charles Ardai] | Songs Of Innocence | Mystery |
| 672 | 7/22/21 | John O’Malley | Basic Circuit Analysis (Schaum’s Outlines) | Technical |
| 673 | 7/23/21 | R. Austin Freeman | The Mystery Of Angelina Frood | Mystery |
| 674 | 7/26/21 | Arthur Conan Doyle | The Poison Belt | SF & Fantasy |
| 675 | 7/31/21 | Dashiell Hammett | The Continental Op | Mystery |
| 676 | 8/2/21 | Michael Francis Gilbert | Fear To Tread | Mystery |
| 677 | 8/7/21 | Isaac Asimov | Murder At The ABA | Mystery |
| 678 | 8/12/21 | James M. Cain | The Baby In The Icebox: And Other Short Fiction | Mystery |
| 679 | 8/12/21 | Frederick Law Olmstead | The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller’s Observations On Cotton And Slavery In The American Slave States, 1853–1861 | History |
| 680 | 8/15/21 | Michael Gilbert | The Long Journey Home | Mystery |
The obvious standout of the next set of ten books was The Screaming Mimi, by Fredric Brown. (No picture because my copy is a dust jacket-less book club edition with dented boards, but we all must make sacrifices if we’re going to read, aren’t we?) Brown was one of the few authors who could write at the highest level in both the science fiction and the mystery genres, and who produced significant output in both fields; every time I read something by him in one genre I decide that he was at his best in that specialty. And then I read something in the other and change my mind again. This story, a tried-and-true tale of the drunken journalist who tries to investigate a murder while coming off a terrible bender, is workmanlike in places, but it’s a master workman’s effort, so this reader (at least) really enjoyed the ride.
The Thirty-Nine Steps turned out to be a much different book than I’d expected, having been prejudiced by the classic Hitchcock movie, but was a truly fun read once I got over the abreaction to the jingoistic nationalism disguised as cynical worldliness. But it’s really a rollicking tale—no matter how implausible—which rushes headlong towards its pretty much preordained conclusion, and we can see in John Buchan’s work the true heir of the Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu series, as in both writer’s the thriller novel as a series of outlandish incidents serves to push back at the existential threats arising against the British Empire.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 681 | 8/16/21 | James Finn Garner | Politically Correct Bedtime Stories | Humor |
| 682 | 8/20/21 | John Dickson Carr | It Walks By Night | Mystery |
| 683 | 8/22/21 | John Buchan | The Thirty-Nine Steps | Mystery |
| 684 | 8/23/21 | Seymour Lipschutz | Schaum’s Outline of Theory and Problems of Probability | Mathematics |
| 685 | 8/25/21 | Fredric Brown | The Screaming Mimi | Mystery |
| 686 | 8/27/21 | Flann O’Brien | The Third Policeman | Fiction |
| 687 | 8/29/21 | Norman Dodge | The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop January 1933, Vol. IV No. 5 | Books |
| 688 | 9/2/21 | Michael McCarthy | The British Monarchy and The See of Rome | Social Science |
| 689 | 9/3/21 | Joe Conason & Gene Lyons | The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton | History |
| 690 | 9/4/21 | Lawrence Block | Grifter’s Game | Mystery |
The third entry in Gavin Black’s series about the adventures of Paul Harris, an Anglo businessman in Southeast Asia, has its flaws, I must admit. A Dragon For Christmas relies just a touch too much upon fortuitous circumstance and lucky breaks for the hero, who simply wants to buy the rights to manufacture a marine engine until somebody plants a dead body in his hotel room. But the book by Joan Kahn’s discovery Oswald Wynd, who wrote under the name of Black, still presents a compelling window into the Anglo-Asian Cold War mindset. Not only that, even given the soupçon of implausibility, Harris manages to be a much—much!—more believable than Fleming’s James Bond ever was. Though it may be as hard if not harder to grok the mindset of leftovers from the British Empire in the treacherous Cold War seas of the post-war world as to understand the strange staunch stiff upper lip Brits of Buchan’s tales, this engaging novel is a joy to read that keeps the reader guessing to the very end.
And we end the hundred books almost as we begun it, with another fine entry in the Dray Prescot series, this time the oh-so-fun Rebel of Antares, the second book in the Spikatur Cycle (you’ll have to read the books for the explanation of this one), which sees the eponymous hero of the Dray Prescot series going under cover once more in another of his many guises to … oh, you know what? Never mind, just skip it. In the time it takes me to tell the plot you could be reading one of the many, many books in this breathtaking series. Suffice it to say that this book, the 24th in the full set of books that Kenneth Bulmer penned before his death, isn’t even (quite) yet the halfway point of the series.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 691 | 9/5/21 | Oliver Onions | First Book Of Ghost Stories: Widdershins | Horror |
| 692 | 9/10/21 | Alan Burt Akers | Beasts Of Antares | SF & Fantasy |
| 693 | 9/12/21 | Alan Burt Akers | Rebels Of Antares | SF & Fantasy |
| 694 | 9/13/21 | Andre Norton | Eye of the Monster / Sea Siege [Ace Double F-147] | SF & Fantasy |
| 695 | 9/17/21 | Theodore Sturgeon | The Golden Helix | SF & Fantasy |
| 696 | 9/17/21 | George Baxt | I Said The Demon | Mystery |
| 697 | 9/20/21 | Agatha Christie | The Mousetrap | Mystery |
| 698 | 9/21/21 | Gavin Black | A Dragon For Christmas | Mystery |
| 699 | 9/22/21 | Samuel Goldberg | Probability: An Introduction | Mathematics |
| 700 | 9/23/21 | Mary Ann Caws, ed. | The Milk Bowl of Feathers: Essential Surrealist Writings | Surrealism |
Once again and even moreso, these last hundred books saw me turning most often to mysteries, with almost half the books I read belonging to the looked-down-upon genre. This gives me a chance to tout once again the almost always exceptional Michael Gilbert, of whom I read five books during this set of a hundred books, among which was the staggering The Queen Against Karl Mullen, an amazing tour de force of well-plotted and intricately crafted by a writer who truly understand the law and police procedure—which makes sense, as Gilbert was a lawyer who wrote his books on his daily commute to and from work.Check it out, or check out anything by him. As to whether and when I’ll do my usual analysis …. Well, I become chary of making promises my procrastination won’t keep, so we’ll just have to see, eh? I do know that I’m already halfway to my next hundred books, so …. Like I said, we’ll see.
The lists of previously read books may be found by following the links:
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