As I mentioned last week, though I just finished my 900th book (since beginning this fatuous book tracking project in June of 2015), I still owe you a book list—if not the data analysis I never seem to get around to—of the hundred books read up to Book #800, which I finished away back in June of last year (some seven years after starting my book databasing). The following list is that list, that is, Books #701 – #800. We start with a Leslie Charteris book about The Saint (“the modern day Robin Hood of Crime”, as the Vincent Price radio serial had it), and ending with the somewhat disappointing (to me) No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy.
I started out the eighth hundred of books with a reprint of an early Saint novel by Leslie Charteris, as mentioned above. Entitled Angels Of Doom in both the first American publication (1932) and in the International Polygonics edition I read (pictured at right), the ‘novel’ (really more like three sort-of connected short vignettes) was originally published as She Was A Lady in its initial UK release. Confusingly, it had yet a third title—The Saint Meets His Match—in later US releases, so you have to keep your eyes open to avoid buying the same book under various guises; this appears to be quite a common problem with the Saint books. The book itself is slight, though fairly fun.
Also read during this first ten books of my penultimate hundred books read was The Postman Always Rings Twice, which was every bit as good as the buzz about this book had made it out to be. Sadistic, violent sex so real you understand why it’s worth committing uncaring murder. Seriously, James M. Cain is truly one of the best craftsmen of … well, there’s the rub. If you call it ‘Noir’ or ‘Thriller’ or ‘Hardboiled’, some will object that Cain’s writing rises to the level of ‘lit-er-ot-tyoor’—and they have a valid point. But to call this ‘American Fiction’ is to underplay just how taut and tense his prose is, how he works in that cold-blooded style that Jack Black (not that Jack Black) gifted to (okay, it was stolen from) William S. Burroughs, how Cain puts into a hundred pages what most writers can’t manage to squeeze into a thousand. Seriously, read James M. Cain.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 701 | 9/24/21 | Leslie Charteris | Angels of Doom [orig. She Was A Lady, aka The Saint Meets His Match] | Mystery |
| 702 | 9/25/21 | Norman Dodge | The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop February 1933, Vol. IV No. 6 | Books |
| 703 | 9/25/21 | Richard S. Prather | Always Leave ‘Em Dying | Mystery |
| 704 | 9/27/21 | Kenneth Bulmer | City Under the Sea | SF & Fantasy |
| 705 | 9/28/21 | Harriet T. Comstock | Bible Stories. Retold in Words of One Syllable. | Children’s |
| 706 | 9/30/21 | Michael Connelly | À Genoux | Foreign Language |
| 707 | 10/1/21 | James M. Cain | The Postman Always Rings Twice | Mystery |
| 708 | 10/3/21 | Erle Stanley Gardner | The Case Of The Counterfeit Eye | Mystery |
| 709 | 10/7/21 | Judith M. Tanur, ed. | Statistics: A Guide to the Unknown | Reference |
| 710 | 10/8/21 | Otis Adelbert Kline | Planet Of Peril [Ace F-211] | SF & Fantasy |
Most jokey ‘spiritual’ books, whether poking fun at the unenlightened or at the seekers themselves, tend to fall pretty flat. (See, for instance, Camden Benares Zen Without Zen Masters, which preserves some of the jokes and/or wisdom of the crowd which spawned much of Robert Anton Wilson’s shtick via Malaclypse the Elder. (The latter’s Principia Discordia is an exception to the rule I’m proposing here.)) But Ram Tzu’s book of ‘spiritual’ poetry is the real deal: choice bits of insight in a mocking nougat of all-too-much awareness, enrobed in a bath of pure chocolate wisdom. Each poem is its own koan and answer. I read each one twice. And still I’m pretty sure that I didn’t really ‘get’ it.
The Tintin books are, of course, a delight, and this clever tale which smacks of The Prisoner of Zenda is one of the best, with the wonderfully illustrated travelogue sections really showing off Hergé’s beautiful lines and his style of detail—to be later earnestly mimicked by the Where’s Waldo? books. I read this (slowly) in French, but I’m sure you can find the English language version if you merely look for it. I would like to say that all of the Tintin books are fantastic, but I’ve recently read The Shooting Star.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 711 | 10/11/21 | E.C. Bentley | Trent’s Own Case | Mystery |
| 712 | 10/11/21 | Ram Tzu | No Way: A Guide for the Spiritually “Advanced” | Religion |
| 713 | 10/13/21 | John Dickson Carr | Till Death Do Us Part | Mystery |
| 10/13/21 | Hergé | Le Sceptre d’Ottakar | Comics | |
| 714 | 10/15/21 | Deng Ming-Dao | 365 Tao: Daily Meditations | Religion |
| 715 | 10/16/21 | G. K. Chesterton | The Man Who Was Thursday | Mystery |
| 10/16/21 | Al Hartley | In His Steps | Comics | |
| 716 | 10/16/21 | Norman Dodge | The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop March 1933, Vol. IV No. 7 | Books |
| 10/16/21 | Al Hartley | Adventure! With The Brothers: The Cult Escape | Comics | |
| 717 | 10/17/21 | Michael Shermer | How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science | Religion |
| 718 | 10/17/21 | Jack Sharkey / Bruce W. Ronald | Ultimatum In 2050 A.D. / Our Man In Space [Ace Double M-117] | SF & Fantasy |
| 719 | 10/20/21 | Michael Dibdin, ed. | The Vintage Book of Classic Crime | Mystery |
| 720 | 10/24/21 | Charles Robert Maturin | Melmoth the Wanderer | Fiction |
I’m on the fence about Boris Akunin’s series of books featuring his … detective? spy?—let’s just say his hero Fandorin. On the one hand, they present a fascinating window into a long-gone Russia of the late 19th century, the Russia of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, when the Tsar’s secret agents were everywhere, though not as omnipresent as the endless fund of bureaucrats. Akunin’s programme was to create in each novel a different exemplar of the classic thriller and mystery genres: the ratiocinating detective, the devil-may-care spy, the locked door mystery, etc. (You can always check out the author’s Wikipedia page (as I did), if you’re interested in more information.) And not only are they of historical interest, doubly so as a post-Soviet commentary not only on the storied past of Tsarist Russia but also a critique of post-Soviet mystery fiction, they are also very well-written, with tongue-in-cheek irony ladled into the story as generously as sour cream in borshcht. But The Winter Queen—the first in the series and the first I read—disappointed me in the end. Literally. I found it great, really triffic, just up to those final pages where … well, maybe you should read it yourself. You may like it more than I, and it is worth reading even with the ending.
I prefer to use these little mentions of particular books read in a pile of one hundred as a means of highlighting some of the highlights, talking about those volumes which moved me with their excellence, novels and tomes which I believe should be more widely known. Usually. But sometimes I feel I should use this space to give fair warning, which is my sad duty now. I grabbed TV Babylon (at a library book sale, if memory serves) thinking that it might hearken back to some of the wonders of Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, or might rise at least to the level of Hollywood Babylon II. (Let’s put aside the fact that nowadays most critics preach that Anger’s original work is almost pure fiction: it’s a gripping read, and I have little doubt that it reflects accurately the stories that were being bandied about at the parties and dinner tables of Tinsel Town. Only nowadays are there efforts to rehabilitate Fatty Arbuckle, after all.) But TV Babylon is … nothing. Instead of digging up dirt, it merely brushes off a light dusting of dandruff. There are a handful of actual scandals here, but most of the gossip seems rehashing of episodes of Where Are They Now? and rewrites of press releases from agents trying to get their aging clients back in the news. Not worth your time.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 721 | 10/17/21 | Mark Earls | Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature | Business |
| 722 | 10/28/21 | Boris Akunin | The Winter Queen | Mystery |
| 723 | 10/30/21 | Dudley Barker | G. K. Chesterton | Biography |
| 724 | 11/1/21 | Jeff Rovin | TV Babylon | Entertainment |
| 725 | 11/7/21 | Marcel Allain & Pierre Souvestre | Fantômas | Mystery |
| 726 | 11/8/21 | Norman Dodge | The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop April 1933, Vol. IV No. 8 | Books |
| 727 | 11/11/21 | Peter Lovesey | Wobble To Death | Mystery |
| 728 | 11/14/21 | Michael Gilbert | Blood and Judgment | Mystery |
| 729 | 11/18/21 | Paul Cain | Seven Slayers | Mystery |
| 730 | 11/26/21 | John Dickson Carr | The Corpse in the Waxworks | Mystery |
Strangely enough, I first got into the stories of Damon Runyon—excepting, of course, the Guys And Dolls musical movie, which I guess we’ve all seen—through the medium of radio, or at least through the massaged mp3 files of the old-time radio program The Damon Runyon Theatre, which I listened to on my iPod, which is actually now my iPhone, so go figure. Anyway, the stories on the radio were great, but not as great as the original, and this collection shows off Mr. Runyon’s nameless narrator (he’s given a name on the radio show, for reasons unclear (to me)) and his endless fund of stories comic, tragic, and somewheres in between. Though some of the tales are heartbreaking, and several were familiar to me from the treatments for radio or for film, these stories with the clever monikers and the once hip patois kept me smiling and reading, a sucker for more.
A shameful confession: most of what I know or recall about Hindu mythology comes from reading Amar Chitra Katha comic books. I first learned of these Indian comics at one of the several used bookstores I used to work at. I grabbed a couple that came in and I was hooked. Unfortunately, like everything else in this Age of Tenuous Reality, they’ve gone digital, and the new editions (almost all reprints of the original striking series from decades ago by this point) have glossy covers, so that new readers will not experience that wonder that comes from holding (very carefully!) cheap paper stock with old school color printing to learn of stories of Hinduism as well as Indian history. The Hanuman issue is a classic, with some of the basic stories of the man-monkey-deity (maybe?), king of the monkey men.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11/29/21 | Urmila Sinha | Gopal The Jester: The Clever Barber of Krishnanagar | Comics | |
| 11/29/21 | Mike Baron | Badger #3 | Comics | |
| 731 | 12/1/21 | Otis Adelbert Kline | Prince Of Peril [Ace F-259] | SF & Fantasy |
| 12/5/21 | Ram Krishna Sudhakar | Guru Tegh Bahadur: The Story of The Ninth Guru of the Sikhs | Comics | |
| 12/6/21 | Mike Baron | Badger #4 | Comics | |
| 732 | 12/7/21 | Alan Burt Akers | Legions of Antares | SF & Fantasy |
| 733 | 12/9/21 | Alan Burt Akers | Allies of Antares | SF & Fantasy |
| 734 | 12/12/21 | Richard S. Prather | Take A Murder, Darling | Mystery |
| 735 | 12/16/21 | Damon Runyon | Guys and Dolls: The Stories of Damon Runyon | Fiction |
| 736 | 12/17/21 | Michael Crichton | Congo | Mystery |
| 737 | 12/20/21 | Jack Vance | The Faceless Man | SF & Fantasy |
| 12/21/21 | Anant Pai | Jataka Tales: Tales of Misers | Comics | |
| 12/21/21 | Luis Fernandes & Ram Waeerar | Tinkle: Just Like Suppandi! | Comics | |
| 12/21/21 | Meena Khanna | Jataka Tales: Monkey Stories | Comics | |
| 12/21/21 | Anant Pai | Panchatantra: The Brahmin and the Goat and other Stories | Comics | |
| 738 | 12/23/21 | Gavin Black | Dead Man Calling | Mystery |
| 12/23/21 | Anant Pai | Hitopadesha Choice of Friends | Comics | |
| 12/25/21 | Anant Pai | Birbal the Clever | Comics | |
| 12/25/21 | Hergé | The Crab with the Golden Claws | Comics | |
| 12/26/21 | Anant Pai | Noor Jahan | Comics | |
| 12/26/21 | Hanuman | Comics | ||
| 12/29/21 | Anant Pai | More Tales from the Jatakas | Comics | |
| 739 | 12/30/21 | Michael Francis Gilbert | Petrella at Q | Mystery |
| 740 | 1/1/22 | Poul Anderson | Flandry Of Terra | SF & Fantasy |
One of the joys of reading old, forgotten books of so-called popular literature (As Steve Martin might once have said, “If it’s forgotten then it couldn’t have been very popular, could it?”) is finding a startling treasure of original thought. Now of course there are no original thoughts, as somebody said, and likely every think we think we think has been thunk before, and we’re just copy and pasting from the original ur-code of human brain stuff we pretend to call consciousness. But even just mixing up the elements in an interesting and novel way makes for a good read—if it’s combined with good writing. King Of The World’s Edge is just such a well-written, intriguingly clever take on an old idea: the lost legion, the alternate history or explanatory speculative fiction of lost history. In this case, a strange near-fantasy North American continent is discovered by the last British legionary who proceeds to build an empire that just might have been the progenitor of what we now call archaeological fact. Maybe. In any event, the story holds up and kept me reading to learn more of just what new craziness the author—or perhaps the putative ancient Roman narrator—could dream up next. You can pick up your own copy from around 7 bucks, if I’m reading Amazon aright. Check it out.
Murder Up My Sleeve is one of Gardner’s ‘other’ series, about the quondam adventurer Terry Clane who passed some sort of time in the Far East—as it was back then—only to be either kicked, pushed, or self-propelled out of paradise because, as he tells it, he couldn’t learn to concentrate for “more than thirty seconds”. And it’s not really a series, because there’s only one other book. Oh, and also, for today’s sensitivities it’s probably as racist as you care to make it in its depictions of the ‘Orient’ and the ‘oriental mind’. But it was a book I remembered liking when I read it in passing whilst passing time at a used book store job, and so I had to read it again. It was, if anything, much better than I remembered. I suppose I wasn’t expecting modern sensibilities from a work published in 1937, and I liked it for what it was: a fast-paced story of San Francisco’s Chinatown, which neighborhood itself in all its versions and histories and reincarnations seems to me a true work of fiction. Gardner disclaims the title of ‘novelist’ in his afterword, but this book kept me reading long past my bedtime.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 741 | 1/3/22 | John Dickson Carr | Hag’s Nook | Mystery |
| 742 | 1/5/22 | Oscar London | Doctor Generic Will See You Now : 33 Rules for Surviving Managed Care | Medicine |
| 743 | 1/9/22 | Susanna Gregory | A Plague on Both Your Houses | Mystery |
| 744 | 1/15/22 | John Le Carré | Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy | Mystery |
| 745 | 1/16/22 | Oscar London | Kill as Few Patients as Possible: And 56 Other Essays on How to Be the World’s Best Doctor | Medicine |
| 746 | 1/23/22 | H. Warner Munn | King Of The World’s Edge [Ace M-512] | SF & Fantasy |
| 747 | 1/30/22 | Oscar London | From Voodoo to Viagra: The Magic of Medicine: 37 Uplifting Essays from a Doctor’s Bag of Tricks | Medicine |
| 748 | 1/31/22 | Earl Derr Biggers | The House Without a Key | Mystery |
| 749 | 2/1/22 | Erle Stanley Gardner | Murder Up My Sleeve | Mystery |
| 750 | 2/4/22 | Anne Hillerman | Spider Woman’s Daughter | Mystery |
Though Swords In The Mist is now placed 3rd in the official listings, it is—like almost all of the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser story collections—an assemblage of tales written over many decades, and though these are supposed to be presented in some sort of roughly ‘chronological’ (in terms of the characters’ time) order, there are often jumps back and forth in both original publication order and quality. Also as usual with the ‘Swords’ series of books, Leiber has penned new frame stories to connect the disparate tales one to each other. That said, the stories in this collection, another book I read with trepidation lest the loves of youth be shown to be follies, grow better and better the deeper one gets into the compilation. The final tale, “Adept’s Gambit”, was the earliest written of this volume, from 1947, and still posits a possible historical world for our two heroes, with the ancient city of Tyre standing in for the later fantasy city-state of Lankhmar. Though the tale doesn’t always get a lot of love from the fanboys, I found this novella to be the best of a very good collection, which combines great fun with a staggering ending.
Star King, the first book in Jack Vance’s Demon Princes series, shows Vance doing what he does best: crafting believable well-detailed worlds with all the politics, economics, history, social forces, or what-have-you that anyone could want from Science Fiction or Fantasy. Though some of the later books tended to drag for me (I believe; I still have yet to reread the series after my first experience with these in my twenties), this first book is a compelling vengeance tale, with the mystery of just how our hero will be able to revenge himself against his parents’ murderers, and indeed the added mystery of just which of the suspects is the guilty party is crucial to the intricate plot. A more immoral protagonist would have just shot them all and let God sort them out, but of course where’s the fun in that?
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 751 | 2/6/22 | John D. MacDonald | Nightmare in Pink | Mystery |
| 752 | 2/7/22 | Otto Bond | Aucassin et Nicolette book II | Foreign Language |
| 753 | 2/14/22 | Mack Reynolds | The Five Way Secret Agent & Mercenary from Tomorrow | SF & Fantasy |
| 754 | 2/20/22 | Sax Rohmer | The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (aka The Mystery of Fu Manchu) | Mystery |
| 755 | 2/22/22 | Eugene F. Krause | Taxicab Geometry: An Adventure in Non-Euclidean Geometry | Mathematics |
| 756 | 2/26/22 | Peter Tremayne | Act of Mercy | Mystery |
| 2/27/22 | Al Feldstein, ed. | Shock SuspenStories (EC Classics #4) | Comics | |
| 757 | 2/27/22 | Murray R. Spiegel | Schaum’s Outline of Theory and Problems of Statistics | Mathematics |
| 758 | 2/28/22 | George C. Daughan | If By Sea: The Forging of the American Navy—From the Revolution to the War of 1812 | Militaria |
| 759 | 3/5/22 | Fritz Leiber | Swords in the Mist | SF & Fantasy |
| 760 | 3/8/22 | Jack Vance | Star King | SF & Fantasy |
Ross Macdonald’s first mystery novel under half of that name (previously he’d been using his birth name Kenneth Millar; The Moving Target (the original title for this book that I’m gonna get around to discussing here in just a sec) was published under the pseudonym John Macdonald—and yes, there’s an entirely different writer John D. MacDonald … well, it can be confusing: one’s stuff is set in California, the other in Florida)—before eventually settling on Ross Macdonald for the Lew Archer series) sees his hard-boiled detective traipsing around the fictional town of Santa Teresa in the late ’40s. It is a taut and sparse novel of an almost empty post-war southern California. I read the movie tie-in edition, which was retitled without permission (according to the all-knowing Wikipedia) Harper, a double travesty in that, of course, Macdonald’s hero is named Archer and Harper is only the name for Paul Newman’s character in the film based on the novel. It’s an excellent movie, by the way. But the book is excellenter.
Back a couple of lifetimes ago, I used to have a friendly argument with my old boss Paul at the used bookstore I worked at for maybe the longest, about whether The Anubis Gates or Dinner At Deviant’s Palace was the better Tim Powers book. Now don’t get me wrong: almost anything by Powers is terrific, and both of those two novels are some of his best. But … well, time passes, and memory fades (at least mine does), and I found myself talking about these books, but realized that I couldn’t quite be sure if I was speaking truth or not, having forgotten most everything from those long-ago days of youth. So I made up my mind to reread them both, starting with Anubis Gates. And … you know? … I misremembered so much that it was almost like reading a brand new work. And what a tremendous work it is. I think my daughter will like it a lot, and I wonder what she’ll think of Deviant’s Palace. But anyway, this is a staggering book, a tour de force, as they say. Its only flaw—if flaw it has—is that it’s just a tetch too arch, a little too good for its own good. Oh, and I have now reread the other book. I was right; Paul was wrong. (He also preferred V For Vendetta to The Watchmen, so … What’re ya gonna do?)
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 761 | 3/9/22 | Ross Macdonald | Harper (aka The Moving Target) | Mystery |
| 762 | 3/12/22 | Steven Saylor | The Venus Throw | Mystery |
| 763 | 3/13/22 | Iain Pears | Giotto’s Hand | Mystery |
| 764 | 3/16/22 | Robert van Gulik | The Chinese Bell Murders | Mystery |
| 765 | 3/20/22 | Dorothy L. Sayers | Clouds of Witness | Mystery |
| 3/21/22 | Mike Baron & Steve Rude | Nexus: One | Comics | |
| 766 | 3/26/22 | Donna Leon | A Noble Radiance | Mystery |
| 767 | 3/27/22 | Tim Powers | The Anubis Gates | SF & Fantasy |
| 768 | 3/27/22 | Robin Heath | Stonehenge | History |
| 769 | 3/28/22 | Phoebe Atwood Taylor | Spring Harrowing | Mystery |
| 770 | 4/3/22 | Susanna Gregory | An Unholy Alliance | Mystery |
Perhaps one of the biggest surprises to me of this century of books, Silver Metal Lover is the kind of book I don’t like by an author who has disappointed me before. I was only reading it prior to getting rid of it, as I’d already done with Lycanthia, and … I loved it! It’s basically a silly little tale about a teenaged girl who gets her own robot or android simulacrum and falls in love with it and—surprise!—the robot falls in love with her, too. But it is pitch perfect. At every point along the sometimes painful, sometimes romantic coming-of-age story, Ms. Lee manages flawlessly to relate the pain and effervescent wildness of an adolescent on the verge of womanhood in the not-so-bizarre future where the haves have more and the have nots have hardly even hope.
Since I brought up The Anubis Gates earlier, it’s only fitting that I highlight Dinner At Deviant’s Palace, which I read as a follow-up. And it really is the best post-apocalyptic Los Angeles novel, hands down. At least until I get around to re-reading Dr. Adder. I was blessed to have forgotten much of the specific incidents of the book, so that I once more could experience the harrowing journey of Gregorio Rivas into the very heart of the bizarre cult-kingdom of … well, you really should read the book. With a rock ‘n’ roll world weariness that hearkens back more to the late ’70s than to the cyberpunk ’80s when Tim Powers wrote this work, the failed lands of neo-California are a frightening and treacherous place, well worth a visit.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 771 | 4/9/22 | Boris Akunin | The Turkish Gambit | Mystery |
| 772 | 4/17/22 | E. C. Tubb / Juanita Coulson | The Winds Of Gath / Crisis On Cheiron [Ace Double H-27] | SF & Fantasy |
| 773 | 4/18/22 | Miguel De Cervantes | Don Quijote | Fiction |
| 774 | 4/18/22 | Alexander Chancellor | Some Times in America: And a Life in a Year at the New Yorker | Biography |
| 775 | 4/19/22 | Karen Elizabeth Gordon | Torn Wings and Faux Pas: A Flashbook of Style, a Beastly Guide Through the Writer’s Labyrinth | Language |
| 776 | 4/23/22 | Tanith Lee | Silver Metal Lover | SF & Fantasy |
| 4/24/22 | Anant Pai | Mahabharata: The Victorious Pandavas (Karna In Command / The Kurus Routed / After The War) | Comics | |
| 777 | 4/26/22 | Baroness Orczy | The Old Man in the Corner: Twelve Classic Detective Stories | Mystery |
| 4/29/22 | William M. Gaines, ed. | Weird Science (EC Classics, #12) | Comics | |
| 778 | 4/30/22 | Tim Powers | Dinner At Deviant’s Palace | SF & Fantasy |
| 779 | 4/30/22 | Melissa Rossi | What Every American Should Know About Who’s Really Running the World | Social Science |
| 780 | 4/30/22 | Seymour Lipschutz | Set Theory: Schaum’s Outline Series | Mathematics |
Charles Martin provides immense insight into Catullus in a volume from the Hermes Books series on notable ancient authors from the Yale University Press. Balancing extreme erudition with truly poetic sensibility, Martin shows the oft castigated poet to be a true ancestor of our supposedly modern interior world view, and shows as well why literary criticism when well done is perhaps the finest branch of nonfiction writing. (With apologies to natural history.) His analysis of the Lesbia poems and their author, while perhaps less titillating than Steven Saylor’s reading in the historical mystery The Venus Throw (which I must shamefacedly admit was the impetus for reading Martin’s Catullus), is perceptive and humane. I cannot comment on his argument for the nested ordering of the various poems themselves, being an uneducated bumpkin at best in this department, and knowing no Latin, but Martin presents his case with all the vigor that either academia or this most vigorous Roman poet could require.
You likely are quite tired of me telling you just how splendid and well written the works of Michael Gilbert are. And I almost expect too much excellence whenever I pick up one of his thrillers or mysteries, because they are all so fantastically good. But my high expectations are almost always met and surpassed. And this book, The Etruscan Net, is splendidly good. Give Gilbert a try; I think you will like him. And if you do, you’re in luck: he’s written dozens of superior novels for you to enjoy.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 781 | 5/1/22 | Erma Bombeck | The Grass Is Always Greener Over The Septic Tank | Humor |
| 782 | 5/4/22 | Michael Gregorio | Critique of Criminal Reason | Mystery |
| 5/4/22 | Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., ed. | Seduction of the Innocent #4 | Comics | |
| 783 | 5/6/22 | Edward Packard | The Cave of Time (Choose Your Own Adventure #1) | Children’s |
| 784 | 5/6/22 | Charles Martin | Catullus | Literary Criticism |
| 785 | 5/7/22 | Carlton Joyce | Coeds Three | Erotica |
| 5/7/22 | William M. Gaines, ed. | Weird Fantasy (EC Classics #5) | Comics | |
| 786 | 5/7/22 | Jon & Robin Valencic | The Complete Whale Watchers Guide | Nature |
| 787 | 5/8/22 | Max Brand | The Legend of Thunder Moon | Western |
| 788 | 5/14/22 | Michael Gilbert | The Etruscan Net [aka The Family Tomb] | Mystery |
| 789 | 5/15/22 | Kenneth Anger | Hollywood Babylon | Entertainment |
| 790 | 5/19/22 | John Maddox Roberts | The King’s Gambit | Mystery |
I plucked this volume down from the shelf because I needed to remind myself just what the original tale of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” consisted of, after having watched—more or less—the movie with most of that name with Johnny Depp playing the role of Inspector Gadget, I mean Mr. Magoo, I mean … oh, what do I mean? In any event, ’twas a felicitous film in spite of the fact that once again Depp didn’t have much chemistry even with himself, for I found myself enthralled at the feet of one of the original literary giants of our nation. I could rhapsodize over the beauties of the Hudson Valley as portrayed in “Sleepy Hollow” or “Rip Van Winkle”, or sigh over the long lost treasures of the Alhambra as reported by Washington Irving. But our author had the happy misfortune to have his first work be his best: Knickerbocker’s History of New York, which is contained in its entirety in this Modern Library book, Selected Writings of Washington Irving. I could go on for days, weeks, months quoting this funny book, would almost declaim the entire work from one end to the other, just to hear the delicious, sharp, droll, wry, caustic, and dry language of Mr. Irving. Perhaps not everyone will enjoy it as much as I did, but I have hardly found any funnier book from start to finish in the English language.
We’ll end this listing with a shout-out to Mike Davis, whose history of the city of Angels, Los Angeles, City of Quartz, was the penultimate book in the 8th hundred set of books I read since I started keeping track. An inimitable sociologist with a keen eye and a clear view of political reality, the late Mr. Davis turns his eye to one of the weirder cities on the planet in this grouping of extended essays focusing on various aspects of LA and its … worldview? ethos? gestalt? I especially appreciated the opening section, with its history of the prehistory of the current (up to the early ’90s that is, when this book appeared) state of the city that is its own state of mind. From the boosters to the movie magicians to the strange contortions of the wartime and warring city, Mike Davis brings to his polemic something rare nowadays in belles lettres in America: sources, and consideration of opposing viewpoints. His prose is tight, his arguments are fair, and his understanding is deep. Sadly, Davis passed away only recently, ending a long battle with cancer, leaving the fight unwillingly, but having given it his all.
| # | Read | Author | Title | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 791 | 5/20/22 | Erle Stanley Gardner | The Case of the Caretaker’s Cat | Mystery |
| 792 | 5/21/22 | Erle Stanley Gardner | The Case Of The Sleepwalker’s Niece | Mystery |
| 793 | 5/21/22 | Washington Irving | Selected Writings of Washington Irving | Fiction |
| 794 | 5/22/22 | Ellis Peters | An Excellent Mystery | Mystery |
| 795 | 5/25/22 | Volker Kutscher | Babylon Berlin | Mystery |
| 796 | 5/28/22 | Karin Fossum | He Who Fears The Wolf | Mystery |
| 797 | 6/3/22 | Sax Rohmer | Fu Manchu [The Hand of Fu Manchu / The Return of Fu Manchu / The Yellow Claw / Dope] | Mystery |
| 798 | 6/6/22 | Paul Lieberman | Gangster Squad: Covert Cop, the Mob, and the Battle for Los Angeles | True Crime |
| 799 | 6/7/22 | Mike Davis | City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles | Social Science |
| 800 | 6/9/22 | Cormac McCarthy | No Country for Old Men | Fiction |
This set of a hundred books found me reading more and more mysteries: almost half of the books (non-comics) that I read. Still, I found time to read a few other works in a few other genres, including this ‘novel’ which pretended to be a dirty book but was more Nancy Drew gets lucky than Peyton Place. Coeds Three is one of many typical books of its ilk from the ’60s, promising more on its cover than it really could ever deliver. It wasn’t the only turkey in this set of 100, but it does have one of the sexier covers.
The lists of previously read books may be found by following the links:
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