BillP's Book\Miniature\Wargame Blog

Been awhile since I updated the blog, but I finished four books in the meantime.

First up were the eighth and ninth Sookie Stackhouse novels, From Dead to Worse and Dead and Gone. While reading the last Sookie book, I was concerned that the series was becoming a bit pedestrian, and while these two books don’t completely address that concern, at least they don’t seem to be getting any worse.

From Dead to Worse deals with Sookie’s concern at the disappearance of her “were-tiger” boyfriend, Quinn and the efforts of the vampire King of Nevada to take over the territory of  Louisiana. Sookie is mainly a spectator in these issues, with much of the action happening around her, rather than to her. Not great, but not bad.

The ninth book, Dead and Gone is a fairly strange (even for this series) with a lot going on. The events of the novel deal primarily with the decision of the “two-natured” community (weres and other shape-shifters” to come out publically, the murder of Jason Stackhouse’s estranged were-panther wife Crystal, and the conflict between two groups of fairies which Sookie gets dragged into. This is a very fast read with a lot happening. In fact this is one of the more satisfying books in the series, much better than the 2 or 3 immediately preceding it. Of course, if you’ve gotten this far, you’ll probably plough on just to see what happens.

I also finished two of Harry Kemelman’s Rabbi Small novels, The Day the Rabbi Resigned and That Day the Rabbi Left Town. For those of you not familiar with them, they are a series of twelve books dealing the life and career of Rabbi/Detective David Small who is rabbi of a Conservative Jewish congregation in fictional Barnard’s Corners, Mass, a bedroom community outside Boston. The books each revolve around a murder, which the rabbi helps the local chief of police solve by some variety of Talmudic reasoning. The books also provide exposition on Jewish beliefs and philosophy which is quite interesting. I read the first 10 in the late 80s and early 90s and can’t remember why I quit before finishing the series, but I saw these last two on the shelf during a visit to the local library and took both of them home.

The books are written in chronological order and cover Small’s 25 year career as rabbi to his congregation. In fact, the first book starts with his appointment as the rabbi of the congregation and the final one deals with the aftermath of his retirement and move to Boston. These final two, as with the first ten, deal with a murder. In these cases, of two college professors, a young one with an unfortunate marriage (in Resigned) and a much older, more or less fraudulent one (in Left Town). Although these were both quite good books, they were definitely part of the series and should not be read before the others. There isn’t any necessary background in the others, but there is a great deal of character advancement and story development in these that will be meaningless (or even irritating!) unless one is aware of the back-story. Highly recommended, if you start at the beginning.

56 for the year.

In the summer semester, my MBA class meets two nights a week for 7 weeks. This means that prep-time for the classes and project work is also doubled, which results in a slowdown of leisure reading.

I still managed to finish two books here lately though.  First was Altogether Dead by Charlaine Harris. This is the 7th book in the Sookie Stackhouse series and I’m afraid the series is starting to meander towards pedestrianism. The book deals with a “Vampire Summit” of all the US Vampire Kings and Queens who meet to arrange their marriages and resolve disputes. Sookie attends as the “court telepath” to Sophie-Anne Leclerq the Vampire Queen of Louisiana, who finds her power and status in the vampire pecking order diminished as a result of the economic losses suffered by her kingdom in Hurricane Katrina.

In contrast to the first seven novels, this one has noticeably darker, with much less comic relief than the others.  Come to think of it, I think I’ve been noticing a steady diminishment in humor as the series has progressed. Since the humor is one of the chief draws, I’m becoming less involved with the book. There are two more, but I’m not sure I will bother with them. In summary, they start strong and the first five or six are great and the next two are also pretty good, but kind of falling off a bit.

Also finished Memoir From Ant Proof Case by Mark Helprin. This is another one of his “magical realism” kind of novels, although I will say that it is less “magical” than some of Helrpin’s work. This book is an autobiography of a man, whose name we never learn, who is spending the last years of his life as a fugitive while teaching English to cadets at the Brazilian Naval Academy. He is shacked up with a serially unfaithful Brazilian women and her son by another man. Through the man’s memoirs (which he stores in the antproof case of the title), which he is writing for the benefit of his lover’s son, who he regards as his heir, we hear the story of the man’s birth in 1904, his being orphaned at an early age, his growing up in New York City and in a Swiss insane asylum, and his varied career as; an errand boy, an investment banker, a WWII fighter pilot, a master thief and an finally an assassin. Oh, and a vehement and devoted crusader against coffee, which the protagonist regards as “evil because it disrupts the internal rhythms that allows a man or woman to understand beauty in all things.”

As always, Helrpin’s command of the language and imagery is spectacular. Some of the passages and scenes of the book will haunt readers for a very long time. The plot is intricately woven with many seemingly disconnected strands which are all neatly brought together at the end. The book is by turns touching and hilarious.  I cannot recommend it highly enough, although as with other Helrpin books, this one is much of a cloth with his other novels, which means if you don’t like them, you won’t like this one.

This is my second time through it, having read it 15 years ago when was first published. As with a few other books, reading it at 47 is a much different experience than reading it at 32. I was surprised by how much more insight 15 years of just living life have brought to my understanding of the man’s character and his motivations. I plan to re-read Helprin’s Refiners Fire next, which I first read at the age of 24. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

52 for the year.