I finally got around to reading The Color of Money by Walter Tevis.

I had been wanting to read it for a long time. I was saving it for vacation since I read mostly non-fiction but like novels while on vacation. I read The Hustler which this is the sequel of probably 40 years ago. And of course The Hustler is one of my all-time favorite movies.

This was a lot better follow up than The Color of Money movie which sort of fell flat for me. I really wish they would have used this plot instead of the Tom Cruise foolishness. This was a far better journey for Fast Eddie. I could just picture Newman and Gleason as I was reading it. If you are a Hustler fan I would highly recommend.

Finished Portuguese Bend, the third novella of the Catalina Eddy trilogy by Daniel Pyne. If the first novella was stylistic and frigid and the second breezy and superficial for the seriousness of the topic, this novella was like a TV screenplay (which is what Pyne specializes in). It's worth reading if you can pick up a copy cheap and want some genuine 21st-century trashy pulp noir.

This piqued my interest, sounded right up my alley as a huge John Irving fan back in the day. About 100 pages in and loving it.

I think the movie is what soured me on trying out League. I've skimmed pages from Lost Girls and it didn't seem to be great enough to dive in. Maybe I'll try them eventually, but I am more interested in reading Swamp Thing, Marvelman and Promethea.

Just finished Star Wars: Life Debt by Chuck Wendig, the second book in the Aftermath trilogy. It is much better than the first one in the trilogy and it got me very excited to read the third book. In fact, I'm already well into the third book.

This book has Han Solo as one of the main characters and the villains are interesting and mischievous. The plot has a pretty big hole, but I'm happy to forgive it because the ride was fun.

I read Silent Running by James Calvert. WWII Pacific submariner's memoir that follows a rising young officer as he learns the ropes. Some quality underwater adventure, here.

Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington starts out great -- a unique point of view and some solid philosophizing. After a while, though, it turns into a chronicle of fundraising and gladhanding that, while it doesn't bury the overall utopian message, does dampen it a bit. Very much worth reading in any case.

I had high hopes for Charles Glass' The Deserters, which follows three Allied deserters in Europe and their various stories of what caused them to walk away and what kept them away. It seems well-researched, but Glass doesn't handle the narrative as well as Winston Groom does in his triptychs which I mentioned a couple weeks ago. Plus, one of the accounts seems almost completely unreliable. It's an interesting book, but it left me wanting.

Finished The Locked Room, the final book of The New York Trilogy (1985,1986,1987) by Paul Auster. Probably the best known and most highly publicized crime meta-fiction novel, Auster put crime meta-fiction on the reading lists with this trilogy (even though writers like Flann O'Brien aka Brian O'Nolan had done it much earlier (At Swim-Two-Birds)). If you like your head games to be a fractal Mobius strip, this novel is for you.

Started Black Cherry Blues by James Lee Burke. Burke and Auster are both skilled prose artists and storytellers in very opposite styles; however, each of them uses a modernist technique to engage the reader's imagination, intellect, and emotion in order to have the reader make the story the reader's story and to create a memory in the reader.

Started The Last Lion Visions of Glory, 1874-1932, the first volume of three about Churchill, by William Manchester. I already read volume 3. Now I'm reading volume one. That's how I roll. And you can stuff it if you think I'm doing it wrong.

Manchester writes like his hair is on fire. Very apt as Churchill lived that way. Amazing book about an amazing character.

I read the first Churchill one years ago, also his MacArthur one and half his Krupp one. He writes well.

I'm finishing up The Brothers K, it's wildly uneven but the good parts are knock-you-down great.

Is the Locked Room stand-alone, or do I need to read the others in the trilogy? It sounds like a great book.

Just finished reading the 3rd volume recently and may now go and check out the previous 2.

Heathens, the lot of you... reading series out of order like that.

Finished two good ones:

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang. Of course, you've got the story that the movie Arrival was based on, and of course they're very different. All the stories are at least decent, and there are a few excellent ones. Heady and technical speculative short fiction at its finest.

The Immortal Irishman by Timothy Egan retells the life story of Thomas Meagher, Irish revolutionary, skilled orator, American Civil War general, Montana governor during the gold rush, etc. Fascinating biography that spans the globe during the middle 19th century. I get the feeling that Egan heroicizes Meagher a bit, but he had me enthralled the whole way.

Finished Black Cherry Blues by James Lee Burke.

Raymond Chandler wrote: "The ideal mystery was one you would read if the end was missing." And just before that said, " . . . that the scene outranked the plot in the sense that a good plot was one that made good scenes." Black Cherry Blues is one of those books.

As always, Burke's descriptions of the environment are fantastic.

It's most prominent shortcoming may be its conclusion. It is rushed and feels forced and a bit artificial, like modern ex Deus Machina. The book could have ended with five pages omitted (all near the end), or used more personal violence, or expanded the epilog.


It may not be noir because the conclusion has winners, but it is surely hard boiled. An excellent novel worth the time to read.

I loved Egan's The Good Rain
In regards to Booker T
A book about a man at the opposite spectrum as far as education, not a slave but his father was, illiterate but brilliant. A powerful sustained voice. All God's Dangers by Theodore Rosengarten
I gave a copy recently to a friend of mine's French son-in-law to help him understand this country...

only 18 more to go

PSA, read some Burke if you haven't

I liked Confederate Soldiers in the Electric Mist from the earlier novels.

Thanks for the recs!


Gave Slaughterhouse Five another readthrough. I remember not being as impressed as I thought I was supposed to be by it back when I read it twenty or whatever years ago. I think I didn't understand the angle Vonnegut was coming from. Now that I've read more books about war and learned a little about battle fatigue, I believe I've got a better grasp on the material and all the elements Vonnegut blends together. I can appreciate how the novel merges style and circumstance (like how PTSD functions as both narrative and plot device). Vonnegut does a high wire routine, never falling into sentimentality or battle glorification or self-pity, all while using his own singular style and voice. Finally, I feel as impressed as I always thought I was supposed to be.

I wasn't quite as enamored by Han Kang's Man Booker International Winner, The Vegetarian. Story revolves around a woman who has a weird dream and can't eat meat anymore. Structure and imagery are the high points of the book, but so often character actions and interactions seem hollow that it was hard to feel for any of them or discern any message the author might've flirted with. It could be that I'm missing something here, but I really don't see what.

I need to read SL5 again. Probably been 10 years

If you want a good book set around war. O'Briens "The Things They Carried" is very good.

I re-read Slaughterhouse 5 last years ago after being a bit underwhelmed by it when I originally read it about 15 years ago. Gotta admit, I was still kinda underwhelmed by it second time around as well.

I've heard that's good. And I'll likely end up reading it. For some reason the title always turns me off, no idea why.

Okay, I'll admit, this is actually the third time I've read it. Second time I found it underwhelming like you did. I think my turnaround has a lot to do with what the book isn't and how carefully Vonnegut handles themes so that they don't take over the book. Lots of war books either glorify or moralize battle, this vehemently does neither. Lots of scifi deals with aliens, this doesn't (I think we never meet a Tralfamadorian character in SH5, we only get the zoo crowds) -- not to mention how the absurd scifi situation begs other questions about the absurdity of war and life in general. Plus Billy Pilgrim's PTSD serves as a great vehicle for the time travel and scattered narrative, instead of using it as a random device like many authors would, Vonnegut uses these conditions to buttress and feed off each other. I think all the war and absurdist books (with my usual dose of scifi) I've been reading have helped me to appreciate all Vonnegut's techniques and style much better.


And oh yeah, I read another war book! The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan. Panoramic view of D-Day invasion of Normandy, chronicling everyone from kindergarten teacher to paratrooper to Rommel. Staggering amount of individual stories in a small space, but handled well. It's not all-encompassing by any means, but it covers a ton of circumstances the soldiers and citizens endured on both sides of the battle.

I will continue to plug, as well, O'Brien's Going after Cacciato, which filters a powerful narrative of the war through a fascinating magic realist lens.

I like most of O'Brien work.

Michael Herr's Dispatches I recall from thirty years back had its own magic in regards to Vietnam. The writing...journalism to fit the subject in the way HST approached politics. Hullcinatory

I'm 100 pages into David James Duncan's The River Why, not really feeling it so far. It's one of those infernal fly-fishing books. The Brothers K was more my speed, but I'll keep after this one and see how it turns out.

ChaseNutley, did you ever finish the other 2 books following The Three Body Problem ?