Listening to the audio version of Bob Dylan's new philosophy-of-song book, it's fantastic. And might I add, excellent use of a free Audible trial thru my Amazon Prime by me. I'm still killing it, even at my age.

I'm 84th in line at the Austin Public Library. Really looking forward to reading it.

Started Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, it's pretty amazing thus far.

In my search for literary crime novels, I recently read two books at the opposite end of the spectrum:

I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh - whoever recommended this as literary crime should be deleted from the internet. This is everything wrong with genre; flat writing, thin characters, limited vocabulary, all tell instead of show. Soon after the murder suspect was arrested, I knew something wasn't right. How? Because the cops investigating frikkin say, "something's not right". Reader intelligence not required.

Plot is paramount, except the plot twists are inconsequential, predictable, and just plain stupid. I do have to wonder about the many who have praised the twists. I don't try to predict what's going to happen when reading or watching a film, but you must be surprised at the sun coming up if you can't foresee some crucial developments long before they're revealed.

It's my own fault really. I knew I should have avoided this when I saw it was a Richard and Judy recommendation. There couldn't be a more blaring warning signal.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon - now this is what I was looking for. Chabon embraces genre with his washed up detective protagonist investigating a murder. The difference is that Chabon can write beautifully and use characters to drive a story. The plot is actually quite barmy and somewhat reliant on unlikely occurrences, but I found it easy not to care about those faults.

You want a great literary crime novel?

I give you the Prix Goncourt winning The Great Swindle, which is AMAZING!

It's about two soliders, one of whom sees his superior officer shoot two soldiers in the back towards the end of WW1 to get his men to take a hill from the Germans one last time, and his friend who saves his life but is very, very badly injured in the leg and face.

It is more 'great novel' than 'great crime novel' thus far - 57% done - but it is such a fantastic book I handily recommend it to anyone. Prix Goncourt is the top French literary prize.

Thanks for the warning about the first of these two novels.

I've read the second and agree with your assessment. You might enjoy following that up with Mordecai Richler's 1990 Solomon Gursky Was Here, which feels very much like a precursor to Chabon's novel, one he surely would have been familiar with. Denser and broader in scope but no less entertaining than The Yiddish Policemen's Union, it is not formally a mystery novel, but it does offer the solution to more than one mystery.

I read his earlier mystery Irene and then skim-read its prequel, Alex. Too dark for my taste.

Love it. Read At Swim-Two-Birds next if you haven't. Gilbert Sorrentino's Mulligan Stew borrows heavily from Joyce and O'Brien.

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Made my way through A Hundred Years of Solitude and can't say I liked it. Spark Notes explains there are lots of references to South American culture and history. Am I really such an ignoramus for not picking up on things like the importance of yellow and gold to Colombians?

The big problem I had is that everything in the book is metaphorical. I frankly found that both tiresome and sometimes overly obvious. The critiques of capitalism were heavy handed; maybe they were original in the 1960s but now they're tired and dated. It was difficult to care about any of the characters because they're symbols instead of people. I guess I'm the kind of simpleton who wants relatable characters in a book.

I'm going to reward myself for finishing this by reading First Law, which I hadn't heard of before this thread. All the reviews are promising.

lol you literature people lured me into listening to The Third Policeman yesterday. I guess the joke is on me! wtf. Oh well, I never could get into Joyce or Beckett either.

Flann O'Brien does seem like he was a cool interesting person, except that he's apparently not really him at all, he's Brian O'Nolan. I suspect it's de Selby who's the real brains of the operation.

Other than the terrible war wounds of one of the main characters, it is nothing like those typical murder mysteries he's written.

Put differently, this is a 'real, literary novel,' not a murder mystery at all whatsoever. [It's about a swindle!]

It is darkly hilarious though. You don't get darker humor than selling fake war memorials and burying the wrong soldiers in the wrong country.

Also started Lady Joker, V.1 which is very highly reviewed Japanese crime novel, finally translated after 25 years [!]which is supposed to be some sort of cross of LA Confidential along with an examination of Japanese mores/culture.

Starts slow but I'm finding it very interesting once we got to the present day. Also the corporate kidnapping and product blackmail is based on a real-life unsolved crime from 1984 by a group called 'Mystery Man with 21 Faces,' which just sounds amazing.

I only see this thread pop on on tapatalk but I love this thread 40 pages from finishing A Gentleman in Moscow (I want to finish it in my favorite park/woods 45 min away but weather and time getting in the way). Might be my favorite book of all time. At least 1a. Will discuss further when actually done. But the last chapter I read I cried. And I'm a grown ass man who doesn't cry easily


At the encouragement of this thread (a long time ago) I revisited Gorky Park next. I'm 100+ pages so I'm in. Sometimes it gets a bit too Le Carre for me but overall I'm interested to see where it goes

I was just talking Gorky Park with my gf last night and how amazing I found the ending - for various reasons.

And what an accomplishment by Marty Smith as the Russkies wouldn't let him in the country to do any research in the bad ol' days.

Arkady Renko is a masterpiece of a main character.

'I was the shadow of the waxwing slain.
By the false azure of the windowpane;'

Truly astonishing the whole way through.

I'm finishing up listening to Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins, read it first many years ago. He's one of my favorite writers but this book is something of a mess. He does seem to have had fun writing it though. And still lots of good things in it, plenty of good in fact. He's one of our most underrated great writers, mostly because he was both very Southern and very Catholic.

I loved The Moviegoer, and I especially enjoyed his essays.

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Loved Moviegoer too. What are his essays like? For some reason I always thought he was from New Jersey.

diet coke literally spit out nose at that.

Binx: studied at Tulane, works as a stockbroker in New Orleans. Walker actually got his BA at Chapel Hill.


Walker did live with his brother in I think AC for two months though.

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/bourbon-neat/



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This is truly excellent. American schoolchildren are taught that an essay is something didactic, but this isn't that at all, it's more in the classical vein.

And even a bit reminiscent of Montaigne's "On Drunkenness"!*

*My highest grade for an essay.

A lot of existentialism, he's a big Kierkegaard guy. But he covered lots of topics, he was really an extraordinary man. Trained as an md but never practiced because of tuberculosis. Signposts in a Strange Land collects most of his nonfiction. He doesn't come off perfectly on things like race but way better than most of his contemporaries I'd say.

For reasons completely beyond my understanding, I conflated Walker with Richard Ford.

That's okay, I once conflated Alice Munro with Edsel Ford.

Just about finished with The Martian by Andy Weir.

Of course, I'd seen the movie (spoiler: you can't take Matt Damon anywhere). The book's more detailed and there's a couple things in it I don't remember being in the film. Small points, one of them obvious why it was left out.

Overall, enjoyed reading it even having seen the movie.