Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy, narrated by Richard Poe

Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the second work of McCarthy's that I've listened to (as opposed to read) and it confirms what I suspected. McCarthy's stories are meant to be told. There is poetry in his words that is amplified by the human voice. Certainly, any of his books will move you if you read them, but listen to a good narrator (Richard Poe in this case, who annoyed me to stopping The Story of Edgar Sawtelle but seemed perfect for this book) and the story will pull you in as surely as if you were sitting in a room with McCarthy himself. Being immersed in this story can be a challenge, however, because it is extremely violent, dark, and at times down right unpleasant. But it is never gratuitous - the actions of The Boy and the Judge and the rest of the Glanton Gang are the people themselves. This is an epic of a downward spirally journey that will drag you down with it, if you're willing to go.

My only critisism of the story is there's a feeling of disjointedness. It's like McCarthy ran out of steam at one point, found a new track and then plunged back in. Events are described in painfully good detail, but then huge chunks of time pass with almost no narrative explaining what happened. It's a "wait a minute, did I miss something?" moment that passes quickly, but still, it's a break from a great story that you wish didn't happen.

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Fragile by Chris Katsaropoulos

Fragile by Chris Katsaropoulos


My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Disclosure: This book was given to me through the Goodreads "First Read" program.


If half stars were available this would be 2 1/2, not quite a 3. There's some amazing character depth here, and considering the three main characters tell almost all their own stories, that's a big statement. We see more of these people than they think they are revealing. Also, the settings are very well done, from the cookie cutter mid-range hotel to the soon to be demolished old style movie palace. Katsaropoulos understands how locations can form personalities. However, despite the well done story telling technique of having one character's narration take over in mid-sentence from another's, the story isn't really all that well joined up. The triangle that is said to form between the three characters, that one is necessary for the other two to find peace is simply not true. That one character could be pulled out altogether, and the other two would probably end the same way. Yes, there's crossover, but it's not needed to move the story forward. It's there because each character has a story of their own to tell.

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Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons

Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A fascinating concept of "vampires" that feed on violent acts and are able to bend the will of most of the rest of the human population through a sort of parasitical mind control if they choose. Now, blend in that there's a sort of war going on among the vampires, and that they can't always identify each other and that they truly believe that they are a superior being compared to the people they use, and you've got the making of a very good thriller-horror-fantasy story. Simmons' uses his creatures to explain some real historical events that have evoked the "how could that happen?" question, such as Hitler's rise to power and how some Hollywood movies get made.

However, this book is a case of too much of a good thing. It really should have been two books. In fact, it reads like two books with a huge final act battle scene right in the very middle, then going back to suspense building narrative. It takes a LOT of characters to support a book this long, and although Simmons' does an a good job of labeling chapters so that you know who's POV you're switching to, a story shouldn't need a road map to keep you from getting lost.

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Castle Eppstein by Alexandre Dumas

Castle Eppstein by Alexandre Dumas


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Very, very gothic and a darn good ghost story told in the old fashioned style of a narrator sharing a scary story at a social gathering. Readers who don't like Dumas's over the top melodrama probably won't like this book, and those looking for the intrigue and complicated relationships of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers will might be a little disappointed as well. This is early Dumas, possibly when he was writing all of a book by himself, and there's as much focus on setting as character in this one, and I liked that. There were portions of the work that didn't read like something written in the 1840s, however and for that I blame the translation. Also, I'm not a fan of footnotes in fiction. They take me out of the story and into a lesson that the editor didn't trust me enough to figure out for myself.

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The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg by Deborah Eisenberg

The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg by Deborah Eisenberg


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
(Disclosure: This book was received free via the First-Reads program, with the understanding that I might read and review it.)

Not only "the collected stories", these are the complete stories of Deborah Eisenberg - four books in one very massive tome. This is a book to pick up and put down, read a story or two, go onto something lighter or maybe less introspective, and then come back to it when you have a hungering for a short visit to a deep place. I say deep, because no matter how much humor Eisenberg grants a character or a subject on the surface, you will be drawn down into stories that are so much more than their plots. There's a sort of progression through the four collections, starting with characters trying to define themselves by the people that surround them, then by the places they visit, until finally the stories that take familiar situations and challenge us to see them through the eyes of characters that we probably wouldn't run across every day in the real world.

There's a lot Virginia Woolf in Eisenberg's style, except that Eisenberg seems to like and sometimes even enjoy her characters. That makes reading even her darker and her most abstract stories for more enjoyable.

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Catilina's Riddle (Roma Sub Rosa, #3) by Steven Saylor

Catilina's Riddle by Steven Saylor


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The mystery portion of the book drags through every stage of its plotting, but as historical fiction, this is the best yet of this series. This is no doubt because of the change of setting: Gordianus has inherited a farm, introducing himself and the reader to a whole new aspect of life in ancient Rome (of course, it's not ancient Rome in the books). Also, the changes in his domestic situations with added family members provide another way for Saylor to reveal what it was to live in as not only a citizen but every other class of persons in that time period. The Real Person characters move in and out of the story almost effortlessly, even the best known one who is linked so closely to the family at the end of the book there's no way he won't be appearing in later stories. It's the setting and the supporting characters that keep me coming back to this series, Gordianus adopted children especially.

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The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1) by Alan Bradley

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A historical fiction cozy with a child sleuth who doesn't have any special powers beyond her own intellect - now that's an original idea for a book! Bradley does quite a good job of balancing his genre's, never letting the story of how life was changing for the landed gentry in post WWII England over shadow the convoluted whodunit (complete with requisite appearances of a cat and tea kettles). Like most cozies, the mystery isn't all that challenging to figure out, so missteps and red herrings are added to keep the book from being more than a short story. What makes this an enjoyable read is Flavia (our girl detective who lives the "Better living through chemistry" credo even if she's never heard it) and just about every other character that appears more than once in this story. Flavia is a child emotionally, and her world and relationships reflect that. But through Bradley's talented writing, the reader can see the deeper complications that make being a kid something worth writing (and laughing) about.

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Breakfast at Sally's: One Homeless Man's Inspirational Journey by Richard LeMieux

Breakfast at Sally's: One Homeless Man's Inspirational Journey by Richard LeMieux


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A very anecdotal memoir of the eighteen months that the author was homeless. I suspect that the editors of the book kept a very light hand intentionally, there's no mistaking that this was not written by a professional author. But it was written by a man who simply wanted to tell what it was like for him to involuntarily join the ranks of the people he himself tried to ignore when he was a wealthy man. This is not a book that offers theories or solutions, it is simply his recollections of the people he met and how he survived with and sometimes in spite of their help. Throughout the book I was constantly reminded of the last line from "A Streetcar Named Desire," and very hopeful that there will always be people that make it possible.

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The Confessiona of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer

The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Many critics have compared this book to Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", most likely because Greer had the misfortune of having his book published at about the same time the Fitzgerald story was released in film form. Both books do deal with a character born old and aging backwards, but the authors obviously feel so differently about how such a person would move through their world, the comparison must stop with that one character trait. Greer's Max is a man who thinks he knows his fate and lives each day with an ending hanging over his head ((or in this case, around his neck). He lives the life as a victim, always preparing himself for a bad outcome. A loyal, understanding friend isn't seen for the good he brings to Max's life, instead he is used to ease the complications, or worse yet, give way when the girl Max thinks he has fallen in love with falls in love with the friend.

The historical fiction aspect of this book is uneven. The late 1880's through the turn of the century are shown vivedly through Max's recollections of his early years. The small details of living in the days before automobiles and electricity are related in a natural way from someone who had lived through the time and could look back at them fondly and not as a novelty. But as time goes on, the setting becomes less nuanced, and Greer's heavy use of metaphore to replace simple narrative becomes annoying. As Max grows older, his ability to self edit diminishes, drawing out an ending that we knew from the very beginning.

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Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf

Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
At last, a Virginia Woolf book where I can understand why she is a "must read" author. The humor of this book is so sly that I sometimes would wonder if I was musunderstanding the intent, but eventually it becomes clear that this is a book about taking life for what it is at that moment - and enjoy it.

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