I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN (NOVEMBER 2012 EDITION)

[defrog]

Reading the books, writing the book reports, posting them on the interwebs. That’s me. 

JUST FINISHED

All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren

Said by many to be the greatest novel ever about American politics (to include Hunter S Thompson), I decided to check this out, not least because it’s an election year and all. The story tracks the political career of Willie Stark – a fictional southern state governor modeled after the legendary Huey Long – via his trusted sidekick, ex-reporter Jack Burden, as Willie goes from populist “man of the people” to corrupt power-hungry politician. But it’s also about Jack, who starts to question his own loyalty and fascination with Stark as events start becoming more intertwined with his personal life. It’s a pretty gripping story – provided yr willing to wade through miles of dense prose to get to it. Warren has Jack go into insane detail and go on philosophical tangents for pages, which to me serve as unnecessary distractions to the story he’s trying to tell. Good, but a little too much work to be enjoyable.

JUST STARTED

The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck

I’ve heard enough references to Tom Joad in my life that it’s probably high time I read this, and I’ve typically enjoyed what Steinbeck I’ve read so far, so given all the dithering in America over the working class and unions, why not now?

RECENT TITLES

The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton

Deighton’s debut novel and the first of his “nameless working class spy” novels that imagine British intelligence not as all James Bond flash and glitz, but more like tedious paperwork, meetings, bureaucracy, agency in-fighting and expense reports. Which is fun because the elevator pitch – top govt scientists are being kidnapped as the Russians figure out how to build a neutron bomb – sounds like typical spy fodder, but Deighton grounds it in a reasonably believable reality. Deighton does tend to play his cards so close to the vest that you often have to backtrack to make sense of what just happened, but overall I liked this, and the nameless spy is a great character – overworked, underpaid, and a smart-ass to his superiors.

The Hunter by Richard Stark

The first Parker novel from Stark (a.k.a. Donald E Westlake), in which Parker arrives in New York City, fresh from breaking out of prison, on a mission to get revenge on the people who double-crossed him on a robbery job (to include his wife), and get his share of the money back. I already know Westlake was a good writer, but even when he was starting out, he knew what he was doing, going by this evidence. Also, like a lot of pulp crime novels written in the early 60s, it’s amazing to read stuff like this and realize that you could get away with all kinds of things that you couldn’t possibly get away with today – like faking a driver’s license and walking into a bank to access someone else’s checking account with it. Maybe you couldn’t do it then either, but Stark makes it sound believable. 

Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut

I’ve been a bit lax about catching up on Vonnegut’s post-70s work, so I picked up this, which takes place in Midland City, Ohio, the setting for Breakfast Of Champions. This one follows the tale of Rudy Waltz, a pharmacist and the son of a failed painter and personal friend of Adolf Hitler (back when he was an art student), who accidentally commits a double murder at age 12 and spends the rest of his life paying for it. There’s also a neutron bomb in there somewhere, and random recipes. I’m a fan of Vonnegut, but this one seemed to meander a bit, story-wise. There are some brilliant moments and great lines, to be sure, but I didn’t get as much out of it as I have with other Vonnegut novels.

Wanted by Mark Millar, JG Jones and Paul Mounts

I recently rewatched the film that’s loosely based on this, and as it was sitting in the “to read” pile, I figured, why not see what they changed? Quite a bit, as it happens. In the film, cubicle wimp Wesley Gibson joins a group of assassins. In the comic, it’s a group of supervillains who have killed off all the superheroes. It’s also far more violent and nasty (Hello? Supervillains?). As a thought exercise, it’s interesting – what would happen if the supervillains got organized and won? – but the bad-ass stuff felt overdone to me, as well as the basic theme that the worst thing in life is for yr son to grow up to be a pussy.

I can make you a man,

This is dF