A Few Random Book Reviews

The Lady in the Lake

Raymond Chandler

(Mystery novel; Philip Marlowe series)

This is less a review of this specific novel than an attempt to recapture the feelings I had upon first encountering Raymond Chandler. Some years ago I bought an anthology of mystery tales called 3X3, which contained three entire novels as well as numerous short stories. On the verge of dumping it again, I happened to open it to the first page of one of the novels, The Lady in the Lake.

I read the first paragraph, about the sidewalk made of rubber blocks. For some reason this made me read the first page. Then I read the first chapter, and the idea of dumping the book vanished.

I know I'm coming pretty late in the game to Chandler, his poetry in prose and the contrasting dark, sleezy world of Philip Marlowe, but I didn't read many mysteries in my youth. More's the pity. Marlowe's world, Los Angeles in the 1930s and 1940s, is a palpable reality in Chandler's novels. You can see every lash on a gorgeous woman's eyelid, smell the sweat and cigarette butts in the police station, feel a muscular goon's knuckles smack your chin. It is a land corrupt and decaying, yet beautiful and alive, full of the good, the bad, the tired, and the sad.

I've heard that reading Chandler means you're something of a snob, in that Chandler detested most detective fiction and consciously tried to improve on it. I don't know how to answer that but to say I was pretty much a blank slate in the mystery field; few of the mysteries I did read held my attention. But The Lady of the Lake reached right out of the book, grabbed me by the lapels, and pulled me in with a splash. Read it, read more Marlowe, read the short story prototypes Chandler wrote before he came up with his archetypal detective. *****

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The Kinsey Millhone Series: A Is for Alibi through K Is for Killer

Susan A. Grafton

(Mystery novels)

I have probably never read a series as fast as I've been reading the Kinsey Millhone mysteries of Sue Grafton. About two years ago, in the depths of the worst depression I ever felt, the "alphabet" mysteries were literally the only things I could bring myself to read, not because they were easy or light but because they were so engaging. A true disciple of the Raymond Chandler school of writing, Sue Grafton's eye for detail is thorough without dragging on too long -- a detective's eye view, Kinsey taking in everything around her. However, though a case can become dark and grim, even deadly, Kinsey is a definite spirit of life, bouncing back in the next volume to solve another case.

The small city of Santa Teresa, California, comes to life through Kinsey's POV, the grittier, darker side as much as the pretty tourist side. Background characters appear and reappear in each volume, populating Grafton's world, and sometimes staging their own little soap operas: Lieutenant Dolan, who (naturally) hates private eyes but who respects Ms. Millhone; Rosie, the bossy Hungarian restaurant owner who varies Kinsey's diet beyond her usual McDonald's fare; and especially Henry Pitts, the old retired baker who rents Kinsey her tiny apartment, who might really have been the man of her dreams had he been a few -- just a few -- years younger.

I won't even try to rate all the Millhone books individually; the first three were the best in my opinion, yet the letters I'm reaching now ("J" and "K") are climbing in quality and entertainment value to equal the earliest books. Altogether : ****

The Night Land V. 1

William H. Hodgson

(Horror/SF novel)

I ought to read both volumes first, but. . . One of the greatest and strangest fantasies ever produced, with the inhabitants of the last structure on earth, the Great Redoubt, faced with monsters and horrors that roam the land beneath a burnt-out sun. The hero learns of a second Redoubt, where lives a woman he loved in a previous life, and he ventures across the Night Land to find her. Slows a little halfway. If it had been cut in three parts, with a slight pause between each volume, I think there would have been no "slowing". The only bad part is the long first chapter, written as if by a 17th century English dandy (the previous incarnation of the hero). Actually, the archaic language trying to explain SF ideas kind of grows on you. ****½

The Night Land V. 2

William Hope Hodgson

(Horror/SF novel)

And now the second half. (I didn't mention above that this is the Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition I own, printed as two paperbacks.) Night Land's second half has our hero reach the Lesser Redoubt to escort the maid Naani back to the Great Redoubt. Here adventure mixes with the couple's growing romance, which many have found cloying, but unnameable horrors pop up often enough to interrupt the saccarin-sweet bits. Hodgson again drops many give-away ideas in this apocalyptic work, such as Naani's mention of a previous incarnation when entire cities on railway tracks rolled along endless plains (perhaps the inspiration for Christopher Priest's The Inverted World). The Night Land truly is a world/universe unto itself; wading through the whole epic takes a bit of time and effort, an ever-more-unlikely occurrence in these days of instant gratification. Still, I say it's worth it to know this weird, frightening, yet strangely beautiful world created by William H. Hodgson. **** 

Christmas Approaches

Last year I re-read Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" to cheer myself up. This year I read the yule-time essays from Washington Irving's "The Sketch Book." I found the last few lines of the last essay, "The Christmas Dinner," to be inspiring for writers:

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"But enough of Christmas and its gambols; it is time for me to pause in this garrulity. Methinks I hear the questions asked by my graver readers, “To what purpose is all this? how is the world to be made wiser by this talk?” Alas! is there not wisdom enough extant for the instruction of the world? And if not, are there not thousands of abler pens laboring for its improvement? It is so much pleasanter to please than to instruct—to play the companion rather than the preceptor.

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"What, after all, is the mite of wisdom that I could throw into the mass of knowledge! or how am I sure that my sagest deductions may be safe guides for the opinions of others? But in writing to amuse, if I fail the only evil is in my own disappointment. If, however, I can by any lucky chance, in these days of evil, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sorrow; if I can now and then penetrate through the gathering film of misanthropy, prompt a benevolent view of human nature, and make my reader more in good-humor with his fellow-beings and himself—surely, surely, I shall not then have written entirely in vain."

The Difference Between Myself and Other Writers

I have revived a novel I call A Kingdom of Children, a fantasy about the Children's Crusade of the Thirteenth Century, and I hope to work on it this winter.

An author named Evan H. Rhodes published a novel about the Children's Crusade, An Army of Children, in 1978.  How do I compare myself to this previous scribe and his work?

Him:  "In researching this book the author traveled the complete route indicated on the accompanying map; by ship, plane, boat, train, automobile, and some 571 miles on foot; only the small stretch of territory between Alexandria and Kantara was not covered.  The Israeli war department was extremely helpful in supplying the author with an armed escort and transportation from Jerusalem deep into the far western reaches of the occupied Sinai desert." (Author's note, 1978)

Me:  "I wonder if I'll be able to pay my rent in January?" "Do I have enough gas to get to work tomorrow?" "Don't I own one pair of pants without ragged cuffs?"

Eh, ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer. :)

"Gate Duty"

Opposing events seem to hit me at the same time.  For instance, a good blogger ought to post something at least once a week, and I rarely come here even once a month.  So I decided to try to punch out something weekly.

Then I took on this job based in another city.  I severely underestimated how much time it takes to travel there and back; I'm lucky to get home three hours before I (ought to) go to bed.  So I have little time now to write.  Eh, I'll slog on anyway.

One of the main species inhabiting my fantasy world Aanuu is the gryphon, half-lion, half-eagle.  I incorporated most of my gryphonian short fiction in The Eyrie: A Book of Gryphons, which can be found on Amazon Kindle, along with Dragonfly Woman, a novel devoted to the bird-beasts (along with early female aviator Amelia Earhart).  I suppose it's time to write more gryphon stories.  Let's try for a beginning right here:

            Inkara of the Bear Clan paced the length of a high, arid cliff-top.  Her acquiline talons clicked against the beige-gray granite; she created a second clicking with tongue in beak.  It seemed criminal to waste a muscular Adolescents’ talents on Gate Duty.

            Gryphons of Clan Bear tended to stoutness of body and leg like their ursine totems, but Inkara more resembled the long, low panthers of the hot lands – particularly one in a cage, because she marched in the same precise fashion.

            All Folk knew of the Gates.  The Gates opened – somehow – onto other worlds entirely.  It was through such portals that the humans and One-Eyes had arrived in Sakria to begin with.  Thousands of years ago, however, a series of Catastrophes both natural and man-made swept over the land:  The Germination, the Rending of the Veils, the Fire and Flood, the Wars of Purity.  After those dangerous times the Gates no longer functioned properly.  Most had stood dormant for centuries. The gryphons, the humans and other species patrolled them more from habit than from worry.

            An utter waste of time, Inkara thought again.

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There we go!  And I have the sneaking suspicion a Gate will open . . .

Hands-On Writing

I spent a ridiculous amount of time preparing a poem for a poetry contest, filling out entry forms in long-hand (including a long author bio) legibly, hunting down large and small envelopes, finding various white labels and putting addresses on them (I think it makes the addresses more visible to the post office scanners against a manila envelope), looking for stamps (and don't forget one for the Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope), remembering that they use cheap glue nowadays so taping the labels on the envelopes and taping them shut . . .

It was fun! At least it gave me a sense of accomplishment. Hardly any magazine or publisher accepts snail mail anymore, so writing consists of sitting in front of the computer for hours, and preparing it to go out consists of sitting in front of the computer some more. And when I'm done I sit in front of the screen looking at FaceBook or watching YouTube. And my hoped-for future job will be mostly scanning things onto a computer and uploading things on a computer. No wonder I can't seem to get excited about writing a new book, no matter how great I think it will be. It means more endless hours sitting in front of the computer . . .

I need to make writing more physical. Since I printed 2 copies of my poem, the first thing I'll do is get a manila folder, and get a label, and write the title on the label, then stick it on the folder (then tape it on, &^%* cheap glue), then put the folder in the filing cabinet. Maybe I'll go back to my enthusiastic college years, when I drew maps, pictures of various monsters and characters, drawings of scenes from stories (they were gawdawful but inspiring). Anything to get things going!

The Mead Notebook of Fantasy

Something I noticed about the way the fantasy world of "Aanuu" developed has itself developed into a rather quixotic task.  When I first entered the hallowed halls of Oklahoma State University, more specifically when I started wandering along the endless shelves of the Edmond Low Library, I began picking historical, legendary, mythological and fortean/paranormal tid-bits from its many books and journals that seemed almost predisposed to gather together in a milieu of strange lands, peoples and creatures.

I spent most of my spare time winnowing out stories of cryptozoological beasts like the Mokele-mbembe, the Chemosit, and the Agogwe, or mythical countries like Norumbega, Tolopan, and Hyperborea, and magical characters like Aristeas the Wanderer and the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Eventually I cobbled them together (more-or-less) to create the backdrop for what I hoped would be many novels and stories of fantasy.

How well I accomplished that remains to be seen, but I remembered something a few weeks ago:  I wrote down endless notes in longhand during my four years at OSU, on legends, fairy tales, mysterious disappearances of people and objects, new monsters to roam the land, story fragments, you name it.  Also, in all that time, all my notes went into a single, spiral-bound, college notebook.

The notebook was a Mead college-ruled, 9 1/2-by-6 inch, 5 subject notebook with two hundred sheets.  Unlike modern notebooks, it had a rather rough cardboard cover.  I bought a pack of three to start my freshman year.  One had a bright yellow cover, one bright red, and one a very dark blue.  The blue one contained my notes on the "Fantasy World Project."  As you might imagine, entries appeared as I came across interesting folklore or legends (or simply made something up), so there should have been no rhyme or reason to Aanuu's development.  Yet, in retrospect, there did seem to be a kind of progression . . .

Now the quixotic part:  I'm going to re-create the notebook.  Ideally, I'd use a Mead of the exact same kind I used in college -- and the same color.  They don't make those anymore, and I'm not sure they go up to 200 sheets now.  Biggest I've found are 180.  That original book of notes disappeared with most of my other college papers years ago.  But I still have its somewhat beat-up yellow package-mate.

The yellow book was mostly full of its own old notes -- but there were some blank pages, and I could say the same about various other Mead books -- and all the 9 1/2 x 6 ones used the same kind of spiral notepaper.  So I Frankenstein-ishly uncoiled the yellow book's spiral, gathered 200 blank pages in 5 sets of 40 (with dividers), and threaded them together.  Now I have a notebook identical to my old Fantasy World book.  It isn't the navy blue cover, but it literally possesses the cover of one of its sisters.

And now I'm trying to re-create the notes I wrote back in college.  I vaguely recall which books I came upon at OSU, and in what order (each one seemed to make a great impression on me).  I even remember when two different subjects would collide, seemingly pulled together by some outside magnetism (The Pied Piper, the Children's Crusade, and the Black death).  Heck, I may try to publish this facsimile notebook someday -- I think it will be almost 80% accurate.  Perhaps a curiosity, a study on how one author thought.

If nothing else, it's a fun romp down memory lane!

Hoarding an Author

Books, reading and writing are my life, so it's odd that I sometimes write about NOT reading.

When I was 12 or so, my introductions to science fiction were John Wyndham's novels "Day of the Triffids" and "The Kraken Wakes." I read them both every summer from then on. I collected pretty much every novel and story collection by Wyndham after that, and I read "The Chrysalids," "The Midwich Cuckoos" (aka "Village of the Damned"), "Chocky", etc. Then I came to a complete stop.

Why? I discussed this phenomenon with a pen-pal way back when people actually wrote letters to each other: finding a favorite author, collecting his/her books -- then stopping cold turkey. We determined that we were saving books for our old age. Yep, if we read everything by our favorite authors now, we would have nothing to look forward to, as if no one else was ever going to write an enjoyable book.

Well, now old age is bearing down on us, or me at least, so it's time to pull out our "saved" books like wine of ancient vintage. Cheers!