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I'd like the use of the book.....is there a "save for Kathy" space on the shelf?

Yep.

Well I've had reader's block every since I got back from Brazil. Even my magazines have been piling up. I purchased a bunch of paperbacks to take with me on my trip that I knew I would not care to leave behind as I finished them.

When I got back, I found I didn't care enough to get past the first 50 pages of most of them. FLIGHT by Jan Burke started off the same way. The book opens with a description of a grizzly murder of a man and his young daughter aboard their yacht. The young son is seemingly also chopped to pieces.

"That's it." I put it down and gave it to my husband.

About 1/2 through his reading of the book, he told me that the only grizzly part of the book was that first awful chapter, and the book was actually a very good "who done it."

I reclaimed the book and continued my reading. The Looking Glass Man is someone who sets up crimes and leaves evidence so that guilty people are brought to justice, not for their killings for which they have skated through the judicial system, but for crimes that were "set ups."

As with all vigilante types, the means justifies the end and sometimes that means innocents get caught in the web.

The author does a good job of hiding the identity of the Looking Glass Man until the near end of the book. Burke interjects a lot of what I found human interest story lines within the main plot.

The last 30 pages of wrap-ups were somewhat tedious to me, but all in all an enjoyable book. It was a definate "B" read.

I had read Jan Burke quite a while ago. Her subsequent books haven't popped up on The Mystery Book Guild magazines or in reviews in Newsweek or Time so I had lost touch with her books. I am about to start another by this same author. In the meantime I'm reading The Newberry Books I have more slowly.

Respectfully Submitted,

Kathy Albers

This should amuse all of us compulsive book organizers!!!



Link

I can't wait to visit my local B&N with the link in hand.

I started reading Joyce Carol Oates in the 1970s. I liked her work but soon discovered that she, like Stephen King, could write 'em faster than I could read 'em—if I wanted to do anything else besides read her books. So I stopped. Then, nine or ten years ago, I picked her back up and have been keeping abreast of her writing ever since. (Either she's writing less or I'm reading more. Not sure which.)

The one thing about Oates' writing that impressed me in the 1970s and does so now is that in every book there's a section of around a hundred pages that grip me so strongly that I can't put the book down. I remember noticing that in an early book called them, and it's true in her latest, The Gravedigger's Daughter, which I just finished. In this one the hundred gripping pages occur when the protagonist, Rebecca (later Hazel), lives through a horrendous marriage. Sadly for the novel—if not for Rebecca/Hazel—is that she has the good sense to leave the marriage, an action which effectively ends the best part of the novel. IMHO.

The epilogue of The Gravedigger's Daughter surprised me when I recognized it as one of the short stories in Oates' High Lonesome, which I read a few months ago. The tale, a series of letters between a retired woman in Florida and a professor in California—was pretty unimpressive as a short story; it's a little better—but only a little—as an epilogue.

Fans of Joyce Carol Oates will probably like The Gravedigger's Daughter. Of the two of hers I've read recently, I'd recommend High Lonesome.

Damn! I have to admit with varying degrees of shame, horror and surprise that I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Clansman by Thomas Dixon Jr. Never heard of it, you might think. Well, you'd be wrong. You have heard of it—at least in one of its incarnations. It's the novel upon which the movie The Birth of a Nation was based. So how dare I enjoy such a racist piece of writing? I will grant it is racist. "One such man (a Confederate soldier) is worth more to this Nation than every negro that ever set his flat foot upon this continent!" (page 8) So what was there to like? I'll start with language. I love seeing how it changes. In the quoted sentence Nation is capitalized; negro is not? Apparently acceptable in 1905. And then what does that say about the importance of each word?

But what fascinated me most were descriptions of our government then when compared and/or contrasted to that of today.

1) About Lincoln: "Many a night he had paced back and forth in the telegraph office of the War Department, read its awful news of defeat, and alone sat down and cried over the list of the dead." (page 73) Doesn't Bush pride himself on retiring at ten? Has he ever acknowledged "news of defeat"?

2) A bit of complimentary dialogue: "You're a born politician. You're what I call a natural liar, just as a horse is a pacer, a dog a setter. You lie without effort, with an ease and grace that excels all art." (pages 92-93) And some things are remarkably the same.

3) The same character later says, "… because, in spite of all our beautiful lies, self is the centre of all human action." (page 97) A twofer in this quote: an example of changes in "correct" spelling and an insight into a timeless motive of human behavior.

4) After the Civil War: "Public opinion, however, had as yet no power of adjustment. It was an hour of lapse to tribal insanity. Things had gone wrong. … The Government could do anything as yet, and the people would applaud." (pages 103-104) After 9-11 as well?

5) Partisanship is/was alive and well. "The supremacy of our party's life is at stake. The man who dares palter with such a measure is a rebel, a traitor to his party and his people." (page 134) Oh, BTW, that was a Republican speaking. And later from the same character: "'The life of a political party, gentlemen,' he growled in conclusion, 'is maintained by a scheme of subterfuge in which the moral law cuts no figure. As your leader I know but one law—success.'" (page 143) Carl Rove dressed in funny clothes?

6) "She began to understand why the war, which had seemed to her a wicked, cruel, and causeless rebellion, was the one inevitable thing in our growth from a loose group of sovereign states to a United Nation." (page 149) Things that make me go hmmm.

7) The great manipulator is again speaking.
The more things change, etc.

8) And even more from him: "When we proclaim equality, social, political, and economic for the Negro, we mean always to enforce it in the South. The Negro will never be treated as an equal in the North." (page 182) Busing in Boston? This book was such fun to read.

The best (most fun) parts of the novel, however, ended about half way through. The formation of the Klan was racist, completely based on fear. But we can find comfort there. After all, we're an advanced and modern society. No one today would stoop to motivating by fear. Or would we? Just asking.

I almost didn’t purchase WHAT THE DEAD KNOW by Laura Lippman. I have a stack of paperback books waiting on my reading table.

“You’d better get busy girl, my cleaning lady and friend Chris said to me, “Jack’s stack of books is getting a lot smaller than is your list of books. (Chris doesn’t really think Jack and I read all the books that move across our bedside tables.)

When I see a review, I tear the slip out of the magazine or newspaper and then this unruly piece of paper sits and sits until I do something about it. It was decision time. Either throw the damn paper away or order the book. I simply was not going to let clutter stay where it was a second longer.

I had started a book by Faye Kellerman, a historical novel about a subject I cannot fill enough of my brain with – the holocaust. Reading was going slowly, so when my “new” book arrived, Kellerman’s book went to the bottom of the stack and one night and ½ ago I started WHAT THE DEAD KNOW. I almost could not stop reading to eat or sleep.

Usually when a plot grips me as strongly as this one did, I’ll cheat and do something strange. No, I’ll not read the last page. I’ll read the last chapter. Then I’ll slip backward which is really forward in the book about five chapters and read from there. When I catch up to myself, I’ll go forward – backward five more chapters, until I reach the front of the book.

The plot of this book unfolds in such a way, it would have been impossible to read in such a fashion. I would have been thoroughly confused. Also, I didn’t want to get ahead of the story. I was willing to let the author tell me what happened to two sisters – a teen and a pre-teen, when they simply disappeared from a shopping mall outside of Baltimore in the 1970s.

WHAT THE DEAD KNOW is a good story. The author did her research well. She even explains in her notes that certain movies were indeed playing at the time of the historical events. She checked, these movies were in re-release.

The only criticism of the book is that the final, FINAL wrap-up is a little too neat. The author allows probably the only case in which a victim gets her wish to remain anonymous. In this day of news savagery, it is hard to believe that a coup of silence of the names and whereabouts of parties involved is accomplished.

I love books that have words scattered here and there that I am so uncertain of their use that I have to look them up. I couldn’t stop to look up these few words that I didn’t recognize. Never fear, my husband will either know the definitions or pause to look them up and tell me the meaning.

I found one interesting use of a word in this book. Lippman speaks of police in the singular. I’ve just never encountered that. Example: “When I was a police, …I worked in robbery”

This plot has more twists and turns than Dead Man’s Curve on Highway 69. (Yes there is a highway 69 in Alabama), but if you like a good story told in an interesting way, I think you will like this book. Laura Lippman is not John Steinbeck but the following review is one with which I agree:

“Laura Lippman’s stories aren’t just mysteries: they are deeply moving explorations of the human heart.”

Here are some nuggets that touched my human heart:


“We’re such good friends we don’t need to go into specifics, Joe,” she’d said, patting his hand. “…something bad happened. Something you seldom speak of. And you know what? You’re right to keep it inside. Everyone says just the opposite, but they’re wrong. It’s better not to speak of some things. Whatever you’ve done, whatever happened, you don’t need to justify it to me or anyone. You don’t need to justify it even to yourself. Keep it locked up.” Pg 109


She had been lucky not smart. She had sold her own house eighteen months earlier, before the market began its precipitous slide. At the same time she had divested herself of some longtime investments she had inherited from her parents. But it wasn’t that she had predicted the stock market collapse in 1987. “Lots of people didn’t want to stay in Texas just now, and these people had cried I Miriam’s office over the past few months, baffled by the concept of negative equity. “How can we owe?” one young woman had sobbed. “We bought the house, we made our payments, and now we’re selling it. So why do we owe seven thousand dollars.” Bolder sellers tried to suggest that a Realtor should not be paid if the deal yielded no profit for them. It was an ugly time. Pg 229


And finally "Children can be happy when their parents are miserable. But a parent is never happier than her unhappiest child." --- Page 371

Respectfully Submitted,

Kathy Albers

I had a phone call last night suggesting I order a series of books by Shirley Rousseau Murphy. There are several book written about Joe Grey, who happens to be a cat. Since I no longer have a dog, I will order and read a couple of these books and wonder if anyone here has knowledge of this Joe Grey?

From a friend who's into cats and mysteries:

"Nope, I've not read any of her stuff -- looks like she has
written about a dozen books about Joe Grey, and I may have
seen promos for them in my Literary (or Mystery) Guild
flyers, but have ignored them thus far.

Sounds kind of like "The Cat Who...." books by Lillian Jackson Braun"

Not terribly helpful, but Kathy may have read her.