Authors Hate Him! Local Blogger Discovers Amazing List Of Things To Do Besides Reading. Number 12 Will Blow Your Mind!

Recently we had a behind-the-scenes discussion about pacing in books, the merits of a slower pace versus a faster pace and all that fun stuff. At the time I was reading The Train from Pittsburgh by Julian Farren and didn’t have much to contribute to the conversation. I’ve mentioned before that I have issues with reading during the summer months so pacing is almost a non-issue. But that’s the great thing about books; they never go away.

The Train from Pittsburgh is one book that I wish would have gone away.

I came upon it on an unremarkable day. I was browsing Facebook, as I am wont to do, when it showed up in a post from The Odd, Mysterious & Fascinating History of Pittsburgh, a great page that definitely lives up to its name. Anyway, I thought, “Oh, it’s got Pittsburgh in the title. I must read it!”

“His wife liked his friends… too much!”
The Train From Pittsburgh from 1952

Posted by The Odd, Mysterious & Fascinating History of Pittsburgh on Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Looking at that cover, I was hoping for a cheesy, pulpy, noir-y book set in 1950s Pittsburgh. What I got was a book originally published in 1948 about white people drinking in excess and whining about their problems with a sometimes not-so-subtle undercurrent of antisemitism and anticommunism. Like if Archie Bunker had been on Cheers and if it wasn’t hilarious.

The main character, Tom Bridges, is an alcoholic who is cheating on his wife, Ellen, but that’s all right because she’s cheating on him, too. Tom is trying to get a man named Mike Myers (no, not that Mike Myers) a job, but Tom’s boss doesn’t want to hire him because Mike is Jewish. Poor Mike is bringing his entire family on the eponymous train from Pittsburgh to New York because Tom practically guaranteed him a job.

Tom gets lit the same night Ellen throws a big party in their New York home and—sixty-seven-year-spoiler-alert—after all the guests leave, Tom decides he’s going to kill Ellen and then himself. His plan is thwarted when Ellen decides she wants to try to get pregnant again.

In the morning he wakes up with a massive hangover and realizes he’s missed the titular train’s arrival. We’re left with no murder-suicide and the presumption that Mike and his family are wandering the streets of New York City.

Pictured: Tom, or me trudging through this book.

Sometimes unlikable characters can be endearing, as Irene pointed out, but these characters were a waste. Their awfulness compounded with the protracted chapters (I’m sorry, but no chapter ever needs to be sixty pages) filled me with dread each time I picked the book up.

It was so awful that I came up with a list of things that I could have been doing instead of reading:

1. Finally watch Pink Flamingos
2. Watch someone Whip and/or Nae Nae
3. Set the time on a VCR
4. Find a VCR
5. Convince myself I like sports
6. Shop for some sweet Affliction deep V-neck shirts
7. Finally start a quinoa blog
8. Have a conversation online using only Tom Hiddleston .gifs
9. Fill myself with delight reading the Common Misconceptions page on Wikipedia
10. Picture the actor Mike Myers as Wayne from Wayne’s World as the Mike Myers in the book
11. Wonder what it would take for our Port Authority to make a cat its stationmaster
12. Come up with an inane list of activities and publish it on a blog with a readership of about one metric ton [citation needed]

I didn’t do any of those things. I stuck it out because I knew that by reading I was at least engaging my brain. When I finished this book, I didn’t feel like I needed a moment of silence; I felt like I needed to excise the book from me. The next time I get a hankering to read about Pittsburgh in the early part of the last century, I’ll just reread Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood.

So, dear readers, I now ask you, how does the pacing of a book affect your desire to read it? Do you prefer a quick pace or a pace where things take their time to unfold? Have you ever wanted to throw a book across the room in frustration of its banality? Let us know in the comments below!

–Ross

Action, Adventure, Monsters! or Some Comics I Want to Read

Since mid-December, I’ve been neck-deep in the process of buying a house and then renovating it. This has severely cut into my comic book reading time.

To keep me from going insane with all the (hopefully) good books I’m missing, I’ve compiled a want-to-read list.

Fables Volume 20: Camelot by Bill Willingham and various wonderful artists
Fables starts out with showing how fairy tale characters have adapted to life in present-day New York City, but has morphed into something much deeper and more epic over the ten-plus years of its run. The past few volumes have been beautifully devastating, so I’m both excited and scared to find out what happens next.

Fatale Volume 5 by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
I’ll read anything by Ed Brubaker. He does crime noir so well, it’s like he invented it. This particular series mixes the femme fatale and horror genres to create a dark, twisted mystery.

 
 
 

Ms. Marvel Volume 1 by G. Willow Wilson

When Marvel announced the new Ms. Marvel would be a shape-shifting Iranian immigrant Muslim lady, and that it would be written by a real live Muslim woman, I was psyched. Sales for this have been going steady, so I’m thinking it’s going to be even more awesome than the concept alone implies. I suggest following author G. Willow Wilson on Twitter–she posts interesting tweets about religion, social justice, and of course, comics.

Rat Queens Volume 1 by Kurtis J. Wiebe and various artists
Like a Dungeons and Dragons quest, only with ladies kicking butt. Need I say more?

 
 
 

Have you read any of these? What did you think?

-Kelly

An Exciting Weekend With Dangerous Women

My idea of a good time is soaring through the air with night witches, galloping through the Old West with outlaws, tailing dangerous dames and femmes fatales, and otherwise cavorting with women you’d be crazy to cross. Luckily for me–and for you!–George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois have edited a spectacular collection of short stories called Dangerous Women,  featuring what are most commonly referred to today as “strong female characters,” though they are ever so much more than that.

Members of the Missouri University Shooting Club, 1934. Photo taken from Wikimedia Commons – click through to learn more.

I had fully intended to read one or two tales at a time to make the collection last longer, but the stories are just so great, I’ve been burning through them the way I normally polish off a bag of Fig Newtons after a long run (do not judge). So far I’ve been totally creeped out by Megan Abbott, highly amused by Joe R. Lansdale, stunned to silence by Brandon Sanderson, and treated to a whirlwind of genres from Western to noir. I’m even in possession of information that Jim Butcher fans who aren’t up-to-date on the Dresden files will be extremely excited to learn. And overall, I’m just plain delighted by the variety of genres produced by a greatest hits lineup of well-known folks–that make up the volume.

[In fact, the only thing that makes me sad about this anthology is that there are no writers of color featured in it. I fail to see how that could possibly have happened, given that authors like Nalo Hopkinson, Jewelle Gomez, and Natsuo Kirino (to name but a few of many) are alive and well, and creating dangerous women of their own. Luckily, there are other story collections to remedy this shortcoming, and I’d recommend you look into them.]

My favorite piece thus far in Dangerous Women addresses the fear of getting old with a twist of the fantastic. Megan Lindholm (better known to some as Robin Hobb) delivers the quietly brilliant “Neighbors,” the story of an aging woman named Sarah whose son is determined to put her in an assisted living facility. Sarah, who has lost her husband (to death), her brother (to Alzheimer’s disease) and her dog (to the mysterious fog that rolls into her yard every night) is determined to hold on to her house for as long as she can. But though her efforts have kept her children at bay thus far, she can’t hold out forever. Meanwhile, the fog–and the mysterious people Sarah sees coming and going inside of it–gets closer and closer to the house. Deeply moving and suspenseful, Lindholm’s story will have you rooting for Sarah all the way up to the surprising–but, under the circumstances, believable–ending.

So, if you’re looking for a series of hair-raising adventures featuring heroines–and villains–who could teach Buffy the Vampire Slayer a thing or two, I definitely recommend snuggling up for a weekend with Dangerous Women. Despite its one glaring flaw, it’s one of the most exciting collections I’ve picked up in a long time, and short story fans of all kinds will consider it a win.

–Leigh Anne

Mr. Peanut Sneaks Up On You…

At first you think the novel Mr. Peanut is going to be this simple tale about a man who fantasizes about killing his wife…and who may or may not have gone through with it. But then the author, Adam Ross, throws in all these other characters and their disturbed lives. All of a sudden you are trying to keep up with multiple inner monologues from some extremely lonely characters, and puzzling over what the storylines’ connections might be.

Personally, I enjoy novels with deeply troubled characters, and I want to know everything about them. Mr. Peanut definitely delivers in this respect: Ross is an expert at putting his readers at the center of the characters’ brains and then spinning them around in circles for a few hundred pages. He makes you wish you could jump into the novel and warn the female characters about what’s coming next, and it’s all the more deliciously terrifying to read because you can’t. You can only watch, helplessly, as the characters’ marriages dissolve.

Ross draws one character and storyline from real life: Dr. Sam Sheppard, whose own murder trial inspired the television show The Fugitive (later made into two films, one of which you can get at your library). It is fascinating to watch Ross’s version of Sheppard as he falls from grace. The reader learns so much about who he was and how his life turned completely rotten. And even though you know how that plotline will end, you still almost want to shut your eyes in horror at the most terrifying parts.

But don’t! Mr. Peanut is worth keeping your eyes wide open.

–Abby

Disturbing Novels Redux

Back in October my colleague Don wrote about the top ten most disturbing novels, a list that was compiled by List Universe.  It got me thinking about what would be on my own most disturbing novels list– as a fan of noir, I’ve come across some doozies.  Jim Thompson and Patricia Highsmith immediately come to mind as the most consistently disturbing novelists I’ve ever read: both have a knack for instilling their characters with a shocking depth of violence that’s made all the more disturbing by how perfectly ordinary they are. In a Highsmith or Thompson novel, the distinction between the good guys and the bad guys is not always clear, and the vicious killer is often a charming protagonist who we can easily relate to. 

The Killer Inside Me is the first Jim Thompson novel that I read, and ranks right up at the top of my own most disturbing novels list.  The narrator is a small town deputy sheriff named Lou Ford, who to all appearances is an easy-going, gentle, regular Joe.  However, we find out very early on that Ford is also a killer, and for the rest of the novel we follow along in Ford’s head as he commits first one murder, and then more to cover his tracks, until his “sickness” (as he thinks of it) finally leads to his downward spiral.  Thompson’s stark prose style contributes to the feeling of tension throughout the book, and while reading this novel one almost begins to commiserate with Ford, despite the fact that the cold calculation of his crimes never gives us any sense that he could possibly be the good guy.

Patricia Highsmith’s novels about Tom Ripley are also among the most disturbing novels I’ve read.  Highsmith first introduces us to the character of Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley.  He’s charming and likeable, someone who we might hang out with, and when he occasionally resorts to murder to get himself out of a bad situation we almost find ourselves agreeing that he really had no other recourse.  Reviewers often describe Tom as amoral, but at the same time he is someone who we root for unequivocally. One of the more shocking aspects of Highsmith’s work is the brutality and graphic detail with which she describes murders, yet even after Tom commits crime after crime I always find myself on edge, anxiously hoping that he won’t get caught.

I think that what disturbs me so much in these novels is the way they leave me with the feeling that everyone has the potential to be the bad guy.  Highsmith and Thompson both play with our preconcieved notions of good and bad, and after reading them, I’m never quite sure where the line falls anymore. What do you think?  Any novels that really creeped you out?  Noir that leaves you wondering which end is up? 

-Irene

Shelf Examination: Mystery

When the poor sap stumbled into my office, I could see he was desperate. “You’ve gotta help me,” he rasped. “You’re the only one who knows.”

I eyeballed his lanky form and decided he was more sinned against than sinner.  “Have a seat,” I said, and gestured to the battered computer chair where all my clients tell me their troubles.  “What’s your pitch?”

“I need…” He gulped, then glanced nervously behind him, as if he expected the reading police to show up at any moment. “I need a good mystery.”

A good mystery to idle away a summer afternoon?  I should have known.  Thoughtfully I leaned back in my chair and crossed my legs, inhaling deeply on my cigarette. I could try to brush him off with something simple, like a premade booklist, but something in his haunted, blood-shot, baby blues told me it wouldn’t work.   Not that booklists aren’t swell. But there was more going on here than met the eye, and if I wanted the mystery man to trust me as a professional librarian, I was going to have to give him a personalized list…and it was going to have to be a good one.

I sighed heavily, sat up straight, and fixed the stranger with my steely gaze.  His face brightened as I pushed a piece of paper and a pencil across the desk. “Here,” I said, “listen up good, and write this down.”

 

 

The Book: The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, ed. Otto Penzler.

Check this out if you like: Short stories, pulp fiction, men’s adventure magazines, danger, suspense, dark alleys, dames both classy and treacherous, gumshoes, shysters, shamuses, double-crosses, or any of the other noir-y tropes common in Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett.

The Book:  Big Boned, Meg Cabot.

Check this out if you like: Wrongly-accused protagonists, celebrity/fashion namedropping, stories set on college campuses, love triangles, heroines of realistic size, loyal friends, cute shoes, or other chick-lit elements.

                   

 

The Book:  Casanegra, Blair Underwood et. al.

Check this out if you like:  Hollywood highs and lows, street lit drama, heroes with troubled pasts, father-son conflicts, tales of redemption, celebrity authors, African American film history, the seamy underbelly of the rap business, or erotic fiction.

The Book: Death of a Cozy Writer, G.M. Malliet.

Check this out if you like:  Cozy mysteries, English country houses, family feuds, dry humor, a hint of self-conscious parody, drawing room scandal, secrets and lies, or stories reminiscent of Agatha Christie.

 The mystery man, visibly relieved, tucked the booklist into the breast pocket of his jacket and beamed at me from under the brim of his shabby fedora.  “Thanks to you, miss, I’m feeling a lot more literate and entertained.  How can I ever thank you?”

I smiled.  This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, I could tell.  “For starters,” I said, “how about you open up that briefcase you’re carrying and show me what kind of McGuffin you’ve got there?”

Cue the saxophones! And don’t forget to tune in next time for Shelf Examination!

–Leigh Anne