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What I've Been Reading



I don't do much police or detective reading.  I tend to think they are like the procedurals on TV, boilerplate, bland and predictable.  But when Amazon let's me buy a book for my Kindle for $1.99 and is almost universally praised I'll make an exception.  In this case I'm pretty happy I did.  Set in Australia a policeman returns to his birthplace village, a place that is dying because of a drought that is killing the crops and thus, killing the economy.  Set in this is the death of his best friend and family by what appears to me murder-suicide.   It was well written, kept my interest all the way through with interesting characters.  

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This was a weird long story about a kid whose mother takes off one day and his dad isn't able to take proper care so he goes to live with his uncle's family in the country.  Did I mention it is long?  I guess I liked it well enough and for the most part the story was a good.  It stretched credulity a few times but I'm a sucker for a good coming-of-age book and, looking back, that kid sure did cry a lot.  It is one of those kitchen sink books.  There's a little of everything:  Indian mysticism, gangsters, FBI, pedophilia, dreamy flashbacks, supernatural stuff.  All in all, it has warts but is worth it.  
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The Paris Architect is a decent read.  It involves a gentile architect who is approached by a wealthy Jewish banker to construct hiding places in his various homes serving as a kind of underground railroad to help people escape the atrocities of the Nazis while occupying Paris.  Good riveting story, well drawn characters and a plot that moves well and keeps you on the edge of your seat.


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A National Book Award winner, a story about a guy who commits suicide and his wife wants an old friend to take his dog.  What could go wrong, right?  Turns out, plenty.  Told in first person, the friend in question who takes the dog urns out to be a female admirer/unrequited lover of the guy and all she talks about are famous writers.  I swear this was the most painful bitch to read and the most unsatisfying.  I'm not into nouveau literature and stream of consciousness as art shit.  A good book has a good story - plain and simple.  This was worthless.  I knew it when I began skipping pages hoping for something to happen.  Don't go near this waste of digital ink.

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I'm conflicted with this one.  It started out so well and fun I immediately began raving about it, even to the point that my SIL Holly went out and bought it.  The set-up was great: a kid has a retina problem at birth making his pupils red.  Being born in a Catholic family makes his condition all the more interesting when he starts school with the nuns.  His family is well drawn and it had all the elements of being an extraordinary book.  Unfortunately, it kind of peters out somewhere after graduation and he becomes an adult.  Some books start slow and gain momentum, this one started well, then lost it.  Extra points for a great book cover art.  

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From the Pulitzer Prize winning author of A Thousand Acres,  I decided to try this long, first of three books about a farming family in Iowa.  It starts in 1920 with Walter and Rosanna having a newborn named Frank.  A family epic?  Midwest?  Farming?  Sure, sounds great.  Well, not so great after all.  Can you believe the first chapter is narrated by the baby?  What a slog this thing is.  Nothing happens and I'm up to 1926.  I have skipped many pages looking fro a protagonist, anything I can deem to be conflict, or plot.  And it eludes me.  Even if I make it through all 400 pages, do I still have to read the other two books that follow?  Must I spend my entire 2019 in plotless descriptions of walking a fence to make sure there are no holes for the cows to scape?  Or for Regnar, the hired man, to stoke his pipe for four paragraphs and then say something in Swedish that isn't translated into English?  I'm a Mets fan so I know a thing or two about patience.  But this is a killer.  The good thing is, my sleeping has been quick and deep since I started it.  I'm not at a quarter of the way in yet so I may or may not keep reading.  My advise to you, even a biography of Chuck Barris would be more riveting than this.

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