Gimme a 1! Gimme a 2! Gimme a 3!
What's that spell?
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I'm with Roger Ebert. Just a work of art by what it is trying to be. Not against some other arbitrary standard unrelated to it's intentions.
With that in mind, Serial Killer gets an A-, Magic Pen a B, One Step Enough an A, Ether an A, and The Big Clock an A+. Even taking into account modern grade inflation, an excellent set of books!
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119) The Serial Killer's Guide to San Francisco by Michelle Chouinard, finished November 22
Funny how a book can pop into your life at just the right moment. For the book, I mean. I found this advance copy in a little free library and was charmed by the title and brought it home. A couple days later, the book I was carrying around wasn't in the right spot as I was leaving this house and this fresh arrival was easy to grab and so I did. Plenty of books in its position never get opened.
I like a lot of stuff about this book. I enjoyed spending time with the protagonist who is my own age and seems like a good person to know. She runs crime-themed tours in San Francisco and is getting along. Unfortunately, a serial killer who has popped up who is mimicking the murders her grandfather committed fifty years prior. You know how it goes.
In related news, her daughter's tuition source has disappeared and so to make money she has no choice but to start a podcast about the murders and to try and solve them before they get placed upon her or her daughter. You know how it goes.
Anyway, it's fun to read. I didn't know who the current killer was. And I was wrong about who the actual, nongrandfather killer of fifty years ago was, even though I was convinced I knew from early on. Unfortunately, I was misremembering a crucial detail.
Pretty sure that misremembering was my fault, but I can't be sure. This advance copy is riddled with errors—more than I'd expect for a book this far along. And the some elements—most notably the podcast recording—are so awkward I can't help but wonder if they were added in a last-minute rewrite. And other parts—like the hacking—seem more like plot convenience than reality.
The contemporary mystery ended so near the end I was figuring the old-time mystery and the flashing-arrow romantic option would have to wait for the sequel. But no. They wrapped it all up in the last dozen pages.
I was entertained. This is pure candy-bar fiction but it has the occasional deeper pleasures of all good entertainment. If it's got peanuts, it's a Snickers. And it's a Snickers.
Don't love the cover though. I always felt like oppressive gender normers were out for me, carrying it around. And yeah, middle-aged single mom solving crimes as she makes a true-crime podcast could not be a more female-coded novel in 2024, but still. I read it. And, you know, I'm, like, super manly and stuff. So there.
probably three weeks
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120) Magic Pen by Dylan Horrocks, finished November 23
I think it's worth starting by clearly stating this graphic novel ends somewhere true and meaningful and in a significant point worth making. A finale that perhaps justifies the path that took us here. Because the story quite intentionally creates a series of pornographic events in its exploration of desires, the morality of desire, and the intersection/relationship of fantasy and reality. Sometimes it dwells longer than necessary on sexy green ladies and sometimes it lingers too long in philosophical hokum. Fewer nipples and less blathering would not hurt this book a bit.
Magic Pen is also autofiction. It's protagonists speaks at a symposium Horrocks spoke at and writes an autobiographical comic with the same title as Horrocks's.
And, in the end, is it any good? Even if I like the conclusion and if it's visually exciting, is it good?
Well, perhaps I should answer that by noting that although the book occasionally seemed vaguely familiar—like maybe I'd read a couple excerpts before—I did not know until finishing the autofiction paragraph above and finally looking around that, ah, I've read it before. And clearly it made very, very little impression. It appears I like it more this second time, but still: Doesn't add up to much of a recommendation.
three or four days
121) One Step Enough by Carla Kelly, finished November 28
This is the sequel to Kelly's My Lovely Vigil Keeping (thutopia, thubstack) which I adored and whose sequel I purchased a few weeks after finishing the first book. I likely would have purchased it sooner except I had not known there was a sequel.
It's quite a different sort of novel. The first is a romance. And although the outer world's story is of a tragedy that is pending from page one, this is a romance, and so the inner story is one of love and of choosing the right man among more than one excellent choice.
This one is different. Our heroes are married. And struggling to overcome the tragedies that have defined their lives thus far. Not just the massive one at the end of My Lovely Vigil Keeping but also the loss of her father and his wife and cetera and cetera and cetera. They have a lot of pain to overcome.
(Which gets to the one Actual Historical Character whose [nonlocal] appearance I did not love. I mean—I didn't mind his existence, but let us either recognize him or not. You don't need to later get a character to say his full name [Sigmund Freud] for the bit to work.)
The book is filled with crises and redemptions as two adults learn how to be married to one another. It's not easy.
The supporting cast is marvelous. I felt like Della came down harder on her uncle in this book. Which isn't to say he didn't deserve it, but to say it felt out of place thematically. For most of the book, Della's personal growth is manifest in her ability to love others with less baggage. Not so her uncle.
A volume of loose ends are tied up in this book. Some more conveniently than others but all believably. This is the sort of book where, by the end, you love all the characters. And regardless of how they came into the story, you're happy to know them. It is a work of joy.
probably a little over a year
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122) Ether: A Brief Theological Introduction by Rosalynde Frandsen Welch, finished November 29
I fear I grow weary of this series, but Rosalynde's book is another winner. And if I was too tired to gain all I could have, I yet gained much.
For instance:
• Reread Ether 12 understanding the word after (where the grammar allows it) in the same way as in the phrase "after the manner of happiness" and see what you discover.
• Perhaps scripture lives only through our continuous retranslation. That is what makes a scriptural tradition.
• Scripture becomes scripture only when it is read with "the Lord [as he gives its reader] grace, that they might have charity" and thus discover scripture—and the Lord therein.
• Moroni models for us how to imagine Christ's love beyond the boundaries were, in our fallen way, naturally feel.
• The brother of Jared's shock at the finger of the Lord may well have been at how . . . normal it was. How not-mighty-seeming.
• The coming of Christ is happening over and over, every time a willing soul opens themselves up.
One to go!
about a month
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123) The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing, finished December 7
I'd never heard of this book.
I heard of the (first) movie based on it a few weeks ago on YouTube, but in my failed search to find the movie, I discovered my library had the book. I checked it out, not expecting to actually read it.
But it was the most convenient book at a moment I needed a book so I decided to carry it with me, read the first couple chapters, see what I thought.
I ended up having time to read a quarter or a third of this slim volume and let me tell you: so glad I did.
I did find the movie for free today (and I intend to watch it) but I'm glad I didn't on my first pass because this is one of the most tightly wound works of literature I've ever read.
In short, a man in put in charge of a manhunt. But he knows something no one else knows: their unidentified target—is himself.
The machinery winds its trap and he does what he can to get closer and closer without stepping inside.
It's excellent.
It's also an early mystery to take on multiple points of view. And it's got plenty of subtext for your book group.
I loved it.
a couple weeks or more