Book Review: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

 

When I was just beginning to find my way into mysteries many decades ago, I pretty much stuck to the Christie model of cozy British country house puzzles.  Even as I branched out from there it seemed I stayed with British detectives and though the police procedurals got more modern, they still retained that English aloofness.  Why oh why did I not discover Chandler.

Just over a year ago I read The Long Goodbye and marveled at this nothing-but-American detective who was tough yet cool.  Now in The Big Sleep I experienced Philip Marlowe as he first burst on to the mystery scene.  There is no doubt that Marlowe is an all together different type than the British detective and that Chandler is breaking open the genre in a new way.  Marlowe tells us everything: the weather, what he is wearing, the details of the million-dollar house; and immediately takes us inside of the story.  Given the task of uncovering a blackmail attempt by the dying General Sternwood, Marlowe encounters the General’s two daughters who continue to upset the neat case Marlowe has set out for him.

And then the murders come–one after another–to people who were never part of the original investigation but are involved, in some way, with each other.  Gritty Los Angeles life is revealed and the gritty cops too.  Though he’s solved the blackmail issue for which he was hired, Marlowe’s interest is high and he keeps looking to see what is underneath the next rock or dumped in the next oil well.

The book is far more frank than I expected from a 1930s novel and I can’t wait to watch the film version to see how the Hays Code muffles some of it.  Chandler set a whole new standard for detective fiction.  No more are we boxed up with the limited group of witnesses in a country house.  Now we are moving down the mean streets of America and into criminal reality.

 

This book read for the Golden Vintage Mystery Challenge.

This book read for the Mt. TBR Challenge.

 

 

 

Book Review: The D.A. Breaks the Seal by Erle Stanley Gardner

I was surprised to find that Erle Stanley Gardner wrote other mystery books besides those featuring Perry Mason.  I was pleased to find this series about prosecutor Douglas Selby written in the 1930s and 40s.

Doug Selby is not the anti-Perry Mason.  In fact he is much like Perry as an amateur detective / officer of the court except that he operates from the other side of the law — as a prosecutor working together with the county sheriff.

In The D.A. Breaks the Seal (published in 1946), Doug Selby has returned to Madison City where he formerly served as D.A. during his week-long army furlough.  There’s a new D.A. in town, but his old friends, the sheriff, the erstwhile reporter, and the private lawyer welcome him back gladly.  The lawyer is working on a will contest, the sheriff gets a call that there’s been a unexpected death in the hotel, the reporter notices two interesting people getting off the train — and by the end of the story all of these threads come together.

While television did a great job in bringing Perry Mason to the small screen, the older books are much grittier than that program and often Perry walks a fine line of legality. Similarly, in the books Hamilton Burger and Lt. Tragg come off as rougher and more mean-spirited than on TV.  Because Gardner is a lawyer himself, it appears that this series was written to give equal exposure to the “good guys” on the prosecution side.  As always, Gardner’s courtroom scenes and cross-examinations are the best.

This is a book I borrowed from the library.  I’m using it on my Golden Vintage Mystery challenge as “One Book with a Lawyer, Courtroom, Judge, etc.”

Book Review: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I’d like to thank the members of The Classics Club who organized the Classics Club Spin #8 and for choosing not-so-unlucky 13 as the spin selection.  Without that I might never have discovered the wonders of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Even though this book has been on my Classics Club list since the beginning and physically in our  house for as long as I can remember, I don’t think I would have ever chosen it out of the TBR stack.

One Hundred Years of Solitude functions as scripture for the village of Macondo — a novel that includes many of the stories found in Genesis as represented in this South American location.  While fiction, it is said that Marquez used his childhood village and experiences in constructing the story.  “Adam” and “Eve” are represented here by Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula Iguaran Buendia and includes six generations of their family.

Marquez introduced magical realism in this novel.  I found the magical elements quite fantastic and yet totally accepted them as part of the story.  At the same time, Macondo experiences the political conflicts between Conservatives and Liberals, Dictators and Communists, as well as the rapid introduction of capitalist industry and exploited workers.

Time is also a major player in the story and something which all of the characters refer to.  Time turns in this novel, but it is always spiraling down.  The story is not always told in linear order and the names of the Buendia family repeat generation after generation.  It can sometimes be hard to remember which “Aureliano” and which “Arcadio” is speaking, but given their professions and marriage partners this is soon easily established.

The only thing I regret is not being able to read this in Spanish as I am sure there are many turns of phrase that are more understandable in the original.  In all, the English translation works well and is very readable.

One Hundred Years of Solitude earns its place among classic literature and Marquez well deserved his Nobel Prize for Literature.  Perhaps I’ll eventually get to Love in the Time of Cholera.

The Hardest Challenge I’ve Ever Undertaken

Yes, this might be the hardest challenge I’ve ever undertaken, but in conjunction with my TBR (to be read) Mountain Challenge, this must be done.

I’m going for the Blue Belt challenge — 11 to 20 books read from my own shelves.  And of course there is always the library for my new book craving.

I’m also committed to giving away at least 25 books.

My only disclaimer is if I take a class for which I need a book I don’t already have.  This wouldn’t happen until mid-June at the earliest.

Reading Challenges for 2015 – A Recap

Here is the final accumulation of challenges for next year.  Quite a set of resolutions, hmmm?

The Mount TBR Challenge: I’ve committed to the Pike’s Peak challenge which is to read 12 books I already own (and have neglected to read) in 2015.

The Vintage Mystery Golden Challenge: I’ve committed to read mysteries written in 1959 and before. Six books for a “Bingo!” and 36 books to cover the card.

Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge:  This challenge is so I read outside of my comfort zone and includes 24 categories.

I have two on-going challenges:

The Classics Club: This challenge is to read 50 books over 5 years.  I’m way behind a 10 books per year pace.

The Nonfiction Adventure Club:  This challenge is also 50 books over 5 years.  I am very, very behind an even pace in this one.

Because I am also participating in my local book club, a postal book club, a genre study, and leading a library book group, I’ve decided to set my Goodreads 2015 goal at 104 books.

No book can be started before the stroke of midnight on 01/01/15 and all must be finished by the following New Year’s Eve.  I will attempt to blog about each book as I finish it and declare which challenge it relates to.

Here’s hoping you’ll follow along and see if I can do this!

Book Riot: The Read Harder Challenge

One more challenge and that’s it.  I’m in for Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge.  Twenty-four books in 24 categories.  I need to read something besides vintage mysteries.  I hope some of these will overlap with other challenges and especially with my TBR pile.

A book written by someone when they were under the age of 25

A book written by someone when they were over the age of 65

A collection of short stories (either by one person or an anthology by many people)

A book published by an indie press

A book by or about someone that identifies as LGBTQ

A book by a person whose gender is different from your own

A book that takes place in Asia

A book by an author from Africa

A book that is by or about someone from an indigenous culture (Native Americans,Aboriginals, etc.)

A microhistory

A YA novel

A sci-fi novel

A romance novel

A National Book Award, Man Booker Prize or Pulitzer Prize winner from the last decade

A book that is a retelling of a classic story (fairytale, Shakespearian play, classic novel, etc.)

An audiobook

A collection of poetry

A book that someone else has recommended to you     Bad Feminist

A book that was originally published in another language

A graphic novel, a graphic memoir or a collection of comics of any kind (Hi, have you metPanels?)

A book that you would consider a guilty pleasure (Read, and then realize that good entertainment is nothing to feel guilty over)

A book published before 1850

A book published this year

A self-improvement book (can be traditionally or non-traditionally considered “self-improvement”)          The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

GO!

The Classics Club

Since my original post on The Classics Club is so far away, and since I haven’t worked on it recently, I decided to re-post my list.  It is a list of fifty classics that I will read by March 28, 2017.  There are fifty different authors with either their most important book I haven’t read or the first book in a series which they wrote.  This list was developed partially from the lists of “books you should read if you’re going to college,” partially from Pulitzer Prize winners, and partially from my TBR pile.  There are books originally written in Spanish, French, German, and Latin as well as English.

I am way behind if I’m going to read these books by my target date, so expect to see more of these books in my upcoming reviews.

• Alcott, Louisa May   Little Men
• Anderson Sherwood   Winesburg, Ohio
• Austen, Jane   Persuasion   finished 08/20/13
• Baldwin, James Go Tell It on the Mountain
• Bellow, Saul The Adventures of Augie March   finished 01/11/13
• Buck, Pearl The Good Earth
• Cervantes, Miguel Don Quixote   finished 06/05/12
• Chesterton, G. K. The Man Who Knew Too Much
• Chopin, Kate The Awakening
• Cooper, James Fenimore The Deerslayer
• Defoe, Daniel Robinson Crusoe
• Dickens, Charles Little Dorrit   finished 07/28/12
• Dreiser, Theodore An American Tragedy
• Dumas, Alexandre The Three Musketeers
• Eliot, George  The Mill on the Floss
• Ellison, Ralph The Invisible Man
• Faulkner, William As I Lay Dying
• Ford, Ford Maddox The Good Soldier
• Forster, E. M. A Passage to India
• Gaskell, Elizabeth Cranford
• Golding, William Lord of the Flies
• Hardy, Thomas Return of the Native
• Hemingway, Ernest The Sun Also Rises
• Hugo, Victor The Hunchback of Notre Dame
• Hurston, Zora Neal Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Huxley, Aldous A Brave New World
• James, Henry The Turn of the Screw   finished 10/16/12
• Kafka, Franz The Trial
• Kipling, Rudyard The Man Who Would Be King
• Lewis, Sinclair Main Street   finished 05/24/13
• Marquez, Gabriel Garcia One Hundred Years of Solitude finished 01/02/15
• Maugham, W. Somerset Of Human Bondage
• Melville, Herman Billy Budd
• Paton, Alan Cry the Beloved Country
• Poe, Edgar Allen The Dupin Tales   finished 05/24/12
• Remarque, Erich Maria All Quiet on the Western Front
• Scott, sir Walter Ivanhoe
• Shakespeare, William Othello   finished 05/28/12
• Steinbeck, John East of Eden
• Stevenson, Robert Louis Treasure Island   finished 09/29/13
• Stowe, Harriet Beecher Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Tarkington, Booth The Magnificent Ambersons
• Trollope, Anthony The Warden
• Verne, Jules Mysterious Island
• Virgil The Aeneid
• Voltaire Candide   finished 04/16/13
• Warren, Robert Penn All the King’s Men   finished 08/26/12
• Wharton, Edith The Custom of the Country   finished 07/14/13
• Wilde, Oscar The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Wright, Richard Native Son

The Nonfiction Adventure Challenge

Many moons ago (in fact, March 2012) I signed up for the Nonfiction Adventure Challenge introduced by Michelle on the True Book Addict.  Like so many other challenges, I have woefully neglected this list, but I am now recommitting to reading these books.  The titles have changed just a bit since I first posted the list.  Only three books have been read.  I originally committed to finishing this list in five years — March 2017.  It looked easy then, but looks like a stretch now.

• Aldous, Richard   The Lion and the Unicorn
• Amar, Akhil   America’s Constitution
• Aristotle   Politics
• Beatty, Jack   The Lost History of 1914
• Brands, H. W.    The First American: The Life of Benjamin Franklin
• Caro, Robert   The Path to Power (Lyndon Johnson #1)  finished 07/28/12
• Caro, Robert   Means of Ascent (Lyndon Johnson #2) finished 08/04/12
• Caro, Robert   Master of the Senate (Lyndon Johnson #3)
• Caro, Robert   The Passage of Power (Lyndon Johnson #4)
• Caro, Robert   The Powerbroker: Robert Moses
• Diamond, Jared   Guns, Germs and Steel
• Douglass, Fredrick   Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass
• Eggers, David   A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
• Ellis, Joseph   American Creation
• Franklin, Benjamin   Autobiography
• Freehling, William   The Road to Disunion: Volume 1
• Freehling, William   The Road to Disunion: Volume 2
• Freeman, Douglas S.   Lee’s Lieutenants: Volume 2
• Freeman, Douglas S.   Lee’s Lieutenants: Volume 3
• Graham, Katherine   Personal History
• Grant, Ulysses S.   Memoirs
• Groom, Winston   A Storm in Flanders
• Halberstam, David   The Best and the Brightest
• Hamilton, Jay, Madison   The Federalist Papers
• Hemingway, Ernest   A Moveable Feast
• Herring, George C.   From Colony to Superpower
• Howe, Daniel Walker   What Hath God Wrought
• Kennedy, David M.   Freedom from Fear
• Kurlansky, Mark   Salt
• Lewis, C. S.   Mere Christianity
• Lewis, Michael   The Big Short
• Lincoln, Abraham   Speeches and Writings 1859-1865
• MacMillan, Margaret   The War that Ended the Peace
• MacMillan, Margeret   Paris 1919
• Middlekauff, Robert   The Glorious Cause
• Mukherjee, Siddhartha   The Emperor of All Maladies
• Obama, Barak   Dreams from My Father
• Patterson, James T.   Restless Giant
• Patterson, James T.   Grand Expectations
• Perlstein, Rick   Before the Storm
• Perlstein, Rick   Nixonland
• Perlstein, Rick   The Invisible Bridge
• Sherman, William T.   Memoirs
• Stashower, Daniel   The Beautiful Cigar Girl finished 05/31/12
• Stevens, John Paul   Six Amendments
• Sullivan, Robert   Rats
• Tocqueville, Alexis   Democracy in America
• Winik, Jay   The Great Upheaval
• Wood, Gordon S.   Empire of Liberty
• Wood, Gordon S.   The Radicalism of the American Revolution

A lot of big books here.  Let the reading (re)begin.

Another 2015 Challenge

I’m still reading and enjoying mysteries.  I’m still leading the mystery discussion group at the library.  I’ve watched with interest as Vintage Mystery Bingo has developed over the past several year.  Now I’m jumping in with both feet.  And, yes, I’m going to try to get “bingos” on both Silver and Gold.

I have found that a bingo game is just the kind of nudge I need to keep reading and to read something I might otherwise not have read.  I’ve found many good books that way.

Here are the bingo cards:

Book Review: Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good by Jan Karon

I am a great enthusiast for mystery novels.  While I’m always eager to solve the puzzle, I often cringe at the gruesome details of the murder.  After binge-reading mysteries I often want something cozier.  There is nothing more cozy than the town of Mitford and the people known and loved by Father Tim Kavanagh.

This is the 12th book in the series and Father Tim has not only retired from his pastorate of Lord’s Chapel, but has completed his various assignments filling in for other absent priests.  He’s returned to his hometown in Mississippi and taken a vacation to Ireland.  Now Father Tim and his wife, Cynthia, have returned to Mitford to take up retirement seriously.

While several of the town’s older inhabitants have died, many of the regulars are still having lunch at the Grill and gossiping about friends and neighbors.  Fr. Tim is continuing to get people out of scrapes and tugging at the consciences of the town.  Is full-time ministry in his future once again?  Will Dooley and his siblings get on in the world and what about Dooley and Lacey?  Most important: does Mitford still take care of its own?

If you are looking for a cozy read before the fireplace during the upcoming holiday season, this book, and all of the Mitford series books, are what you want to read.  And yes there is Orange Marmalade Cake in this story.