Well, it's a New Year and we have a new President. We'll see how that goes. I haven't been Babysitting my Granddaughter much but I did get some time in. I thought that I'd have more time to read but between exercising my leg and trouble with my car, I didn't get too far. This month's selections are a little different because one is the basis for a current movie and the other is something that popped up in my Facebook Newsfeed that piqued my interest. Of course, you can't expect to find something your looking for at a Library Sale so I ordered them from a couple of online Discount Book Sites that I have bookmarked.
Miscellaneous
Live By Night - Dennis Lehane ($16.99/$4.30, copyright 2012, 402 pages, Trade Paperback)
I saw that Ben Affleck made this into a movie and I thought that I'd look it up. Lehane has been one of my favorite authors for years. Here he takes Joe Coughlin, who was a minor character in Lehane's previous book "The Given Day" (which was pretty good) and gives him a new life. He is the youngest son of a Boston Police Captain who turns his back on a life of fighting crime to become a criminal himself. The book reads like a collection of events in a gangster's life during the late '20's Jazz Age including bootlegging, violence, and racism. Lehane has an amazing ability to adapt his tone to fit the era of which he writes and he's tried to create an homage to the Bogart anti-hero stereotype - you know, the good guy gone bad. But , in my opinion, there's no reasoning behind what Coughlin does and that ruined the story for me. It was OK.
The Autobiography of Jack The Ripper - James Carnac (?/$4.76, copyright 2012, 277 pages, Hard Cover)
This is the alleged manuscript of the “real” Jack the Ripper. Written in the 1920's by a man calling himself James Carnac, it was "discovered" recently in a lot of memorabilia purchased by a vintage toy dealer (Alan Hicken) and it's divided into 3 parts. The first deals with his childhood, which was quite brutal; the second concerns the murders in Whitechapel; and the third occurs decades later, with Carnac detailing an odd circumstance he has found himself in with his landlady. I've read a lot about Jack over the years and I found this book fascinating. I don't actually believe that it's real (considering that there's a Paul Begg, freelance writer, who wrote the Introduction) but there is a lot of information in the manuscript that would likely only be known by the killer. I don't think we'll ever know the truth. I enjoyed it.
Well, that's it for this month. Up next, February.
I'm hoping we can get through without too much angst, given the "State of the Union".
Until then ....
Keep reading.
Miscellaneous
I saw that Ben Affleck made this into a movie and I thought that I'd look it up. Lehane has been one of my favorite authors for years. Here he takes Joe Coughlin, who was a minor character in Lehane's previous book "The Given Day" (which was pretty good) and gives him a new life. He is the youngest son of a Boston Police Captain who turns his back on a life of fighting crime to become a criminal himself. The book reads like a collection of events in a gangster's life during the late '20's Jazz Age including bootlegging, violence, and racism. Lehane has an amazing ability to adapt his tone to fit the era of which he writes and he's tried to create an homage to the Bogart anti-hero stereotype - you know, the good guy gone bad. But , in my opinion, there's no reasoning behind what Coughlin does and that ruined the story for me. It was OK.
The Autobiography of Jack The Ripper - James Carnac (?/$4.76, copyright 2012, 277 pages, Hard Cover)
This is the alleged manuscript of the “real” Jack the Ripper. Written in the 1920's by a man calling himself James Carnac, it was "discovered" recently in a lot of memorabilia purchased by a vintage toy dealer (Alan Hicken) and it's divided into 3 parts. The first deals with his childhood, which was quite brutal; the second concerns the murders in Whitechapel; and the third occurs decades later, with Carnac detailing an odd circumstance he has found himself in with his landlady. I've read a lot about Jack over the years and I found this book fascinating. I don't actually believe that it's real (considering that there's a Paul Begg, freelance writer, who wrote the Introduction) but there is a lot of information in the manuscript that would likely only be known by the killer. I don't think we'll ever know the truth. I enjoyed it.
Well, that's it for this month. Up next, February.
I'm hoping we can get through without too much angst, given the "State of the Union".
Until then ....
Keep reading.
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