Fall is here and the days are getting shorter and cooler. I've had more spare time lately which means more time to read so I've tried a few different things this time.
Miscellaneous
Different Seasons - Stephen King ($7.99/$3.99, copyright 1982, 99 pages, Paperback)
I've mentioned before that I'm not a big fan of short stories or Stephen King and yet I did pick up a copy of this book. In my defense, they are actually novellas and I really wanted to read one of them.
Interestingly, 3 out of the 4 have been made into films and I've only seen 1. I'll leave it up to you to guess which one. the 1st is Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, the story of Andy Defresne who's been imprisoned for the murder of his wife and her lover. King does a good job of depicting the struggle Andy goes through which, at times, was very brutal. Apt Pupil is the story of a teen aged boy who discovers that a Nazi war criminal has been quietly living in his home town. King actually keeps the suspense climbing in this one. The Body was the basis for the movie "Stand By Me". 4 young Oregon boys set out to find the body of a boy who - they learned - was killed by a train. Various mishaps occur that will make you laugh and cry. The Breathing Method was the least interesting to me but was closest to the work King usually wrote. It revolves around an unmarried woman who finds herself pregnant and is desperate to give birth. I won't say any more about this except that it's pretty powerful. It took me a while to get through this but I enjoyed it.
Spade and Archer - Joe Gores ($15,00/$4.19, copyright 2009, 337 pages, Trade Paperback)
I'm a big fan of Hard-boiled fiction and one of the greats was Dashiell Hammett. Several of his books were made into movies and my favorite is "The Maltese Falcon". Gores, with the permission of the Hammett estate, has written this prequel because of his fictionalized biography of the author. Spade quits the agency and goes private and we get to meet Effiie, his secretary, and Archer, who he brings on as a partner. This is actually 3 different cases that are tied together eventually. The 1st being the theft of gold off an Australian ship. The 2nd revolves around the murder of a San Francisco Banker. The 3rd involves missing money that was meant for Sun Yat Sen. It ends with Effie introducing someone familiar. Gores does a great job with Hammett's characters although I did think it dragged at times. Still, I enjoyed it.
Nonfiction
Atlas Obscura - Joshua Foer and Dylan Thuras - ($17.95/$4.82, copyright 2017, Trade Paperback)
I ordered this book because it popped up on my Facebook Newsfeed. A friend liked it so I checked it out. I thought that it was going to share the off-the-beaten-track sites that would be interesting to see in foreign cities even though I'll probably never see them. Well, turns out the first 2/3rd's of the book consists of blank paper which, I guess, you're supposed to make notes in while you're traveling. The last 1/3rd however is kind of fun. They do tell you about some of the interesting places to see in cities like Berlin (Subterranean Berlin), Buenos Aires ( Castillo de Naveira), and New York (the Edgar Allen Poe Cottage and Museum, which I've seen). It was interesting.
I just got something in the mail that I've been looking forward to reading. Maybe I'll be able to tell you about it next time.
Happy Halloween all! And …
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