@EyeBeam

EyeBeam@literature.cafe · 16 days ago

Southern Man by Greg Iles, a late addendum to the Penn Cage series.

It’s risky to infer an author’s political leanings from their fiction, but there are exceptions. This was written and set in the 2024 election season, and is bluntly critical of Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters. No, I don’t think Iles got invited to Trump’s inauguration party.

EyeBeam@literature.cafe · 23 days ago

I’ll claim 18 titles for 3 bingos: Row 1, Column B, and the main diagonal.

(This should duplicate what I submitted through the form and should be final. I cracked open a long one that I don’t expect to finish this month.)

List

1A: The 47th Samauri by Steven Hunter
1B: The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
1C: Meg by Steve Alten
1D: Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan
1E: The Housemaid by Freida McFadden
2B: The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
3A: Ireland by Frank Delaney
3B: The Ballad of Frankie Silver by Sharyn McCrumb
3C: Burn by Nevada Barr
3D: The Brethren by John Grisham
4B: The Cabinet of Curiosities by Preston and Child
4C: Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot
4D: Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews
4E: The Cardturner by Louis Sachar
5A: The Short Reign of Pippin IV by John Steinbeck
5B: The Middleman by Olen Steinhauer
5C: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
5E: (sub for it takes two): The Bone Yard by Jefferson Bass

Favorites

Saving fish from Drowning. Dead Bibi Chen’s ghost was a charming tour guide through SE Asia, patiently and omnisciently watching unheard as her living charges do everything wrong. I thought it was beautifully written and culturally informative.
Alice in Sunderland is a non-fiction comic book with a bibliography. My only complaint is that it should have had an index too. But mainly, I recommend it because it’s clearly not the sort of thing you write just to fulfill a publisher’s contract. Talbot must have strongly believed that such a book should exist, and that nobody else was going to make it. Moreover, it’s a better fit for the category than I initially expected because in the middle of the book, he writes about the cover art, thus making it integral to the content.

Both of these have re-read potential.

Classics

Three of these, I think are old enough to be considered classics. Steinbeck’s wasn’t nearly as funny as the cover blurbs said it was. Maybe political satire has a shorter half-life and it hit harder when it was fresh. While Bradbury uses some dated tropes typical of SF from that era, they don’t detract from a central plot that is still disturbingly relevant today. Tey’s was both old and British, and assumes the reader knows British history better than I do. It’s still rather informative, but harder for me to properly appreciate.

Diversity Stats

5 from series I’ve enjoyed previously
2 standalone novels from authors I’ve read other works by
11 by authors I had no prior experience with.

EyeBeam@literature.cafe · 1 month ago

I have two in progress.

Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue: English and how it got that way. Some of it more dated than I expected (The opening page mentions a sign in Yugoslavia.) Some of it I already knew (or at least had already been told, even if I’d forgotten the details). But linguistical trivia can be interesting and informative, so it’s worth the read.
Louis Sachar’s The Cardturner. This is a blatant propaganda novel. The author is a bridge player and hopes to popularize the game among younger audiences (perhaps inspired by the million weaboos who took up Go inspired by Hikaru no Go.) At least it’s a nobler cause than some of the propaganda I’ve been exposed to. The old, rich, blind bridge expert hires a kid to escort him to tournaments, look at his cards, tell him his hand and play it as he directs. The previous kid fucked up and got fired for learning enough bridge to question his decisions, but this new cardturner knows nothing. The book is intended for YA audiences and has the usual scenes of teenagers acting like teenagers, often while their parents act like toddlers, neither of which appeal to me, but they can be skimmed to get back to bridge scenes more comprehensive than I’d expected.

The Cardturner would be a great fit for the 4E (Game, Gamble, Contest) bingo square. This would also break a beautiful symmetry on my card. Not counting the central square, all 12 of my my scoring lines have an odd number of books completed. (2 lines are 1/5 completed, 8 are 3/5, and 2 are 5/5.) I don’t think that specifies a unique arrangement (even up to rotational and reflectional symmetry), but it was surprising.