Remains Silent

Remains Silent, Michael Baden and Linda Kenney, 2005, Knopf, Genre: Mystery. 228 pages. Finished 8/24/13.

LesOpinion: This is the debut novel by real life husband/medical examiner and wife/attorney, Baden and Kenney. Guess who the main characters are? If you guessed a medical examiner and an attorney who fall in love, you win our prize!

Despite its leaky plot and gratuitous suspense, Remains Silent was a quick read and a pleasant way to pass a day on the porch.

Blaze

Blaze, Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King), 2007, Scribner, Genre: Suspense. Also includes short story, "Memory," by Stephen King. 285 pages. Finished 8/23/13.

LesOpinion: When he writes books like this, Stephen King can be one of my favorite popular authors. Blaze is a melancholy, suspenseful book that will have you pulling for its antihero--a giant, mentally disabled man (a nod to Of Mice and Men) who carries out a crime-of-the-century kidnapping.

Blaze was written in the '70's during King's "Richard Bachman" period, but the master recently dusted it off, re-worked it, and published it (with an entertaining forward) in 2007. If you're looking for a good book to read as the summer fades away, head on down to the library and pick up Blaze.

Thinner, or How Stephen King Snuck Up on Me

Thinner, Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King), 1984, New American Library, Genre: Horror. 309 pages. Finished 8/22/13.

LesOpinion: In the early '70's, when Stephen King was just starting out, he wrote so many books that his editor suggested that he write some of them under a pen name so he wouldn't freak out the publishing world (never mind that he was launching a career wherein he would freak the rest of us out for the next 40 years). So King invented "Richard Bachman." "Richard" wrote Thinner just before and on the same typewriter as King wrote Carrie.

I've long been dreading my arrival in the K section of the S. White Dickinson, because it means delving into the wacky world of Stephen King--not because he's a terrible writer, but because I'm not a fan of horror. So imagine my surprise when King jumped off the shelf and scared me just as I got into the B's.

Thinner is Horror Lite (seriously, it has a Gypsy curse at its core), and it isn't particularly well-written. The plot drags, and every single character is so unsympathetic that I found myself  hoping they would all die. The good news? I wasn't afraid to turn out the lights.

Two by Jane Austen, or, The End of the A's

Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen, Originally published in 1811; this edition gave no publication date, Nelson Doubleday. Genre: Fiction. 276 pages. Finished 8/8/13.

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, Originally published in 1813; this edition published in 1991, Everyman's Library/Knopf. Genre: Fiction. 368 pages. Finished 8/20/13.

LesOpinion: Remember how I made it through to a Bachelor's degree in English literature from a pretty good university without having ever read Moby Dick? It is now time to confess that I also made it through without having ever read either of these two seminal Austens (I get dispensation for having read--and hated--Northanger Abbey).

In an uncharacteristic bout of cockeyed optimism, I believed at the outset of the Library Quest that I'd spend my days reading foundation works like these--sharpening my brain, filling the gaps in my reading repertoire and generally getting more literate as time went by. Of course, I was wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. Instead of great works by great authors, I've been hammered with pablum, puke, and pandering. These Austens are the first classic literature I've come across in nearly 100 books (these are numbers 98 and 99, respectively). I may as well stop reading and start keeping up with the Kardashians for all the good this Quest is doing my brain.

Do yourself a favor, Gentle Reader, and go re-visit your Austens. Never read them and don't want to read both? Read Pride and Prejudice. Its humor is more developed and its social critique more scathing. The Kardashians have nothing on these 19th-century social climbing, materialistic manipulators.

Cave Lady Love: Four by Jean M. Auel

The Valley of the Horses, Jean M. Auel, 1982, Crown Publishers. Genre: Fiction. 502 pages. Finished 4/19/13.

The Mammoth Hunters, Jean M. Auel, 1985, Crown Publishers. Genre: Fiction. 645 pages. Finished 5/20/13.

Shelters of Stone, Jean M. Auel, 2002, Crown Publishers. Genre: Fiction. 749 pages. Finished 6/26/13/13.

The Land of Painted Caves, Jean M. Auel, 2011, Crown Publishers. Genre: Fiction. 757 pages. Finished 7/31/13.

LesOpinion: Have you ever disliked a book but liked its author? Jean M. Auel's iconic fiction/fantasy Earth's Children series is the long (and, Gentle Reader, I do mean long) story of Cro-Magnon lady, Ayla, and the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons she meets in the course of her travels. On the positive side, the stories have cliffhanging adventure, hot cave man sex, and interesting, research-based imaginings of Stone Age life. On the negative side, the books are long. They are long, in part, because they are repetitive (the first and third books in the series are not at S. White Dickinson Library or I'd still be reading). They are repetitive, in part, because the author cares that you understand all elements of the saga, even if you haven't had the pleasure of wasting months of your life reading the previous books. Because Jean M. Auel cares about your reading pleasure, she spends at least 1/3 of each book bringing you up to speed on the parts you might have missed. Bless her heart.

But here's why I really want to like Jean M. Auel: She's us. She is this chubby lady with nerdy glasses who had an idea and wrote a book. She then just kept on writing. Sure, she wrote about cave people. But she busted her butt to learn as much as she could about them, traveling to archaeological sites, meeting with pre-eminent researchers, and reading everything she could get her hands on. Her books aren't great art, but they are interesting just in their conception.

If you have a couple of years to kill and want to try something different, you can do worse than picking up a Jean M. Auel book. As for me, I'm ready to move on.