I’ve long had a bias against John Steinbeck. I don’t know why, it’s just been there, like a gargoyle you thought was a good idea when you saw it at a fairgrounds and you bought it and the damn thing turned out to be of real stone, not styrofoam, like you thought, and now you’ve got this stone, heavy bastard of a thing in your living room, staring down at you while you sip a cup of tea in front of the TV and try to focus on whatever’s on.

But we were down in Monterey a weekend or two ago, sleeping overnight in the aquarium down there, and I figured, “hell, you know, why don’t I try reading Cannery Row, what harm could it do?”

So I started it. And wouldn’t you know it, like throwing out the gargoyle, it was a good idea. I really enjoyed this book. It was short, sweet, a beautiful picture of some misadventures and some great characters and scenes. And it’s all done in good humor. There’s no malicious undercurrent running through this group of miscreants it chronicles, nor is there any in the grocer who abides them. And there’s certainly none in the Doc or the girls from the whorehouse. It’s a picture of humanity that paints it in a very positive light, even when a guy heads off to get a replacement part for a broken down Model T Ford and winds up in prison or the gang meet a man all on his lonesome, take advantage of him in the politest way possible, even steal from him, sort of, leaving him with a destroyed home and surely no little anger at how he’s been misused.

And even when things get ugly, and they do, it’s not so ugly that the redeeming qualities of these people don’t shine through.

I picked this one up because it’s Joseph O’Connor, and he can do no wrong, nearly. I wouldn’t list this as one of his best books. It never hits the highs of “Inishowen” or “Star of the Sea” or “Redemption Falls,” but it’s good.

I found the story dragged a little bit, and while I get that it was the old woman, wandering across London, her memories of her time with Synge resurfacing, Joseph sparkled when telling of young Molly and her early sizzling affair with the playwright. And threatened to, when hinting at the strained relationship between Molly and her daughter, living up north, inaccessible to Molly of her own doing, it seems.

When I say ‘drag’ I mean more like the pull of the sea. The story surges forward, gently, though, and then lulls for a little bit as Molly lurches forward and hatches a plan to survive in London on what she has left. By the end I was knee deep in the sea, surrounded by it, and does Mr. O’Connor ever write well, immersing you in his characters’ lives.

So while it’s not my favorite Joseph O’Connor book, not by a long shot, it’s very worth your while spending a few afternoons or evenings with it, he’ll tell you a good story.

Tana French writes the kind of books people claim Ken Bruen has written. Only better. Frank Mackey is an excellent, scorching character, the dialogue sparkles, and the picture she paints is something you can easily get lost in for a few days or hours.

SPOILER (ISH): The only place I’ve ever seen better writing, from Bruen, is in the ending. It ended well enough, but it didn’t knock the breath out of me the way the ending of The Dramatist did. But this was a really, really great read.

I feel like George and I got off on the wrong foot. I’d been seeing his name everywhere lately and thus far hadn’t read a thing by him. So I figured I’d dip my toe in the George Saunders water. Was this the wrong story to start on? Is all of his stuff like this?

I’m genuinely curious. Again, like Big Man with a Shovel, I probably would have lapped this stuff up, were I still studying for my English degree… but I’m not. And the only lapping was frantic, trying to get to the end, just to put i down.

Again, more than willing to accept that I simply picked the wrong book to kick off my George Saunders relationship with and would love to hear opinions.

This is a radio play review of Big Man with a Shovel:

[Cue music: old-timey banjo-laden number]

Man’s voice [sounds like a smoker]: This was one good book, I tells ya.

Woman: I don’t remember you vein’ from Brooklyn, Frankie.

Man: Wells I is, Lila, I tells ya. That’s my thing, that ‘I tells ya.’

Woman:

Man: Why so silent, chum?

Woman:

Man: It’s… you don’t agree?

Woman: Well…

Man: The digressions?

Woman:

Man: The different styles?

Woman: No…

Man: The pastiche? The literary pastiche?

Woman: No.

Man: Because the story was good. I rifled through the book, the way you can on one o’ them e-readin’ devices. Just flickin’ and flickin’. It captivated me, you might say. Hell, let’s say it: it captivated me.

Woman: I’m gonna switch it up here.

[Cue Western Union telegram sound.]
INCOMINGTELEGRAMFOR: MAN
FROM: WOMAN
DIGRESSIONSFINE. STOP.
SWAPPINGNARRATIVEPOINT OF VIEWFINE, GREAT, EVEN. STOP.
MYTHICAL–DIGRESSION, NEARLYDISAPPEARING UP ITSOWN A**HOLE THEONESTICK-IN-THE–MUD. STOP.
COULDADONEWITHOUTLASTLAYER OF META–NESS ON TOP. STOP.
LIKE A CHOCOLATELAYERCAKEWITHONETOOMANYLAYERS OF CHOCOLATE ON IT. STOP.

Big Man with a Shovel was a great read. The story was a really great yarn with, yes, underpinnings of tall tales, and enough meta-ness to satisfy my old hyper-fictional biases. I think I would have enjoyed this book more had I still been working on my English degree. But if you can (and you can) breeze through those indulgent bits when the author (one of the many intruding upon the story) goes a little too into his lists and definitions it’s a really worthwhile read. Steerage Press have picked some excellent authors, and I’m excited to see what other books they pick to publish based on this one and Michael Joyce’s “Disappearance.”

I think this might be my favorite Christopher Moore book, up there with Lamb, for sure. He’s wildly inventive, like he usually is, and tells a fantastic story in which it’s very easy to get lost.

He doesn’t belabor any of the jokes too much, and each character’s been given a full, fleshy life. A really good read.

Well, thank goodness that’s over.

Pull up a chair, let me start a little further back.

I used to like Neal Stephenson. Used to anticipate his every new book like a little schoolgirl (for the record, I have not ever been a little schoolgirl, but have, at times, acted like one). Until “Quicksilver,” which, for me, was a pompous, over wrought nightmare of a read. I slogged through it because I gave him the benefit of the doubt from “Cryptonomicon” and “Snow Crash” and Zodiac." I bailed on the rest of the trilogy and waited patiently until Neal got something a little more… manageable under his fingers.

And I thought, from the reviews and book jacket copy, that REAMDE would be it.

But it really isn’t.
REAMDE, I thought, would be right in Stephenson’s wheelhouse: tech-tinged with a bit of real world intrigue and excitement, but now I’m afraid to go back and revisit Crypto, for fear it suffered from the same problems REAMDE does. I get the sense that Stephenson hates the reader (and freedom, too, while we’re at it) while plodding through this book from joyless cardboard description to the next. He had a really interesting idea, in outline, for a book, researched the crap out of it, and then put all of his research in painful, way up front detail into the book. He spends far too long on certain subjects, stroking them and milking it until it gets to the point where you want to look away, to give him a bit of privacy, while he finishes whatever it is he’s doing (which he obviously loves – but is probably something best done in private). The dialogue makes me feel bad for Neal, because if this is how the characters talk in his head he must be driven almost completely insane by their stilted, awkward drivel. The dialogue, like crawling over shards of glass, makes the characters’ interactions a bit far-fetched and unbelievable. When he matches them up you feel much the same emotion you feel when putting together a children’s 12 piece puzzle: it’s not shocking and you don’t feel like there’s much of an accomplishment having done so. But here’s the rub: the children’s 12 piece puzzle you just put together you also did with the aid of a jigsaw, and none of the pieces were from the same puzzle, really, so you just cut them to shape and shoved them all together, leaving behind a messy, incoherent picture, in the end.