TBR Double Dare with Cute Bunnies

Press play to hear about The TBR Double Dare and to see two cute bunnies.

Tuesdays with Dorothy

Dorothy Parker's pet cat, sitting on her bed.

"A list of authors who have made themselves most beloved and therefore, most comfortable financially, shows that it is our national joy to mistake for the first-rate, the fecund rate."

The Locked Room by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

The bells of St. Maria struck two

as she came out from the subway

station on Woomar Yxkullsgatan.

Opening to

The Locked Room

by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

Translated from the Swedish by

Paul Britten Austen

WARNING:  REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.


The Locked Room presents a classic murder mystery scenario--a victim found inside a room securely locked from the inside.  Classic Agatha Christie territory.  To help ease Inspector Martin Beck, who has recovered from the gunshot wound that nearly killed him in the previous book, back into his job as chief inspector, the detectives he works with have saved this special case for him.  This case is one a detective usually only gets a chance to read about.

Inspector Beck is not the sort of man who takes his work lightly, but his the case piques his curiosity so he takes it out of an honest desire to see police work done correctly and a desire to solve a classic murder.  He finds that before he can begin true detective work, he must undo the shoddy job the local officers did before the case fell on his desk.  For example, how is it the officers on the scene managed to convince the coroner the victim was a suicide by gunshot to the heart when no weapon was found inside the locked room?

While Detective Beck works his case, another group of detectives is investigating a recent string of bank robberies which have left one bystander dead.  Through this group of inept detectives Ms. Sjowall and Mr. Wahloo present a biting critique of the Swedish police force of their day.  These detectives are Keystone Cops.  In one botched attempt to capture the bank robbers they break into a fifth floor apartment by charging full force into an unlocked front door which swings open at just the right moment resulting in the lead detective falling out an open window. He survives by hanging onto the ledge, legs flailing, while he waits for rescue.

Sjowall and Wahloo have been far from light-handed in their criticism of Sweden's police force up to now, but in The Locked Room they take their gloves off.  Every opportunity to criticize the Swedish police is seized and exploited until the book begins to turn polemic.  By the end of the novel, I began to feel sorry for the cops.  Things couldn't possibly be as bad as the authors portray.  Could they?

The Locked Room presents two alternatives for the Swedish police force: a highly competent dedicated  detective determined to find the guilty party even if it costs him career advancement and a group of uneducated, slipshod, ruffians unable to function in anything but a comically incompetent fashion.  At the top of the police force, a group of careerist politicians more concerned about Sweden's image than the lives of the country's citizens consistently fail to correct this situation.  In a rather brilliant plot twist Martin Beck solves his case but fails to get the evidence needed to convict the killer due to police incompetence while the Keystone Cops investigating the bank robbery successfully point the finger at the wrong man who just happens to be the killer in Beck's case.  The killer ends up serving a life sentence for a murder he didn't commit.

That's justice in Sweden circa 1973.

Here's hoping things have improved since then.

Sunday Salon: Confessions of a BBAW Judge.

Dakota has to wear an itch-preventing cone

for another week.  The cone only makes
her cuter.

Earlier this year, I was a judge for the Book Blogger Appreciation Week awards.  Years ago, I was nominated for the Best LGBT Blog but didn't win.  The blog that won is at least as good as Ready When You Are, C.B. and it's much more focused on LGBT issues.  (There still is no category for cutest pet.  We'd win that one. See picture at left.)

I know the BBAW awards are controversial year in and year out, and I know why.  But seen in the positive light they're meant to be seen in, I have no problem with them.  I think they're fun.  I know a lot of people put a lot of effort into the BBAW Awards each year.  Since I appreciate this effort, I decided to give a little back by becoming a  volunteer judge.  Why not? It's not like I have a conflict of interest.

I reviewed 11 blogs for the category I was assigned.  I was surprised to find that being a judge made me a much more critical reader--I began to notice things I would typically overlook in my day-to-day blog reading.   I carefully read all five individual posts that each of the eleven bloggers submitted.  I even took notes.  I looked over the rest of each blog, too; I was supposed to include overall layout design in my scoring and to determine if the blog really published enough relevant material to be considered a ________ blog.  It took more time than I thought it would.  I had to read outside of my "comfort zone."

This year the BBAW volunteer judges did the first round of scoring, so between us we read all of the nominated blogs no matter how many actual nominations they received.  Frankly, I think some of you out there were nominating your friends.  As I vainly tell my seventh graders every year when we have student council elections, it's not supposed to be a popularity contest.  I'm very pleased to say that the blog I thought was the best of the eleven ended up winning the award.  There's something satisfying about correctly picking the winner.  The other ten ranged from very good to needs to breath a little more before we drink it.

By doing close reads of eleven blogs I'd never read before, I noticed enough common issues to make some conclusions and offer a few suggestions for anyone starting a book blog.  I've waited until now to publish them because I don't want my suggestions connected with any one blog in particular.  I am just one reader who happened to be a BBAW judge this year--these are some suggestions I'd like to make.  I admit that some of them even apply to me and I promise to try to follow my own advice.

1.)  No book blogger should be allowed to use the word 'awesome.'  There needs to be a law against it; it's so over used.    I hereby pledge never to  use the A-word ever again.  Enough.

2.)  SHOW NOT TELL!!!!

3.)  Do not try to write like you talk.  Write like you write.  People who read your blog are reading, not listening.  'Um' should never be used as a comma, and 'well' really isn't a very good way to start a sentence.  Unless you are a teenager, sounding like a teenager does not equal a conversational tone.

4.)  "A lot" is two words. 

5.)  The longer I blog the more apparent it becomes that simple layout designs with fairly neutral colors are the norm for a reason.  Elegance in design should always be your goal.  Keep it simple.  Keep it neat.

6.)  If you want to be considered a serious blogger, writing your own plot summary is required.  If your readers want to read Good Reads summaries, they probably will.  You must write your own even if you think you're not very good at it.  Practice may not always make perfect, but it always brings improvement.

7.)  No one likes small print. That's why they call it small print.

I hope that  BBAW lives to give awards again another year.  If they ask for volunteer judges once again, I'll probably do it, if they'll have me.  

You have been warned.

Friday Picture Reading: The Home Demonstration Club

Pearl Cooper, secretary of the home demonstration club reading.

The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester

Explosion!

Opening to

The Demolished Man

by Alfred Bester

The Demolished Man started off well.   In the future murder will become almost impossible to commit because the latent sensory skills we all possess will be developed to such a high level that police detectives will be able to read the minds of those under investigation even before they have the chance to commit their crimes.  How would a killer reach his intended victim if he has to pass a body guard who can read minds?

This is what makes the science fiction/police procedural The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester such entertaining reading over 50 years after its first publication.  Mr. Bester creates a world where premeditated murder is impossible, finds a way for one to be committed and then sends his detective after the killer.

Everything about The Demolished Man works except for one thing.  The characters are well drawn, the crime is well plotted, the investigation is believable and interesting, the dialogue snappily delivers what detective story readers like in dialogue and the science fiction elements offer food for thought as they entertain the reader.  The book would make a perfect novella.  Unfortunately, it's a novel.  Things go on too long, events spin out of control, telepathy becomes more ridiculous the longer you look at it, and everything breaks down by the book's end which comes about 75 pages after this reader lost interest.

Tuesdays with Dorothy

"Outspoken by whom?"


Dorothy Parker at a party in reply to someone referring to the host as "outspoken."  


Did she really say this?  See the article at Quote Investigator.

Rough Trade by Dominique Manotti

There's a girl sitting naked on the

edge of a vast white bed in the middle

of a room, with mirrors all around.

Opening to Rough Trade

by Dominique Manottie

Translated from the French by

Margaret Crosland and Elfrenda Powell

The Paris police force as portrayed by Dominique Manotti in her debut novel Rough Trade is the most corrupt force I've encountered in a lifetime of detective novels including James Ellroy's hard-hitting early Los Angelos novels.   Need to questions a prostitute--be sure to make free use of her skills first.  Someone refusing to give you the information you want-- beat them until they do.  If you're a Paris police detective, your authority is your ticket to get whatever you want from anyone who comes into contact with the law, especially anyone in the country illegally.  

Even Inspector Daquin, our nominative hero, is beneath contempt as far as I'm concerned.  His beautiful young lover, a Turkish man in the country illegally, is only willing to be with him because Daquin has evidence that could get him deported.  As long as Inspector Daquin keeps the evidence to himself, Soleiman remains his "willing" lover.

While the detectives are not nice people, the criminals in Rough Trade are worse yet.  Ms. Manotti's novel deals with some of the major political hot-button issues of the 1980's:  exploitation of illegal immigrant labor, international prostitution rings, the growing international heroin trade, and the very powerful men who make them all possible as the profit from them.

Rough Trade's plot concerns the murder of a child prostitute who died shortly after an encounter in a sophisticated and secretive establishment where powerful business men can go to have themselves filmed while having sex.   (Home video was a relatively novel technology in the early 1980's.)   The investigation takes Inspector Daquin through the underworld of Paris's sex trade, drug abuse and human trafficking.  We don't meet anyone we can really like with the exception of Inspector Daquin's unwilling lover Solieman who is working to bring legal recognition to the Turkish men who, while in the country illegally, make the manufacture of clothing possible through the cheap labor they provide the Paris rag trade.  

Rough Trade is a challenging novel.  The plot takes the reader all over the place and the characters, while true to their world, are not likeable.  They are all degrees of bad.  But Inspector Daquin does find a level of redemption in the end, I think, through his dedication to find the killer of this one girl.  His motives have much more to do with career than with altruism, and he never does make the connection between what happend to her and what he is doing to Solieman, but even dedication to a career is dedication to something, and a bit of good comes out it all in the end.  That's something, I guess.  

I've got two more Dominique Manotti novels in my TBR pile.  Will I read more?  Probably.  But I'm going to wait a while.  I'm not the only reviewer to compare her to James Ellroy's early work.  The comparison is apt. Both are terrific writers, both bring the underworlds they portray to vivid life, and both can leave a disquieting aftertaste.  

Sunday Salon: Oh, the days dwindle down...

The owner of The Bookery,

in Placerville, CA pictured 

here with the store dog, 

Abbey.

Year-in-review articles should not begin until the day after Thanksgiving if you ask me.  So, I'm going to try to avoid making this a year-in-review article.  Consider it a year-not-quite-over article.

I started 2011 with two reading projects in mind: read all of Lawrence Sterne's 18th century classic comedy The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, one part a month for ten months and read each of the ten books in The Story a Crime series by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.  The year's almost up.  I should have finished both projects in October.  Neither one is done.

I'm on part seven of Tristram Shandy and book eight of the Sjowall/Wahloo books.  I can certainly finish both before the end of 2011, in between doses of 1Q84, but I need to get moving.

Fortunately, most school districts in California, mine included, have arranged their schedules to give everyone the week of Thanksgiving off.  So I have seven free days ahead of me and no other ambition than to spend as much time as I can stand reading novels.

The dining room at the Sonoma Mission Inn.  Just like
 Mom's used to be.

C.J. and I will be joining his family for dinner on Thanksgiving this year at the Sonoma Mission Inn.  They like to eat out on Thanksgiving.  Next year, I'm hoping for a chance to cook up a feast once again, including at least a 20 pound turkey with a hazelnut prosciutto crust.  No offense intended, but my turkey is better than your.  It's even better than the turkey at the Sonoma Mission Inn which is delicious.  But this year I will have plenty of time to read.

Except that so far C.J. and I keep coming up with little day trips we want to do.  Yesterday, we headed up to Placerville in the Sierra Foothills.  We're looking at possible retirement locations, even though we're at least 15 years away from retirement,  and the area around Placerville looks very promising.  Placerville itself is a fun little town-- a little more touristy than homey, but we had a great time checking out the shops and seeing the sights.  They have one of the better second hand books stores I've been in lately called The Bookery.  People can take their dogs inside most of the shops in Placerville, a big plus as far as C.J. and I are concerned.  The Bookery has a shop dog named Abbey who roams around the store freely, saying hello to everyone.  If you live in Northern California and are free next Saturday the town is having their annual tree lighting celebration.

The patio at the Ledgewood Winery

 in Suisun Valley, CA.

Today, if it doesn't rain all day, we may go to the local wineries in Suisun Valley.  They're just a 15 minute drive away, Placerville is about 90 minutes, so I may still have lots of reading time, but if you've ever been wine-tasting you know how it can end up taking much longer than you had intended.  We don't have the rest of the week planned yet so there's a good chance I'll finish some of my scheduled reading.

Will I finish Tristram Sandy, 1Q84 and The Story of a Crime before year's end?

You'll just have to wait for my year-in-review post.




If you haven't sign-up for The TBR Double Dare yet, what are you waiting for?  You can sign-up here.  Come on, don't be chicken.  I double dare, ya.

Dakota's Favorites: Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace

Detective Minami! Detective Minami! Detective Minami!

Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace is not like any book I have read before. When you have read as many books from as eclectic an assortment of genres as I have, it's very rare to find an author do something you've never seen before. David Peace's detective story Tokyo Year Zero stretches the hard-boiled detective genre into uncharted territory and gets under the reader's skin like no other book I've ever read.

The novel's setting, post ward Japan, is not a new one but it is a rarely visited one. This type of post war setting has been explored before, done wonderfully well in Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir series and in Joseph Kanon's The Good German, but Tokyo Year Zero sets the mystery in post war Japan instead of post war Germany. While what happened in Germany is familiar territory for American readers, what happened in Japan remains largely a mystery. (It's difficult to imagine a Japanese version of The Reader becoming a best seller with a movie version playing in American multiplexes.)

Tokyo Year Zero provides an antidote to this situation. The mystery compels the reader, as with all good detective stories, but the setting also compels. Tokyo Year Zero is able to teach a great deal of history without teaching history--as the book progresses we learn all we need to know about life in post war Japan under occupation, and about life in war time Japan under military rule, because, like most detective novels set after a war, the search for answers leads back to what happened during the war.

There is a good murder mystery here, based on a real life serial killer who murdered many women during and after World War II. As a detective story, Tokyo Year Zero is a solid, successful thriller. But that's not what makes Tokyo Year Zero stand out as a novel that stretches the genre, as a novel that brings something completely new to readers. What's new is the way David Peace gets so fully under the reader's skin.

Tokyo Year Zero is set after World War II during a time when all of Japan was under massive re-construction. It's easy to see the city as one giant building site, filled with endless hammering. It's one thing to say so, but it's another to make that hammering a constant presence in the reader's experience as it is in the character's lives. Mr. Peace does this by continually littering the scenes in his novel with the Ton-ton of the hammers. Sometimes the hammering is worse than it is at others. The results can read like a prose poem:

I take a different route back up to Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters. Ton-ton. The air is more humid than ever. Ton-ton. The hammering louder than ever. Ton-ton. I want to wash my face. Ton-ton. I want to wash my hands. Ton-ton. I step inside the Hibiya Public Hall. Ton-ton. I wish I hadn't. Ton-ton. It is the inaugural convention of the Congress of Industrial Unions. Ton-ton. The now-shabby lobby of this once-grand hall is filled with counter-intelligence agents and military policemen, foreign journalists and Japanese snitches, their paperclips in their lapels and an extra ration of cigarettes. Ton-ton. Young men selling Akahata. Ton-ton. Young men whistling "The red Flag'. Ton-ton. I want to wash my face. Ton-ton. I want to wash my hands. Ton-ton. I walk through the Sinchu Gun armbands and the press-corps badges. Ton-ton. The auditorium is dark and airless, packed with men standing and sweating, either staring or shouting at the large stage. Ton-ton.....The speeches begin. Ton-ton.

Very soon the hammering becomes too much to bear, and the reader is forced to tune it out, to just try to skip over it or ignore it. But it's not easy to do; it never lets up for long. It began to drive me so crazy that I could not help but wonder why Mr. Peace included it. Why deliberately try to drive your readers nuts? Tokyo Year Zero is more than a detective story. It is the story of one man's attempt to remain sane in a world that appears to be actively trying to drive him mad. The first person present tense narration combined with the constant repetition of hammering, other construction noise, even the narrator's own repeated thoughts, give Tokyo Year Zero a sense of immediacy unlike any I've ever encountered before. By the end of the book I had the sense that I was sharing Detective Minami's journey into madness.

It's not a place I want to go, but Tokyo Year Zero is a novel that takes the reader places. Isn't that what a good novel is supposed to do?

Tokyo Year Zero is the first of three novels. Part two, Occupied City, is due out this August. If the publishers would like to send me an Advanced Review Copy, I'd be happy to read it. (Wink-wink.)

For further reading, Wendy has a very good review up at Musing of a Bookish Kitty.

Why We Love Haruki, #2

"Some things can't be solved just by going wild every now and then."


"You're absolutely right."


"You are not doing anything that will destroy you?" the dowager said.  "Nothing at all?  You're sure of that, are you?"


"Yes, I"m sure," Aomame said.  She's right.  I'm not doing anything that is going to destroy me.  Still.  There is something quiet left behind.  Like sediment in a bottle of wine.

1Q84 page 192.  Italics are the author's.

I'm taking this book very slowly.  I limit myself to four chapters a day maximum and don't read it every day.  Although it's a very long book, I want to make it last.  My full review probably won't see the light of day until mid-December.

Tuesdays with Dorothy

"There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it."

Bunny Lake is Missing by Evelyn Piper

This time when Blanche came in 

the woman was alone in her

 vegetable store.

Opening to 

Bunny Lake is Missing

by Evelyn Piper

You pick your three-year-old daughter up from her first day of pre-school.  You wait with all of the other mothers, none of whom you know since you are new in town and on your own, as they watch their children come down the stairway.  You wait.  And wait.  But your daughter does not appear.

You look for her, for her teacher, but you can't find either.  You panic when the school administration tells you they have no record of your daughter even registering for pre-school let alone attending the first day.  The police show up, and you beg them to start searching for your daughter, but they seem hesitant.  Soon you understand that everyone believes you don't even have a daughter at all.

Blanche Lake faces a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances in Evelyn Piper's novel Bunny Lake is Missing.  She has just moved to New York City, not all of her belongings have arrived so she has no pictures of her daughter to show the police officers who doubt she exists.  She has kept a low profile because she is not married to her daughter's father so no one at the office where she works even knows she has a child.  One thing after another that might help her prove her child exists, fails to materialize for some reason, leaving Blanche on her own, searching the city streets throughout the novel in a Kafkaesque nightmare.

I've written before about the pleasure of the suspense in classic pulp fiction thrillers like Bunny Lake is Missing.  The situation is basic, a mother searches for the daughter only she believes is real.  We're spared the gory details that have become so common in today's crime thrillers.  Ms. Piper can generate suspense to spare  from this simple situation without invoking the latest in ritualistic serial murderers.  

It's interesting to me to find that Bunny Lake is Missing has been reprinted by The Feminist Press because it's difficult to see how this novel is feminist at all.  Blanche appears to be undergoing a punishment for having a child out of wedlock.  Her biggest on-going fear is that someone will discover her daughter is illegitimate.  The entire situation she finds herself in is the result of her affair with a married man.  Her mother does not support her.  The good friend she stayed with, practically in hiding, while she was pregnant and during the first few years of Bunny's life, offered to adopt the child once she married because it was the only way Bunny could have a normal life.  That Blanche insisted on raising Bunny herself seems to have led to her kidnapping.

I think a clue to what the reader is supposed to take away and to what makes this a feminist novel can be found in the title.  A real or imagined child is missing.  Her mother has to prove she exists in order to find her.  In a larger sense, Bunny is missing from the realm of acceptable children.  Her mother must prove she has a right to legitimately exists--something the other mothers at the day care center do not have to do.  Bunny's illegitamacy and the way this keeps her outside of the realm of 'normal' children is tied up in her abduction and in her mother's search for her.  By the end of the novel finding Bunny Lake, proving she exists, will prove she has a right to exists as well.

There really is much more to these pulp fiction stories than meets first meets the eye.

Otto Preminger directed a decent movie based on Bunny Lake is Missing.  He transplanted the action to London and cleaned up the morality of Blanche Lake's life as well, but the central problem of proving her child exists before anyone will help her find Bunny remains.  The trailer featuring Mr. Preminger himself, is below.

Sunday Salon: 48, etc.

Today is my birthday.  Last night, C.J. and I went out for a fancyish dinner with a good bottle of wine.  Afterwards, we stopped in at Half Price Books and I picked up a few titles.

I've nothing profound to say about turning 48.  So far it feels a lot like 47.

This week my class finished reading The Misfits by James Howe.  The Misfits has been a part of the core curriculum at the school where I  now work for several years.  It's a wonderful little book about a group of friends who start a campaign to end name-calling at their small-town middle school.  While the book deals with serious issues, it maintains a humorous tone throughout and has happy endings for everyone.  It also has an openly gay character, Joe, who is completely comfortable with himself, out to everyone, free of all the psycho-drama and self-doubt that would have characterized the book if it had been written in 1976 when I was in middle school.

Not one parent complained.  Each of my two classes had a single incident of inappropriate giggling about the gay character which I squelched with a few comments about immature behavior.  Most students agree that Joe Bunch is the best character in the book, certainly the funniest.  A few of them are even reading the sequel about him, Totally Joe.

The high school I went to in a suburban California town much like the one where I now teach had one book in the library with gay characters in it.  One of characters died in a car wreck before the book ended.  I "stole" it rather than risk anyone discovering I had checked it out.  I returned it later.

Now I'm happily and legally married.  To a man.  And teaching a book with an openly gay character to my 7th graders.  A lot can happen in 48 years.

"The world only spins forward.  We will be citizens.  The time has come."  Angels in America by Tony Kushner.

Friday Picture Reading - Literary Overeating

The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin by Joe McGinnis

I moved in next door to Sarah

Palin today.

Opening to

The Rogue: Searching for

 the Real Sarah Palin

by Joe McGinnis

The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin by Joe McGinnis is a good book.

Surprise!

Mr. McGinnis frames his account of Sarah Palin's rise to fame with his own brush with infamy, the time he spent living in the house next door to the Palins  in Wasilla, Alaska.  You probably heard something about it.

I'm going to leave politics aside as much as I can.  This will not be easy for me or for anyone reading this review.  Sarah Palin is someone everyone has an opinion about.  Many people's opinion of her will include an opinion of Mr. McGinniss as well.  Some readers may have already decided what they're going to say in the comments.  In fact, some may already be in the comments saying what they're going to say instead of reading the rest of this review.  

I'll take my chances.

When I say that The Rogue is a good book I mean that it's entertaining, highly readable, a bit suspenseful, and a bit informative.  If you're looking for either a song of praise or a vicious hit piece, you'll have to look elsewhere.  I found The Rouge to be neither.  But, while I enjoyed the book, I didn't learn much about Sarah Palin from it.  I suspect this is where I need to confess that I probably know far too much about Sarah Palin already.  I think many of us do.  None of the big events Mr. McGinniss covers--troopergate, Trig's unusual birth, the attacks on the Wasilla librarian-- were news to me.  I probably read too many blogs.  There were a few details here and there, especailly in Mr. McGinniss's account of the time he spent in Wasilla, that I didn't know, but I was expecting more.  Certainly more about the McCain/Palin presidential campaign.

By the end of the book, those who come off the worst are the reporters in the mainstream media whom Ms. Palin so frequently attacks as "lamestream."  Mr. McGinniss accuses them of failing to investigate Ms. Palin's claims adequately so as not to spoil the gravy train they were all riding.  Had they made even the slightest effort to investigate, things might have come to light that would have stopped her rise to fame and fortune, a rise the mainstream media was profiting from. 

A rise that looks like it just might be over.

Tuesdays with Dorothy

"Listen, I can't even get my dog to stay down. Do I look like someone who could overthrow the government?"


Under interrogation by the F.B.I.

Act of Passion by Simenon

Your Honour: 

I should like one man, just one, 

to understand me.  And I would 

like that man to be you.

Opening to 

Act of Passion 

by Georges Simenon

Translated from the French by

Louise Varese

From the very first page, we know who the killer is; we know that he'll be captured, found guilty and sentenced to prison; but we don't know who his victim is.

Georges Simenon's novel Acts of Passion takes the form of a long letter, written by a killer to the judge who sentenced him.  The killer wants to explain why he did what he did; he wants someone to understand his actions, to see him as reasonable in spite of it all.  The judge knows who he killed, of course, so there's no reason for him to mention the murder until he has to.  This is what gives Act of Passion its narrative tension, a tension the reader feels almost at once.

The killer begins with the first days of his marriage.  Did he kill his wife?  It seems like a good marriage, though there are hints of trouble to come.  A mother-in-law who is around much too often.  Does he kill her?  After several years together, the killer takes a much younger mistress.  Will she be his victim?  He manages to introduce the young woman to his wife and to convince his wife that she is alone in the world and in need of help.  His wife agrees to let the girl live in their spare bedroom.

This certainly can't end well.

In his introduction Roger Ebert explains that Simenon deliberately wrote without style; that whenever he encountered a particularly literary turn of phrase in his writing, Simenon edited it out.  The result is some of the most spare writing you'll find, even in a crime novel.  I imagine that while writing Acts of Passion whenever Simenon came across a passage that built up suspense he took it away as well.  He never tries to make this novel a page turner.  His killer is not hiding the truth from the reader just to keep the reader reading.  He's telling his story to the judge, trying to explain his actions, not to justify them but to make them understandable.  He's not trying to tell a suspenseful yarn.  But he does.

Acts of Passion has obvious links to Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.  Both deal with a man who comes to kill and is then haunted by the act.  If you were to say that Simenon is not in Dostoevsky's league, I would agree of course, but I think you may be structuring the comparison incorrectly.  It's not that he's in a different league, it's that he's playing a different game in the first place.  Dostoevsky's wonderful novel is concerned with higher philosophical issues.  The crime in Simenon's novel is based on passion alone.  The killer cannot bring the judge or the reader to understand his actions in the end because we have not shared his passion.  Dostoevsky's hero becomes mad as his story progresses.  Simenon's killer is mad from the outset.  That he seeks understanding is a sign of his own madness.  He's similar to the narrator of Edgar Allen Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" who keeps insisting he is not mad right up until the end.

All of this makes Act of Passion an anti-thriller thriller.  Without using any of the typical tropes one finds in thrillers, without overtly forcing suspense on the narrative, Simenon keeps the reader turning pages caught up in the story in spite of it all.

Sunday Salon: Registration for the TBR Double Dare is Open

Registration for the TBR Double Dare is open.

Last year, many of you joined me for The TBR Dare.  I challenged you to read only books from your To-Be-Read stack for the first three months of the year.  It turned out to be much more fun than I thought it would.  Many of us had some wonderful stuff  hiding in our TBR stacks some of it for years.

A few people even asked me if I'd be hosting The TBR Dare again in 2012.  The answer is no.  I'm upping the ante, of course, in an attempt to get those of you who were a bit shy about taking the dare last year.  This time I am double daring you.  Take the TBR Double Dare.

Complete rules and sign-ups can be found at the link above or by clicking on The TBR Double Dare page at the top of this site.  Basically, if you are brave enough to take the double dare, you agree to read only books you currently own as of January 1, 2012 until Arpil 1.  The TBR Double Dare ends on April Fool's Day, which just seems fitting to me.  You can modify the rules however you like to suit your own needs or whims.

And if you are one of the many people who have sworn off reading challenges, have no fear.  This is not a reading challenge. It's a dare.  There is a difference.  It's too subtle for me to explain, but you know what I mean.

You have until midnight December 31, 2011 to sign up, but the first 20 people to join in will get free t-shirts. Not really, but that would be pretty cool.

It's not a book buying ban.  You can buy as many books as you want to during The TBR Double Dare, you just can't read them until after the dare is over.  Of course, you know most of them were all going to sit in your TBR stack for at least three or four months before you got around to reading them anyway.

So don't miss out on the fun.  Join The TBR Double Dare.  Click here to for more information and to sign-up.

Dakota's Favorites: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl is divided into two parts. The first deals with the author's experiences in German concentration camps during World War II. Dr. Frankl is not interested in writing about the great horrors but about the every day life he experienced and in how these experiences led him to develop logotherapy, a school of psychoanalysis based on the idea that man's primary motivational force is his search for meaning. To be honest, I am skeptical of this idea as I am of psychoanalysis in general, but when an author can back up his theories with experiences from Auschwitz it is difficult to remain a non-believer.

Man's Search For Meaning does not go to extremes depicting life in the camps; it does not have to. As Mr. Frankl says we all know the horrors and those who are going to believe they took place already do. His focus is on the day to day issues such as how did a prisoner get enough food to survive, specifically how did he convince the man who ladled out the soup to go to the bottom of the pot and give him some of the peas that could be found there instead of just skimming broth off of the surface. When one's life is reduced to this, how can it possibly have any meaning? Dr. Frankl provides this answer:

We who walked in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They many have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way...



...Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those marytrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom--which cannot be taken away--that makes life meaningful and purposeful.



This is certainly not an easy path to follow. Of late the word "purpose" has been cheapened, at least here in America. Dr. Frankl survived the worst experience the 20th century could summon, and he found people there who still maintained a life the meant something and had purpose. He also found their antithesis, men whose lives had lost meaning, men who had seized on all that is dark, who wanted nothing but survival. The thing that is a little hard to accept is that he found both groups of men among the prisoners and among the guards. Only recently have writers begun to widely discuss the role of the Capos in the concentration camps. I suspect many people don't realize how important they were. The guards ran the camps, but the Capos ran the barracks, did the real day to day grunt work of keeping all the prisoners in line and working on rations and sleep well below what is needed to stay alive for long. The Capos were prisoners themselves, chosen by the guards because they were bullies enough to be willing to beat their fellow prisoners into submission when the guards weren't around to do it themselves. Dr. Frankl says the Capos enjoyed a level of power and prestige in the camps that none of them would have experienced outside them.

Some of the guards were better than others. Dr. Frankl describes one who used his own money to purchase medicine for the prisoners in his camp and another who was hidden by three former prisoners when liberation came until the prisoners could convince the American soldiers that he should not be harmed.

Dr. Frankl writes: From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two--the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of "pure race" --and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards.



The second part of Man's Serach for Meaning is "Logotherapy in a Nutshell" a brief overview of Dr. Frankl's theory. (The term comes from the Greek "logos" or meaning.) It suffers from being a brief overview of what took 20 volumes in German to fully explain, as Dr. Frankl admits. I'm not qualified to comment on logotherapy's effectiveness, I'm still skeptical of it frankly, but I did find much to admire in this section along with a great deal of food for thought. Man's Search for Meaning is a book that stays with the reader long after it is finished. It just may be one that stays with me for life.

Tuesdays with Dorothy

 "He is beyond question a writer of power; and his power lies in his ability to make sex so thoroughly, graphically, and aggressively unattractive that one is fairly shaken to ponder how little one has been missing."


New Yorker review of An American Girl by Tiffany Ellsworth Thayer