Recent Reading: Fiction

A shorter list than my non-fiction one.

My Antonia by Willa Cather.  

Last year I read Death Comes For The Archbishop by Cather which was simply wonderful and a book I will reread.  My Antonia was very enjoyable, if not at quite the level of Death Comes.  Set in the late 19th century farmlands and small towns of Central Nebraska where Cather grew up, the book deftly captures memorable characters and the physical settings.  Never thought I'd be a Willa Cather fan but now I'm deciding which of her books I should read next. 

A Chateau Under Siege by Martin Walker.  

Set in the Dordogne region of France, I look forward to each installment of the Bruno, Chief of Police series.  This is the latest and while a good read, I fear the overall quality has begun to decline.  I still enjoy the settings, many of which I am familiar with, and the characters but if you haven't read the books, I suggest starting from the beginning and going through the first dozen and avoiding this one.

The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky.  

I'm still making my way through this one.  It's slow going.  Maybe it is the translation.  I now know where Norm Macdonald got the inspiration for his version of The Moth Joke.  I hear Norm's voice in my head when reading the book.

Night Soldiers by Alan Furst 

One of my favorite authors, this was a book I reread.  Furst wrote about 15 novels all set in Europe during the years leading up to WW2 and during the war itself.  Night Soldiers, the first in the series, and its successor, Dark Star, are more sprawling in scope, time and geography than the later books, but essential as they set the framework for Furst's world.  His characters are Russians, Eastern Europeans, Poles, French, and sometimes British, caught in the murky world between the Soviets and the Nazis, where every other group has its own agenda, where alliances and motives shift quickly.  As history, the settings and dilemmas are very accurate.  Night Soldiers and Dark Star provide as good a background on those times, and the terrible choices faced by so many, as any academic history.

Night Soldiers held up well upon rereading.  The story of a Bulgarian in his late teens, living in a Danube river town, who witnesses his younger brother beaten to death by fascist thugs, and is then recruited by the Russians and set to Moscow for training as an intelligence agent.  Over the course of the book he is in Spain and France, before coming full circle to return to the Danube.  The novel covers 1934 to 1945.  After Dark Star, Furst's later books are set in a tight time frame from 1937 to 1941 with a number of recurring characters.  The writing is captivating and precise until the last two books in the series which fall off in quality.

Resurrection Walk by Michael Connelly

Another favorite.  Connelly has three different series of crime novels built around the characters of (now retired) LAPD detective Harry Bosch, current detective Rene Ballard, and Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer.  All are worth reading.  Resurrection Walk is his most recent, featuring both Bosch and Haller who are half-brothers.

L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy

I've seen the movie four or five times and it is a great film, on my top 10 list.  You can read my full take on the novel here, but I summed it up this way:

The 500 page book makes for intense and compelling reading, I couldn't put it down.  It is also completely bonkers, an insane fever dream . . .

No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

Quite a book, deserving of being on your must read list.  Reflecting upon it led me to some thoughts in Carryin' Fire and What Is To Come.