Rashomon: And Other Stories

Rashomon: And Other Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In a Grove: A man is found stabbed to death in a grove. Some people of interest and the key players give their accounts.

Yeah, I'm a fan of this. Lots of narrators with varying degrees of reliability. If the other stories are this good, this collection is going to be stellar.

Rashomon: A samurai's servant sits under the Rashomon during a rain storm, pondering whether he should become a thief or starve to death.

I didn't like this story as much as the first but it was still interesting. I never thought of making wigs in that way.

Yam Gruel: Goi, a samurai who is the butt of everyone's jokes, has a life-long craving for Yam Gruel. But what will he do when he's offered all he can ever eat?

This was an odd one, more like a fable than the previous two. I felt bad for Goi and really hoped he'd go on a killing spree but, alas, it was not to be.

The Martyr: When the umbrella maker's daughter becomes pregnant, everyone suspects, Lorenzo, the orphan raised by Jesuits.

Huh. This was an odd one about protecting the people you love at all costs.

Kesa and Morito: The tale of a love triangle from two of its participants. This was another story with unreliable narrators. It was well written and fairly twisted.

The Dragon: An old man tells the story of a big nosed priest named Hanazo and the prank he played on a village that backfired.

All in all, this was an enjoyable collection. By far, my favorite tales were In a Grove and Kesa and Morito, the two unreliable narrator tales. The others were good to mediocre. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

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The Detectives of the 87th Precinct Tackle Two Unnerving Cases

Reviewed by James L. Thane
Three out of five stars

In this installment of the 87th Precinct series, the precinct's male detectives spend their days and nights hunting someone who is killing young women and then hanging their bodies from lampposts around the city. They are assisted in their investigation by Fat Ollie Weeks of the 83rd Precinct and, as always, this is something of a mixed blessing.

Meanwhile, Eileen Burke of the Rape Squad is undercover, attempting to catch a particularly sadistic rapist who continues to attack the same few women over and over again. Burke is acting as a stand-in for one of the victims, hoping that she will be able to decoy the rapist into attacking her and that this will give her the opportunity to arrest him.

As always, the story is well-written; the police procedures are interesting and the by-play among the detectives is entertaining. But there's a certain creepiness factor involved with both storylines that kept me from enjoying the book as much as I otherwise would have. I'm not normally overly sensitive to this sort of thing, but in this case McBain is so good at creating truly repulsive situations that I found myself wanting to cover my eyes at some points. Thus three stars for me rather than four.

Honestly, It Didn't End All That Well

All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

All's well that ends well...sure, but does it really end well? Really?

A simple maid with the one remedy for what ails the king, cures him and receives as her reward the hand in marriage of a high-born courtier. The groom-to-be won't submit to wed such a lowly personage, nay! His refusal is seen as base and tarnishes his reputation, so he flees to the wars, for it is through deeds of bravery that he will redeem himself. Slight of hand and high japery set the scene for misunderstandings and tricky ruse de guerre in the realm of romance. Will they or won't they?!

A very fairytale story, that! Shakespeare tries to transform it into something a more realistic, but in the process creates a strange brew of the two.

What never rises above the land of make believe, imo, is that the simple maid ever finds attractive and purposefully pursues the asshole groom-to-be. This portion of All's Well That Ends Well parallels the Lizzy and Darcy struggle from Pride and Prejudice, except that it never quite makes enough to sense to satisfy this reader. Shakespeare fails to bring the couple together in a realistic way. In the end it's a flippant one-liner that switches hate to love. Is this a cop out? A comedy shortcut? Or just poor writing?

Maybe it doesn't really matter, because quite clearly this framework is meant to be a vehicle for the "comedy" strewn about the middle of the play. I used quotations around comedy, because I'm sarcastic like that. While cowardice can be comical, I don't find kidnapping, hostage threats of torture and death, and weaselly traitorous admissions to be hilarious good fun...well, for a little while, maybe. The scene with Parolles drags on and on, and we get it right off the bat, the guy's a coward. Yes, this scene is important for the big reveal at the end, but man does it go on too long.

It's failures like the above that kept me from loving this play like I have others. It's not bad, just not brilliant.

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Only the Lonely

Gary Zebrun
Alyson Books
Reviewed by Nancy
3 out of 5 stars

Summary

Asim, gay and 19, is ready to bust out of his rundown steel town, Lackawanna, N.Y., for the University of Michigan. Even the cherished family business — a movie house called The Bethlehem — and its nightly dose of celluloid dreams no longer captivate him. But the bright future he envisions is turned upside down when his father dies and leaves him with the keys to the theater and the job of caring for the old man’s Russian lover. As if he needs another problem, he discovers that his brother Tarik is headed off to some kind of training camp in the Afghanistan desert, and when he returns, he ensnarls Asim and others in a dangerous fanaticism that peaks on September 11, 2001.

My Review

I found this book by accident at the library. Its title and the blurb on the back that mentions three people bound together by their love for movies caught my eye.

There is Asim, a 19-year-old gay man, who wants to leave Lackawanna, NY to attend college. His father, Badru’s, death and final wishes prevent him from doing so. There is Sonia, Badru’s longtime mistress, now sick with Parkinson’s disease and a failing memory. There is Asim’s brother, Tarik, who is a Muslim extremist and alienated from his family’s “heathen” ways. And then there is Billy, who drinks at the pub across the street from the theater and falls for Asim.

The story is told in flashbacks and jumps back and forth between characters. Sonia and Asim are especially well-drawn, both of them lonely and seeking escape in movies. This grim family situation is set against the backdrop of a bleak industrial town with its decaying movie theater, dingy pubs, neglected buildings, and old memories.

I knew this was going to be a sad story. I just didn’t know it was going to be so unremittingly depressing.

THE KIND WORTH KILLING BY PETER SWANSON

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

”Truthfully, I don’t think murder is necessarily as bad as people make it out to be. Everyone dies. What difference does it make if a few bad apples get pushed along a little sooner than God intended? And your wife, for example, seems like the kind worth killing.”

We are brought up to believe that murdering someone is the worst thing we could ever do, but is it? If a person is leaving a wide wake of broken hearts and battered spirits and in some cases much, much worse, is it really the worst thing we can do for all of humanity to give that person a nudge towards the afterlife? Of course the question remains, are any of us capable by ourselves of being the defense, the jury, the prosecution, and ultimately the judge?

When Ted Severson sees Brad Daggett, a man he has been paying an abundant amount of money to build his dream house, bend his wife, Miranda, over a table and have consensual sex with her, it sets off a string of events that...leads...to...murder.

At the very least Brad should have offered Ted a discount.

Okay, so the guy is banging your wife. She signed a prenup. That silly bitch isn’t getting one more thin dime out of you. You just need to go get drunk, maybe call up an old flame and have some unsatisfactory revenge sex, and call your lawyer in the morning.

Not Ted. He can drink like a fish, martinis in fact, line them up from here---------------to here, but mostly he just simmers on what he saw. He even tries to convince himself that what he saw wasn’t exactly what he saw. Brad was just trying to...nope... not even after six martinis can he convince himself that Brad was doing anything, but SHAGGING his wife.

Ted wasn’t sure what he was going to do until on a plane flight home he met The Lily Kintner. Maybe it is because she is beautiful and receptive to him, or maybe it is just because he has to tell someone and usually a stranger is much easier to spill your guts to than a friend. She doesn’t react the way he expects. In fact, she tells him that his wife sounds like the kind worth killing.

You’d never know to look at her, but Lily is an unusual young woman. She is a woman who doesn’t believe in letting people get away with things like infidelity or lying. She doesn’t believe in turning the other cheek or forgiveness. She realizes there is something missing in her, something different.

Her father is a reasonably famous author, and her mother an academic. Their household was a free-for-all of revolving parties with artists, writers, friends, and lovers of both her parents coming and going throughout her whole childhood. She was mostly left to her own devices, and when one young man took an interest in the thirteen year old with the flaming red hair and the long thin legs,...well...he annoyed her.

”I’d been waiting for two things since killing Chet. Waiting to get caught and waiting to feel bad. Neither had happened yet, and I knew that neither would.”

Now, it may seem like she is just a random stranger with a morbid sense of morality, but as the plot thickens we discover why Lily has taken an interest in Ted’s shattered marriage.

The chapters alternate between characters. We are allowed to see things from their perspectives and what is missing in one chapter can be revealed in the next. It all begins to really heat up when police officer Henry Kimball can’t let go of a hunch and begins to follow Lily. He adores her father’s writing, and after interviewing her a couple of times he is half in love with her, but dribs and drabs of loose ends from their conversations continue to nag at his consciousness. 2+2=3.75

There is a funny scene that I have to share that made me laugh because it reminded me of myself. Lily’s father has very distinct views of the ocean. ”He said it was like looking at death…. I love the beach, everything except the fucking sand, the fucking sun, and the fucking water.” Okay, it made me chuckle again writing it because it is so sacrosanct for anyone to ever say anything remotely negative about the ocean because everyone is so IN LOVE with water. I enjoy looking at the water. I can understand the attraction, but for me it is something to look at briefly and then move on to something more interesting. I have never really trusted large bodies of water. I wouldn’t say I’m suffering from Thalassophobia, but certainly I don’t feel the need to join the masses in venerating the ocean. I prefer solid terra firma under my feet... all the time... besides the water is such a slurry sludge pit of god knows what.

Killers become victims...victims become killers. Yet again Peter Swanson has delivered a neo-noir thriller that reminds me of some of the best of James Cain. There are twists and turns enough to leave your legs corkscrewed together by the time you reach the final page.

I also enjoyed his first book. The Girl with a Clock for a Heart Review

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Vermilion

Vermilion by Molly Tanzer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When boys from Chinatown vanish mysteriously, psychopomp Lou Merriweather gets drawn into the mystery, leading her into the Colorado mountains, to the sanatorium of the mysterious Doctor Panacea. What is Doctor Panacea's connection to the missing Chinese men and what is his true goal?

I've made no secret to the fact that I have a weakness for fiction from the strange wavelengths of the spectrum. When I caught wind of a weird western mystery featuring a half-Chinese psychopomp passing as a man, I was medically unable to pass it up.

Lou Merriweather is a psychopomp, a person who helps reluctant undead on their way to the afterlife by giving them a metaphysical kick in the ass. Lou hooked me right away with her attitude. She's got much more in common with the wisecracking PI of noir books than she does most supernatural characters. Her conflict with her mother, feelings for her friend Bo Wong, and grief for her deceased psychopomp father make her a very well rounded character.

I don't want to give away too much about the plot. I will say that I loved that Lou met people of all stripes on her journey, including talking bears, a lesbian, a hermaphrodite, and various other interesting beings, supernatural or otherwise.

The first thirty percent of the book was dynamite. I thought the middle bogged down a bit but things picked up near the end. I wasn't completely happy with the end but I'm glad the opening for future Lou Merriweather books was left open. The writing was even better than I expected. I enjoyed the modern dialogue and the story, while dark at times, was peppered with humor.

While it wasn't as pants-shittingly awesome as I was hoping, it was still a fun read and I'll be thrilled to revisit Lou Merriweather in another book. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

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Harry Hole Struggles agains Two very Clever Killers

This is another excellent, complex thriller from Jo Nesbo, featuring his tormented protagonist, Oslo homicide detective Harry Hole. This story continues a number of developments that were set into motion in the last Hole novel, Nemesis, when someone close to Harry was murdered. Harry knows who the killer is but cannot produce the evidence to make the case and it appears that the killer is going to go unpunished. The effect on Harry is brutal. As the book opens, he has descended into an alcoholic   Reviewed by James L. Thane Four out of five stars This is another excellent, complex thriller from Jo Nesbo, featuring his tormented protagonist, Oslo homicide detective Harry Hole. This story continues a number of developments that were set into motion in the last Hole novel, Nemesis, when someone close to Harry was murdered. Harry knows who the killer is but cannot produce the evidence to make the case and it appears that the killer is going to go unpunished. The effect on Harry is brutal. As the book opens, he has descended into an alcoholic haze and has alienated virtually everyone around him, including his lover and his most ardent defender on the police force. He is constantly drunk, barely able to function and only days away from losing his job. Harry hits rock bottom in the middle of a sweltering summer in Oslo, when many of the other detectives are on holiday attempting to escape the heat. Then a woman if found ritually murdered in her apartment and, short-handed, Harry's boss has no choice other than to assign Harry to the case, even though Harry is clearly impaired. To make matters worse, Harry is assigned to work the case in tandem with another detective whom he hates. Harry assumes that this is the last case he will ever work and so pulls himself together, at least enough to make an effort. Five days after the initial murder, a second woman goes missing and seems clearly to be the victim of the same killer. What follows is an intellectual duel between Harry and a very clever adversary. Clearly there is a method to the killer's madness; the only question is whether Harry can figure it out in time to save other potential victims. This is a very tense and gripping story. The case itself is fascinating, and even more interesting is the psychological drama that plays out as Harry battles to control his own demons and to set right injustices that have occurred outside the boundaries of the case he is investigating at the moment. In Harry Hole, Jo Nesbo has created one of the most intriguing characters to come along in crime fiction in quite some time, and it's a pleasure to watch both Nesbo and Harry work their magic.

An Amazing Little Man

Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery by Eric Metaxas
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Amazing Grace is a biography written with WAAAY more cheek than I expected!

The slight and frail English gentleman William Wilberforce...



...was the heroic and eloquent man at the head of the push to abolish the slave trade.

Wilberforce is a name not well known in America as perhaps it may be in England. Right or wrong, we Americans think "Lincoln" when we think of the end of slavery. Of course, slavery continues to this day. Eric Metaxas' Amazing Grace does an admirable job in reminding us who deserves the credit in passing the laws that put an end to the legalized trade in human lives.

It is a noble subject, but Metaxas actually uses sarcasm and like humor nearly through out and, while funny at times, it's off-putting in a biography. Perhaps he felt the subject matter needed levity. Perhaps he looked to capture Wilberforce's own gay sense of humor. Whatever the reason, it didn't always set well with this reader.

From the title it should be readily apparent that religion (in this case Methodism) will be given a feature role. While not a puritanical prude from start to finish, Wilberforce was heavily influenced by his faith and let it guide him in many of his life's choices. From the book's tone, I would guess Metaxas is, if not Methodist, at least a like-minded Christian. He writes with an obvious bias. It's almost completely transparent at times with very little reading between the lines necessary. That swamps integrity in my book. However, when it comes to non-fiction, for some reason biographers are often allowed a long leash when it comes to balanced, fair and honest journalism.

At heart, I would call the above faults, but I managed to overlook them and if you too can stomach an agenda not your own, then Amazing Grace will ring in your heart the chimes of glorious freedom! Or at least it will be a worthy read on a worthy man. Either way, it's worth your while.



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Mnevermind 1: The Persistence of Memory

Jordan Castillo Price
JCP Books
Reviewed by Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

Summary

Every day, Daniel Schroeder breaks his father’s heart.


While forgetting your problems won’t solve them, it does seem like it would make life a heck of a lot easier. Daniel thought so once. Now he knows better. He and Big Dan have always been close, which makes it all the more difficult to break the daily news: the last five years were nothing like his father remembers.


They’re both professionals in the memory field—they even run their own memory palace. So shouldn’t they be able to figure out a way to overwrite the persistent false memory that’s wreaking havoc on both of their lives? Daniel thought he was holding it together, but the situation seems to be sliding out of control. Now even his own equipment has turned against him, reminding him he hasn’t had a date in ages by taunting him with flashes of an elusive man in black that only he can see.


Is it some quirk of the circuitry, or is Daniel headed down the same path to fantasy-land as his old man?

My Review

45-year-old Daniel Schroeder and his father, Big Dan, own Adventuretech, a business that specializes in implanting fabricated memories based on a client’s needs. While the memories are temporary, the feelings of confidence, happiness, or inner peace that result are lasting.


Daniel developed Life is Awesome, a mnem intended to make his business rich. Instead, the mnem has altered his father’s past, seemingly permanently. And just who is that hot guy in black who keeps popping up in Daniel’s own mnems?


I liked Daniel a lot and appreciated his struggles as he works a part-time job to help keep his business afloat and maintains a close relationship with his family, particularly his father, who believes that he and Daniel’s mom are still together.


I also loved the way memories and actual experiences flowed and overlapped to a point where it was often difficult to tell which was which.


Some mysteries are solved, but there are lots of loose ends and the conclusion is a bit too untidy for my liking.


This is written by Jordan Castillo Price, so I expect fantastic writing, impeccable editing, mesmerizing plots, imaginative ideas, fully realized worlds, and believable, engaging characters.


I’m happy to say the story met all my expectations, and I very much look forward to the next installment!

THE WRIGHT BROTHERS BY DAVID MCCULLOUGH

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first photo of flight snapped by a man who was taking his first picture ever. The Wright brothers were very careful to document each stage of their development not only with photography, but also with journals.


”The best dividends on the labor invested have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power.” Wilbur and Orville Wright

They were brothers.

As close as two peas in a pod and you could make it three with Katharine, the little sister who also at times provided the role of mother and first wife to flight. (neither brother ever married) There were two older Wright children, both boys who lead fairly normal decent lives. They grew up in a more traditional home with the mother and the father, but by the time the three younger children came along their mother was not alive to raise them, and their parson father was travelling extensively trying to build up followings in churches all across the nation.

Orville dropped out of high school to start his own newspaper. Wilbur soon joined him. It became the first of many alliances between the brothers, though claiming not to be very good at business, their resume shows something quite different. Despite how close they were their devotion to one another was not always based on harmony.

”Wilbur...believed in ‘a good scrap’. It brought out ‘new ways of looking at things,’ helped ‘round off the corners.’ It was characteristic of all his family, Wilbur said, to be able to see the weak points of anything. This was not always a ‘desirable quality.’ he added, ‘as it makes us too conservative for successful business men, and limits our friendships to a limited circle.’”

If you have strong family ties your need for an extended circle of friends certainly diminishes. Sometimes family does not provide friendship and many of us have to find that solace elsewhere. As I always told my kids it is better to have one really good friend than an extended circle of “friends”. Those “friends” may believe that they are your friends, but I’ve found when the chips are down those “friends” suddenly become “acquaintances” and sometimes very distantly so.

The Wright Brothers may have fought vigorously with each other, but each was a sounding board for the other to clarify their thinking. A good battle would often have them getting together the next morning with each brother switching to the other’s opinion creating yet another skirmish as they tried to prove the other right.

When the bicycle craze began, the brothers were on the leading edge by opening the first shop in Dayton to repair those bicycles. It wasn’t long before they decided they could make a better bike and in the basement of their shop they started making bikes to order. They named them Van Cleve (launched 1896), after an illustrious ancestor of theirs who helped settle Ohio. They were successful business men yet again.

Wilbur first turned his thoughts to flight. He may have followed Orville’s lead into the printing business, but this time Orville was following after Wilbur. It was a true partnership and like the Paul McCartney and John Lennon alliance they took equal credit for all that they created.

First in flight was plural. They flew!


Orville on the left was always a bit more dapper than Wilbur on the right. Here they are on the Wright Flyer 1 in 1910.

I’m not going to go into the trials and tribulations that lead to the first powered, controlled flight of an airplane on December 17th, 1903. You’ll have to read the book to find out those details. I will say I was surprised at the length of the process. I thought that after 1903 they were lauded and celebrated, but it actually took much longer than that for the world to take notice of exactly what they accomplished. The French showed much more interest than the American government which was a source of disappointing to the Wright Brothers. I do wonder if H. G. Wells, with his creatively conceived books of the future, was already contributing to the French fascination with flight.

In a reversal of roles from what I expected the Americans were sceptical while the French felt that anything was possible.

It was interesting to me that the venerated Samuel P. Langley of the Smithsonian was competing with the Wright Brothers. He had raised over $70,000 in funds to build his airplane. The Wright Brothers in comparison spent $1,000 building their airplane using only funds raised from profits from their bicycle shop. We do not celebrate Langley as the first to fly so you might be able to ascertain that his expensive prototype did not fly. As the Wright’s heard about the progress of their competitors it never bothered them. They had a vision of where they had to get to and never wavered from their intended course or worried about whether someone else would fly first.

”It wasn’t luck that made them fly; it was hard work and common sense; they put their whole heart and soul and all their energy into an idea and they had faith.”

They built a concept out of a garage before America even had garages. If Steve Jobs were alive today and had read this book he would certainly have identified with the ability of the Wright Brothers to take an idea and refuse to let it go. One thing we know is that all over World there are people tinkering in their basements, garages, and on their living room floors. They are taking wisps of ideas and turning them into reality. As they drive to work, as they sit at a desk at work, as they turn a bolt on an assembly line, they are dreaming about contributing something new to humanity.


Walking in tandem.

The Wright Brothers did become wealthy, but certainly not as wealthy as they could have if they had been showmen or if money had really been the be all and end all of learning how a man can fly. They were focused on the HOW, fame and fortune would take care of itself. I couldn’t help but admire them and be inspired by their bred in the bone entrepreneurship that took them from a printing press to a bicycle shop to conquering the sky.

”On July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong, another American born and raised in southwestern Ohio, stepped onto the moon, he carried with him, in tribute to the Wright brothers, a small swatch of the muslin from a wing of their 1903 flyer.”


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