Where Personal and Professional Life Collide...

Sunday book summaries are my casual log of what I’ve been reading this week. These are not formal reviews. They’re more my reactions and musings as taken from my journal when I complete the reading, and at times will contain notes about how they influence my thoughts on what I’m writing. 

Been a busy time so this one is three weeks’ worth of reading. 

I got rather frustrated when looking up my library’s offerings of Len Deighton ebooks—which is to say, they were pretty minimal. So when I found a copy of Spy Hook in a Little Free Library, I grabbed it. Complex plotting, of course, conspiracy upon conspiracy…and then I discovered that it was book one of a trilogy. Did I like Spy Hook well enough to go seeking the rest of the series? Sadly, not really. There was a time when I would gobble up this genre, but…given that there’s some real-life versions unfolding with the Epstein Files and some Very Weird Connections that I’m reading about that…well, they’re rather interesting. And weird. Plus, I’ve read too much of Charlie Stross’s Laundry Files books that were a pastiche of Deighton’s style that…I just kept hearing Stross’s voice, not Deighton. Oh well. 

One of my enjoyable, to-be-savored reads was Charles de Lint’s Someplace to Be Flying. Set in de Lint’s Newford world, it’s a fascinating look at how the world can change. I don’t find de Lint to be an author I want to binge read. I’m working my way through his books slowly, as the mood takes me—somewhat like I do with Ursula K. Le Guin. De Lint manages to create an interesting mix of Native American traditions and European fantastical work, and does it so very well. Not everyone can pull it off like he does. 

Then there was Kurt Baumeister’s Twilight of the Gods. I have to admit, the beginning had me thinking that “yessss, this is better than Gaiman’s American Gods.” Then…I started not liking what he did with Loki. Perhaps my perspective is spoiled by reading fanfic but the rest of the book didn’t live up to the opening for me. 

I continued my dive into 20th century women journalists by reading Martha Gellhorn’s Travels with Myself and Another. It’s a mildly concealed secret, so to speak, that the “Another” spoken of is Ernest Hemingway. Gellhorn is an…interesting read, with strong biases about what she expects in the way of services, cleanliness, and the like. Very strong opinions and…definitely a product of her era when it comes to other ethnicities. 

Another de Lint, Dreams Underfoot, is a collection of the early Newford short stories. I do not remember reading them, which makes me wonder because I thought I had read more de Lint than I apparently have. Recommended. Lovely urban fantasy, a foundational work. 

I finally finished Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, in paper. Trollope’s books tend to be among the sort that I prefer to read in paper and take my time with. They’re a dense read and this one, involving a woman hack writer and her marriage schemes involving her son and daughter in hopes that they will find wealthy mates. But there are other marriage schemes afoot, including that of the daughter of a wealthy grifter who ends up in a bad way when his malfeasance is discovered. Fortunately, the daughter recovers and the grifter is the only one who really comes to a bad end. Those who scorn historical romance might…want to take a look back at some of the authors now considered to be classics, because Trollope for one definitely wrote himself some rather twisty marriage scheme plots, all involving British aristocracy. 

I wanted to reread some of Cordwainer Smith’s work, but…could not find my copy of Norstrilia, alas. I have to wonder where it went walkabout to because I had planned to write a piece about Le Guin and Smith, and I suspect I pulled it to reread for that purpose. Oh well. I reread one of his short story collections, The Instrumentality of Mankind. For the most part, it holds up very well, with minor visitations from the Suck Fairy. 

Then there’s the horse book fix. I reread Blister Jones by John Taintor Foote, a collection of short stories featuring the headline character, a racehorse trainer back in the wild days of the early twentieth century, when doping a racehorse was the norm except for certain stakes-level competition. This book is—well—a product of its era, and probably among the early sources for a bunch of later tropes featuring racehorses. It’s also very heavy on dialect, stereotypes about Black racetrack workers, and hoo the times where the n-word shows up in multiple forms. But the champion racehorses are outstanding, the problematic horses—including the titular character in the last story, the Big Train—end up fitting into what are later cliches, and, well—if you want a somewhat accurate account of the lower levels of the early twentieth century horse racing world, this is it. 

While I’m not much of a mystery reader these days with a handful of exceptions, I enjoyed a reread of Dorothy L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night. It’s been long enough since I read it that I didn’t remember the details, and while it started slow in comparison to current-day mysteries, by the halfway point the story was rocketing along. I’m not that big on Lord Peter Wimsey but I do like Harriet Vane. 

And sadly, finally, I have a DNF. I really, really wanted to like Danica Nava’s The Truth According to Ember. I liked most of the characterizations, I really appreciated the depiction of a successful Down Syndrome Native American woman, I really really liked the use of Native American characters, but…oh dear. The plot in that particular setting. The further I read, the less believable it became to me, just because I’ve had enough exposure to corporate world to know that a lot of it doesn’t ring true. Plus the lead character, Ember, just started grating on me, unfortunately. But it was mostly the plot. Too much of it read like a formulaic “must hit plot points by this page” story and it really felt forced to me. Poor editing? Very possibly. I have another one of Nava’s books on hold and have hopes for that one, because I really like Nava’s writing and setting. 

If you like what you’ve read, please feel free to check out my books at https://www.joycereynolds-ward.com/books or drop a tip at my Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joycereynoldsward

And oh hey! It’s Indie April! I have a bunch of ebooks on sale, starting with my Resistance and Romance! Itch bundle featuring six of my books heavy on relationships in the face of corporate and political turmoil. That will go for all of April. Plus I have Vision of Alliance and The Cost of Power Omnibus edition both available at $3.99 each throughout April. Check them out at my website, https://www.joycereynolds-ward.com