So, as we close in on the midpoint of February 2012, I find that I’ve already read a number of books that I want the rest of the world to read: old books and new books that have knocked my shoes off. These are just a few of my favorite things.
Suspects by David Thomson
Anyone who has spent any time talking with me about film and/or books about film knows about my undying love and appreciation for David Thomson. One of the most insightful devourers of cinema, he has written so many books that deserve to be on any aficionado’s shelf, most famous of those being The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.
Structured like The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, Suspects is both a fantastic novel and a study of film noir. It is an encyclopedic listing of characters from the great noir films, providing them with both a past and, if they survived the films they appeared in, a future. Soon characters start appearing in the lives of other characters and Thomson begins to weave a tapestry of darkness with a mysterious center.
A true masterwork of film history as well as one hell of a thriller, I can’t recommend this book enough.
Ragnarok: The End of the Gods by A. S. Byatt
A delightful, insightful, and compelling retelling of the Norse mythology wrapped inside a fictionalized depiction of Byatt’s childhood in the English countryside during the Blitz, Ragnarok is both an analysis of myth and a meditation upon loss and death. It started a little slow, a little dry, but by the time it was over I was demanding more and more, my appetite for Byatt’s prose and commentary became as large and ravenous as that of the wolf Fenris.
Defending Jacob by William Landay
Wow! When I picked this book up, I was expecting a nice airplane/beach read and instead got a fantastic character driven thriller that stayed with me for days afterward. An intriguing book about the murder of a high school girl in a small bedroom community, Defending Jacob explores the ramifications that the killing has upon the community and on the families of the victim and the accused. Well written and intelligently plotted, it has an ending that still has me wondering about what really happened and who really was the killer. The best legal thriller I’ve read since Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent.
The Demi-Monde: Winter by Rod Rees
I tend to avoid all books that carry even just a whiff of “steam punk” but, due to recommendations from people whose opinions I respect, I picked this book up. Oh My God!!! I knocked this book out in two days and am dying to read the next one. It’s the near future and the military has created an intense virtual reality world of a Victorian Era technological level populated by the greatest political psychopaths from history to train the military in asymmetrical warfare. Somehow, the president’s daughter has gotten trapped inside and only one person can get her out. It’s like a crazy Escape from New York mixed a with a more visceral version of Charles Stross’ Merchant Princes series. And you get Archie Clement, Heydrich, Beria, and Crowley as grand over the top villains. Great fun!
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