From time to time I’ll simply slap up a micro-book-review here. (Maybe a longer one for more recent books).
My tastes are eclectic; as a kid, I loved SF — ’speculative fiction’ — more commonly divided into fantasy and sci-fi. Sometimes adventure stories, too. These days, I tend to enjoy mysteries, techno-thrillers, history (especially with a political, economic or military bent).
Maths, physics, and biology can also be fun, but I struggle more and more with each passing year with the latter two fields.
In semi-jest, I’ll say that I think I have moved away from SF since I think my job has become too much like the science fiction I read as a kid.
So, what am I reading right now? Two books from the late 1960’s.
First, John Kennedy O’Toole’s “Confederacy of Dunces“. My girlfriend has recently discovered this and is loving it, so I’m rereading it. Perhaps one of the finest late 20th century authors of the United States, Toole wrote very little (this was his only novel) before committing suicide at a young age. In a story worthy of a novel itself, his mother took his book around (after his death) pushing it at everyone who’d read it and eventually persuaded a professor to help publish it. [I'm linking you to a review rather than an amazon link to buy the book; no scrabbling for affiliate fees here... yet!].
An incredibly bizarre coming of age story written in the 1960’s, it resonates even today nearly 40 years later.
What else? Well, Michael Crichton, father of the modern techno-thriller, initially wrote under two pseudonyms while in medical school. One of them was Jeffrey Hudson, under which name he wrote “A Case of Need” in the late 60’s.
This is an interesting tale, narrated by a pathologist, of his attempts to prove the innocence of a colleague of performing a botched abortion upon the daughter of a famous and powerful physician.
Replete with the politics (and religion) of 1960’s Boston, and pre-Roe vs Wade America, the novel seems out of date, yet the crisp and intelligent writing draws the reader in, even today.
Covering everything from how to synthesize LSD [deleted in the latest edition] to 1960’s era moral arguments for and against abortion, the novel packs a great deal in.
Perhaps that’s its one failing. The two wives of the main actors (the largely off-stage abortionist and the protagonist) are largely reactive. To be sure, Dick will view that as a plus, but they remain cardboard characters with only vague foreshadowing of divorce in one case. The denouement is a touch innocent and expectant of people to behave in predictable ways when confronted. Still, it remains an excellent early novel from a fine writer on a topic that will likely move to the forefront in the years ahead in America.
What are you reading?
