What I've Been Reading

     Typically, I have one or two books going on the Kindle, and another actual paper-pages book for reading where a Kindle would be inappropriate, notably the bathtub.

     These days, I lean as much towards space-travel history, classic noir detectives and essays as I do science fiction; on my Kindle at present is a collection of Dashiel Hammett's lesser known work, The Hunter And Other Stories; Jay Barbree's history of his career as a journalist covering the space program, Live From Cape Canaveral; and United States: Essays 1952 - 1992, a collection of Gore Vidal's wonderfully acerbic non-fiction.

     Vidal is best enjoyed in small doses, but despite his political leanings and personal predilections, if you enjoy the work of Florence King, her mastery of language and her distaste for posers, fools and witlings, you'll likely enjoy his essays: equally at home with the language and at least as dismissive of hype and nonsense.

     Hammett's mastery of storytelling and gift for character hardly needs pointing out, and finding more (he wasn't hugely prolific) is a treat.  The collection contains some fragments, character studies and starts, which I enjoy; as someone with many more stories begun than finished, a look into another writer's files -- and a master of the art, at that! -- is instructive as well as entertaining.

     Jay Barbree has Been There and Done That from the earliest days of NASA well into the Space Shuttle era, covering every U. S. manned spaceflight to date.  Many journalists struggle to slow down and tell a long-form story but he does an excellent job of letting the reader look over his shoulder in triumph, disaster and the day-to-day work of the space program.

     In actual book form, when I realized I'd started but never finished the C. J. Cherryh-helmed series, "Merovingen* Nights" because not all of the books showed up at the used-book stores I was browsing, it was easy to fill the gaps via Amazon and Alibris.  With the entire series in hand, I dug in.  It's an interesting concept, a "shared world" of deliberately narrow scope, all of the action taking place in a Venice-like city on a technologically backward world.  And the overall story's good one, a tale of love and political intrigue.  The series ends abruptly, though satisfyingly enough; I think there was at least one more book in the material but publishers base their decisions on other factors.  An entertaining read nevertheless, and a well-conceived world in Cherryh's Alliance/Union universe.

     Followed that with Fatherland by Robert Harris, a thriller set in a 1964 Germany in which the Allies lost; the lights all across Europe are indeed out and a police detective sets out to solve a murder that it turns out higher authorities did not want solved.  That crimes connects to others and the whole things grows--  You'll have to read the book (or watch the HBO movie) to find out what follows, but all may -- barely! -- not yet be lost.  Well-researched and chilling, though I have my doubts about the long-term success of thugocracy holding up for twenty years after victory.

     The latest physical book I'm working on is Aftershocks, the most recent novel from Marko Kloos.  I've hardly begun but it promises to be at least the equal of his previous work, in a setting with considerable historical resonance.  (Full disclosure: Mr. Kloos is a friend of a friend.)
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* From the name of the city where the stories take place, "Merovin," and having no connection to the Merovingian dynasty of fifth through eighth-century France.