The American Red Cross First Aid & Safety Handbook by Kathleen A. Handal

I’ve spent so much time learning how to dismantle people with krav these days that it seemed I should spend a little time working on skills on the other side of the fence. I needed to gain a point or two of First Aid Skill, and this book seemed like just the way to do it!

This is an imminently practical guide to the very lowest level of First Aid and care in critical situations. The book serves as a reference to be consulted in case of different types of emergencies, from Amputation to some emergency that starts with a Z.

It’s handy, and is better than nothing, but even if one had memorized all of the knowledge herein it wouldn’t be good enough in the case of a real emergency. Makes me think that I need to find and take a few classes in EMT or basic combat medicine.

Shadow Country (Killing Mr. Watson) by Peter Matthiessen
Killing Mr. Watson is the first book of a trilogy which are collected in this version as Shadow Country. Matthiessen has rendered a compelling vision of the landscape of the lawless Florida Everglades at the turn of the century. Almost every detail of the hard lives of the settlers, seminole, and the criminals who make up the region’s cane farms and villages feels authentic. The narritave is brooding and piecemeal. Each chapter is written from the perspective of someone who had a personal relationship with the Watson family, or was present on the day of the lynch mob execution of Edgar J. Watson. This collection of voices creates a patina of tales which taken together give a shadowed, murky picture of Watson’s life and his ultimate death. The language is precise is a bit florid when describing the natural beauty of the region. Matthiessen’s ear for dialect is superb. He tackles themes of mythmaking, the American deification of the outlaw, mob justice, and the lawlessness of a frontier which is very different than the dusty west, but still unquestionably American.

The first book of Shadow Country is compelling, and surprisingly easy to read given its daunting heft.

Shadow Country (Bony By Bone) by Peter Matthiessen
The second novel in Matthiessen’s epic saga of Ed Watson and the Florida Keys is more personal and self aware than the first. It tells the tale of poor lost Lucius Watson, son of the notorious, now legendary “Bloody Watson.” After his father’s Lucius goes to war, goes to the university of Florida and nearly gets his doctoral degree in the history of Florida. He drops out ABD (as many do!) and sinks deep into drink and an obsession with the past. He tries to dig up the “truth” of what happened to his father and learns a Faulknarian lesson about how shallow a grave the past lies in.

The writing is better than in Killing Mr. Watson and the tale is sadder. Lucius is never able to live a life of his own, giving up everything in a misguided attempt to seek out a truth that is mired in local legend, loss and sorrow.


Shadow Country (Lost Man’s River) by Peter Matthiessen
The third book of Watson’s saga and Matthiessen’s opus is an incredible payoff for the six hundred or so dense pages of slog that it took to get here. In this final installation we get to learn what really happened or at least what Ed Watson tells us happened. From his tragic boyhood in the deep south during the worst days of Jim Crow down to his fateful final day on the banks of Lost Man’s Key, Watson tells us of his life, his drive for the American notion of “progress” and his peculiar and violent moral code.

The echoes of Shadow Country and the tale of Bloody Watson linger with you for weeks after finishing the novel. This sequence is a powerful journey though the transformation of America between the Civil War and the First World War. It’s a meditation on violence, progress, history, race relations, and cultural moral evolution. Fantastic work.

The Box by Richard Mattheson
Yep, now I know there is a Cameron Diaz movie of this released just in time for Halloween. Lots of people told me this when they saw me reading the book. Hopefully the movie is better than this retread collection of old short stories that were all published several decades ago. Mattheson is a decent storyteller, and I’ve enjoyed a few of his nuggets in other places, as I’ve mentioned here before. Unfortunately, most of these are just plain bad. This is a collection of eight or so short tales that have either been widely published elsewhere, or should have been left in a bottom drawer. Sentient organs, jazz encounters told in verse, walking suits of clothing, etc. Moving on.

Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris

The weres go public and local bigots get evil. Jason is suspected of something, and the FBI is nosing around asking about Sookie. This one ends about one hundred pages short of where it should have, feeling a bit rushed.

From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris

Gosh, let’s see… There is upset in the vampire kingdom following the incident in Chicago. Sookie is trying to lay low in Bon Temps, but Mrs. Harris has other things in mind! Good surprise ending.

All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris
Sookie goes to Chicago as a servant of the vampire queen. I won’t tell you what happens there, cause it’s soooo awesome!

Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris

In Definitely Dead we meet Quinn the Weretiger! He’s pretty cool! But this novel is a little weird because there is a missing chunk of time between the previous novel and this one. And for Mrs. Harris, who has almost nothing happen offscreen ever, this is puzzling. Add this to the lack of numbering on the books, and I found myself wondering if I’d somehow skipped one.

But no indeed, apparently a few of Sookie’s adventures just fell on the cutting room floor, to later be included in a book of short stories. But Charlaine didn’t both to rewrite any of this to make it any more clear. And it didn’t really matter. By this point in the series, the books are all so far from stand-alone fictions that you wouldn’t be here unless you’d already read the rest and were hooked.

Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris

Just when you thought the naming of the novels couldn’t get much worse, you realize that Mrs. Harris is just grabbing for any phrase with the word “Dead” in it! But that doesn’t much matter, because by this time you are hooked on the wacky world of Bon Temps, Sookie, and all her supernatural friends. Now Jason gets involved with a werebitch, and I think we meet faries and demons for the first time.

Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris

Sookie’s involvement with Alcide gets her wrapped up in werewolf pack-succession politics. There’s also a sniper in Bon Temps blasting non-humans!

Club Dead by Charlaine Harris

Club Dead flags a bit, because nothing much happens. Sookie goes down to New Orleans
and we get a deeper understanding of the were community. She gets involved with Alcide H., a wearwolf contractor. (Oh yeah, the books really are that steeped in the PWT culture of the south.) A few people (and nonhumans end up dead.)

I should mention that it’s irritating that while the books are definitely meant to be read in chronological order, there is no system of numbering on them. (Sookie Stackhouse #3, for example.)

Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris

Sookie goes to Dallas to help out Erik and gets involved with the vampires there. She causes trouble for the Fellowship of the Sun. Every bit as much fun as Dead Until Dark.

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Wow was I not ready to read anymore pulp vampire crap. But I picked it up after The Professor’s recommendation that it “really wasn’t like Twilight.” And sure enough, it isn’t.

Dead Until Dark is the first of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, named after their heroine, a telepathic waitress living in Bon Temps, Lousiana. It also forms the basis for the (fairly divergent) HBO television series True Blood.

Sookie is a great heroine, grandly entertaining and likable. Bon Temps and the supernatural dirty south around it are brought to life with a smile, a dirty joke or ten, and a lot of sly humor by Mrs. Charlaine Harris, whose picture on the back of each book make her seem like someone who would be great fun to share a drink with.

Dead Until Dark is barely a novel at all, weighing in at barely two hundred pages. It introduces us to Bill, Sookie, Erik, Jason, Sam, Tara, and the rest of the Bon Temps regulars at Merlotte’s Bar, epicenter of the Sookie Universe. We also meet drainers, the Fellowship of the Sun, and at least a few weres. The written is silly, the plot is silly, but the sex and violence are high and the characters are exceedingly likeable. The murder mystery component of the first few books make for a fun whodunit, and the books tie together nicely.

Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs

Mr. Burroughs is clever, if deeply unlikeable. He’s a snotty gay Manhattenite who embodies a slew of traits that represent the worst neurotic self-indulgences of his generation of Americans.

Possible Side Effects is a series of comedic essays on Burroughs awkwardness in social situations and times when he has been mildly inconvienced. A former advertising agent from a shitty childhood, Burroughs turned into a drunk, which gave him the type of lowbrow James Freyesque “life story” that sells books like Running With Scissors, his previous bestseller.

Now, all of this may make it sound like I don’t much like Mr. Burroughs, and that would be accurate. But his book was funny, diverting, and occasionally insightful and not badly written.

I read this one in Stillwater Minnesota during a weekend long wedding. Stillwater was a beautiful town on the St. Croix river. This book wasn’t the most memorable part of the weekend.

Double Indemnity by James M. Cain
An honest man falls for the wrong woman, and they end up killing her husband for the insurance money. He’s an insurance man, an expert in sleuthing out insurance fraud. She’s a manipulative bitch who seduces him and cynically manipulates everyone in the novel. No one wins.

Double Indemnity is fast paced and fun to read through. Again, like the rest of Cain’s work, it’s not a crime novel in the way Chandler or Hammett prepared us for. This is more psychosocial drama than anything else.

Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain

Mildred Pierce is a housewife and a baker. When she kicks her husband out for infidelity her life begins. This novel is fabulously successful as a period piece and a look at feminism and class in the nineteen thirties.

Mildred takes a job as a waitress to support her family, including the petulant Vera, one of the least likeable children in literature. We get sex, love, betrayl, crime and a lot of knowledge about how to cook the books (hehe) of a diner.

Of the three James M. Cain novels I read in 2009, this was my favorite, because the texture of the piece and the tragedy of the deal were the best conveyed. Don’t expect gat wielding gangsters here; this is crime of a different sort, and social drama of a more realistic nature.

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

I picked up a handbound volume of James M. Cain’s three most famous novellas in the dog-days of August in Austin.

James M. Cain didn’t write what I expected. From this legendary name in crime, with a title like this (no, I’d never seen the movie) I was expecting a tale of a criminal stalker and real mur-der. There is murder and death does come to call, but not in the way I expected.

Cain writes in a cropped style here which makes the whole sleazy Southern California Diner scene every bit as unambitious and lowbrow as he intends. This is a crime novel in a very literal sense, not in the stylized noir mode of Pulp Fiction.

New Year, new posts!

It's been far too long!

Since my last post, we've moved twice. First into a treehouse apartment in the Austin Arboretum, now into a three story tower in Houston Midtown. Still working with CA, and RS starts a new job with FBJ next week. I finished a book of my own, Distributed Game Development, and it will be on store shelves (likely very few of them) by late March.

Of course, I've been reading lots, and for the first time have violated my rule about getting a year's books all posted before the end of the year!

I need to post on:
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain
Double Indemnity by James M. Cain
Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs
Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris
Club Dead by Charlaine Harris
Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris
Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris
Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris
All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris
From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris
Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris
The Box by Richard Mattheson
Shadow Country (Killing Mr. Watson) by Peter Matthiessen
Shadow Country (Bone By Bone) by Peter Matthiessen
Shadow Country (Lost Man’s River) by Peter Matthiessen
The Red Cross Guide to First Aid by The Red Cross
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahari

Stay tuned! The posts will be coming soon, I promise!

-tf