Poetry: "Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower" by Sarah Lindsay

Poetry: Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower by Sarah Lindsay, 2013, 9781556594465.

I'm not sure why I ordered this for work but it must have won an award. The title is also neat. Don't let Lindsay's status as an Olie graduate dissuade you from reading.

Lots of poems drawing in aquatic life like squids and octopuses. Poems of deep sea life in pitch black water. Poems about Aunt Lydia and her observations. I liked these.

There are some real nice ones in here. Lindsay never goes too abstract, I understand what she is writing about. I may be drawing my own conclusions about her stories and intent but, hey, tough crap.

62 total poems and I won't try to flip back through and flip favorites. There are enough good ones that flipping through would be worth my time.

The title refers to a sea worm that eats bones.
But without her (and the him she keeps,
for his lifetime, in her body), every
seashore would be barricaded
by skeletons of whales

EDIT Nov 6, 2015: Since this made Forgotten Books I took some quick photos of some one page poems. I also did some Poet Poses. I cannot get the dang HTML layout to work like I want.

EYE IN THE SEAS - cannot get this to rotate

THE DRIVER

Pondering Poet

Thinking Poet

Drunken Poet

Heard: "Nothing to Lose" by Lee Child

Heard: Nothing to Lose by Lee Child, 2008, overdrive.com download.

Short version: Reacher rolls into town. Runs into trouble. Beats up local goons. Has sex with local female cop. Kills a few people. Proclaims his love for justice. Hits the bricks.

This is the usual formula from Lee and, like usual, it works. I do still think Reacher is basically an asshole. He is a highly intelligent man, a math savant, but he chooses to work through intimidation and violence. Sure, he'll always say he gives people a choice, but he will also goad opponents into action and them overract and severely pound on people. Sometimes he'll enjoy giving the beatings and sometimes he is emotionless. Lee always provides nasty villains to make you happy Reacher is a goon with a brain.

I'm not the only one who wonders about his position on a sociopath scale. Or, if he is unable read or understand the emotions of others. He certainly doesn't usually care about most people - even if he does put his neck out for near strangers. Kinda like a movie villain who really likes someone and ingratiates themselves into that person's life.  Anyway.

Reacher is walking west through the plains of Eastern Kansas and visits Hope, CO. A few miles down the road is Despair, CO. "Huh," thinks Reacher, "That's kinda neat, I should go through Despair."  Reacher gets to Despair, is refused service in the local cafe, and four toughs show up telling him to get out.  Reacher is arrested, taken to court, fined for vagrancy, and driven by local Police Officer to the City limits and dropped off.

Reacher is ticked off. Reacher goes back to Despair and causes trouble. Reacher meets Pretty Young Thing whose husband is missing in Despair. Reacher wants to help. More things happen.

Things: a Company Town under the thumb of the factory owner. Religious zealotry. Missing young men. Worried young women. Lady Cop in Despair has brain damaged Army husband. Reacher speechifies the importance of honor, duty and respect. Reach and Lady Cop have sex. Lady Cop joins Reacher in researching the factory owner. Lady Cop joins Reacher in stopping a dirty bomb.

Listened: "Don't Look Now" by Michelle Gagnon.

Listened: Don't Look Now by Michelle Gagnon, 2014, Overdrive.com download.

Sequel to Don't Turn Around and second novel in Gagnon's Persefone trilogy.

Recap: A pharmaceutical company kidnaps street kids, infects them with a terminal wasting disease called pema, and experiments for a cure. The dead teenagers are disposed of and no one suspects a thing except for the novel's teens and a couple adults. Main characters Noa and Peter discover a  black site that warehouses kidnapped teens and medical labs. Even after a raid on the lab by the FBI everything is a secret; the FBI claim nothing happened. The fix is in.

Former street kid Noa is now on the run with fellow fugitive Zeke. They have created a strike team of other street kids rescued from the medical experiments and the group travel the West Coast raiding secret medical sites and hacking computers.  Noa is her group's leader but never feels like she knows what she is doing.

Peter is still in Boston and working as the main hacker to find the black sites housing the secret medical facilities. Peter is under surveillance by the bad guys but somewhat protected by his parents involvement in the conspiracy. Peter is worried about ex-girlfriend Amanda who might be getting sick.

Things happen.  Peter feels unimportant by sitting at a computer. He starts to follow the main bad guy from volume 1, Mason, and Peter bugs Mason's apartment and comptuter in hopes of getting more information and evidence.  Noa and Co. capture a bad guy and the guy is killed. Noa and Co. then go on a raid in Phoenix and rescue three kids. The raid turned violent with a warehouse fire, sary armed guards, and gunplay.

Amanda goes missing and Peter is set-up by Mason. One of the kids rescued by Noa is a plant for the bad guys and Noa's safe house is attacked. Characters die. Teen love drama is everywhere.

Comments:
1. Gagnon's adult paperbacks circ' pretty well at my library.
2. Some of the teens are not believable. All the street kids can be rough and violent but they are still free of drugs and sex. These are street kids, they're orphans, foster kids, abused kids, kidnapped kids, raped kids, and cut-open-for-experiments kids. I'd not expect such a tight and focused group.
3. Oh, well, it's a novel. Roll with it.
4. The narrator pronounced Gagnon's name and I've forgotten how it's said.

Heard: 'The Sweet Forever" by George Pelecanos

Heard: The Sweet Forever by George Pelecanos, 2002, Overdrive.com download. Very good narration by Cary Hite.

Pelecanos's novels are a tough read (listen) for me. He sticks me in the middle of people and culture I do not understand. He has people living in ways - cocaine partiers, racist street cops, ghetto crime  - that make no sense to me. Plus,the slang throws me off.  Pelecanos has good people living through rough times and bad people enjoying the rough times. Even the good guys can be sketchy and violence is often the only option left for them. 

I'm not sure if I read other books in this series. Sweet is a snapshot of cocaine and growing street crime in D.C. in 1986. Cocaine parties and good times precede the coming wave of crack cocaine. The story takes place in March during the NCAA tournament and everything is shadowed by the characters' constant praise and admiration for the soon-to-be-dead Len Bias. The book is full of pop culture music, basketball, and a city saddled with the graft and incompetence of cocaine loving Marion Barry.

Marcus Clay owns three record stores in the D.C. area. He just opened a new one in a rougher neighborhood. Clay's lifelong friend Dimitri Karras helps manage the stores and is burning his candle with booze on one end and cocaine on the other. They get mixed up with dirty cops, neighborhood cocaine dealers, a dumb gangster trying to be extra hard, boys without supervision playing gangster or hooky, an appliance repairman stealing drug money from a burning car, romantic trouble, and parenting difficulty.

Pelecanos gives you characters rich in personality; none of Pelecanos's people are cookie cutter or plot props. You get to know the people and understand why they do the things they do.  The drug money thief is a sad sack in love with a woman who wants money and it's status. He knows she cheats on him, and he doesn't care as long as she stays with him. With an extra few thousand from the burning care the man thinks he can keep her.


Comments:
1. Narrator Hite really performs this novel. He's telling the story, not reading the story.
2. You do not remember Len Bias? Even I remember Bias. As a star for Maryland Bias was a huge name in college basketball. Bias celebrated his NBA draft pick with some cocaine and died from cocaine intoxication.

Got to: "Tom at the Farm" Michel Marc Bouchard

Got to: Tom at the Farm, Michel Marc Bouchard, translation by Linda Gaboriau, 2011 play, 2013 translation, 9780889227590.

I just mentioned to someone that I ordered this for the library thinking it was a novel. Nope, it's a play. I read the book anyway. Written in French by a Quebecois and had a film version released in 2013. I have not seen the film version. The film was panned by a couple things I read. Apparently the film director is a precocious dude and was too self-indulgent with the movie.


The play is arty. Tom will speak directly to other characters but is thinking out loud, "The lines that Tom addressees to himself or his deceased lover should not be played like the traditional direct asides to the audience. Tom should instead deliver these lines in ongoing interaction with the other characters." Maybe this plays better on stage because I had difficulty visualizing things. 

I was interested in the book because I thought it was a crime/horror story. Young man Tom visit's his dead boyfriend's farming family. The family did not know the dead son was gay and Tom was unknown. Tom stays a few days and things get dark and brutal. Things do get brutal but this is gay-bashing and hidden identities.

Tom is a handsome, stylish, office worker.  When Tom's nameless boyfriend dies in a traffic collision Tom visits the family farm in Northern Quebec for the funeral. Dead Boyfriend never spoke much about his family. Dead Boyfriend got out of No-Gays-Around-Here, Quebec as a young man. Part of Dead Boyfriend's departure was the brutal older brother, Francis.

Things happen.  Francis wants to keep his mother, Agatha, happy and that happiness involves keeping secrets secret. Francis knows Tom's true relationship with Dead Boyfriend but threatens Tom into pretending to be a pal.  Agatha is oblivious to the true nature of both sons. Francis seems to have repressed his own gayness with violence and booze. Tom stays at the farm, works the dairy cows, and is oddly taken in as a new son. Dead Boyfriend's fake girlfriend shows up after Francis (Tom?) asked her to drive up. Tom learns how Dead Boyfriend's first boyfriend was attacked and mutilated by Francis. Francis takes up with Dead girlfriend. Tom murders Francis in the corn field.

Heard: "Little Elvises" by Timothy Hallinen

Heard: Little Elvises by Timothy Hallinen, 2013, Overdrive.com download. Narrated by Peter Berkrot.

Junior Bender, volume 2. Since Junior is a burglar and crime solver I keep thinking his name is Bernie. This makes perfect sense because Hallinen writes Lawrence Block Type novels that are Lawrence Block quality. By Lawrence Block Style I mean: humor, some grit, witty banter and love talk, oddball bad guys that are still scary, and good doses of realism sprinkled throughout.

This time Junior has been called in to the local cop shop under suspicion of burglary. A nasty burglary that involved a death. The Detective on the case gives Junior the option to skate on the frame-up if Junior will help the Detective's aging uncle, a retired record producer. What can Junior do? Of course, this doesn't stop him from negotiating payment and terms.

Aging Uncle is suspect in the death of a journalist. Aging Uncle has an alibi but is hiding the alibi. Aging Uncle made his fortune by selecting Elvis lookalikes from Philadelphia. Giving them suits and songs, then selling singles. Junior's computer savvy daughter even wrote a report on the topic.

Junior meets the journalist's widow and falls in lust. Junior has his crook friends help him out. Junior is tabbed by Scary Old Gangster to do some work. You don't say "No" to Scary Old Gangster. Junior pines for his wife. Junior misses his daughter. Junior enjoys his shiftless and dangerous life; he has fun as a crook. Anyhoo.

Things happen. We follow Junior around as he narrates his investigation, his concern for his teenage daughter, jealousy over Ex-Wife's new boyfriend, threats from a nutbag hitman, side plot on a missing woman, etc.

This is the kind of novel where I start reading (listening) and get sucked right into the story. Hallinen tells a great story with a vivid setting and characters. The characters act believably and the dialogue is very fun.

Done: "The Fever" by Megan Abbott

Done: The Fever by Megan Abbott, 2014, 9780316231053

The usual high quality work of Abbott, Jr. I was a year behind on reading this one.

Abbott moves even further away from straight crime and noir novels by focusing more on the psychological. Abbott uses teenage girls again, but this one spreads out compared to Dare Me. Abbott tells the tale by 1st personing three family members: Deenie is the teen protagonist. Eli her older teen brother. Tom her father and high school teacher. The crime at the center of the story is caused by a romantic jealousy driven frantic by teen drama and emotion. It's the crime's strange psychological byproduct that Abbott zeroes in on.

Deenie is a high school sophomore in Dryden. (New York state, maybe? Oh, it doesn't matter.) She is is part of a tight group of four girls and feels her best friend Gabby is slipping away from her. Gabbie is spending more time with Skye and Deenie has been hanging out with Lise. Things start out with teen worries and concerns. Worry over vaccination pain, love interests, reputation, status, family concerns, mysteries of why people behave badly.

Deenie is in class one morning when Lise has a "fit". A thrashing,shaking fit that throws her from her chair and onto the floor. He classmates are concerned enough to make sure they record everything on their cell phones. Deenie is freaked out and worried. Lise goes to the hospital, is released home, has another fit and whacks her head on a table, goes back in the hospital. Then another  girl has a fit. Then Gabbie has a fit. What is to blame? "I'll bet it's that vaccine. You're poisoning our children!!"

Meanwhile, Eli is a hockey playing fool. He spends as much time as possible on the ice and his good looks draw women like flies. Eli has been a slut the past year or two but is getting weary of the behavior. Tom is a careless father and a serial dater after his wife suddenly left after a surprise miscarriage that may have been part of her surprise affair with a married man.

Things start to happen as Abbott bounces us back forth among those three. Deenie is worried for her friends. Worried that she is to blame for the unknown disease. Worried that someone will find out about how she had sex for the first time.

Teen girls are acting weird and anxious. Teen girls are falling sick. Parents are getting paranoid and angry. Parents are blaming anyone they can. Public health starts asking questions. Police start asking questions and searching the school grounds.

Everything ties up nicely in the end with a reasonable and realistic solution, same as Dare Me. Deenie is too distracted by the mess around her to suspect what really happened/.

Comments:
1. Abbott and Bill Crider are real good at setting things up so everything makes sense in the end.  
2. Abbott got interest in the breakout of "Teen Girl Sickness!" in Maine. Massachusetts? New Hampshire? One of those states anyway. Abbott writes us a close-in account but does not write from the perspective of someone who gets sick. Deenie's homelife is not perfect but she has the self-confidence and stability to not sicken herself from the commotion, worry and anxiety.
3. Yes, "personing" is a word. So is "screwyouitsmywordsothere".