At present, I am enjoying the final book of Michael Moorcock's heroic fantasy series about Elric of Melnibone, Stormbringer. I read a lot of swords and sorcery stuff when I was in my teens but have since only dabbled a tiny bit. My return to the Moorcock books after many decades has been most satisfying, mainly because they are so well written, and hold up nicely over time. The fact that each of the six books in the series is a slim novel says a lot. Moorcock has an energized, direct, and lean writing style, nothing like J.R.R. Tolkien's wordy and weighty Lord of the Rings saga, which I waded through a few times in my younger years.
I've also found some authors thanks to movie adaptations of their work. I was so taken with art-house film Under the Skin that I sought out the novel by Michel Faber. A riveting science fiction story, yet with several differences from the movie, not to mention a lot more exposition. Then I tackled Faber's massive but highly pleasurable The Crimson Petal and the White. Similarly, I found a Jo Nesbo crime thriller; his book Headhunters became an amazing film, so I made note of the novelist's name from the screen credits. Then I located another one of his books, The Snowman, which was quite good.
Friends and family urged me to try out Oryx and Crake, the first of a trilogy by legendary Canadian author Margaret Atwood. I loved the book, and eventually read the entire series. All great, though the final instalment was a bit weaker. And as luck would have it, the kings of quality television, HBO, are adapting the stories to the small screen.
Being a fan of espionage and military special operations, I ploughed through fascinating non-fiction that included Secret Wars and Seal Team Six. The former was heavy with government and political details, quite fascinating, and the latter was a revealing and exciting look at the special units that handle terrorist threats. On the lighter, more imaginative side, I loved working my way through just about every spy novel by Len Deighton over the span of several years. Highly entertaining and realistic, and some of his series (like the Game, Set, Match trilogy) were downright funny. Years ago, I took it upon myself to pore through every James Bond story written by creator Ian Fleming. I even collected most of Bond's continuing adventures by authorized writers after Fleming's passing. Some were good, some not so good. Gardner and Benson produced some of the better work. Oh, and a new one is on its way... by Anthony Horowitz. Must be sure to snap that up.
About a year ago, a friend urged me to try out All The Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy. The modern (1950's) western is expertly realized with attention to characterization and suspenseful storytelling. Though I was put off just a little at first by McCarthy's disuse of punctuation, I came to love his methods. Even his sometimes lengthy dialogue entirely in Spanish did not put me off. I found it added realism, and I very rarely tried to decipher the meaning. It didn't matter. The same goes for English language movies that don't use subtitles for non-English dialogue. The technique adds something to the finished product.
I was so taken with All The Pretty Horses that I rounded up the remaining stories in McCarthy's "Border Trilogy". Every book was a winner. Then I moved on to his standalone novel, Blood Meridian, which was equally enthralling. This guy is a genius. I plan to check out more of his work, including No Country For Old Men. Its film adaptation was stunning, as we all know.
More than a decade ago, I discovered Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt adventure stories. I was heavily into collecting and reading the many novels he'd already released. One of his earliest, Raise the Titanic, is perhaps the best of the bunch. I amassed over twenty of the Pitt marine thrillers, then called it quits. The stories were becoming weaker and Cussler was less involved, employing his son as co-author. That series had run its course for me.
An old friend turned me onto the crime romps by Lawrence Block. This prolific genre writer pumped out several entertaining series. My favourites followed the clever and silly exploits of cat burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, and Evan Tanner, the "spy who couldn't sleep", an even more exaggerated version of James Bond, if I ever saw one. Less humorous were the Hit Man books (still some laughs in there), and darker still were the Matthew Scudder tales.
Exploring the crime genre further, I branched out into Donald Westlake territory, where I found some gems. I loved Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone series, and though I initially enjoyed his lean, sparse prose, I later found it repetitive and unimaginative. The television adaptations starring Tom Selleck actually improved upon the books, thanks to a stark and quiet atmosphere set by moody music and camera-work, and deliberate pacing.
I checked out a handful of other mystery and crime writers for years, but eventually tired of many of them. Folks like Howard Engel, Sue Grafton, and Janet Evanovich, all of whom I gave up on due to the rather tired template they used for every novel they pumped out. Maybe less so with Engel but the other two are guilty as charged.
Quite by accident, I stumbled upon a Patricia Cornwell mystery some time ago, and that led to a long stretch (still going) of catching up on her many forensic science investigations. Still, they have become rather cookie-cutter, but what else can you expect when an author churns out a book a year? Something's got to give. I have, however, come across some books by Michael Connelly, and I have to say I'm really digging them. In fact, The Closer is on deck.
Creeping into another genre, I restored some of my interest in the macabre with a few modern tales. As a teenager, I read several early Stephen King books, both novels and short stories, but lost interest as I "grew up". Suffice it to say, I came back to King a few years ago when I read The Dark Half and Dolores Claiborne. In the 90's, I reread Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire, then leaped onto the bandwagon to devour her subsequent bloodsucker novels, and found something even cooler in her Mayfair Witches series. But again, I reached a point where I'd had enough, and left Rice behind. The same with Rice wannabe Nancy Baker, who I actually met at her stop in town while on a book tour.
The weird and wonderful world of Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy impressed me as a teenager, and I was pleased to finally own my own copy, all three novels collected in one volume. And I loved it all over again. A tremendous writer with style and imagination. I will enjoy this again someday.
More recently, I've been trying out some new releases by other authors of dark themes: The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova (one of my all-time favourites... a hypnotic real life Dracula novel); The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (a mystery about books - does it get any better than that?); and The Demonologist, by Andrew Pyper (lighter but still enjoyable fare).
In the non-fiction corner, more recent reads have included Tina Fey's Bossypants (which made me laugh until tears flowed); Who I Am, by Who guitarist Pete Townshend (a detailed and revealing look at the man and his turbulent and creative life); Quiet (which talked about shy, less chatty people... like me); and Full Count (a colourful recounting of the history of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball club).
Other older favourites are The Odyssey (the ancient Greek epic), The Club Dumas (adapted to film as The Ninth Gate - both rank high on my list), The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson (I love it, but am having trouble getting through Great Shark Hunt), Boys Life by Robert McGammon (which has a Stand By Me vibe, but with a horror element), and Mary Stewart's King Arthur novels of the 80's.
I'm barely scratching the surface of all of the books I've ploughed through over the years, but you get the idea. A fairly wide variety, and some deeper exploration of certain genres and authors.
Turn the page....
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