Naked in Death by JD Robb

Naked in Death (In Death 1)
by J.D. Robb
Brilliance Audio, 2010 (originally published in 1995)
5 discs, abridged

Welp, that was another abridged audiobook. It wasn't supposed to be, but it was what I could get, and I've wanted to try this series for a while now. For those not sure, yes, JD Robb is a different incarnation of redoubtable, prolific romance author Nora Roberts. This series is exceedingly popular and long-lived, and incredibly all 40 (40!!) entries in the series have above a 4 star rating on Goodreads. The setting appealed to me - I like mysteries, and the idea of a series set in a futuristic New York City, but still a police procedural and a romantic thriller, really tickled my fancy.

Lieutenant Eve Dallas is a young and very successful police inspector with the New York City Police and Security Department in the year 2058. After a particularly messy episode with a domestic assault and murder, in which she's been responsible for the death of the murderer, she's immediately called in to a top secret investigation involving the gruesome murder of the prostitute (legalized, now) granddaughter of a very powerful, very right-wing Southern Senator. The top suspect is the charming billionaire Roarke, a man with deep secrets. But as Eve grows to know Roarke she becomes convinced that his secrets don't include coldblooded murder (this one, at least.) And she finds herself increasingly fascinated by this contrarian, handsome, and likely very dangerous man.

I know why this series is so popular. It ticks off alllll the fantasies: young, scarily competent, slightly maverick, and secretly scarred detective; fancy gadgets that do cool things; a possible conspiracy of the powerful and a hard-ass boss for our detective to fight against; and very rich, very good-looking, very alpha male hero. The writing is extremely competent and even excellent in places. The tone is perfect. The plot is... not a big surprise at any point, exactly, but there's enough tension to keep it interesting. In short, this book is straight-out escapist fiction and it doesn't pretend to be anything else, and it's very, very good at what it does.

Any problems I had with this book really had to do with the abridgement I listened to and nothing else. And that's not even saying that the abridgement was poorly done; it wasn't. It's just that any romance that is abridged feels too fast, and mysteries that are abridged often leave clues that the author might have buried a little better feeling pretty bare. The predictability of both the plot and the identity of the murderer are partially due to the format I chose.

So I need to talk about Roarke and the alpha male hero. Intellectually I find myself pretty conflicted about this, but in some ways Robb(erts) has made this easy: Eve is not a wallflower, nor is she too perfect. She saves herself when she needs saving, but she's messy, and she makes an acceptable number of mistakes. I say "acceptable" because I really think that this kind of story needs a protagonist who makes errors, but she can't make too many because otherwise the story stops being enjoyable because the reader is too worried - Eve hits these notes perfectly and manages not to be either one-note or stereotypical; she's very likeable and she's very competent and she's not a push-over.

This is important, because Roarke is super-alpha. In his desire to take care of Eve and help her out, he does a couple of things that are pretty creepy if one thinks too hard about it. To the author's credit Eve calls him out on these things, but she doesn't do the sensible thing and get him out of her life entirely. And this is where I have trouble. I feel that, by enjoying the alpha male, I am somehow buying into a misogynistic social construct, and I don't like that. On the other hand, I also feel like it's unhelpful to suggest to women that certain avenues of fantasy or desire are off-limits or shameful. I don't have the background to be able to take this discussion too much further, and I obviously still have a need to work through it.

But simply: I enjoy Roarke as a hero, and I find the scenes with him romantic and sexy, and as a fantasy his behaviour doesn't creep me out, even if I encountered someone like him in real life I'd stay as far away from him as possible. I can spend as much time as I would like trying to justify this, but I think I just maybe need to own up to it: as a fantasy, this works for me. It can be borderline - there are alpha males I find just insufferable and not attractive at all - but something about this combination, Eve and Roarke, I find sexy and believable enough as a fantasy to enjoy the relationship.

If it's not clear from all of the above, I really enjoyed listening to this, and I'll definitely read/listen to more of the In Death series. Do I have the need to read all 40+ books? Maybe not, but I'm glad I've started. A solid mystery and vivid characters, with the bonus of a well-realized, very interesting and fun setting. If you're not a fan of the alpha male romance, steer clear, but this is a good bet for those who like that sort of thing. Even if you're a bit conflicted about it.

DNF: The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Circle
by Dave Eggers
Random House Audio, 2013
11 discs, unabridged

I don't normally to this, but the reaction I had to this book and the fact that I was over halfway through when I threw in the towel makes me want to write something about it. Luckily I have a place to do that. Hello blog!

Um, so this book has actually been fairly well-received. And I felt the premise was really interesting, and definitely creepy, and things started off strongly. I didn't love any of the characters but that's okay... or so I thought. It made me think, it made me curious to know what was happening next. I was listening on audiobook, and it's a rare audiobook that I don't finish, so I figured I'd just keep going even if I wasn't loving it (also: book club.) But then the rage started.

The premise is that Mae Holland starts work at a big tech company in California, a company called The Circle. It's a bit like Facebook and a bit like Google and a bit its own thing (and has already subsumed Facebook and Google and all the rest.) It's a great place to work, but all is not as it seems. About a disc and a half in, it was really feeling like things were too good to be true - and of course they were.

And then. The further we got, the more I disliked Mae. This is 100% intentional on the author's part, and I think what I find most interesting here in my reaction is that he really did a good job. When I was sending my comments to the book club, I made a confession: I know I have said in the past (likely here on the blog too) that I don't have to like the main character in order to enjoy a book. This may be true, but I'm not sure I can actually tell you the title of a book I've enjoyed where I didn't like the main character. Mae starts out a bit... not loveable, but as the book progresses she becomes more and more obnoxious, stupid, vapid, selfish, thoughtless, and righteous, none of which is very fun to spend time with. In fact, I started wondering why I was spending hours of my life with characters I mostly wanted to punch in the face.

When, finally, one night at 2am I was still awake feeling furious with her, just over halfway through the book, I quit. I am not saying this is a rational response, or a good one, but it's not unusual for me to get really emotionally invested in a book. I prefer that I get emotionally invested in a positive way. I don't really have room in my life for books that make me feel that much rage right now. I need my sleep.

The premise was really interesting, and I think important. It certainly did make me think very seriously about how I use technology and how I feel about privacy, and why I think privacy in my online and physical life is important. It had things to say about the gradual erosion of our privacy and of meaning in our lives, without feeling like a conversation with a grouchy old uncle who thinks we should all go back to rotary telephones and making our own jam. (I am kind of with him, though.) It is even clear that these ideas that erode our privacy can be good - they can be convenient, they can help the world become a better place - but we have to be vigilant and we have to have protections in place, protections with teeth, sometimes to protect us from ourselves.

At any rate. I didn't finish it, but I don't think it was a bad book. Just definitely not for me. And it was a useful book to me, making me a bit more conscious that my desire to know everything about how smallfry is doing at her first day of preschool this morning is maybe not actually what I really want in the grander scheme of things...

Lords and Ladies by Sir Terry Pratchett

Lords and Ladies
by Sir Terry Pratchett
Corgi Books, 2013 (originally published in 1992)
400 pages

LOOK! More Pratchett! I haven't forgotten about the Discworld. In fact, I think it basically stays in the back of my head all the time. I putter about my library and in my head, I am always on the watch for the Librarian. I would welcome him with a banana. I would never dare call him a monkey.

One learns all sorts of things from the Discworld, you see. I've been trying to explain these books to a few non-converts lately and I just can't seem to get it right. I'm too deep into the Discworld at this point to be objective, and while I objectively recognize that these books are not for everyone, emotionally I just can't understand why everyone doesn't adore these books the way I do.

In Lords and Ladies, we're back with the witches Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick, who, if you recall Witches Abroad (and you should; it's one of the best) went on a trip, leaving the tiny country of Lancre to get about on her own. This, it turns out, was maybe not such a good idea. It's circle time, meaning the walls between universes are becoming thin. Those walls are there for good reason. On the other side of those walls are laughing, merry, beautiful elves. Beautiful, bloodthirsty, greedy, amoral elves.

As with most Discworld books, amid the merrymaking (some of it quite bloody) and the madcap, slapstick, and occasionally subtle humour, there are serious notes. As with Witches Abroad, Pratchett peels back the layers of stories and what they mean and what they can do, but in a different way here. Memory and its failings is part of it: it's been so long since the elves were in Lancre that no one remembers them as they truly were. They have become laughable and cute, and in some cases glamourous - because elves can make themselves look like what the humans observing them desire. The point that no one remembers the hidden horrors because all they remember is the surface beauty and class of the elves is made a couple of times. Elves are compared to cats: beautiful, classy, charming creatures when they want to be - and mercilessly cruel, deadly, and capricious, too. When all that's left are the folktales and the superstitions, the tales of heroes and villains, then it's quite possible for history to repeat itself. One knows one is supposed to leave milk out for the fairies. One forgets that's because one really doesn't want the fairies to have to come in to the house to get it themselves.

Surfaces and what they mean also make an appearance - what elves are on the surface, what each of us is on the surface. Hard to explain this more without spoilers, but let's just say that when it comes to Magrat Garlick, surfaces matter a lot. And changing the surface helps her change the interior when she needs that change the most. We've probably all been in a situation where the clothes we're wearing help us feel up to the task (or not) - at a job interview, or meeting an important personage - and Magrat suffers an extreme case in the latter part of Lords and Ladies. To cathartic effect.

In the end, I liked this book but I didn't love it the way I've loved some of the other Discworld books I've read. I'm not entirely sure why, though I did find it a bit hard to follow towards the end and had to read a couple of sections two or three times to get exactly what was going on. The danger never felt particularly acute, not in the same way it has in some of the earlier books; I always figured something was going to happen to fix the situation. The solution was telegraphed a bit, too.

But as always, saying that this particular Disworld book isn't quite as good as some of the others is like saying that coconut cream pie is all right: I might prefer pumpkin, but coconut cream is still pretty delicious. And contains enough cream to keep the fairies sated.

Old City Hall by Robert Rotenberg

Old City Hall
by Robert Rotenberg
Recorded Books, 2009
10 discs, unabridged

Here's an interesting case: a book I can acknowledge was not terribly well-written, in the main, but that I still quite liked.

I think I read a lot of things that aren't brilliant writing, and I generally enjoy them if they've got decent characters and a good story. It's pretty rare that I can ignore out-and-out poor writing so comprehensively as I did in this case. But Old City Hall was at least extremely entertaining to listen to, and at best it was great. The writing isn't consistently mediocre; it even has some very good moments. Enough that I have hope for the future books of this series.

And as I said, something did grab me. Maybe I just enjoyed hearing a mystery set in Toronto, or maybe in the end it was the characters - wooden and obscure as some of them felt - that did it.

A newspaper deliveryman arrives at the penthouse apartment in a downtown building at exactly his appointed time, bearing a copy of The Globe and Mail for Kevin Brace, Canada's most famous radio voice. But instead of the usual punctuality and polite chat he has come to expect, Brace meets Mr. Singh late, with blood on his hands and a stunned expression - "I killed her," he says. Sure enough, Brace's younger common-law spouse is naked and dead in the hallway bathroom, a single stab wound to her abdomen. Brace refuses to speak to anyone, including his lawyer, and the pieces in what should be a cut-and-dried case just don't quite fit.

Ari Greene is the lead detective, and the series is named for him, but this story is told from multiple perspectives as well as Greene's, including Nancy Parrish the defence lawyer, Arthur Fernandes the prosecutor, and Daniel Kennicot, a young criminal-lawyer-turned-police-officer. It's a fairly straightforward procedural and steeped in Toronto in deep winter. Because of the multiple perspectives we don't get terribly deep into the heads of any of the characters, and Greene is a bit of a cipher, though the bits with his father are lovely. Daniel Kennicot was the character who really stood out for me, and this is a good thing as things seem set up to continue with him as a main character throughout the series.

The problems come in with the plot, a little, and the writing, a lot. The plot is well-done, except that it starts to spin a little out of hand, as though Rotenberg was trying to jam as much in as he possibly could, and make comments on certain societal things. It gets complicated and I do like that while the mystery wraps up there's still enough messiness to make it believable. And while I enjoyed the procedural aspects of the book a lot, I did find that Rotenberg gets a bit explain-y. He gives the reader too much information - doesn't let us come to our own conclusions, about characters or about events - and he often gets a bit dry while talking about aspects of the legal system, such that he's almost taking the reader aside and saying, "okay, this is how this works, this is why these characters are doing that."

I don't really need to be told how close to reality it is, I'd rather feel it's close to reality, if that makes any sense.

Regardless, I enjoyed, and enough that I'm hoping to get to The Guilty Plea soon. Paul Hecht, by the way, does an excellent job of the narration. I kind of forgot I was driving sometimes, I was paying so close attention. I should probably watch out for that. Recommended for fans of light and easy-to-follow mysteries, especially if you want a different sort of setting, and want to experience a parallel universe where the Maple Leafs are actually kind of a hockey team and not a joke.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
by Gabrielle Zevin
Viking Canada, 2014
258 pages

This is a book best read by people who love words and stories. It's not a heavy story (surprising, given some of the subject matter) but it's heavy on the literary references and book world in-jokes. This is an easy, fast read, gently funny and somewhat predictable, which makes it a very comfortable summer read, even for someone like me, who generally doesn't read a lot of contemporary fiction because I like to keep reality out of my reading space.

A.J. Fikry is the owner of Island Books, a small literary bookstore on Alice Island. It's a quiet place in the winter, and a very busy place with tourists - the summer people - in the few sunny months. Things are not going the way A.J. planned; his wife, and business partner, was killed in an accident, and business is slowing, and A.J. is not the sort of person who can attract business the way his vibrant, socially adept wife could. But things are about to change for A.J. and his small circle of friends and acquaintances, with the introduction of a small, abandoned girl into his bookstore and his life.

I think if anything I'd maybe describe this story as a bit of a love letter to short stories, a mild statement on the value of sharing books, and a bit of a fairytale. It struck me that it managed to be neither maudlin nor manipulative, both very easy traps to slide into with a book like this, which I appreciate hugely. It wasn't terribly deeply examined either, so while some very difficult things happen to some of the characters, I'm not sure how much staying power this book has with me in the grand scheme of things. Weeks after I've actually finished reading the thing, I'm still enjoying the afterglow but maybe not as loudly enthusiastic as I was.

One thing that did strike me as I was reading was the way Zevin used multiple narrators. I am not usually a fan of this technique in the way Zevin was using it. Many times certain narrators have very important bits of information that other narrators don't, and because we care about what happens to these people and the relationships they have with each other, it becomes very tense, wondering who will find out what when and exactly what the fallout will be, and suspecting it will be very unpleasant for everyone involved. However, I think because of the way Zevin handles her characters, which is gently, I trusted her. The tension was there, but not overwhelming, and left space for enjoying the other aspects the story. Namely the literary references and the book world in-jokes.

Also, her foreshadowing is pretty clear. The ending, though not its specifics, is telegraphed, and I saw it coming. I was supposed to. I appreciated this as it meant nothing was a huge surprise (or not much) and it occurs to me that I'm not wild about being surprised in books, at least not about some things. At least not in the usual course of things.

It's not a remarkable book, but it's lovely and charming and - I've used this word already a couple times, but it fits - gentle. It's funny and if it treads lightly, that's okay by me. A recommended speedy, very readable summer book. Book clubs will likely get some mileage out of it, though hard to know how much. It might be fun to pair a couple of the short stories that form the backbone with the book; the Flannery O'Connor alone packs a more visceral punch than the whole book, if you like that sort of thing.