Presidential (S)elections

I haven't been having a cold like Leigh, or trouble with my leg like Rob, but what I've been having is like a combination of the worst aspects of both. I've been having a presidential election. I say 'I', but I really mean 'they', because although I'm in France, I'm not altogether of it, if you catch my drift. I can vote in local and regional elections being a European, but for any Rosbif who tries to muscle in on the choosing of the Head Grenouille, the shrift he gets is decidedly on the short side.
It's been a bad-tempered campaign, often peevish and at times verging on the distinctly shirty.
So to get away from this parliament of crows and the not unfrenzied activity which has surrounded it, I decided to catch up with my reading. Our town library now boasts a vast(ish) English language section with a high proportion of crime/mystery novels. From Block, Connelly, Coben and Cornwell  all the way to Westlake. Wodehouse is also there to ease the fractious mind.

My selection this last month has largely consisted of books I should have read long ago, but have inexplicably failed to. So it's been Catch-Up time. But you can't ever really catch-up, can you? And my reading has been interfered with by the thought that people will say incredulously "You haven't read that? But everybody's read that. Years ago!"

Well, okay. We can't all be perfect and I don't get out much. But three of this month's books have made for a fine distraction from the worritsome Gallic punch-up. What I like in a book is  (of course) a good story well told, but I also love to learn about something new to me. And these three have all taught me something new, told me about something of which I was completely ignorant. Coincidentally, all three concern America, but I don't mind that.

The first is The Given Day by Dennis Lehane. This is a very good book indeed. I've now stopped classing D. Lehane as a great crime writer and started thinking of him as a great writer full stop. And what fascinated me was the back-drop of Boston in 1919. I had never heard of the Boston police strike and most of all, I had never heard of the Boston Molasses Disaster. If anyone had spoken to me about it before I came across the book, I would have assumed they were talking about a Monty Python sketch. But the horrid reality was anything but funny. And the fact that it has Babe Ruth as a sort of Greek Chorus turning up throughout the narrative is a clever added bonus.

My second selection is The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld. I am always a little wary about detective novels written about actual historical figures, but this is an exception. I didn't know about Sigmund Freud's visit to New York in 1909, and his fractious relationship with Carl Jung, so here again I learned something new. The (fictional) murder plot which takes place during the visit and with which Freud becomes involved is well constructed but again, it was the back-drop that entertained me the most. The New York of 1909, with its towering nineteen-floor (gasp) skyscrapers, the Manhatten Bridge as yet unbuilt, the social New York of the Four Hundred Families - all beautifully drawn.

Third and not least, I read this.

And it frightened the bejasus out of me.

After 'No Country For Old Men', I had to amend my List Of People To Be Really, Really Scared Of, to include Anton Chigurh, but nothing prepared me for this. Why on earth hadn't I read this before? It is one of the strangest, most terrible, most terrifying things I have ever read. I kept having to stop during one of McCarthy's long hair-raising paragraphs, to take a few deep breaths and tell myself it was only a book. But it isn't only a book. One review (the NYT, I think) called it a journey 'through a hell without purpose'. And that it is and then some. There is no salvation in this book, no redemption for anyone. The end is as terrible as the beginning. It is dark, bloody and pitiless.

And what I didn't know about was John Joel Glanton , his band of scalphunters and their horrid, bloody work in 1849. And worst of all, I didn't know about Glanton's appalling second-in-command, the dreadful Judge Holden. And now I know, I'm not sure I wasn't better off not.

What mesmerises is McCarthy's English which is like no English language anyone one has written or  read before. It isn't simply the repetitive use of 'and', nor the lack of quotes around the dialogue. It is the way he drifts into near-Biblical  or quasi-mediaeval mode, his use of the archaic word, the outmoded phrase when he is describing the indescriptible which raised the hair on my neck. I am going to have to read it again to make sure I had it right the first time. But not just yet. I have to read some P.G.Wodehouse to settle my nerves.

France has elected a new President.

And I have elected Judge Holden to head my List of People To Be Really Really Scared Of, which now reads:
1. Judge Holden
2. Anton Chigurh
3. Roy Batty
4 Keyser Sose

They just keep on coming.

Quirks in Progress

Every year at Christmas our family--my wife and I, our daughter, our sons, and all their spouses and children--get together for a week or so, at our house. The headcount is up to thirteen now, and shows signs of growing even more in coming years. It's a lot of fun, and since the five grandchildren are all under the age of seven, it can be a little chaotic as well. Sort of a mix between a Waltons Christmas special and the studio food-fight scene in Blazing Saddles.

What's different about this year is that some of our clan arrived here later than usual--the day before Christmas Eve--and are staying until after New Year's Day, instead of coming a week earlier and leaving just after Christmas. Therefore, instead of my usual practice of avoiding booksignings the week before Christmas because the family's here, this time I told my publisher I'd be available, and wound up signing at several Booklands and Books-A-Millions over the past few days.

Gift rapping

I had a good time at each store, met some interesting folks, and was pleased to see firsthand that a lot of shoppers still choose to give books as Christmas presents. I'm sure some of them were last-minute gifts--I still remember the way I used to frantically grab presents for the kids at the airport after a business trip--but the fact remains that the items under the tree on Christmas morning sometimes still turn out to be books. That warms my heart: I love to give them and receive them.

(By the way, I don't mean to be ignoring e-readers or magazines or subscriptions to magazines. To me, any kind of reading material--or instrument for that purpose--makes a good gift.)

Take me to your reader

Which brings up another subject. Several of my writer friends have told me they don't read other people's fiction while they're in the process of writing their own fiction. They say that if they do, it dilutes their focus, and keeps them from concentrating fully on their own styles and storylines.

That's fine with me. I've always believed a writer should do whatever it takes to make him or her productive, which of course includes avoiding whatever would make him or her unproductive. If it hurts when you laugh, don't laugh.

But I must tell you, the "don't-read-others'-fiction-while-you're-writing-your-own-fiction" policy is--for me--a quirk that wouldn't work. If I stopped reading other authors' fiction while I was in the process of writing my own, I would never get a chance to read other authors' fiction. I'm always writing something, it seems, and if I'm not actually putting words on paper I'm dreaming up those words to later put on paper.

Concurrent sessions

Here's a related point, which I'll put in the form of three questions. Do you ever read more than one novel at the same time? (I don't.) Do you ever read a novel and a nonfiction book at the same time? (I do.) If you're a writer, do you ever find yourself plotting (in your head) more than one novel or short story at the same time? (I do.)

One thing I don't usually do, and I'm not sure why, is read two installations of a series without reading some other kind of book in between them. Novels I've read over the past couple months are (in order): Lee Child's Without Fail, Kinky Friedman's Blast From the Past, Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, John Grisham's The Litigators, Child's Worth Dying For, Friedman's Ten Little New Yorkers, Stephen King's 11/22/63, Collins's Catching Fire, Michael Crichton's Micro, and Collins's Mockingjay--and splitting up the two Child and Friedman "series" novels and the Hunger Games trilogy was intentional. I think I just enjoyed them more that way. (During that same period I also wrote seven short stories and I've almost finished plotting two more.) How about you?--Do any of you prefer to read books in a series back-to-back, or do you (like me) prefer to sandwich other books between them?

Speaking of gifts and sandwiches . . . that's a wrap

In closing, I sincerely hope all of you read plenty of books and stories in 2012, that you buy plenty of books for others, and that you receive even more.

Happy holidays to everyone! See you next year.