As mentioned previously, we were in Florida for a good chunk of last week, which necessarily involved airplanes. In keeping with my recent attempts to cut down on my doomscrolling (and save battery on my phone, which is getting on in years) I brought a bunch of paper books as reading material, and having finished the last of them last night, I thought I might as well write something about them.
Harlan Coben’s Myron Bolitar Series:
I ordered the first three of these after I read and enjoyed Win, which is written from the point of view of a major character in this series. I actually finished the first one before we even left, and then banged out the other two on planes, one on each flight. They’re pretty much perfect as airplane reads.
These go back a ways, dating to 1995 and 1996, so it’s sort of amusing to see what passes for high tech. Myron explains the *69 redial system in each book, but says it only works in limited areas, and in the third there’s a bit where they catch a bad guy off guard by using a cell phone to call a car phone and leaving the line open so the other person can hear what’s going on. The past, as they say, is a different country altogether…
These are fun, fast reads, but banging out three of them in quick succession has its drawbacks, as the tics associated with serial writing are really obvious. Win and Esperanza and Jessica get described in extremely similar words in each book, which is great for catching new-ish readers up, but when you’re reading it the third time in the span of a week, it gets a little tired. I expect that gets better as the series goes along, as some of the stuff in Win suggests a longer plot arc. Anyway, I’ll read more of these eventually, but I’m going to do more to mix in other stuff. (Recommendations of authors and series in this vein would be very welcome in the comments…)
Terry Pratchett’s Guards, Guards and Witches Abroad:
Technically, we bought these for SteelyKid, who recently powered through the Tiffany Aching series, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, and Nation, which are Pratchett’s best-known YA books. I stuffed them in my bag “just in case,” but really to have something to break up the Coben-o-rama. I ended up reading Guards, Guards mostly by the in-laws’ pool, and Witches Abroad after our return.
Both of these are also even older than the Bolitar books— dating to 1989 and 1991, respectively— though being comic fantasy, they don’t feel as dated. I had read both of them before (probably in the mid-90’s; I would’ve sworn we owned copies, but they may have been donated to the library book sale at a time when we were short of shelf space), but remembered essentially nothing of the plots, just a handful of the jokes— the bit about million-to-one chances, Greebo’s transformation into a human, the bit about seeing the future in gumbo, a few more. This was a good thing, as it made them feel fresh.
And, damn, Terry Pratchett was a good writer. Some of the late Discworld books really dropped off in quality (there’s at least one Tiffany Aching I’ve never read, because it has a bad reputation), but these are from near his peak, and they’re just terrific. I’m not 100% sure SteelyKid will like them as much as the others, but I’m really glad we got them, and will seriously consider re-reading more Pratchett in the near-ish future.
And that’s this week’s brief foray into literary criticism, inspired in part by making a run to the bookstore today for some more paper books. If you’d like to hear about my future doomscroll-avoidance efforts, here are some buttons:
And if there are mystery/thriller authors or series you’d like to recommend (I picked up a Robert Crais book today to give that series a try), or Terry Pratchett jokes you’d like to quote at me, the comments will be open.