Telegraph Days

Over the weekend I completed Larry McMurtry's Telegraph Days. This one was a pretty quick read due to its easy flowing style and first person narrative technique. Marie Antoinette "Nellie" Courtright narrates her own life story, most of it taking place in her 20's. Now I've read Lonesome Dove as well as the three companion volumes to that novel and this book is no Lonesome Dove. But that is not necessarily a bad thing. Lonesome Dove won the pulitzer prize for literature, presumably for the quality of the writing. My feeling is that it won for the sheer audacity of it. After all, it took the "Western" style of fiction away from the predictable cowboys and indian structure of Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour and steered it towards something completely new and different. Well, here we have another type of western novel that is different.

This novel seems to be purposefully over-the-top. By that I mean, Mr McMurtry cares little for realism this time around and focuses instead on the impossible-to-believe. Here we have a 22-year old young lady living at the end of the "Wild West" days that manages to meet, interact with, influence, and sleep with virtually all of the famous folk of the day. This includes Wild Bill Hickock, General Custer, Buffalo Bill Cody, Wyatt Earp and all of his brothers. Her journey (in just one book mind you) takes her from her western home in Rita Blanca (present day Oklahoma panhandle), to Dodge City, Nebraska, Arizona (where she witnessed the shootout at the OK Corral) and finally on to Arizona. She is vitally important to Buffalo Bill's Wild West show getting off the ground and she becomes a bestselling author of dime novels of the era. Unlikely? Yes. Enjoyable entertainment? Absolutely!

It seems many readers tend to dislike this book. The author will forever have his other work compared to Lonesome Dove, I suppose, and readers seem to expect that sort of book. I have also read all four of McMurtry's "Berrybinder Narratives" which is of the same nature as this one...storys filled with over-the-top, humerous situations and quirky characters. I enjoyed this novel as I think many would if they gave it a chance to stand on it's own and not try to cram it into a certain mold. Too often I think we get wrapped around the idea of what makes a quality novel and we forget that we can just sit back, relax, and enjoy it for what it is.

Next up, I'll be diving into The Nezovats in Despair, a fantasy book that was sent to me by the author in order for me to review it on Amazon. I'll let you know what I think here as well.

The Academy

The final book I read on my Spring Break trip (actually only made it half way through before the trip ended so I finished over the weekend) was The Academy by Bentley Little. Mr Little writes in the horror genre and this is perhaps the 8th or 9th book I've read by him. He likes to take ordinary circumstances that most of us have had to to deal with and then put in a horror element that then spirals out of control. Previous topics have included The Store, one of my favorites which turns the local chain box store (Walmart type) into an evil presence in the community. He has written similar things with a house, a university, a town, a home owner's association, etc. My favorite Bentley Little book so far was The Ignored which deals with an adolescent who is shy and so ignored by friends, family, and school that he literally fades out and becomes virtually invisible and discovers there are others like him. It seems like many of us can relate to that. Beware though; if you've never read a Bentley Little novel, they do tend to be very sexual, many times graphically so.

Unfortunately, The Academy will rank among the lower end of the Bentley Little books I've read. I was intrigued by the cover blurb because this time the evil surrounds a charter high school. Since my son attends a charter high school I was curious as to how the evil would manifest. The main plot proceeded in a predictable pattern, probably too predictable. If this was my first book by this author that might not have bothered me too much but it seems like this one was sort of a retread of his other works. I read in the author bio at the end of the book that Mr Little spent at least a little time in his life as a teacher. It sure didn't seem like he knew much about charter schools though; more like he was using talking points put out by the NEA depicting charter schools as "bad". He takes those things on faith and exploits them for the purposes of horror. The problem though is that those talking points are biased opinions put out by an organization that is threatened by the very existence of charter schools. No doubt some charter schools are better than others but Mr Little seems to paint them all with a broad brush here. And it's not a pretty picture.

He also fails to disguise his anti-conservative political views. I really don't care where on the political spectrum my authors dwell, and if a particular character is blatently liberal or blatently conservative that's fine, especially if it pertains to the story. But if you are going to editorialize then at least get the basic principles correct. There are parts in this book that you'd swear were written by Michael Moore.

But what irked me the most was the stupid characters. Not one of them acted like any normal, rational person would act. When confronted by the off-the-wall "requirements" for parents to volunteer their time and money (or else) , the parents thought it odd. I would have found a new school for my child. When a student sees the girls' physical education teacher engage in obvious (and sick) sexual behavior with the entire class, she tells her best friend but that's it. These kinds of incidents, resulting from the growing evil, are numerous and serve only to demonstrate the stupidity of the characters as they fail time and again to do anything about it.

Mr Little does write in a page-turning style which works though. Despite the negative aspects of the plot and characterization it was pretty easy to keep reading. I guess I was hopeful that in the end, when the evil was finally discovered and dealt with, there would be some redemption. Unfortunately, the book fell flat here as well. The evil was known from almost the first page and it was a mercy killing at the end, for the reader. Of course the charter school converted back to a regular public school and all was good again. Disappointing to say the least. I may still read books by Mr Little in hopes for another one like The Ignored but it may be a while.

For my short story reading I selected the collection of Native American myths that has been sitting on my shelf for years. I won't comment on each of the stories this time because they are quite short and I'll be reading 2-3 between each novel. When the book is done, I'll blog about it then.

Next up for novel reading: Telegraph Days by Larry McMurtry

The Cat Who Wasn't There

The second book that I completed on the trip was The Cat Who Wasn't There by Lilian Jackson Braun. I was due for a straight who-dunnit mystery and I also needed to read a shorter novel after just completing the lengthy The Seventh Scroll. This book is the 15th in the "Cat Who..." series and although I haven't read all of them up to this point I would guess I have completed about 10-11 of them. I confess to not having read them in order, something I normally never do, but that is due to the nature of how I acquire them. You see I received several as gifts, years ago and I knew my mother had read them and liked them so I gave them a try. Since then I occasionally pick one up at a used book store but by no means own all of them nor read them in the correct order. That really doesn't matter though as each is a stand alone story and the parts of the bigger story arc that stretch across books are slow moving and easily picked up by the context of each book.

I do enjoy these novels...the more of them I read the more I enjoy them. They are safe mysteries, meaning I know what I'm getting each time I read one. I envy the main character's position in life: wealthy due to unexpected inheritance, yet living somewhat frugally in a small town filled with quirky characters. He writes a column in the local newspaper on topics he thinks are interesting. Really, it's a stress free life...or should be. The problem is, just like other who- dunnit protagonists, there are a lot of murders that seem to take place in his small town, and with the assistance of his two siamese cats, he usually gets into the middle of it.

This particular entry in the series is among the favorites of the fans. It's easy to see why. Quill (Jim Quilleran, the protagonist), agrees to travel to Scotland with several of the townspeople and see the sites. This gets him out of the normal town routines and gives readers a change of scenery. The actual murder and subsequent mystery and the solving thereof takes many twists and turns as we travel with Quill to Scotland and back home again. His girlfriend is being stalked by an unknown person(s) and Quill himself is being stalked by an old flame intent upon marriage. Could she have her eye on that vast fortune of his? The town's character and it's quirky residents are on full display. All in all a witty story well told. I will keep on reading these books at a rate of 1-2 per year because its always nice to come home to a friendly place.

The trip still wasn't over yet though so one more book to tell you about on the next blog.