The Fireman

I read a review for this book a few months back in a review journal that praised Hill's "sophomore effort" and I laughed. I guess the reviewer was unaware of "Heart Shaped Box" or "Horns". At any rate, I liked "Horns" and I loved "Nos4a2", so I was really looking forward to this one. He cribbed some things from his dad's "The Stand" (a blind boy named Nick, one of the bad guys named Harold Cross, a pregnant lady as a heroine, etc.) which he did in "Nos4a2" as well but this time around it just seemed a lot more blatant and it bugged me a bit.
A virus known as Dragonscale is sweeping the world, and it causes the infected to spontaneously combust. Society falls apart quickly, as expected. A young nurse named Harper promises her husband Jakob that if they're infected they'll commit suicide rather than burn, but when Harper finds out she's pregnant and then discovers she's infected, she realizes she'll do anything to protect her unborn child. She runs from Jakob, who is determined to make her uphold her end of the bargain, and ends up at a type of refugee camp for people infected. They've learned how to control the Dragonscale, however, so it doesn't burn them alive. One of them, a man named John who is known as the Fireman, has even managed to figure out how to use it as a weapon.
It was good, but I didn't like it as much as I thought I would, and I think because of all "The Stand" references. It just made me hyper-aware of what he was doing and I compared, even though I didn't want to. I'm really curious if anyone out there has read this one but not "The Stand" and how they feel about it.

When Breath Becomes Air; Stars Over Sunset Boulevard

Oh man. If you want to weep, and I mean like clutching your stomach because it hurts so bad weep, read this one. Paul Kalanithi was a brilliant young man training to be a neurosurgeon, almost done with his grueling residency, when he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer (he passed away in 2015). He was able to return to work long enough to graduate and save a few more lives before the cancer treatments weakened him too much and he had to stop. Paul loved literature and wanted to spend his last years of his life writing, so he took the little time he had left to write this book, to teach all of us the importance of living.
We need more people like Paul in this world.

I needed something lighter after "When Breath Becomes Air", so I read Susan Meissner's "Stars Over Sunset Boulevard". My boss recommended it to me after she heard Meissner speak, and since this book ties into "Gone With the Wind" she knew I would like it, and I did.
Set primarily in Hollywood in 1939, Violet is a young secretary from Alabama who is recruited by David Selznick to come work for him while he shoots "Gone With the Wind". Violet meets an aspiring actress named Audrey, and the two become friends and roommates. Through Audrey, Violet meets and falls in love with Bert, who works in the costume department. It was a sweet book and it was fun to imagine what really went on behind the scenes of the film.

The Witches: Salem, 1692

What exactly happened back in 1692 in Salem to make everyone go so insane? It's hard to say, now, three hundred plus years after the fact, but Schiff does an excellent job of trying to sort out fact from fiction and make some sense of the scattered and half-complete record that was left behind. Even before the year was out, the good people of Salem were trying to rewrite the record so they didn't go down in history as a bunch of nutcases (they failed). I do enjoy Schiff's slightly snarky footnotes and asides, they make for fun reading as I was shaking my head in disbelief over some of the things that were going on. I know, it's not fair to judge people who lived in a different time by the standards of today, but damn if it isn't hard sometimes.

On a side note, I visited Salem back in October of 2011, and they now gleefully celebrate their witches. It's a popular Halloween destination.

Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror

I'm not normally a big short story fan, but I do love Joyce Carol Oates and this book of short horror stories was terrific. Almost all of them were very good, I enjoyed the lot. The last story, "Mystery, Inc." was particularly fun: it was about a man who is systematically killing off rival mystery bookstore owners in New England. He meets his match at the Mystery, Inc. bookstore in New Hampshire.

The Loney

I had the worst time finding this book in the library catalog, because I kept typing in "Lonely", adding an "L". Don't you hate when your brain stuffs letters in where they don't belong?
At any rate, I read a really great review for this book in "Entertainment Weekly". It sounded right up my horror loving alley, so I checked it out. It was...okay. A bit odd for my taste, I think.
The narrator is a man named Smith (I don't think we ever learned his first name) who is looking back on a trip his church made in the 1970s to a remote English countryside where there's a shrine that his mother is convinced will heal his older brother, Andrew, who is mute, possibly developmentally disabled in some way (he didn't go into specifics). The church is recovering from the sudden death of their long time and much beloved (although very hard nosed) priest. While they are staying at this remote countryside house known as the Moorings, Andrew and his brother run across some sketchy people staying in another remote house.
I'm not sure what to say about this book. It was definitely very well written, and very atmospheric, I could feel the cruel, cold wind and the bitter salt air, the way he described it. Like I said, I think it was just a bit too odd and maybe a bit too subtle for my taste. I like my horror more straightforward.

Paul McCartney the Life; Killing Reagan; Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse; Murder Never Knocks

I'm a big Beatles fan, and yes, Paul was always my favorite. I have a Beatles poster in my room that has followed me for over 20 years now. As a teenager I had a friend named Tom who asked me EVERY SINGLE TIME he saw it if the signatures on the bottom were real. Alas, they are not. Tom was very cute, so I didn't mind the repetitive question. You know who else was cute? Paul McCartney in his prime. Sigh...
It was a fun biography, nicely written. I wish Philip Norman would have left a few bits out in the very beginning (teenage boys are vile creatures) but other than that I learned a lot about him, how much he really did contribute to the song writing team known as Lennon/McCartney, and not just all the fluff bits. He's led an interesting life, that's for sure.

 I read O'Reilly's "Killing Kennedy" and enjoyed it, so I figured I'd give "Killing Reagan" a chance. It was pretty good, he's got such a brisk way of telling the story that it goes by very fast. The footnotes can be a bit much (early on, the text said something about Reagan's black hair, and then the footnote mentioned his hair was actually dark brown but the cream he used on it made it appear black. I was like why even say it like that? Why not just say in the actual text that it was brown? That was a little weird to me). The book looked at Reagan's entire life, not in depth, but enough of an overview to make it interesting, and seemed to posit the theory that the assassination attempt in 1981 may have hastened his decline into Alzheimer's.

 I have zero recollection of buying this book, but I must have at some point. I was putting away other books that I'll probably never get around to reading, and saw this one on my shelf. It looked interesting, so I pulled it off the shelf and read it. It was quite fun, it's a choose your own adventure type of book about the zombie apocalypse. Every decision you make has consequences, most of which ended in painful and gruesome death, but some endings were fun.

And finally, a great Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins collaboration, "Murder Never Knocks". Mike Hammer is minding his own business in his office when a man walks in with a gun. He tells Hammer he was paid to bump him off. Hammer throws an ashtray at him and fires off a round from his big .45 before the would be assassin knows what hit him.
As the week goes on, Mike survives two more assassination attempts, and one of his friends is nearly killed. So he's got to figure out who wants him dead and why, and also how to keep Velda safe while doing it. It was great fun, I do so love Mickey Spillane.
I wonder if anyone will ever pick up the Ed McBain 87th Precinct series? Maybe McBain didn't leave behind material like Spillane did. It's a damn shame, because it was such a good series, I'd love to see more of them. Oh well.