Dodge City; For This We Left Egypt?; Night Ocean

"Dodge City" by Tom Clavin was really great, I enjoyed it a lot, so much so that when I visited a new library a few days ago, I bought a bunch of used books in their bookstore on the Old West. It has reignited my passion for that era. Now if I ever get around to reading them is another story :0 At any rate, this one was fun, I learned a lot about Wyatt Earp, who I knew a little about, and even more about Bat Masterson, who I knew absolutely nothing about. There were some bits about Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday, and other notable miscreants sprinkled throughout. He had a very fun writing style, it was sort of snarky, sarcastic, darkly humorous, which made for lively reading.

A quick, fun spoof on the Haggadah (for those of you who don't know, a Haggadah is a book you use for your Passover Seder. You buy the same copy of each one for everyone at your feast, and they're usually pretty short). The Haggadah explains the Passover story, why the Jews fled from Egypt and why we continue to celebrate thousands of years later. The authors (including Dave Barry, one of my favorites) had a good time.

I checked out Paul La Farge's "The Night Ocean" because it was about H.P. Lovecraft, and he's always piqued my curiosity. I really enjoyed this one, I couldn't put it down. Charlie Willet is a nonfiction writer who loved reading Lovecraft as a kid. The book is told from his wife, Marina's, POV. Charlie finds evidence that Robert Barlow, a man who was purportedly a lover of Lovecraft's, is still alive, having faked his death in the 1950s. Charlie goes chasing him down and brings his story to light, publishing a huge book purporting "the truth" about H. P. Lovecraft. There are cracks in the foundation from the beginning that Charlie willfully ignores, hoping for the best, but of course after the book is published and becomes a huge hit, scholars start digging and discover Charlie has been duped, the man claiming to be Barlow is not actually Barlow. After Charlie's suicide (that happens early on in the book, Marina fills us in on what led him to do it) Marina is determined to get to the bottom of things herself and goes looking for Barlow and in the process, the truth about Lovecraft.