R.A. Raab's Blog, page 3

3 Book Reviews

Book Review: The fact that Kent Haruf was writing Our Souls at Night while he was dying makes this poignant novel even more so. The story is about relationships that form near the end of life and the effect it has on the people around them. Haruf writes about a small fictional town in Colorado with such style and ease that one not only feels like they know these characters, it leaves one feeling like they’re real people … or at least based on real people. And then you wonder how much of the story is autobiographical–and that’s the moment that you realize how much we’ll miss a talent like Kent Haruf. Not his best book, but a wonderful finish to an inspiring writing career. Four Stars.

Book Review: I haven’t cross-referenced my review for the first book of the Century Trilogy by Ken Follett, but I’m pretty sure my review of the second book, Winter of the World will be pretty much the same. If you’re looking for a great beach read that will take a good chunk of your week (or two), you could do worse than to read one of these gigantic tomes by Follett. Fast-paced and full of violence and sex (and characters that die off a la Game of Thrones), it’ll have you flipping the pages faster than you can say “gird my loins.” Not great literature, but a fun read. Four Stars.

Book Review: If you’ve ever played the video game Portal, then you know the premise of The Fold by Peter Clines. A research facility figures out a way to make a teleportation device–a door that makes you travel long distances instantly–and the resulting plot comes from what goes right … and horribly wrong during the process. I was loving this book until halfway through, when alternate universes and ant men attacking the lab were introduced. Then it all became just a little too silly for me. Shame, really, because until that point it was turning out to be one of my favorite sci-fi thrillers of all time. Three Stars … an average score for the awesome first half and the ridiculous second half.

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Lawn Darts

It took me fifty years to figure it out, but I’m pretty sure my parents tried to kill me when I was a child.

But first, let’s back up a bit.

Two weeks ago, a kid asked me what sports I liked to play as a child. In typical wise-assed fashion, I answered, “Slip ‘n’ Slide, Horseshoes, and Lawn Darts.” But as soon as “lawn darts” left my mouth, I asked myself, Where the hell did that come from? I hadn’t thought of lawn darts since the 70s, but now that I had thought of them, it was all I could think of.

If you’re not familiar with the dark and sordid history of lawn darts, here it is:

They were a popular toy when I was growing up, and look like they sound: a large dart with a heavy metal tip and plastic fins. You throw them across your lawn and try to get them inside a hoop laying on the ground to score points. And therein lies the problem: they had a heavy metal tip that could kill a kid.

That’s exactly what happened in 1987 when a seven-year-old girl was killed by a lawn dart tossed by her brother’s friend in Riverside, California. But, of course, that hadn’t happened yet when I was slightly older than seven and playing with them in my New Jersey back yard a decade earlier.

Here was the problem with me playing with lawn darts (which my parents bought for me and condoned my involvement with): I really didn’t have many–or any–friends growing up, so playing lawn darts alone gets really boring … really fast.

So I made up my own game, and the game was this: Toss the lawn dart straight up in the air, and run like hell. Thankfully, it’s one of the only games I ever won. And thankfully I couldn’t throw to save my life (although that’s exactly what I did). I was a pitcher in little league baseball–worst position assignment ever for a kid who couldn’t throw–and the only thing I could hit with consistency was the backstop. I shoot basketballs like a girl (and that’s an insult to girls everywhere), and when I tried to assassinate my annoying older sister with an ax or hammer (depending on who’s telling the story), my throw went wide left, over her shoulder.

So I suppose you could say that my athletic ineptitude helped to save two lives when I was growing up. But back to the lawn darts and the point of this story.

When I was in the back yard, throwing the darts up in the air and running like a maniac every which way, there must have been a point when my parents looked out the window and saw me. I can only imagine my father watching me out the living room window, my mother in the kitchen saying, “Anything yet?” And my father saying, “The idiot keeps missing!”

Those lawn darts are long gone now. I know because I looked. And because they’ve been banned for decades, you can’t buy them anymore. Oh, sure, you can get Nerf-tipped ones to throw around, but back when we were kids–when we were men in training–we used lawn darts that could kill you. And most of us survived, much to the consternation of my parents.

But I think I’m going to mosey on over to Ebay and check to see if I can score me a set of the real deal. It’s not illegal to sell used ones, I don’t think. And you never know when one of the kids–or grandkids–are going to annoy me to the point where I summon them out to the garage with a warm smile and say, “Hey, kid…c’mere! I’ve got a present for you!”

My parents would be so proud.

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You Can’t Win ‘Em All: 4 Bad Books

I’ve been on a tear lately…the bad kind. It’s the kind of thing where you read so many bad books that you start thinking that you just don’t like reading anymore. Here are a few that have had me avoiding books altogether lately:

BOOK REVIEW: When it takes you three months to get through a thriller, you know it can’t be very thrilling at all. Such is the case with The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell. You may recall that Caldwell, along with Dustin Thomason, was responsible for giving us The Rule of Four back in 2004. This book deals with the murder of a priest in Rome. While reading the book, you’ll learn an awful lot about the Shroud of Turin, Greek Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and a host of other things you didn’t really want to know about. And at some point–if you’re like me–you’ll put the book down and ask yourself, “When, exactly, do I start feeling thrilled?” The answer? Never. Two Stars.

BOOK REVIEW: The Mirror World of Melody Black is the second book by Gavin Extence, who wrote The Universe Versus Alex Woods, one of my favorite books of 2013. So imagine my disappointment when I read this book and realized it was the biggest of sophomore slumps: a protagonist who is spiralling into insanity chapter by chapter. Problem is that she’s bland, boring, and pretty annoying if the truth be told, so you keep wishing somebody would just lock her away in a padded room so she could just shut up already. What a disappointment–and I think the publisher knows it, too, because it went straight to paperback here in the States. One Star.

BOOK REVIEW: The premise for Look Who’s Back by Timur Vermes must have seemed like a great idea. Have Adolf Hitler wake up in 2011 in Berlin, and have him deal with a world that turned out distinctly different than the one he envisioned. Sounded great to me, too, and I laughed at the opening slapstick scene with Adolf and a newspaper vendor. But that was it. For a book that was supposed to be a satire, it was long on Hitler spouting off about his disappointment with the world on Facebook and YouTube, and very short on laughs. If I was interested in reading the rantings of a racist megalomaniac, I would have just picked up a copy of Mein Kampf. Two Stars.

BOOK REVIEW: The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides has been out for a while, but it’s my biggest disappointment of the year. His second book, Middlesex, is one of my top ten books of all time. Reading this book was like being invited to the dorm room of two pretentious college kids, who then spent the next six hours discussing all the awesome stuff they learned in class. If that isn’t bad enough, they frequently use words you’ve probably never used, or never heard anybody else use for that matter. If I heard people talk like this around me, I’d probably want to give them a solid beating. Luckily, it was just a book, so I was able to give up about halfway through. Pure, unadulterated torture. Oh…did I forget to mention the plot? That’s because I couldn’t figure out what it was, or if there was one at all. One Star…but that’s just a carry-over star from the six-star Middlesex.

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Welcome to the Funhouse! (…or Why I Love My Wife)

It’s my wife’s birthday today, so what better time to talk about pinball?

Trust me…there’s a reason the title is what it is.

A few months ago, I bought a Funhouse pinball machine. It played okay, but just barely. To look at it, you’d think it was a junker. If you’re not familiar with the machine, it was put out in 1990 and is considered a classic today, so much so that many people have chosen that machine to restore. And that was my plan.

When I told my wife that I had bought a project machine that would consume my summer, she was pretty upset. This was pinball machine #6 in just over a year, but I explained that I couldn’t fully consider myself “in” the hobby until I fully restored at least one machine. And what better game to start with than Funhouse, the game with a creepy talking head named Rudy that gets angrier with you every time you hit him in the face with the ball?

She settled down, but when we went to pick up the machine, she got upset again. And who could blame her? This is what it looked like:

So I set out to prove her wrong. And being a Type A person, I couldn’t wait until summer to get started. So I’ve spent the past 8 weeks carefully polishing every piece of the cabinet, replacing junked parts, and stripping the cabinet down to wood, then sanding, painting, and decaling it.

A few weeks ago, I told my wife that I wasn’t happy with how the back of the backbox looked. She took one look at it, told me my paint job sucked (she was right), and while I was at work, she resanded it and repainted it to perfection.

This past weekend, I put (almost) all the finishing touches on the cabinet in preparation for work on the playfield (the part of the game that you actually play on). That will take me about another eight weeks to complete, but then I’ll have a 25-year-old game that looks brand new. Here’s how it looks at this stage:

I haven’t found anything as rewarding as taking something that was once old and making it look even better than when it left the factory 25 years ago. Oh, wait…yes I have…

Marrying my wife has been even more rewarding. She puts up with my little obsessions and is even patient enough to help out with them, even when she thinks I’m a moron. The ironic thing is that my Funhouse restoration is a solid metaphor for the work my wife has done restoring my life; I wasn’t doing well before I met her, and she made me feel brand new again and gave me a new life.

So thank you Janice…for helping out with both restorations. And have a wonderful birthday. I love you and look forward to hitting the Start button with you for years to come!

See? This didn’t turn out to be about pinball at all.

3 Short Books, 3 Shorter Reviews

Every once in a while, it’s nice to be able to read a book that you can plow through in a day, or even one sitting. Here are three of them:

BOOK REVIEW: All the Old Knives by Olen Steinhauer is a slim offering by this spy writer, but packs all the twists of one of his longer works. A man and his former flame meet over dinner to discuss a terrorist highjacking that went horribly wrong five years earlier. Of course, all is not as it seems, and while some revelations came as no surprise, some took me completely off guard. Some of the pacing is off, and I think the book quite possibly could have been even shorter–a novella, perhaps. Four Stars

BOOK REVIEW: World Gone By is the third book in a trilogy by Dennis Lehane that began with The Given Day and continued with Live By Night. It’s the slimmest of the three books and doesn’t require that you read the first two. This is also the best book Lehane has written since Mystic River and the Kenzie and Gennaro books. The plot momentum is fairly non-stop from start to finish…and what a finish. You won’t see it coming…and you’ll be enthralled and heartbroken. One of my favorite books so far this year. Five Stars.

BOOK REVIEW: Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbo is a short book that comes shortly on the heels of The Son–another standalone novel–while we wait for the next Harry Hole offering. If you’ve never read a Nesbo novel, this is a good introduction to him. It reads like his other books, but compressed into a tightly-plotted and fast-paced story in a shorter format. It’s about a “fixer” (a hit man) that falls for one of his targets, and the ramifications of that decision. Another great read by the best writer of Nordic crime fiction working today. Four Stars.

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3 Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEW: To be completely candid, I couldn’t finish Gutenberg’s Apprentice by Alix Christie. It’s not that it isn’t written well–it is. It’s just that I found the first hundred pages to be tantamount to stuffing your mouth full of Saltine crackers and trying to swallow them a little bit at a time. Bland, boring, and in the end–even in small doses–it still seemed like work to get through. There should have been more forward momentum from the plot. Maybe there was later in the book, but I just couldn’t make it that far. And this from the guy that wrote The Gutenberg Gambit. I really wanted to love it, but I didn’t. Two Stars for the solid writing.

BOOK REVIEW: The Burning Room is another installment in the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly. What can I say that hasn’t already been said. He’s one of the finest crime writers working today, and this was one of the better books in the series. This time out, Harry is investigating the ten-year-old cold case of the murder of a mariachi player. And wouldn’t you know it? One thing ends up being connected to another, and before you know it, bigwigs and politicians are involved. I’ve read so many mysteries that it felt like I’d read this one before, but it was still a great read. Four Stars.

BOOK REVIEW: Joseph Kanon is one of those authors where I forget why I like him until I read another book by him…and then I remember. Leaving Berlin, his latest, was no exception. It’s a book full of twists and turns, taking place in postwar Berlin when the city was divided into sectors and nobody trusted anybody else. A brisk read, but there were too many sections where dialogue seemed to ramble on without any connection to the plot. That would be excusable if it went a long way toward developing the characters, but I didn’t feel that either. A fun read nonetheless. Three Stars.

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3 Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEW: Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson was one of the most lauded books of 2014 and on nearly every top ten list. And with good reason. It’s a gritty book that manages to move quickly, yet take it’s time getting to the end. The story follows a social worker as he tries to cope with a violent radical and his son living in the wilderness of Montana. There is another subplot of the social worker’s daughter that goes missing, and he goes to hunt for her. But that plot, while initially compelling, wasn’t ever really resolved to my satisfaction. And that’s the only reason I deduct one star. Four Stars.

BOOK REVIEW: Hooray! It’s another Flavia DeLuce novel, which (for me) is always cause for celebration. As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust is the latest book by Alan Bradley to feature the young sleuth, and what better way to start than by having a charred, mummified, and headless corpse fall out of a chimney into the fireplace? Flavia’s been exiled to Canada, so we’re missing the usual cast of characters (including her bicycle, Gladys), but the temporary change of pace is a welcome breath of fresh air in this ever-expanding series. A wonderful and easy read. Four Stars.

BOOK REVIEW: Dr. Mutter’s Marvels by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz examines the life and influence of Thomas Dent Mutter, a nineteenth century surgeon in Philadelphia that is best known today for his collection of medical oddities that can be found in Philly’s Mutter Museum. This is a quick and heavily illustrated read that will have you cringing when you read about what patients had to endure to have surgery 150 years ago. (Hint: “anesthesia”=sip of booze.) After reading this book you’ll find yourself thanking Dr. Mutter the next time you get knocked out for a procedure, or when your doctor has exceedingly good bedside manners. Five Stars.

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Harper Lee’s Mistake

It was recently announced that Harper Lee–best known for her one and only novel, To Kill A Mockingbird–was to release a second novel all these years later called Go Set A Watchman. The manuscript was discovered by her lawyer and the release of the book has supposedly been given Harper Lee’s blessing. (Although there are rumors that she is rather infirm as she is currently convalescing in a nursing home.) The story takes place many years after To Kill A Mockingbird and features many of the same characters “all grown up.”

For decades, Lee has insisted that she would never write another book. And she was right to say that. Her one and only book was a perfect little gem, a masterpiece of contemporary literature. To try to top that performance, she most likely knew, was sheer folly. And so she has been content to sit back and enjoy the fat royalty checks all these years, fully knowing that she had achieved something most authors can only dream of.

Until now.

There is much enthusiasm about the release of this book, of course. People are already lining up for it–it’s the #1 bestseller in preorders on Amazon, and even the release of the (boring) cover has garnered national attention. Yes, I’ll be ordering my copy as well, and I’ll even read it with great anticipation. But I’ll also read it with great sadness, because I’ll know that it won’t be anywhere near as good as the first book. Not even close. There’s a reason Harper Lee kept the manuscript locked away for so many years. Even she knew that it wasn’t a worthy follow-up to her masterpiece.

The shame of it is that the release of this book will only serve to dilute Harper Lee’s legendary status in the publishing world. It will diminish the mystique she has been enshrouded in for so many years, much like J.D. Salinger was up until his death. But Salinger also made the same mistake. Everybody knows The Catcher in the Rye, but can you name the other books he wrote? Probably not.

Jerry Seinfeld knew what he was doing when he bowed out of the Seinfeld television series when it was at its peak. He said that he wanted to go out on top, and didn’t want the show to wither away in quality and in the ratings until it became unwatchable. (I’m paraphrasing here!) It’s advice that Brett Favre should have taken in his football career and Martin Brodeur should have taken in his hockey career. I even believe that J.K. Rowling should have called it quits after the last Harry Potter book. Will anything she writes ever match the legendary status of those books? Not likely.

I understand the need to create, and the need to keep going, doing what you love. But when you’ve been given such a gift of talent in your respective field coupled with the blessing of legendary status and universal acclaim, there’s also one talent that everybody should possess and utilize.

You gotta know when to quit.

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How To Make Your Own Time Machine

When I started this blog, I promised to never discuss politics or religion. But what has happened to me recently surely bespeaks a higher power. It can’t simply be passed off as coincidence.

It was in the fall when my wife and I, while driving to my mother’s house, passed by a house that was very familiar to me when I was a teenager. My wife asked me what my interest in the house was (probably to alert me to the fact that I wasn’t watching the road). “I had a close friend that lived there,” I told her. “Not really sure what happened to him. It’s one of my few regrets in life that I lost touch with him.”

A few weeks later, I was taking a guitar lesson with another good friend who I had also recently reconnected with. He told me he was spending the night with some close friends. When he told me their last name, and told me the guy played drums, I knew it was my friend from thirty years ago. I casually mentioned his first name, and my friend was stunned that I knew him. He immediately called him to share the good news.

I finally got to see him, and it was literally as if I had jumped forward thirty years in time. I had the youthful picture of him in my mind; the way I had left him the last time I saw him. Time had, of course, aged us all as it does everybody–and I’m sure he felt the same way seeing my fatter, wrinklier face. But the enthusiastic young man was still there within him–it even kept him looking youthful–and it reminded me that no matter what time may do to our bodies, it can’t take away the child inside if we don’t allow it to.

We had a wonderful night together, and I missed watching the Super Bowl for the first time in my life…and I didn’t even care. Now, you may say that this was all just a big coincidence, but what happened next defies logic.

Another lost (but not forgotten) friend crossed my mind. Why him, I have no idea. So I did what anybody in the 21st century with a computer does: I Googled him. This was a guy that seemed to be almost entirely off the grid. No Facebook, no Twitter, no nothing. Only a few possible mentions of a guy with his name working with Indian tribes in the Southwest. That couldn’t possibly be him, so I let it go and considered him lost to history–and my own laziness for not keeping in touch.

A few weeks ago, I got an email from him. He’s obviously not using anything too high tech, because it’s the first time in a while I’ve gotten an email using ASCII text characters. And there’s a reason for it. He lives in the southwest and works with Indian tribes. He doesn’t have a cell phone and no social media accounts. But while he seems to enjoy the simple life away from the mad rush of living in New Jersey, he also remembers his time here with fondness. And for some reason he thought of me and, presumably, Googled me just like I had him.

Difference was, he was able to find me and contact me. And thank God for that. Literally. Now I have opportunities to teach music to Native Americans in the Southwest–something that, while I can’t really fit it into my schedule now, might need to be done in my future. More importantly, I have the opportunity to get up to date with an old friend.

I can’t wait to fly out there, get off the plane, and meet him for the first time in over thirty years. It’ll be just like stepping out of a time machine.

So do yourself a favor and make your own time machine. If you’ve lost touch with a few people, you don’t have to wait thirty years. (If you’re lucky, they haven’t died in the meantime…) Contact them if you can and get together for a coffee and a chat. You know…just to catch up after a few decades.

Coolest. Thing. Ever.

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3 Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEW: The highest praise I can offer an author is when I read a book by them, then head off to the bookstore to buy all of their backlist. Such is the case with A Sudden Light by Garth Stein. Part mystery, family saga, and ghost story, this book had me engaged from beginning to end, which didn’t disappoint. I’m looking forward to reading The Art of Racing in the Rain by Stein, which has also gotten high praise from reviewers (but is an entirely different sort of book). Four Stars for this wonderful read, but only because I don’t give half stars … and because I’m really picky about my five-star designations.

BOOK REVIEW: The Strangled Queen by Maurice Druon is the second book in The Iron King series. The new king, Louis X, must decide what to do about his cheating queen, imprisoned in a tower for the length of the book. The book is full of intrigue and political maneuvering, but my only wish is that the fate of the queen hadn’t been given away by the title. I was hoping that it was just a metaphor, but that’s the worst kind of spoiler you can have. He should have just named one of his books The Butler Did It. Bummer of an ending, but a fun read. Four Stars.

BOOK REVIEW: It may only be January, but The Girl on the Train by Paul Hawkins is the most fun I’ve had with book all year. Comparisons to Gone Girl are inevitable but unfair. It’s a completely different book and–in my humble opinion–a better, faster paced book. (I also had the ending of Gone Girl figured out 100 pages in, but this one kept me guessing almost until the end.) A woman imagines a fantasy life for two people she sees on a terrace each morning from a train window. When the woman on the terrace turns up dead, she gets involved in trying to figure out who killed her. A wonderful page-turner for a snowy day. Four Stars.

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