Thanksgiving week was a strange holiday for me this year. Hip replacement on Tuesday and then a stay in the hospital over the holiday gave me time to finish off some books between drugs and PT. Here are some short summaries of those books.
I listened to This House of Sky by Ivan Doig on Audio Book and loved it. Doig has both the experience and the language to bring live in the sagebrush plains to life. He lost his mother early in life and moved around to a variety of places sharing their home with another wife that did not work out and his grandmother.
His dad frequented the bars too often, life was rough and rewards were few, yet you see the richness that Ivan was able to derive from life whether his dad was working cattle or sheep.
The story is timeless and might be as true today as it would have been in the late 1800's. Not a cowboy story, not a true pionee story, but an example of people making do with both life and location.
Live Wire by Harold Coben
Myron, the sports agent, is drawn in to intrigue by two tennis clients in a spiral that reaches the mob, rock music, drugs, murder, extortion, and ultimately, Myron's family. It is a story that involves his normal cast of characters (who are anything but normal) - his partners a formal professional wrestling woman and a very rich partner with connections and a skill for violence.
The book is longer than necessary and I found myself drifting at times despite the thriller aspects of the book. Myron is an interesting character to build a series around and his role as an agent connects him with fields that differ from the usual PI.
There is humor and exageration that sets a light tone even if the topics are heavy.
Brimstone, Robert Parker
I really enjoy the western series that Parker has developed. These are the same characters as you find in Apaloosa and they are excellent personalities to play against the amoral west.
Cole and Everette make an interesting team that mixes education and violence with a black and white sense of right and wrong which basically translates to the fact that they are hired as the peace officers so what they say is right and anything in conflict with that is wrong.
The towns are filled with bold personalities - in this case a preacher and a bar owner - as well as secondary characters - their whore friend, an old Indian warrior, and a Mexican/Indian deputy.
The showdown is inevitable, it is just a matter of how long the author wants to let the interaction play out. Simple western motif that will please any old west reader.
Muir Among the Animals, Mighetto
A 1986 collection of essays from Muirs writing that center on animals that he encounters. Some of the essays are less compeling because they are historic and you have to remember that there are no field guides, no photographs, and very little awareness of what he is seeing among the readers who bought his work - primarily on the East Coast.
We learn about his dislike for sheep - hoofed locusts, his first nearly fatal attack at trying to get a bears attention by charging the bear, the role of bees in the mountain meadows, his adventure in Alaska with the dog Stickeen, and a variety of vignettes that honor the animals.
Other than sheep he writes with respect and lack of judgment. Predators fare as well as the birds. He sees the beauty that animals contribute and he specialized in becoming part of the land he was in and just observing their actions.
It is the acceptance and respect of other species that is the theme of the book. It is a good appeal for a higher moral value that does not place humans first in every equation.
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