Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure— Bernard Baruch
From time to time, I get asked by a reader about what I do with books after I’ve read them. The books sent to me for review—as opposed to books I buy for myself—sometimes go into my library, which occasionally bump out some of my older, not-so-loved books. So what happens to all of those unwanted books? I donate them to my local library. While some Internet pundits say this is a bad idea because the library doesn’t want your books, my local library does want them. They don’t want them for their stacks but they run a used bookstore and sales are used to fund books they really want. That’s why they are happy to see me bringing in books and always tell me they appreciate my donations.
Let me tell you what I won’t be doing with my old books or movies. I recently went though a reorganization of my DVDs, Blu-rays and 4K movies and ended up with a small stack of duplicates that had been updated with newer Blu-ray or 4K versions plus there was one Blu-ray that I really didn’t like and didn’t want wasting shelf space. I took the movies to Second and Main to sell and the process was, to be polite, a cluster. First, they won’t give you the money right away; instead they give you a claim check. Then you have to wait several days and make another trip back to the store to get either money or store credit. My small stack of movies netted me $2.75 for two trips for a total of 80 miles of driving. Maybe that covered my cost of gas? Maybe it didn’t. The library will also take movies, so in the future, that’s who will get my excess or unwanted movies.
My TBR list was dwindling, now it’s not
Right now, my TBR list includes Michael Connelly’s The Waiting, but I don’t expect that book to arrive before October. In the meantime, waiting in the wings are The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corer, the creators of the books that were the basis for impressive The Expanse TV series. In the meantime, I’m taking my own advice and re-reading David Housewright’s First, Kill the Lawyers. It’s the third time I’ve read the nook, which hearkens back to my sister’s question when she was visiting, “Have you read all these books?” And my answer to her was “sometimes more than once.”
Last minute update: From the library: James Kestrel’s Five Decembers from Hard Case Crime.Mary just informed me that she ordered me We Solve Murders by Richard Osman and Spirit Crossing by William Kent Krueger. She also tossed in a Nero Wolfe paperback, Trouble in Triplicate to get free shipping or some such from Barnes & Noble.
Mini Reviews
Let me get this out of the way first: Preston & Child’s sequel to their time travel novel, Angel of Vengeance, is the best mystery or thriller I’ve read this year. To be fair, the books in Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs’ Pendergast series are really thrillers with a dash of sci-fi tossed in. After all, Pendergast’s lady love, Constance Green, is 150 years old but looks like she’s in her early twenties, which is key to the villain and plot of this novel. And the finales of some books in this series seem more like the finale of a James Bond movie. Still, I love reading these books.
F
As a sequel I was wondering how the authors would handle the transition from the previous book, especially for those who didn’t read it. (I strongly suggest that you do read first; it will make the new book even more enjoyable.) The transition handles it by dragging out a new protagonist, really a former antagonist, from previous books, who sets up the opening of the book through his actions and figures greatly in the epilogue. NO SPOILERS as to who that person might be. The twist and turns the book takes are such that the Angel of Vengeance isn’t who you think or thought it might be. The whole book is like this, defying expectations and is a wonderfully engaging read. If you enjoy a thriller with sci-fi overtones that’s also a period mystery, you need to pick up a copy of this book!
And then….Dig Two Graves by Mickey Spillane and Max Alan Collins is not a great book but it was a fun read, especially for Mike Hammer Fans. It kicks off with Mike investigating the hit and run accident involving Velda’s mother, which in turn leads to a bedside confession in the hospital that in her youth she was a naughty girl and married a mobster, who is Velda’s real father. Who then. it turns out, is in a retirement community in Nevada that’s really part of the FBI’s Witness Protection program along with a whole bunch of other ex-mobsters. During Mike’s investigation, there’s some mayhem including a classically violent showdown at the end that will please fans of early Hammer novels written before Spillane got religion and toned things down. This book is recommended for fan of Spillane and Collins and anybody who likes a classic hard boiled detective story but not…
Shortly after finishing Dig Two Graves I picked up Mickey Spillane’s last novel, The Last Stand, which is being published on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. This is not. and I didn’t know it at the time, a Mike Hammer book and also contains a short novella called A Bullet For Satisfaction and it’s terrific. This is a classic Spillane story but sans Mike Hammer and is full of sex (for its day), betrayal and violence. It’s a fun read so I was excited to get to The Last Stand even though Mike Hammer would also not be making an appearance in that story either. But I was disappointed. In the first part of the book, a crashed pilot is “rescued” by a Native American and they spend several days wandering around the dessert trading quips. It feels more like Robert B. Parker than Spillane and by the time they were maybe rescued. I had lost all interest and gave up reading it. And maybe, just maybe it got better but I’ll never know. Recommended on;y for Spillane completeists.
Old Books, Old Movies
My planned Part II video review of the last two film versions of The Maltese Falcon is (eventually) going to happen, I promise. You can see Part I here.
In the meantime, I picked up a box set of Tyrone Power Collection “swashbuckler” films and am watching them in no particular order. In recent Joe’s Movie Club posts I mentioned that I thought Colin Farrell is the most handsome actor since Tyrone Power and that’s what possessed me to pick up this set. Plus it was five bucks on eBay for five movies on DVD!
Back in the golden era of Hollywood, many popular movies such as those in this collection were based on novels, My favorite film, Lost Horizon was based on the book by James Hilton. Two of the films in the swashbuckler collection were from books written by Samuel Shellabarger, who was an American educator and author of scholarly works and best-selling historical novels. Those films were Captain from Castile (1947) that I saw in the theater as a kid and Prince of Foxes (1949.) The other films in the collection, such as The Black Rose (1950) and Son of Fury (1949) were also based on novels, while Blood and Sand (1941,) a remake of the Valentino silent film (1922,) was based on a 1908 novel by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. Look for a video for my YouTube channel about these five movies, maybe even before I get around to making the Maltese Falcon Part II video.
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