Joe’s Book Club, Chapter 42. Kicking off the New Year

by | Jan 20, 2024

Today’s Post by Joe Farace

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
― Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

According to Inc, Warren Buffet is known for many things but one of them is his famous reading habit. He is a voracious reader who spends 80 percent of his day reading. Buffet once said. “I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business.” For him, sitting and thinking is as natural as riding a bicycle and he believes that taking time for thoughtful reflection is crucial for leaders for several reasons:

  • It clarifies your vision
  • It helps you make good decisions
  • It leads to innovation and creative problem-solving
  • It prevents burnout and promotes well-being
Previously on Joe’s Book Club

In my discussion of the (partially read at the time) The Mountain In the Sea by Ray Naylor, I said. “While reading I keep getting vibes reminding how the book feels somewhat like Michael Crichton’s Sphere but I hope not because that book built up to a hugely unsatisfying conclusion…” Well, I’m sad to report that my premonition was correct and while this book was not as big a letdown as Sphere was, I found the conclusion to be weaker than I expected. The author added an Epilogue that tried to tie the disparate elements of the story together—and did a pretty good job of it—but it had the feeling of being a response to notes from the publisher asking the author to give the book a more uplifting ending, or maybe the author figured it out themselves upon a final reading before submitting to the publisher. I’ll give this book a somewhat reserved recommendation. On the other hand, if you love octopi and are fascinated with the more than 300 species of octopus on our planet, you will love this book.

The legendary Ray Harryhausen jokingly named the giant octopus he created for the film It Came from Beneath the Sea. “the sixtopus.” Because the film’s budget was so low, Harryhausen saved money by building his octopus model using six rather than the correct eight tentacles.

On the 2024 Books Read List

I am currently reading Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson, a clever and somewhat meta mystery novel.

Let’s talk about meta first: I don’t like meta in my mystery novels. Oh for sure, I enjoy Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorne and Horowitz Mysteries where the author also appears as a somewhat fictionalized and a stylized version of himself. The books are funny, tongue-and-cheek and I enjoy that Horowitz is making fun of himself. On the other hand, I didn’t enjoy

Stevenson‘s book was a gift from my wife who worries about me when I don’t have something new to read and appears to be the first of three monthly books she has ordered for me in 2024.

The book is built around an Australian family reunion held at a ski resort to celebrate the return from prison of one of its family members, another of whom is the narrator a writer of books about writing, who testified against his bother sending him “up the river” for murder. So you can imagine how excited our protagonist is to be at the reunion. And our narrator occasionally but not annoying reminds us about the book’s meta-ness from time-to-time. Each chapter focuses on a different family member and the “murder” that he or she may have committed. In the case of his mother there are two; one in which the victim did not die and one in which sadly, he did.

This sad section, which the author somewhat glosses over, brings me to…The blurb of the cover compares Stevenson to Richard Osman and while there is the familial sense that one gets within the core group that’s found in Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series, there is—I think in Stevenson’s efforts to be clever—not as much warmth. Even in the more serious tone of Osman’s most recent  book, The Last Devil to Die that tackles the difficult subject of  euthanasia. there is a sensitivity to the subject and also to the characters that, I think make it the best in that series.

Yet it’s the cleverness plus an unexpected action sequence that has kept me reading Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone. instead of giving up on the book, which would be a heckuva way to start my “Books Read in 2024” list. In fact, when the protagonists drags all the family and a member of the local police force in the resort’s library—where else?— to identify the murder Agatha Christie-style, the writer gets so twisted up with trying to explain all of the meta-ness that has gone before that I almost tossed the book across the room. But If I did, I would have deprived myself of not just one but two big plot twists that I must confess didn’t see that coming —NO SPOILERS. As Chief Dan George says in The Outlaw Jose Wales, I “endeavored to persevere.” Then the murderer is revealed with a flourish  There is an Epilogue, which seems to be a trend these days, that does much more than just redeem the author for all of the “murderer reveal” drudgery he put us through leading up to the denouement. Just keep reading.., I forgive him and so will you.