Reading Slump

I’m in a reading slump.

It has been 3 days since I finished a book.

I don’t know how people do it. This is driving me crazy.

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson came out in 2019 and immediately gained lots of traction. The plot follows a high school senior who uses her capstone project as an excuse to investigate the murder of a high schooler that rocked her community five years earlier. With a 4.33 out of 5 star rating on Goodreads, I had high expectations for this YA thriller.

And…it was fine.

I think if I had read it while younger I would have enjoyed it more. But instead of getting immersed into the story, I just got annoyed with the main character. She constantly runs into dangerous situations in pursuit of the murderer. She blackmails, stalks drug dealers, and threatens random adults in the community. And what happens? They blab all their secrets to her.

I don’t need realistic in my teen detective fiction, but some level of common sense from this self-proclaimed good girl would be nice.

Book Recs From Acquaintances (3 Years Later)

In 2021 I blogged about a friend from work who out-read me. As in the year I read 300 books she read 500 books. Unfortunately, we had very different tastes in books. I wasn’t sure our friendship would make it.

Well now we’ve been housemates for 3 years. And we still have really different tastes in books. But we’ve also reached a silent compromise: I don’t judge her books and she doesn’t recommend them to me.

(Actually in fairness, I think both of our reading has changed over the years. Certainly our annual reading numbers have dropped, which we regularly celebrate as a sign of improved mental health!)

A Phantom Walks Among Us by Rod Vick

2/5 stars

This is a book written by a resident of Mukwonago, WI, set in Mukwonago, WI, that will appeal to residents of Mukwonago, WI. (And possibly some of the neighboring towns.)

It is full of Easter eggs designed to elicit ‘I understood that reference!’ moments for locals. Take, for example, the following description of a character’s habitual jog:

“She had a set route for every weekday night, although she always began with a warm-jog to Field Park where she paused for a rigorous ten-minute stretching routine. After that, on Mondays she ran the bike path west along Veterans Way, past the high school, wove her way through that subdivision—the one with the all the famous golf course street names—took Eagle Lake Avenue east to Rochester, and then back to the park…Tuesdays it was the Mukwonago Heights subdivision, where streets were dedicated to NASA astronauts with names like ‘Lovell Court’ and ‘Armstrong Court.'”

Guess which two subdivisions never appear again?

If you’re a local, this is exciting because you recognize those subdivisions. But if you’re not a local…this is an unnecessary info dump with little purpose or payout later. And that basically describes most of this book.

Unfortunately, the other elements of the story don’t really make up for it either. (Someone went through my library copy with a pencil and noted every grammar error which perhaps made them more glaringly obvious than they otherwise would have been, but was a pretty continual reminder that this was self-published.)

I really could not stand the male lead. His personality consists of being an overweight cop (fueled by an almost-constant dialogue about fast food eaten and beers consumed) and siting at the the center of an entirely unbelievable love triangle. (Why would any woman give him the time of day?)

The solution to the mystery truly makes less sense the more I try and explain it to my parents so I’m going to just leave it at that. Certain plot elements were introduced about 2/3rds of the way through the book that I suppose ‘tracks’ with the police figuring it out, but undercuts the Phantom POVs.

To be fair, as someone who grew up in Mukwonago, this book scored enough nostalgia points to sugarcoat a lot of my problems with its internal consistency. I enjoyed it enough that I’ll consider picking up the sequel. But also has someone who has since left Mukwonago, I can’t say there is much else going for it unless you particularly like mysteries with odes to the local public high school.

Re-Reading Scalia Speaks

I challenged myself in 2024 to re-read the books that impacted me most in my 20s. I’ve already found myself pretty surprised by which books have held up and which ones didn’t make as much impact as I thought. One of those books was Scalia Speaks—a collection of speeches by Antonin Scalia. I still love it but I don’t think the book (read in 2018) impacted me as much as some of his other writings.

However, I really love his law school commencement speech to the University of Dayton Law School on “The Legal Profession.” In particular, this quote (edited down and transcribed from my audio book so sorry if I got something wrong.)

“Having removed the false premise that one of the characteristics of lawyers is damnation, let me turn to what I think the true characteristics are. First, I suppose, there is a compulsive precision. You’ve already been exposed to that a good deal in law school. Don’t think it gets any better once you get out into practice. One of the distinctive skills of our profession is to discern ambiguities, inaccuracies, and insufficiencies that would not occur to the ordinary layman…Suggestion, illusion, and thus to some extent imprecision is the very life of poetry and the very death of the law. Ladies and gentlemen, if you aspire to be poets, get out now.”

“A second characteristic of our profession is a certain worldly wisdom. Or, if you wish to put it pejoratively, cynicism…How is it that we are this way? I at least have lived a very sheltered life. The answer of course is that we are so worldly wise because we have seen so much of the world vicariously through the innumerable cases we have read covering the entire spectrum of human experience…And we have not just learned about life, we have learned about people. People at their worst. By in large human fault and human perfidy are what the cases are about. We have seen the careless, the criminal, the profligate, the foolhardy parade across the pages of the case reports. We have seen evil punished and virtue rewarded. But we have also seen prudent evil flourish and foolish virtue fail….Expect to find here no more a dreamer than a poet.”

You should really read the passages (and his conclusion) for yourself. Because despite his rather depressing points (at least, depressing if you want to be a poet), he really does manage to bring hope and charm as he describes what the legal profession is and could be.

Whatcha Reading…? 3/20/24 Book Update

Having binged several urban fantasy novels while dealing with this pinched nerve, I’ve been on a nonfiction kick recently. But then I started several books at once and…here we are.

Creativity Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull (audio book, library)

Written by a co-founder of Pixar, Creativity Inc. is one of those rare management books that combines practical advice with fun stories about the creation of some of the best Pixar movies. This is a re-read for me and part of my overall “re-reading the best books of my 20s” reading challenge for 2024. So far solid, though not hitting as hard as my re-read of Good Profit did.

Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived by Justice Antonin Scalia (audio book, library)

Speaking of re-reads for my 2024 reading challenge, Scalia Speaks contains speeches by Scalia on topics as varied as the law, faith, virtue, pastimes, opera, role models, and friends. It is an inspiring collection. I just had to put listening to this audio book on pause because I kept laughing…which hurt my already inflamed shoulder!

Death in Cyprus by M.M. Kaye (owned, e-book)

This is another re-read for me, though not for any purpose outside of fun. I really like the M.M. Kaye Death In series. They capture a bygone era with the fading of the British empire post-World War 2. I usually forget the plots until I give them a re-read and then I sit there trying to guess if I’m remembering right!

When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan by Peggy Noonan (owned, physical book)

Despite being on my to-read list for over a decade, this is my first time reading this book. Peggy Noonan was a speech writer during the Reagan administration. So far this book is very…nostalgic. I’m trying to reserve judgement as I generally like her other works.

Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (borrowed, physical book)

My Grandma recommended this one. It is a collection of sermons breaking down, well, the causes and cure for spiritual depression. So far there have been some interesting insights, though it takes a lot of focus.

Great by Choice by James C. Collins (owned, physical book)

Written as a follow up to the classic business work Good to Great, Great by Choice looks at how successful companies handled uncertainty and circumstances outside of their control. It is an interesting follow up study and definitely has got my brain cooking!

Audio Book Friends (Update)

As a follow up to my post yesterday, I feel obliged to admit that the hero displayed no red flag behaviors.

It was a little disappointing considering we approached the book so we could mock it senselessly.

It was basically a Hallmark movie in book form. But as both LB and I kept commenting on how much the heroine reminded us of our housemate TG, probably for the better. Friends don’t tend to take kindly when you tell them they resemble a character in a book who marries a tool.

If looking for a fluffy holiday romance, you could do worse than Season’s Schemings by Katie Bailey.

Audio Book Friends

Me: * cackling * “This novel promises marriage of convenience and a playboy love interest in need of a green card.”

LB: “Sounds like a red flag.”

Me: “Reddest of red flags.”

LB: “Hit play and turn it up so I can hear.”

Sometimes you read a book because it is fun. And sometimes you read because little cheese makes everything more fun.

Heretics by G.K. Chesterton

I’m too tired to think of a good blog post tonight, and there are no updates on TG, so please enjoy this review I recently wrote.

I challenged myself in 2024 to re-read the books that impacted me most in my 20s. Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton ranked high on that list. But I realized that to really re-read Orthodoxy, I first needed to start at the beginning of the debate, with the shots fired in Heretics. (And truly, this book is shots fired! Chesterton has no problem tackling all the big thinkers of his day and explaining Why They Are Wrong.)

It is a curious books in many respects. Published in 1905, Heretics stands at a weird crossroads halfway through the Edwardian era. WW1 is still a murky 9 years or so off. Joseph Chamberlain is the British politician garnering Chesterton’s wrath; his son will yet become Neville Chamberlain who infamously attempted to appease Hitler.

The thinkers of the day garnering Chesterton’s critique will be familiar in our English lit courses but not necessarily for their brands of philosophy. Chesterton kicks off by analyzing the public writing of Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, and Bernard Shaw.

The first half of this book, where Chesterton stays (mostly) on track by focusing on other thinkers, is the most digestible and most practical. He then veers off at random points to vent about cowardly journalists, the fallacy of “young” nations, and the problem with identifying certain attributes with race. (Particularly interesting in light of Europe’s next few decades.)

As you might expect with Chesterton, no matter what his topic, he has the best one liners. A few favorites:

“Scotland continues to be educated and Calvinistic; England continues to be uneducated and happy.”

“Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.”

But he also has a way of expressing big thoughts with few words, meaning it often takes a while to fully grasp what he is saying. But when you do, it sure packs a wallop. Take the following few sentences and think about modern discourse on social media:

“There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique. The men of the clan live together because they all wear the same tartan or are all descended from the same sacred cow; but in their souls, by the divine luck of things, there will always be more colors than in any tartan. But the men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment, like that which exists in hell.”

This was certainly a solid start to my re-reads.

2023’s Villain Books

2023 saw the publication of two books starring villains: Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer and Starter Villain by John Scalzi.

Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer originated as a series of TikTok videos. The plot centers on the sunny, happy-go-lucky assistant to a fantasy villain. The whole premise would have worked a lot better if the villain didn’t have a POV. Anything actually villainous happened off page and he was not nearly villainous enough to make this one work. I’d recommend skipping. (And if you need any more reason, there are at least two more books in the works.)

Starter Villain by John Scalzi follows down-on-his luck Charlie who unexpectedly inherits his uncle’s role as a supervillain. Now he has to figure out what to do with an island volcano lair, giant laser death ray, and minions in need of direction. (To say nothing of the cats.) If looking for something tongue-in-cheek and surprisingly well-written, I recommend reading this book. The plot was quite funny and it is a standalone novel. It is one of the few books I have read and mentally rated, then woke up the next morning and decided it deserved a higher rating.