“A Small Death in the Great Glen,” by A. D. Scott

FM's rating:

1.      Premise 8

2.      Prose 9

3.      Plot 8

4.      Characters 8

5.      Overall 8

Comments (optional - but try to keep it under 3000 words!)

Beautifully written; the author gives us an excellent sense of place and setting.  She tries to do a little too much with the plot, and it’s hard to justify some of the extra scenes, but with each passage we get another interesting scenario of what it was like to live in that time and place; and this is done so well that the extra baggage can be forgiven.  As a mystery, the long stretches between developments are a little frustrating, but we like the characters enough to let that slide.  Overall, this is a commendable effort, and worth the time; especially if you’re interested in knowing more about life in the Scottish highlands.

Here’s the August line-up! 

 

“Dying Light,” by Stuart MacBride [8/1]

“Dead and Gone,” by Charlaine Harris [8/8]

“Scar Night,” by Alan Campbell [8/15]

“H is for Homicide,” by Sue Grafton [8/22]

“The Secret Agent,” by Joseph Conrad [8/29] 

(As always, if there are any books you’d like to recommend for the next month, please do so!)

   

“The Scarlet Letter,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne

FM's rating:

1.      Premise 8

2.      Prose 7

3.      Plot 8

4.      Characters 6

5.      Overall 7

Comments (optional - but try to keep it under 3000 words!)

If giving this low a set of ratings to such a venerated novel doesn’t disqualify me completely from any serious consideration as a knowledgeable reader, then nothing will!  Obviously, I simply don’t understand what makes great literature great.  Or do I?  My contention is that if Hawthorne hadn’t been an “AMERICAN WRITER,” this story would never have stood the test of time.  [I think Poe is a bit overrated, too.]  To be fair, having read Hawthorne’s “The Marble Faun” and “The House of the Seven Gables” I consider them both much better than this one.  The characters here are embarrassingly stereotypical; even little Pearl, who comes closest to believability.  The prose is “impressive” – conspicuously so.  It’s as if the author is trying to show off his magnificent command of the English language.  As I read, I frequently thought of much better wording and phrasing choices that could have been made, even taking into account the era in which the story was written.  He seemed to be choosing an idiosyncratic stylishness over clarity and even over aesthetic effect.  In this book, unlike the others mentioned above, such writing comes across as pretentious.  Apparently, the English Literature Experts over the years have had a different view.  Well, I’ve been wrong before … but so have they!

Here’s the August line-up! 

“Dying Light,” by Stuart MacBride [8/1]

“Dead and Gone,” by Charlaine Harris [8/8]

“Scar Night,” by Alan Campbell [8/15]

“H is for Homicide,” by Sue Grafton [8/22]

“The Secret Agent,” by Joseph Conrad [8/29] 

(As always, if there are any books you’d like to recommend for the next month, please do so!)

  

“Naked in Death,” by J. D. Robb

FM's rating:

1.      Premise 9

2.      Prose 10

3.      Plot 9

4.      Characters 10

5.      Overall 10

Comments (optional - but try to keep it under 3000 words!)

Nora Roberts is one of the best popular authors out there – as long as she’s not writing under the name of Nora Roberts.  As J. D. Robb, she writes some of the most compelling, entertaining fiction I have found.  This series featuring Eve Dallas as an investigative cop in the not-so-distant future (50 years or so) has become one of my favorite reading experiences.  Yes, these novels do contain the “steamy” sex scenes you would expect in a cheap Romance Novel; but somehow, it doesn’t detract as much as one might think.  Having read three of the “…in Death” novels now, I would rate each one a 10.  Though part of me feels that a 10 rating should be reserved for a book that is more “important” in some way than a crime novel about a serial killer focusing on prostitutes, sometimes sheer entertainment value is the most important factor.  If it’s done well enough, as it is here, you can’t really ask for more.

"The Forever War," by Joe Haldeman

FM's rating:

1.      Premise 8

2.      Prose 8

3.      Plot 8

4.      Characters 9

5.      Overall 8

Comments (optional - but try to keep it under 3000 words!)

This book is touted as one of the great classics of the Science Fiction genre, and it’s easy to see why.  If anything, it’s TOO classic – almost formulaic to a person who has read sci-fi extensively over the past several decades.  That is not to say “predictable” – in a story like this, literally anything can happen, and here, it does.  Returning to Earth after traveling at near the speed of light, your subjective time would have gone by much more slowly, your years equaling many years on Earth.  This is not an uncommon concept in sci-fi, but Haldeman adds some really nice twists on the theme; notably, that heterosexuals, at one point in history, have come to be considered aberrations!  The description of how the returning warriors feel totally out of place on their home world is rendered nicely, and the Taurans – the enemy race – are described with just enough ambiguity to emphasize their alien-ness.  The twist at the end is a beautiful touch – one of the best in literature, perhaps – always a great way to wrap things up.  Many would give this book a 10 rating overall, for its importance to the genre.  I wouldn’t argue the point; but taking it at face value, for me, the relatively high 8 rating does it justice.