Everybody needs a little time away, I heard her say…
Chicago
I haven’t written on my blog since December 5 when I shared a story about my nearly 17 year old dog Motzie that passed the day after Thanksgiving. If you have yet to read it, here’s the link: I Once Had a Shadow.
It didn’t feel right, nor was I motivated, to fill this space on the web with any new words aside from those.
It’s fair to say I was in mourning. Grieving. There were tears upon tears upon tears. I bought a new bottle of Visine my eyes became so red. Redder than normal. No, I don’t smoke weed. I’ve inherited my dad’s all seasons of the year itchy, red eyes. Crying exacerbates that stoner vibe more than pollen or dust or dander.
This wasn’t originally my return to blogging post. There was another story I’d written. It’s about a bird and it’s about a dog. It’s about life and death and loneliness and rebirth. The tale was becoming intricate. I haven’t decided whether I’ll keep it nonfiction or transition it into a fictional short story.
I like what it is now but feel transforming it into a short story could give it another layer, more breadth. We’ll see.
After Motzie passed, I took a break from the Internet. After reading the story I posted on December 5, a handful of friends reached out to me by text while others, many across the world wide web I don’t even know personally, used my contact form to share their condolences. To share stories of their own pets who they’ve had for years that are nearing the end. Of those who recently passed that, like Motzie to me, meant the world to them.
I need to reply to those messages. I’ve been a bad digital citizen in that regard.
If you’re reading this and you wrote me, even though I’ve yet to respond, I want you to know how much I appreciated your message. I read them all. The words of someone you consider a stranger can be comforting. Such is the web.
Books I’ve read the past 30 days
I started reading more while on this break from the digital sphere. It’s been nice. Interestingly enough, the authors and the books I’ve read aren’t ones I thought would’ve turned me back into a “reader.” But I’ve now read more books in the past 30 days than I had in the past year.
At first, I was going for easy reads. Bluntly said, mindless entertainment. I didn’t want to think too much. Be in my head. I wanted out of my head. I turned to book series of shows I’d seen in the past.
It’s worth stating here that my opinion of these books and authors should mean nothing to you. If you like these authors and their books, you do you. This is all personal preference.
Reacher
I started with Lee Child’s Reacher books. I read two:
- One Shot
- The Affair
Were they great? No. But I wasn’t expecting great. They were good in the sense that a Chuck Norris movie or television show is good. You know what you’re going to get and Child delivers on that promise with the Jack Reacher character. I watch Chuck Norris movies occasionally not because I’m expecting Academy Award winning acting, but because I’m expecting Chuck Norris to crack skulls â and that’s what the Chuckster does, much like Reacher.
As a side note, my wife bought me a wildly inappropriate Chuck Norris joke book years ago. She had no idea how explicit it was. It’s called The Truth About Chuck Norris: 400 Facts About the World’s Greatest Human, by Ian Spector. I highly recommend this purchase if you have a dad, brother, or husband. But don’t buy it for your son until they are at least 18.
Alex Cross
I watched the new Cross series and decided I’d give the books a whirl. I feel like this is a rare example of the film adaptation being better than the book. Way better. I read three or four of these books by the wildly popular author James Patterson who I’ve avoided like the plague in the past. Looking at the list of books in this series, I can’t even recall which ones I read. I borrowed the books from the library and forgot to write down the titles.
Anyway, they were all pretty forgettable and predictable which is a shame. As a reader, I felt like Patterson was writing down to his audience, piecing together the puzzle for us instead of letting us piece it together ourselves. Feels odd saying that as someone who read a couple of Reacher novels by Lee Child before the Patterson books.
Coincidentally, and while I haven’t read the book, I did enjoy watching the film adaptation of Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life with my wife and kids. Nice little twist in there.
Bosch
About a year ago, I binged the Bosch television series starring Titus Welliver. I loved it. I’m one of the original die-hard fans of The Wire. Before I began streaming Bosch, I had no idea the show had as many actors from The Wire as it did. That sold it for me. Jamie Hector, who plays J. Edgar in the Bosch series, was the notorious Marlo Stanfield from The Wire, whereas Lance Reddick, who recently passed away, plays Chief Irvin Irving in Bosch and Col. Cedric Daniels in The Wire.
After the Patterson novels, I wasn’t expecting much from Michael Connelly’s Bosch books. I’d seen Connelly’s name nearly as much as Patterson’s at the bookstore and, wrongly I would learn, equated them as similar enough to historically avoid.
In comes Connelly’s City of Bones. Holy cow was it amazing! For better or worse, when I read fiction, it tends to be literary fiction so this recent adventure into the works of Childs, Patterson, and Connelly is a departure from my normal routine.
With that said, I’ve been a fan of Walter Mosley’s detective fiction work, especially the Easy Rawlins character, for a while â ever since taking a mystery fiction course at the University of Virginia as an undergrad in the early 2000s. I figured I’d give Connelly and his character Bosch a try. So very glad I did.
I’ve since read:
- The Black Echo
- The Last Coyote
- Trunk Music
- Angels Flight
And I’m currently reading The Closers.
I’m mesmerized by Connelly’s writing style. The Bosch books are, under no circumstance, mindless entertainment. His background as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times is apparent. It’s reminiscent, again to reference The Wire, of David Simon whose background was that of a police reporter in Baltimore prior to writing the hit HBO series which cast Idris Elba as Stringer Bell into the national spotlight.
Because of availability on the Libby app, which allows you to borrow e-books for free using your local library system, I haven’t been able to read the Bosch books in order, which is preferred. It hasn’t been detrimental to the experience thus far.
The thing about Connelly, for me, is the pleasant surprise of his writing style, character development, narrative technique, and plotting. Unlike the way Reacher and Cross are written, Bosch’s character is complex. He has a background story that follows him from the past into the present. He has a code and a moral compass. Every character does. But Bosch isn’t one-dimensional. He’s not all-knowing and all-seeing. He’s not a super-human. He’s smart in the work he does for a living but not written as to be smarter in other aspects of his life than you or me. He makes mistakes and he pays dearly for them.
I remember years ago watching The Wire. And, spoiler alert if you’re twenty years behind watching the show, drug kingpin Stringer Bell gets set up by Avon Barksdale, who is imprisoned at the time, and killed by Omar and Brother Mouzone. And it was the first time I remember watching a show and verbally saying aloud to the television screen, “What the hell are you doing? What did you just do? What the fâk?!”
When I took The History of the Civil Rights Movement seminar with Julian Bond while at UVA, Bond, a legend in his own right, said at the start of our first class:
There’s something you all should know about me before we begin: I love The Wire and I’m as pissed as some of you in here that Stringer Bell got offed.
Julian Bond, an American Civil Rights legend and my former professor
I had, subconsciously, as many fans of The Wire, found myself rooting for Stringer Bell, a bad guy. But was he as bad as we first thought? Rotten to the core? Yes? No? Maybe so? There was good in there. The good was leaking through. Right? We wanted to see the full transformation. But we never did because Stringer was snuffed out by Omar and Brother Mouzone. I’m still pissed about it two decades later.
That’s how I feel about the Bosch character in Connelly’s novels. Bosch, albeit a “good guy,” has that Stringer Bell quality about him. He’s not perfect. He’s not written to be perfect or without fault. He’s kind of a jerk to be honest. But it’s an oddly likable trait considering his profession.
Anyway, this is all a long way of saying this is my return post to blogging. It’s been a while. I’m a little rusty. I hope everyone is doing well and staying warm. I’m done with the snow all the while my weather app is now saying we should expect 9-11 inches more next Wednesday.
No thank you.