U Is For Undertow, Sue Grafton
I picked the Sue Grafton book because she's one of my favorite authors. I like the series, I like Kinsey, the main character and I usually enjoy the storyline. The good news is that it's a readable book ... the bad news is that it's a long running series and I think it's getting a little stale. I thought the plot line was intersting but there were no surprises. My suggestion to Ms Grafton is that she needs to bump up the next one.
My vote: BORROW IT
What the Dog Saw, Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm is one of my favorite non-fiction authors. I love the topics he picks, I love the way he writes and I love the way he thinks. I feel like I've sent my brain to the spa when I read his work. I recommend two of his three other books: Tipping Point and Outliers.
My vote: BUY IT
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Arrgh! I wrote an entire 4 paragraph comment and then (due to my superior technical skills), managed to delete it. I'll try again, but this time, I'm going to be very terse. Once burned...
ReplyDeleteU is for Undertow: I am experimenting with audio books, so I didn't in fact read this, but listened to it. I think it was an excellent book to have read to you--the format heightened the suspense and prevented me from easily peeking ahead to try to pre-solve the mystery.
I mildly disagree with Chairman Ann about whether this was just a good (not great) entry in the alphabet series. Here's what I really like about it:
The time shifting. Her books are usually chronological and I thought the use of 3 time frames really enhanced the suspense. It also kept me interested, because it took almost the entire book to figure out how the characters and events fit together.
The different voices--usually (I think) Sue G. talks exclusively through Kinsey. In this book, she had a number of different characters narrate, and I thought she did a good job of differentiating between the multiple voices. However, since the audio book had a single actress read the entire book, at some point I began to feel like everyone sounded a little bit like Kinsey and that may have been a drawback of "reading" it in an audio format.
I also like how, in the past few books in the series, she is expanding info on Kinsey's family background, which was rarely touched on in the earlier books. I think as a character, Kinsey needs more outside contacts than Henry and Rosie. She's basically a loner, and having a long-lost family turn up and intrude messily in her little ordered world is a nice change.
Possibly one drawback to listening to this one was that I ended up still slightly confused about WHY the killers ended up murdering Mary Clare. I consulted my expert, Chairman Ann, and she helped me figure it out. But that part might have been more easily achieved if I was actually holding a readable book in hand instead of listening to it.
My recommendation: BORROW IT, unless you are likely to sit down some day and re-read all of the Kinsey books in order.
What the Dog Saw. Since I'm only on page 4 of this one, I will only make the briefest of comments. I really like how he writes and I badly want to read on. So much so that I can tell I am going to temporarily shelve the book for the next Pacifica Library book club and read this one instead.
Thanks, Chairman Ann, for managing to pull this off--something I doubt any of the rest of us could do, and for recommending two really excellent books.
And now, I'm going to post this without proof-reading it because it was the proof-reading part that resulted in losing my entire first stab at this and I will NOT do a third version.
U is for Undertow
ReplyDeleteAlthough Ms. Susan wrote I persuasive review, I must side with Chairman Ann. U was a good read and a great end-of-the-day escape from work. I, too, am interested in more surprises. Bringing back the long lost family was okay, but it did not "excite me." NOTE - Mr. G Sr. (Al) rates all experiences by whether it excites him or not.
What the Dog Saw
Of course, I have not finished the book, but what I have read I like. His style is clear and compelling even about topics that I generally could care less. It only goes to prove how much more I need to learn.
Kitten Bethie
Bethie—don’t for a minute feel like a newbie. For the SECOND time, I’ve written a long-ish post in response to your comments on U/Undertow and What the Dog Saw and managed to delete it just before posting. I am really a techno-spaz. It’s sad. OK, once again…
ReplyDeleteU/Undertow: I really don’t think I have much critical ability when it comes to mysteries. They’re kind of like dark chocolate to me—just give me some and I’m perfectly happy and don’t think twice about whether it’s good or not. This is of course not entirely true—Chairman Ann will tell you the sad story of how I rashly bought all 10 (or so) of Leslie Glass’s mysteries at once and then, about 30 pp. into the first book, decided there was way too much sexual violence in them for my tastes and tossed the whole collection aside—and she will also point out, as she did to me, that the sexual violence in the first couple of chapters of the first book is about the only time in the whole series that it occurs, but by then, I’d moved on. On the other hand, Rosie was thrilled to get a complete set of the April Woo books from me, so it wasn’t all bad!
What the Dog Saw: I was glad these were small-bite essays, because I found that certain of the topics were totally fascinating to me and read them avidly, but about half of the topics just weren’t my cup of tea , which meant that I dabbled and then moved on to the next essay. Which I think is probably what makes collections of essays so appealing. You can wade in, test the waters and then either deep dive or head back to shore and try another one. [Think I’m overdoing the swimming imagery, aren’t I?]
By the way, here’s my new trick: Type your comments in a Word document and THEN AND ONLY THEN paste it in the “Comment” section—that way, if you make a standard practice of accidentally deleting your pithy input, you can go back and retrieve it from your nicely stored, edited, and spell-checked Word doc. And don't try any fancy formatting--it all (back to swimming) washes away when you paste it into the real "Comments" window!
First off: love the exuberance and joy he displays in writing about things that interest him. Nice change from the standard “I-write-and-suffer-every-minute-of-it” moaning of many writers.
ReplyDelete“Self-consciousness is the enemy of “interestingness”—this is profoundly true. Never heard anyone say this before.
Also love this pronouncement: “Good writing…succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else’s head—even if in the end you conclude that someone else’s head is not a place you’d like to be.” I think this is the genius behind publications like Vanity Fair—they shoe-horn you into the head and world of someone (famous or otherwise) in a way that makes you feel like you really know that person (even if you’ve never heard of them before).
Structure: Initially, I really like the way he doesn’t introduce his ultimate topic until after he does a 1-2 pp exposition of the general topic—and then veers somewhat abruptly into his main topic. For example, he starts with a professional tennis player crumbling under pressure in a match vs. Steffi Graff at Wimbleton and then moves onto an examination of what caused John Kennedy Jr.’s plane crash and finally arrives at his ultimate topic: how learning occurs and the difference between choking and panicking
But in the final analysis: the choppiness of the book (long essays, which meander until they arrive at their ultimate focus) eventually wore me down and I lost interest. I like essays in short doses, but as this was a library book (=with a due date) AND a book being read for book-club purposes (ditto), I found it didn’t sustain my interest. Probably it would have worked fine as a book I read one essay at a time with a few days in between each reading. Lesson learned!