In the Janwillem van de Wetering novel I just finished, the running joke is how all the various agencies and police departments trip over each other and interact; and it's also a running joke in this one: Tony Hillerman's Hunting Badger. 
       This is another fine entry in the Navajo Mystery series. The story was inspired by, and ( Read more... )

          My second book of the year is the tenth entry in Janwillem van de Wetering's Amsterdam Cops series, also known as the Grijpstra & De Gier mysteries. It's entitled The Rattle-Rat, and was my relaxation reading at the Writing Popular Fiction residency.
         The series was published from 1975 to 1999, and follows the members of the ( Read more... )

          Having finished my class-related reading for the semester, I got to take up a book for pleasure, and that would be Blue Shoes and Happiness, the seventh installment in Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. These books are charming, and a delight, and they make one a better person, when possible.
          The ( Read more... )

          I took Alexander McCall Smith's In the Company of Cheerful Ladies, the 6th volume in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, to the WPF Residency in June, but only got a couple of chapters into it. I've been reading it in spurts ever since, when I have met my quota of student manuscript for the day.
          Smith really loves his ( Read more... )

          I took Tony Hillerman's The First Eagle with me on my recent trip. It was his 15th novel.
          Okay, let's get the grimace count out of the way first. Eight. Pages 2, 3, 7, 36, 100, 159, 247 and 257 of my paperback edition. The man probably would have lived another six or seven years if he'd dropped the habit, but what can you say?
    ( Read more... )

          I started When Red is Black, Qiu Xiaolong's third Shanghai Police Bureau novel, on my recent trip to New Orleans, but once I got back it went on the shelf, mostly. I finished in widely-spaced snippets.
          I've got two more of the series on my pile, and another on my to-buy list, and they continue to please me.
          This one ( Read more... )

          While we were in New Orleans, I took a bit of a break from school reading, and enjoyed Alexander McCall Smith's The Full Cupboard of Life. It's the fifth in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, and just as delightful as the first four.
          Mma Ramotswe is given the job of vetting the four suitors of a rich businesswoman; Mma ( Read more... )

          I think of myself as a fan of Jonathan Lethem, so it is somewhat embarrassing to realize that I let his National Book Critics Circle Award winning Motherless Brooklyn gather dust on my shelf for over a decade. So, yeah, I'm reading Lethem, and I'm about a decade behind.
          Lethem reminds me of Stanislaw Lem, though the comparison ( Read more... )

          It's a good year in which one gets to read two Raymond Chandlers in a six-week period, so 2012 is officially a good year. I'm teaching The Big Sleep, so I just re-read it for class preparation. I won't discuss it here, so as not to get my words fed back to me in class.
          It's wonderful, though, and if you haven't read it, you ( Read more... )

    My self-reward for enduring the madness of the January and June residencies at SHU-WPF is that I read a Raymond Chandler. This time I reveled in The Long Goodbye. (Sadly, this means I have only one more, before turning to the Complete Short Fiction, or his Collected Letters.)
    Marlowe gets beaten by the cops in this one, as usual, but gets ( Read more... )