Saturday, December 29, 2007

End of the Year Wrap

It's over for the year. When we all left the book club two weeks ago now, I had a smile and felt ready for the holiday break. And when we had a relaxingly, fun session with a more than enough chocolate--again--to eat and a fun read to discuss, what's not to love?

This year has been mostly successful with good reads and I'm glad the regular book
clubbers have trusted my judgment to try some new authors (for some that is, others have read from the selected authors) and found their books worthwhile. I gathered the best received writers for the year were Charles Todd, Peter May and Chris Grabenstein. All these authors have series that some either begin to read or noted for later reading interests. For instance, we read the first of the Peter May "China Thrillers" series as our library system has those first two novels.

Two authors we finally got around to reading this year include Jack Kerley and Chris Grabenstein. With Kerley's setting of the deep-South police and Grabenstein's setting of the New Jersey amusement park laden coast, I was glad to have these two as book club targets.

And although time and opportunity didn't permit me to do as much as I wanted with the book club or blog, I'll try it all again in January... Until then, here's a "YouTube" video with author George Pelecanos reading from the book we read in March, The Night Gardener.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Book club discusses " Whack a Mole"

Last week, the book club meet for its end of the year session to discuss Chris Grabenstein's Whack a Mole. This is the third of the "John Ceepak mystery" series--the newish member of the Sea Haven Police Department which covers a tourist strip of the New Jersey Shore. In this novel, events evolve into a bizarre police matter when John and his young partner Danny Boyle follow up on the discovery of body parts which leads to a major investigation of the community the conclusion of multiple bodies and deaths. John is much more alarmed when it appears the killer is gearing to murder again.

Grisly in a few incidents but bone-tickling in so many more, this story of an angry killer and the determined beach cops won over the book club attendees. Our discussions included the unlikelihood of multiple murders in a tourist haven although there's the transit aspect of the murder victims. As it turns out, the victims are women passing through resort looking for as one retired cop says "sun, sand and sex." That is the ideal client for a resort area. I thought the resort community could lead to good crime stories with the revolving population and credited writer Grabenstein with a good setting.

And the setting was well-written too. One person noted how it seemed memorable and another how despite the fact that the book introduced a number of characters,
they were distinctive.

One distinctive quality for Ceepak was that he claims (as does the writer about the character for that matter) to never lie. Ever. That's a great personal claim but we did discuss how that could operate in personal life or Ceepak's professional life.

Otherwise, we did discuss some other interesting characters, the set-up of the
murder's identity, inter-office relations with the police, and a surprise shoot-out which ended in a way you would not expect.

I also discussed Grabenstein's professional background and mentioned his work as a ad writer and in comedy. One attendee said his writing took a little time to adjust to with his frequently short sentences. And as Grabenstein writes about his writing background--the work is fast for quick consumption. I have a pix of Grabestein above from his www.chrisgrabenstein.com website.

Again, the wacky-titled Whack a Mole won us over as a readers and some have gone on to read the earlier books--there are two others in this series now.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Too Long to Make the List--

I looked at the New York Times list of "100 Notable Books of 2007" this week and found one straight out-and-out mystery in the fiction section. The intriguingly titled The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon is last on the fiction list and I had considered it as a possibility for the mystery book club to read. The list describes the book as: Cops, thugs, schemers, rabbis, chess fanatics and obsessives of every stripe populate this screwball, hard-boiled murder mystery set in an imagined Jewish settlement in Alaska. The novel runs more than 400 pages long and--I hate to say it--but, I decided that's too long for a book club selection. (I make recommendations for books to read for the library's mystery book club and attendees vote on the titles in most instances.)

Why not read this book? During the first year or so of the book club, I had one attendee suggest--in the mildest of ones--that the book club limit the pages for a book selection. Granted, some may have plenty of time and interest to read a large book but others don't. As such, I've kept in mind when looking for books for the book club sessions. I have skipped books that appear to be on the jumbo size.

Now, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is 414 pages and closer to the long side for a book club selection. And, of course, that's my judgment with the standard type of mysteries we tend to read.

That said, we could still read this book if the group decides so.