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052) The 5th Generation by Dale Jay Dennis, finished July 7
So based on the cover
I expected some deeply cheesy teen romance. One of the lovers would be an LDS convert. Something would go wrong but they'd fall in love by the end. This wasn't so far off, but this was all taken care of well before we reached page 100 and I was confused, wondering where it would go from there.
Now perhaps I should pause to mention the book has a lot of surface flaws that a good editor should have helped Dennis resolve. He has a bad habit of getting into hair and eye color each time a new character is advanced, for instance. A few plot details that interest are dropped. But! There are also some stellar things happening on that surface. For instance, the way he writes the Irish dialect is superb. (Spoken as someone who is far from an expert, but reading the lines made me believe I was hearing Irish people speak.) He also handles the occasional Gaelic pretty well. He has a lot of faith in his audience and I appreciate that.
What what's best about this book is what's happening below the surface. The story takes place over roughly eight years near the end of the Troubles. The book was published in 1995, three years before the Troubles ended. I'm not sure exactly when the book started and therefore I can't say for sure when it ended. I suspect it began in the present day and ended in the near future but as that would make it out of line with the actual history, lets start it circa 1988 so it can end shortly before the Troubles themselves.
It is appropriate that this story ends with the Troubles. More or less.
The story begins with Kathleen, Northern Irish, who is baptized Mormon to the irritation of her father. She attends an all-Ireland youth conference where a BYU professor cites Exodus re the third or fourth generations being in bad shape and suggests that these Irish kids be the fifth generation: peacemakers.
The experience is rough on Kathleen who has been struggling with fear, perhaps even hatred, of the southern Irish kids this entire time. But her heart opens. And once it's open, it's wide open and she falls in love with a kid from Dublin. They'll maintain a longterm relationship until they get married. She leaves her family and moves to Dublin.
It's not a long book (200pp) but all this is less than half. The book moves quickly. It does not waste time. It's willing to leap over scenes we don't need to see and Dennis's instincts are pretty good on this point. I was surprised multiple times that a guy who is making some amateur errors was also showing this level of boldness when it came to his organization.
I don't suppose many people are likely to run down this book (copies seem to run a bit under $15) but it's a worthy read. Because of it's flaws, it's the sort of book that you might say could make a better movie. I dunno. Even with the flaws, my emotions were entirely wrapped up in this story and these characters. Although if BYUtv were looking for a three-season prestige epic, this would be a solid option.
I'm here in Utah now without much of my library and found this book in my in-laws basement among a bunch of cds. I laughed a bit at the cover but it was made out to my wife at the end of her junior year of high school, a gift from her seminary teacher. I took it upstairs thinking I could plow through it McBride-style. Then I learned (it was pointed out to me; I didn't notice this myself) that the book was written by said seminary teacher. That's how it came to my hands twenty-nine years later. I think I'm the first person to read it.
And I'm glad I did.
from a little after 2pm to a little after midnight
053) To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, finished July 10
A couple Christmases ago, I gave the boys a killer set of novels: Three Men in a Boat, Have Spacesuit Will Travel, and To Say Nothing of the Dog. I only discovered those other two novels because Connie Willis, when I read To Say Nothing of the Dog in 2000 or 2001, introduced them to me. She also introduces lots of other books, and I think I may need to run down Dorothy Sayers's Harriet Vane books next.
Anyway, when I first read To Say Nothing of the Dog twenty-five years ago I absolutely fell in love with it. I still think about it to this day and although I was able to have a largely fresh experience a quarter-century later, I did now certain things would arrive as the novel progressed. It's a charming bit of near-future science fiction (although it just goes to show how far away 1998 was from 2008 when it comes to cellphones, while time-travel certainly didn't appear in 2013—but of course she didn't really expect that), but it's also a detective story riffing off the classics, and it is a wonderful romance. Connie Willis has the sort of respect for the reader that means we're all getting to have fun together, on this little romp through time and literature, and it's absolutely delightful.
For some years I included this novel on my list of favorite books and I see no reason why it shouldn't be reestablished thereon. And if anyone's thinking about getting me a Coast Guard Day present, although I've read maybe all of Connie Willis's short stories in the last twenty-five years, I still haven't read any (any!) of her other novels. I cannot explain it. Except maybe to say that whenever I'm in a used book store (as I was today) and think to check (as I did today) they never have any. But as excuses go, that's pretty weak.
Quick detour to talk about the paperback cover:
It drives me crazy that whenever someone wants to praise a comic novel, the go-to is It's as good as A Confederacy of Dunces! as if that's the only comic novel of note to appear in the modern era.
(This is a good time to note I, too, have had work compared to Toole's novel.)
Anyway.
I do think my experience of 2025 is different from my experience of c. 2000 in that I was a bit more aware of things that could be called flaws in the time-travel stuff and that I did find some of the book's human optimism misguided in a way I never would have pre-Trump.
That said, all the more reason to read it—to believe once again in our potential to be good and to do things for good reasons. I want to believe!
And in that way, this novel is both highly moral and desperately needed. Which is exactly was art should be, is that not so Mr Arbitage?
But if thinking it might be good for you turns you off, forget about it. Just know this story is filled with wonderful characters, will make you laugh, leave you happy, and plays so many different games so skillfully it's like reading three genres at once. Deeelightful.
a couple months
054) Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout, finished July 25
After To Say Nothing of the Dog I've been wanting to read '30s mysteries. Starting with a Nero Wolfe novel seemed like a good idea as the great detective never leaves his house and his Watson has to do all the legwork. And that sounds an awful lot like a project I'm working on.
It was a good read and I like Archie Goodwin, Nero's Watson. He's clever and competent. Frankly, a decent detective in his own right. He just doesn't have that certain genius this species of detective novels requires, ala Holmes or Poirot.
I was intrigued that the mystery was solved well before novel's end, but gathering sufficient evidence took longer. Daring choice.
a couple weeks
055) Meet Monster: The First Big Monster Book by Ellen Blanca and Ann Cook, illustrated by Quentin Blake, finished July 26
Until just now when I tried to find out who the original illustrator was, I had assumed that this must be a reissue of a classic story reillustrated by Quentin Blake. But no, he's the original.
The stories are easy for early readers with simple words and repetition, but they also occasionally make strange decisions in terms of what comes next both with language and story.
Apparently there are a gajillion of these things.
while at the library
056) Last Pick by Jason Walz, finished July 29
Don't know how old Jason Walz is, but his creature design seems influenced by Jake Parker. I appreciate the ambition of this scifi story for kids, but it never really came together for me. It does set up an even more ambitious second volume which is intriguing buuuut my library doesn't have it, so this is probably the end of the line for me.
a couple days
057) Death Comes to Eastrepps by Francis Beeding, finished August 2
In my casual recent collection of Thirties mysteries, I picked up this serial-killer yarn. My copy was published in the Sixties with an intro in which one of the authors (Beeding is a pseudonym) was displayed in conversation super-pleased with himself for crafting a tale in which no one ever guesses the villain. Which made me on the lookout for a villain and, well, I called it about halfway through.
This is what comes of making a novel into a puzzle.
Anyway, some clever things were done with the language, but largely this book was a series of examples of things that drive me crazy about midcentury popular fiction—I just didn't realize "midcentury" began so soon.
I did appreciate the actual decisive clue, I should add. It was reasonable. Important since (spoilers) the killer is not revealed before another man dies for his crimes. And let me add here that I'm shocked how quickly capital crimes worked their way through the system in 1930s Britain. Shocked.
a week
earlier this year..........
Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!
001) Beowulf translated by Maria Dahvana Headley, finished January 1
002) Cthulhu Is Hard to Spell: Volume Three, finished January 1
003) Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (translated by Megan McDowell), finished January 8
004) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, finished January 11
005) You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown, finished January 12
005) Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard—and Still Is by Terryl Givens and Nathaniel Givens, finished January 24
006) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book Two by Emil Ferris, finished January 25
Maybe we should just pretend this set begins and ends with Wednesday Addams
007) Chas. Addams Half-Baked Cookbook, finished January 29
008) Monica by Daniel Clowes, finished February 3
009) The Unexpurgated French Edition of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland, finished February 19
010) Peach and the Isle of Monsters by Franco Aureliani and Agnes Garbowska, finished February 20
011) Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, finished February 28
012) Comic Poems edited by Peter Washington, finished March 7
Love, Beauty, and a complete lack of sasquatch
013) Love that Dog by Sharon Creech, finished March 11
014) Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper, finished March 21
015) Antelope Spring by John Bennion, finished March 24
016) Shelley Frankenstein by Colleen Madden, finished March 28
017) Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew #21: Double Take, finished April 5
018) The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clark, finshed April 8
019) Rave by Jessica Campbell, finished April 13
020) The Creeps: A Deep Dark Fears Collection by Fran Krause, finished April 14
Do not ask what she does with the babies.
027) Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito, finished April 21
028) Somna: A Bedtime Story by Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay, finished April 23
029) Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu, finished April 24
030&031) The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, finished April 25
032) Raised by Ghosts by Briana Loewinsohn, finished April 26
033) Ephemera by Briana Loewinsohn, finished April 26
Brighter and brighter until we all get our heads lopped off
034) Brighter and Brighter until the Perfect Day by Sharlee Mullins Glenn, finished April 27
035) Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett, finished May 3
036) The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, finished May 5
037) Equus by Peter Shaffer
038) Travesties by Tom Stoppard, finished May 8
039) The Art of Intimacy: The Space Between by Stacey D'Erasmo, finished May 10
040) A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt, finished May 16
Criticism & Comics
041) Arts and Inspiration: Mormon Perspectives, edited by Steven P. Sondrup, finished May 18
042) The Waiting by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, finished May 19
043) Odessa by Jonathan Hill, finished May 22
044) Barnstormers: A Ballad of Love and Murder by Tula Lotay and Scott Snyder, finished May 22
045) Bingo Baby, finished May 26
Books on the Fourth of July
046) Final Cut by Charles Burns, finished May 28
047) Fever Beach by Carol Hiassen, finished June 12
048) How to Talk to Your Succulent by Zoe Persico, finished June 17
049) Poetry Comics from the Book of Hours by Bianca Stone, June 24
050) Night of Camp David by Fletcher Knebel, finished June 25
051) The Serial Killer's Son Takes a Wife by Michael Libling, finished July 3
PREVIOUS OTHER YEARS IN BOOKS
2007 = 2008 = 2009 = 2010 = 2011 = 2012 = 2013 = 2014 = 2015
2016 = 2017 = 2018 = 2019 = 2020 = 2021 = 2022 = 2023 = 2024
