Double Indemnity, by James M. Cain

Another Cain! I really like this guy's work.

This book is more like The Postman Always Rings Twice than Mildred Pierce, because there's more murder plotting, but it of course still has that don't-trust-charismatic-people aspect to it. So good.

And the murder plotting here is EXCELLENT, because the murderer fellow, who is again offing a lust-object's husband, is an insurance agent and he knows what has to be done to make a murder play out like an accident. So there is lots of planning and trickery and secrets.

But of course there are more secrets than just this planned murder, as our murderer discovers AFTER he's done all this work, and those combined with the fact that he works with at least one good insurance agent who has totally figured out that there was a murder but can't quite prove it make this novel wonderfully suspenseful.

The ending is great as well; it combines a few excellent surprising endings that I've read before and makes them more interesting. It's just a good time all around!

Also, just a few pages into this book I realized that I had watched the movie version in my freshman English class, though I didn't remember it terribly well because I'm pretty sure the noir voice-over aspect put me to sleep. Definitely a more gripping book.

Recommendation: Good for those who like suspense and slowly unveiled evil characters, and also those who would like tips on planning a perfect murder.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain

I read Mildred Pierce for my book club a little while ago and loved it, so the fact that I had a couple other Cain works sitting in anthology form turned out to be an excellent thing.

Of course, The Postman Always Rings Twice isn't really anything like Mildred Pierce. In Mildred, Cain writes a moderately creepy story about the power of especially charismatic people, while in Postman... no, wait, it's still about the power of especially charismatic people. But here there be MURDERERS. That's the difference. Not such a big one, really.

Postman is about a drifter fellow who very quickly falls in love (well, lust) with a married woman and just as quickly they are planning her husband's death. They try once and fail, then try again and succeed, but of course murdering someone isn't really something you can get away with so easily, especially when an insurance company is involved.

The trial bit is what I think I liked the best... my husband's in law school so he's always coming home with very strange hypothetical and real cases, but this one takes the cake, especially in the way the lawyer uses all sorts of lawyer-y tricks that baffle and confuse and amaze me in the end.

I also liked that the narrator turns out to be possibly unreliable (not even definitely unreliable, how cool is that), and also the way the whole ending plays out, from the betrayals to the justice.

But it is a short book (~100 pages), so really you should just go read it.

Recommendation: Not for people who love their characters, but definitely for people who love their plots. Also for budding lawyers who want some true genius to aspire to, but not for those who want to have, like, integrity.

Rating: 8/10
(RIP Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, by David Sedaris

I got to this book in a somewhat roundabout way... my Mary recommended it to me as a Read-a-thon possibility, but then my library didn't have it and I had a whole host of other books to read anyway and I figured I'd get to this one eventually. Then I went up to Pittsburgh for a weekend to visit Scott's family and one of the first things I hear from Sister-in-law the Elder is, "Do you like David Sedaris? Have you read his new book? No? I will lend it to you!" Amazing how these things work.

I busted it out on the plane ride back to Jacksonville, which was both awesome and terrible because dude, the pictures in this book are not all safe for work. I was moderately concerned that my seat neighbor would turn out to be some sort of PETA member who would throw red paint on me after seeing a picture of a dying lab rat or a lamb with its eyes plucked out.

Ugh, right? The stories in this book are, I think, meant to be like human mythologies as told by animals. Some of the stories are a little banal, like the title story which tells of a budding relationship between a squirrel and a chipmunk that goes poorly when jazz is mentioned. Some are tales of really stupid animals, like "The Mouse and the Snake," in which a mouse thinks that a snake will make a very good companion for her, or "The Toad, the Turtle, and the Duck," in which being incredibly mean to someone is fun until racism gets involved. And some, including "The Sick Rat and the Healthy Rat" and "The Crow and the Lamb" are kind of disgusting.

It's a short collection, just about 150 pages of large-type stories and cool illustrations, and while I'm not over the moon about all of the stories I think that they work well taken together, and of course you don't spend too much time on the ones that flop. And it's probably perfect for that plane ride where you really don't want to talk to your neighbors.

Recommendation: Good for the not-squeamish and those who have some schadenfreude. Also good for those who like Sedaris.

Rating: 8/10

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Dead-Tossed Waves, by Carrie Ryan

So I kinda sorta rather enjoyed The Forest of Hands and Teeth, to which this book is a companion (not so much sequel). Forest was full of interesting zombies and deep dark secrets and a trial of faith and although I didn't think it a particularly good book, I thought it was very entertaining.

This book... less so. At first I was all excited because the main character here is Gabrielle, not Mary of the first book, and in the first book Gabrielle is the zombie chick that caused a lot of problems. I thought perhaps this was going to be a sort of companion book that talked about Gabrielle's life and how she ended up in Mary's town. Then, crushing disappointment when I found out that the Gabrielle in this book is actually Mary's daughter.

So we have fast-forwarded many years to the future. And nothing much has changed. Mary has settled in by that ocean she had longed for, where Gabrielle — Gabry — has learned all about the Mudo (previously the Unconsecrated) and how lame they are and how they want to nom people. Nonetheless, she sneaks out with a bunch of people to go play in Mudo territory and of course the Mudo attack and Gabry's boy-thing is bited and she runs away and her friends get caught and sentenced to a Really Bad Rest of Their Lives and then Gabry's bff blackmails her into going out to rescue said bff's brother slash Gabry's boy-thing. But of course, this is not very easy, especially when Gabry starts falling in love with another boy.

And that is where I got distinctly displeased with this book. It was like the Hunger Games books all over again, with the indecision and the boys mooning and FOR SERIOUSLY it needs to stop. Bring me more zombies!

But the zombies are mostly lacking in this book, at least until the end when there are a disgustingly large amount of them, and the love story was certainly not as compelling as the deep dark secrets of the first book. Like the Hunger Games before it, I am sure I will read the third novel in this series in the hopes that it will be as awesome as the first book. I hope I'm not disappointed again!

Recommendation: Not for the zombie lover, or those with an allergy to dramaful love stories. At this point, I would definitely stop after The Forest of Hands and Teeth.

Rating: 6/10
(RIP Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Chrisbookarama
Shhh I'm Reading...
Book Addiction
Persnickety Snark
Devourer of Books

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Musing Mondays — How Many?

Today's Musing Mondays question is... "About how many books (roughly) would you say you own? (If you don’t have a clue how many, do you care to know? Why, or why not?)"

Well, my GoodReads "owned" tag tells me that I have 72 books, which seems a little low... a quick count of my shelves puts it at more like 95, on account of I don't track my reference books on GoodReads just yet. Perhaps I should?

But really, I don't care too much about how many books I own, just which ones I do, so I don't go buying duplicates at book sales and so that I remember what I've lent out. And actually, I'm surprised to know I own so many books! I guess that explains the new bookshelf we just bought...

Word Freak, by Stefan Fatsis

I picked this book up a while back, started reading it, and then forgot about it in favor of made-up stories. Word Freak wasn't boring, exactly, but it wasn't as exciting as other books that I had piled up, and so off to the side it went. And then I discovered it was due back to the library, with no chance to renew it, and the book proved its interestingness by popping right back into my hands rather than going back to the library unread.

I picked this book up because it promised, right on the cover, to be about "Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive SCRABBLE Players," and I am nothing if not a giant nerd for all things words. I don't play Scrabble very often, but I used to play the Yahoo! Games version constantly in high school and I've always been a pretty okay player against my friends, largely because I know a lot of words.

But dudes. I would have no chance against any of the players in this book, even the author. I sort of knew that there was a competitive Scrabble community, but I did not realize the extent of the memorizing and calculating and sheer mental strength having that members of said community possess. Playing upwards of 10 games in a tournament on a fairly regular basis? I would be bored after, like, three. All of which I would have lost due to not knowing really really really obscure words and anagrams and how to manage a rack or the board or my brain.

Fatsis plopped himself into this world ten-ish years ago, first to write this book and then because he was obsessed. So about half the book is Fatsis talking about other players and their strange, Scrabble-obsessed lives and the other half is him talking about omg why is his rating so baaaaaad? Which it's not, of course, but people who are really good at things are also really good at thinking they're bad at things.

I think the best parts of this book were the games themselves; I enjoyed seeing strange words score lots of points and especially to see an interesting board layout. But I also thought it was interesting to see what sorts of people are the high-rated experts in competitive Scrabble... Fatsis focuses on some of the craziest people, though he insists that there are sane people who are good at Scrabble. These crazy people tend to have no jobs or lives outside of the game, and yet somehow their weird quirks and whatnot start to seem normal as the book goes on.

And now I'm itching to break out my Travel Scrabble set, except that those tiles are so hard to pop into the little holders! I should really get a real board.

Recommendation: Read this if you like to read interesting stories about oddly interesting people, or if you think you're good at Scrabble, because you're probably not.

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Booking Through Thursday — Foreigners

Todays Booking Through Thursday question is... "Name a book (or books) from a country other than your own that you love. Or aren’t there any?"

Oh, there definitely are.

The Shadow of the Wind (from Spain) is a book I read what feels like forever ago, but that I'm still pretty in love with. I need to find the Cemetery of Forgotten Books someday.

Its prequel, The Angel's Game, is also good, if more confusing than its predecessor.

Who Slashed Celanire's Throat is an intriguing book, one of those where there's not much plot but there are plenty of interesting characters.

And of course no list of anything is complete without my beloved Thursday Next series, out of Wales, which is a completely oddball series about a literary detective in an alternate-universe England where time travel is real, people have cloned dodos for pets, and books are not just for reading.