The Book Wrap Up 2020: What I Read

My Reading increased from the previous year, but like always, there seems to be a stretch in which I don’t read, a time when reading does –for whatever reason- becomes difficult. Between October 17 to November 21, I barley read. I think the election had a lot to do with that, along with the continuing depressing aspects of the pandemic. But sometimes I just don’t read.

Can’t say if there were any books that where my favorite, but I finished off the John Dortmunder series by Donald E. Westlake, while I started Westlake’s darker half, Richard Stark’s Parker tales, getting through 12 of the 24. I really enjoyed Dortmunder (and still have a collectionof short stories to go through) and the Parker books are brutal and the violence and death makes me a bit queasy at times.

Also, I still have plenty more Westlake ahead as well, and need to finish the Fletch series (one more book) and the Groucho Marx mysteries (one more, as well). But I still have more and more to go through.More than I can ever read.

The list below in the 54 novels I got through in 2020 –The Year of Hell.

01. The Word is Murder By Anthony Horowitz

02. The Hunter By Richard Stark

03. Dead Voices By Katherine Arden

04. Nobody’s Perfect By Donald E. Westlake

05. The Conference of Birds by Ransom Riggs

06. The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek by Rhett McLaughlin & Link Neal

07. Travelers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism: 1919-1945 By Julia Boyd

08. Good Behavior By Donald E. Westlake

09. From the Dust Returned By Ray Bradbury

10. Paradox Bound By Peter Clines

11. The Liquidator By John Gardner

12. Elementary, My Dear Groucho by Ron Goulart

13. At Childhood’s End By Sophie Aldred

14. The Philosopher’s Flight by Tom Miller

15. Don’t Ask By Donald E. Westlake

16. If it Bleeds By Stephen King

17. The Remarkable Inventions of Walter Mortinson by Quinn Sosna-Spear

18. The Man with the Getaway Face By Richard Stark

19. The Outfit By Richard Stark

20. Groucho Marx and the Broadway Murders By Ron Goulart

21.The Mourner By Richard Stark

22. The Score By Richard Stark

23. The Jugger By Richard Stark

24. The Seventh By Richard Stark

25. What’s the Worst that Could Happen? By Donald E. Westlake

26. One of Us is Wrong by Sam Holt

27. Bad News By Donald E. Westlake

28. Battlestar Galactica: Armageddon By Richard Hatch and Christopher Golden

29. Mostly Dead Things By Kristen Arnett

30. The Fugitive Pigeon By Donald E. Westlake

31. The Road to Ruin By Donald E. Westlake

32. The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires By Grady Hendrix

33. Watch Your Back By Donald E. Westlake

34. What’s So Funny? By Donald E. Westlake

35. Fletch Won By Gregory McDonald

36. Fletch, Too By Gregory Mcdonald

37. Fletch and the Widow Bradley By Gregory McDonald

38. Fletch By Gregory McDonald

39. Carrioca, Fletch by Gregory McDonald

40. Confess, Fletch By Gregory McDonald

41. Get Real By Donald E. Westlake

42. The Handle By Richard Stark

43. Fletch’s Fortune By Gregory McDonald

44. The Rare Coin Score by Richard Stark

45. The Risk Pool By Richard Russo

46. The Green Eagle Score By Richard Stark

47. The Black Ice Score By Richard Stark

48. Enola Holmes And the Case of the Missing Marquess By Nancy Springer

49. Fletch’s Moxie By Gregory McDonald

50. Groucho Marx, Secret Agent By Ron Goulart

51. The Sour Lemon Score By Richard Stark

52. 4.50 From Paddington By Agatha Christie

53. Castle in the Air By Donald E. Westlake

54. Pandemonium By Daryl Gregory

Books: Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory (2008)

 

"It is a world like our own in every respect . . . save one. In the 1950s, random acts of possession begin to occur. Ordinary men, women, and children are the targets of entities that seem to spring from the depths of the collective unconscious, pop-cultural avatars some call demons. There’s the Truth, implacable avenger of falsehood. The Captain, brave and self-sacrificing soldier. The Little Angel, whose kiss brings death, whether desired or not. And a string of others, ranging from the bizarre to the benign to the horrific. As a boy, Del Pierce is possessed by the Hellion, an entity whose mischief-making can be deadly. With the help of Del’s family and a caring psychiatrist, the demon is exorcised . . . or is it? Years later, following a car accident, the Hellion is back, trapped inside Del’s head and clamoring to get out. Del’s quest for help leads him to Valis, an entity possessing the science fiction writer formerly known as Philip K. Dick; to Mother Mariette, a nun who inspires decidedly unchaste feelings; and to the Human League, a secret society devoted to the extermination of demons. All believe that Del holds the key to the plague of possession–and its solution."

Last summer I read Daryl Gregory’s sixth book, Spoonbenders, and enjoyed it a lot. It’s taken me this long to get to his brilliant debut novel Pandemonium. Gregory apparently references a lot of his childhood growing up in suburban Chicago, by not only setting the book there (and writing about places, roads, and towns I know very well) but also (probably) his love of comic books, horror, and classic science fiction writers. It’s a subtly alternate history novel where Eisenhower is assassinated, where Richard Nixon became president earlier, and where Philip K. Dick and the English band The Human League are possessed by demons (which Gregory only sort of hints at their origins). By far, the book is a lot deeper than its premise belies, as Gregory takes a scientific and biological study approach to mental illness and adds demonic possession into the mix. It’s often funny but mixed in is an underlying feel of sadness and even loneliness. It’s a remarkable first book.

Books: Castle in the Air By Donald E. Westlake (1980)

 

A South American dictator, who is being ousted by a coup, conceals millions of dollars worth of said (fictitious) South American valuables in his dismantled castle, which is being brought to Paris to be re-assembled. However, an international gang of thieves - with national eccentricities- set out to steal the castle. 

Much of Castle in the Air is a seemly attempt by Westlake to remake his much funnier and better Dancing Aztecs (with a homage to It’s a Mad Mad World thrown in for good measure), except set in France. Westlake does his typical twist after twist to confound and confuse everyone (including the reader) and there is a whole raft load of frenetic slapstick action, but while the book climaxes in a mad chase around the canals and roads of Paris, with the “loot” changing hands every few pages, it still does not work. It’s overtly simple tale, with thinly drawn characters and pointless humor about a gang of thieves who mostly don’t speak the same language. In some ways, being a short book made my pain of reading it a little better.

As a prolific writer Donald E. Westlake was, not every book is a brilliant masterpiece (even his Richard Stark books don’t always work). And Castle in the Air is pretty much a disappointment in my opinion.