From Sunday's Times and News-Star
Let’s
quickly review our summer reading list so we can make sure we’re all on the
same page.
First
of all, the only book I’ve read this year that I wished I hadn’t was “The Last
Kind Words Saloon” by Larry McMurtry. Hadn’t read him in years but this was a
freebie and, thank goodness, less than 200 pages and with lots of white space.
I’ll put bad books down now, just like I’ll change the channel on a TV set, but
I read this one to the end because it was Larry McMurtry, who I will always
semi-worship thanks to “Lonesome Dove” and “Some Can Whistle” and “The Last
Picture Show” and the “Texasville” trilogy. Oh, mercy, and “Terms of
Endearment.” But be warned: somebody’s going to drop $24.95 American, plus tax,
get to about page 20-something and want to kick the next word that walks by
right between the vowels. Read his old stuff instead.
Every
other book I’ve read so far this year is a keeper. The weakest was “End of Days”
by James Swanson, about the JFK assassination. But hey, that’s on me. It’s not
like I didn’t know what was going to happen. His book on Lincoln and John
Wilkes Booth was better, but maybe that’s because I went in less informed.
The
year’s highlight has been “His Ownself: A Semi-Memoir” by Dan Jenkins, now of
Golf Digest, 85-ish, and back in his hometown of Fort Worth after extended road
trips to New York City and Florida. His high ranking could be because he is a
bit of a hero to me, the best sportswriter to ever breathe air and the reason I
wanted to become a writer in the first place. I think it happened around age 10
when I put down my Sports Illustrated long enough to understand that you wouldn’t
go to hell for cracking a joke about golf, and that people who wrote about games
we loved to play could actually turn them into stories that held their own
against anything the Hardy Boys could manage to get themselves into or out of.
Or
the reason I enjoyed it so much could be because it taught me stuff and made me
laugh at the same time. Which is why I think you might enjoy it too -- unless
you have no taste for history, the foibles of the human race, or giggling.
(Which reminds me, thanks to Mr. Jenkins: reading that McMurtry book I just
warned you not to read was like being at a nude beach where all the wrong
people get naked. High expectations, dismal result. Bummer.)
I’ll
say about Dan Jenkins, in a writer-type comparison, what former tour player Bruce
Crampton once said when describing the PGA vs. the athletic talents of another pretty
fair golfer named Jack Nicklaus: “We all suffer from human deficiencies; Jack
just suffers from fewer of them.”
I
re-read “The Postman Always Rings Twice” by James Cain and would recommend it,
maybe because I like thinking about Lana Turner-type people but also because I
can be a crime noir guy with the best of them. The passing of Elmore Leonard
inspired me to knock out “The Switch,” from 1978. Beautiful. Read Phillip
Margolin for the first time; “Heartstone.” Not great writing but a surprising story
and yessir, I think I’ll have another. Daniel Silva and “The Kill Artist” was
better, and more along the lines of your international intrigue.
Another
new author for me is Byran Forbes; loved “The Rewrite Man,” a “Hollywood” novel
from 1982. These were all pump-primers for a summer reading schedule that will
contain very little Emerson or authors with hyphenated names.
Before
I forget, “The Big Burn” by Timothy Egan is about America’s biggest forest fire
ever, and Egan, to complete the thought, can write like a house afire. I should
have been less surprised because he’s always seemed smart and thoughtful to me,
but the actor Gene Wilder has brought me much joy though his movies “Willie
Wonka” and “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein” and now through his
autobiography, “Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art.”
Finally,
this summer I plan to read – and it’s much overdue -- “The Last Hayride” in
honor of the gentleman and pro John Maginnis, who died May 25 and took a
backseat to no one in his coverage of our state’s politics. And a steady hot-weather
friend is Travis McGee, the John D. MacDonald creation who makes every summer
better. I read “Dress Her in Indigo” and “The Long Lavender Look” last summer;
now I’m on “A Tan and Sandy Silence.” Trust me, it’s a no-risk deal: you can
take Travis McGee to the bank and to the beach.
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