Month: April 2018

As noted in this post, I ended up DNFing the very first book I tried to read off of my Classics Club Challenge list.  This presented me with the dilemma of whether or not to replace the book with something else or just cross it off the list.  In the end, I decided to create a list of alternate books.  In the event that I don’t read a given book on the original TBR, I will note that on the original list and read a book off the alternate list in its stead.

I also decided that the British Crime Classics are not really worthy of inclusion in this list.  I am going to remove them from the list and add 10 other classics.

Here is the list of 10 alternates:

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
Evelina by Fanny Burney
The Mysteries of Udolpho  by Ann Radcliff
Wilderness and the American Mind by Roderick Nash
The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskell
An Autobiography by Agatha Christie

Here is the list of 10 replacements for the British Crime Classics:

Laughing Boy by Oliver LaFarge
A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird
The Land of Little Rain by Mary Austin
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers

After reading an old interview with Tony Hillerman late last year, I decided to re-read the Leaphorn and Chee novels in chronological order.  I read the series in the 1990’s but in a rather haphazard way and am now quite certain that there are one or two that I did not read.

Reading the first 6 novels was definitely an interesting and enjoyable endeavor.  While the quality of the novels up through The Ghostway was a bit uneven every book has been a lot of fun to read.  Hillerman  created a terrific mileu for his detective stories and Leaphorn and Chee are great, complex characters.

The first three books in the series (The Blessing Way, Dance Hall of the Dead, and Listening Woman) feature Lt. Joe Leaphorn and the next three (People of Darkness, The Dark Wind, and The Ghostway) feature OfficerJim Chee.  While both of these characters are compelling in their own right, their pairing in  Skinwalkers brings together one of the genre’s greatest detective teams.

While Leaphorn is trying to crack a lead in three unsolved homicides someone makes an attempt on Jim Chee’s life by blasting three shotgun holes in his mobile home while he is sleeping.  This chain of events brings the two  together as they investigate these seemingly unrelated incidents.  Initially,  Leaphorn is skeptical about Chee, assuming that cops don’t get shot at for no reason.  Also, Chee is practicing to become a healer and Leaphorn is vehemently antagonistic to the traditional spiritualism embodied in the yataalii.

For his part, Chee is cognizant of Leaphorn’s scrutiny, but maintains his professionalism and goes systematically about his investigation.  It soon becomes apparent that the Navajo belief in witches or Skinwalkers is playing a significant role in the murder spree, and  Chee’s knowledge of the traditional Navajo religion is crucial to solving the crimes.

Here is the short analysis of the five broad categories I use to consider when thinking about a novel.

Characters

I particularly enjoyed the way Hillerman depicted the evolution of the relationship between Leaphorn and Chee.  The character development of the two main protagonists gets much deeper than in any of the 6 preceding novels. Comparing and contrasting the strengths and weaknesses of each character against those of the other leads to much more layered complexity and interest.  Both Leaphorn and Chee are described as having an almost visceral connection to the landscape which becomes crucial to their criminal investigations.  The minor characters are also deftly drawn–Hillerman does not resort to caricatures.  Five out of 5 for Characters.

Plot

The mystery is intriguing and the narrative momentum keeps you turning the pages.  I am usually terrible at solving the mystery before the author’s explicit reveal, but I did have this one about 90% figured out shortly before the motive was explained.  Hillerman did a masterful job of bringing in magical elements of traditional Navajo culture and giving them credence while acknowledging that the crimes have a logical, fathomable solution.  Five out 5 for Plot.

Writing Style

Hillerman’s writing style is not flashy, but he can sure paint a good landscape or thunderstorm.  His exquisite use of the four corners geographic and cultural backdrop, makes it an integral part of the characters and the plot they inhabit.  While I totally expect and accept violence and sex in my detective fiction, I do appreciate that there is little graphic violence and no explicit sex in Hillerman’s writing.  It is difficult to find anything to criticize, but I did note one instance where a pair of characters travels to a location in one vehicle, but they leave the location in a different one. It is mystifying to me that an editor did not note this discrepancy and flag it for reconciliation. I seem to remember reading somewhere that Hillerman kind of had a reputation for these disparities.  Four out of 5 for Writing Style.

Made Me Think

Hillerman’s exploration of the tension between life on the Navajo reservation and the majority Caucasian culture is always interesting and thought-provoking.  In Skinwalkers, there is the additional tension between the more worldly Lt. Leaphorn and the more traditional Jim Chee which emphasizes that intra-cultural differences are often as important as the larger clashes between the minority and majority cultures.  Skinwalkers also explores conditions of poverty, access to health care, and misappropriation of religious beliefs.  Five out of 5 for provoking thought.

Pure Enjoyment

This book is brilliant. Five out of 5 for pure enjoyment.

I am a real fan of detective fiction, but this is one of very few representatives of the genre that I would rate 5 out of 5.

In March I decided to begin the Classics Club Challenge.  I created my list of 100 classics to read in 5 years and was excited to participate in my first Classics Spin Challenge.  The spin resulted in adding one of the British Crime Classics, Calamity in Kent by John Rowland, to my TBR.

This morning, I excitedly cracked open my Kindle and began reading and almost immediately felt my heart sink.   After 35 pages I found that I just could not devote the 4 to 5 hours it would take to finish reading it.  The premise is not bad–a murder that takes place in a resort town “lift” that transports people from the town heights to the beach, which creates a locked room situation.   But from page one we are subjected to a journalist narrator who not only tells you what he is thinking but tells you why he is thinking it and then tells you again.  He then proceeds to behave in an unethical manner while justifying it to himself and the reader.   It was annoying and preposterous and I am not going to waste my time on it.

Now I have a dilemma.  Do I consider that I have checked a book off my list of 100 Classics?  Do I add another book to the list to account for this total failure?  Do I want to replace all of the 10 British Crime Classics?  I am not sure.

For the time being, I redid Spin #17 and will be reading a Persephone Book, Effie Briest by Theodor Fontane .  I’ll decide later about how to handle books I DNF.