High WIndow by Raymond Chandler

 This is the first novel Chandler wrote that is not based on some previous short story.  It was made into a movie called "The Brasher Doubloon" but the plot was different somewhat, and Marlowe was not played by Bogart. All move adaptations have simpler plots as Chandler's novels get really complicated at times.  In "The Big Sleep" about 1/3 of the plot was cut out and the ending is completely different from the book. 

The "High Window" is a story of a rare coin from early USA stolen from an old rich lady with an attitude adjustment problem. Her secretary is the one that hires Marlowe and her son's wife is the one who is suspected of stealing the coin.  There are some local goons involved because the son has a gambling habit and the mom is just not dying. 

Eventually, a denture maker and old coin collector are killed in the same building and the secretary comes to Marlowe to confess to a murder she didn't commit.  Marlow finds the real murderers who were making copies of the doubloon with the denture maker's casts and returns it to the old lady, but now there are several of them already. 

Marlowe finds evidence that it was the old lady who pushed her ex husband through a high window and framed her secretary for it.  The secretary is free and Marlowe escorts her to her parents in Idaho. Pretty good book. 

Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

 "You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell."

Probably some of the most philosophical ontological words ever written in Pulp literature.  That's what I like about Raymond Chandler, as opposed to Dashiell Hammett.  Chandler is a philosopher, connoisseur, while Hammett is just a bare craftsman.   Marlowe is refined in his own way, thinks about life, the meaning of it all, his place in the universe.  Spade is a lowlife brute, who couldn't tell Plato from a platoon. 

This time around I read the written book, as opposed to the last review when I read the audiobook while commuting to work and much of the finesse was lost in the jungle and jumble and rumble of public transportation. Luckily, since the Pandemic, I am 100% remote and no more commuting for me. I think I'd like to keep it that way permanently.  It is just too much of a wasted time, even though it gets me out of the house.  As a Project/Engagement Manager I found out I can be just as successful without ever meeting the clients in person, and sometimes not even seeing them on video.  Voice is enough. Fuck the extroverts. Let them crawl up their extroverted rectums.

Anyway, this is still one of my favorite books. Not just detective, pulp or noir books, but books in general, in any category.  One day I'd like to make my own version in film.  I love Bogart, but his version has plot that leaves a lot of out, especially towards the ending.  I'd be the script writer, director, producer, editor and casting.  I know exactly how I want it.  It will be rated M for mature.  No family movie, this one. 

Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

 A quick and flowing read compared to Carrion Comfort by Simmons! Not everybody's cup of tea. Sam Spade's attitude towards women (even those he claims he loves) is decidedly mysoginistic by today's standards, and by a long shot.  There are three developed female characters (plus G's daughter, who only appears on a couple of pages), but they seem to be very stereotyped, and not much real humans.  Miss Wonderly (to use her first alias) is the caricature of a femme fatalle, who uses her physical beauty and sexual favors to manipulate and conquer men to use for her own purposes, while not shying from putting a bullet in their brains when they are of no more use to her.  Iva Archer is the stereotypical suburban housewives whose feelings for her husband died off long time ago (if they even existed beyond her imagination and wishful thinking) and now wants to reinvent herself and get a chance for a fresh start with an affair with her husband's business partner.  Effie is the gregarious secretary stereotype, who is street smart but still has deep feelings, especially for men in positions of authority, like her boss. 

Hammett has a quick and flowing style, especially well crafted dialogues, quick proceeding plot and interesting twists, however his descriptions of every detail of people's clothes and the expressions in their eyes or the twisting of their lips - becomes way too much already after the first 1/4 of the book.  There is an interesting twist in the end when Spade tells out who killed his partner Archer, but the preceding part of the book reads more like an adventure novel (plus hard-boiled) than a detective one. The way the Falcon just "walks" into Spade's office is a real letdown, and doesn't give the anti-hero any chance to prove his professed detective qualities.

If people are looking for a likeable character with whom to identify or "feel for" in books - then this one is definitely not one of them. There are no likeable characters. All of them are flawed, nasty, mean and sleazy in completely unlikeable ways.  Spade, even for an anti-hero, is completely unlikeable. He is a brute, bully, misogynist, homophobe, racist, liar, swindler and many more choice epithets.  However, he is a successful detective and a good reader of people's personalities (summary: they are all rotten).

Although, I appreciate the effort Hammett put into creating Spade, and since Hammett was a private dick himself for a number of years and this would be how an ideal "real-life" gumshoe looks like, I still prefer Philip Marlowe, who is more thoughtful, more introvert, more philosophical, a bit better with women (not bedding the, but treating them) and definitely more fully developed.

The movie is also good, but the Spade there is different from what Hammett wrote in the book (John Huston rewrote many parts for his script for the movie).  From the physical side Spade is supposed to be over 6 feet, blonde, scheming, with a sly smile on his face at all times.  Bogart is 5'6'' (with shoes) , dark, direct, and with a poker face most of the time. Spade in the book calls all his women "angel", but Bogart in the movie calls all of the "sweetheart". 

Anyways, a good book, and a perennial classic, but I am going to re-read "The Big Sleep" again.  By the way, Bogart plays exactly the same character in "Maltese Falcon" and "The Big Sleep" although they are two different detectives.  Well, to come to think about it, Bogart plays exactly the same character in every movie he's been - himself.  

Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons

Yes, it took 2.5 months to read this book. It is very long.  Also it is not overly interesting or readable.  I had such quite expectations from the Hyperion Cantos, which are one of my favorite Sci Fi books, plus I enjoyed the Olympus/Ilium duology, however this book falls below both of those.  I have no idea how this book could win an award when it is so average, artificially prolonged and just plain pretentious. 

First of all, I was expecting a horror book.  This is not a horror book, unless you count the descriptions of the different character's face distortions and lots of blood and murder.  Blood and murder does not make a horror.  It could be called a thriller, but definitely not horror.  The book is also not a Sci Fi book either, since nothing scientific is really described.  Probably we can call it Speculative Fiction, at best, but still mostly a very prolonged, very slow-burn thriller. 

The BS with the FBI agents being 'conditioned' to work for Brother Christian and all past American presidents being in cahoots, event landing US Navy destroyers to guard Brother C.'s personal island, is just too far fetched.  Such thing has never happened in the history of the US, and, in all probability - never will. 

One note - this book was written in the late '80s, so some things that were acceptable then, are not really acceptable today in 2022.  First is racial slurs.  The N-word is peppered all over, and although I get it that the bad guys are using it - it still feels like too much.  Also, the description of rape (by Tony), and I mean physical rape, not just the mental one, and the description of the fear and humiliation the women experience during, was also a bit too much.  I get it, again, it is the bad guy doing it and he is a piece of shit, but less graphic and disturbing descriptions would benefit the plot just as much if not more. 

The best part of the book is Saul Laski and the Holocaust descriptions, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the murder of millions of innocent Jews by the Nazi monsters (Willi being an exaggerated example).  Saul is the only character I found interesting and could feel for.  The other characters were paper-thin marionettes, with no real existence.  Especially ridiculous is the Southern Sherriff who dies half-way through, without having any impact, neither on the first nor the second half of the narrative, but being a kind of caricature which has no meaning attached to its existence. 

The "mind vampire" concept is novel, to be sure, but I fail to see how "Using" is the same as "Feeding" and to what extent? It seems that the "Ability" is independent of any "Feeding" as it stays at the same level/strength and although there is some rejuvenation and life extension for the mind-vampires - that seems to be marginal, and far from the "immortality" of the actual vampires in literature. 

The action/fight/battle scenes are just way too long.  It seems like an inexperienced writer tried his best to write the most epic battles/fights and it ended up being forced, verbose and boring.  Although Simmons has a lot of disdain in the foreword for the Goth Girl Editor who told him to cut the book in half - that advice is definitely valid for the fight scenes, as they are the most boring part of the book, and include descriptions of materials, expressions, sounds and thoughts that are completely superfluous and boring.  Sure, make it "sensory", but within limit; use some common sense. 

So, after 800+ pages and 2.5 months of daily (nightly) reading, I don't feel much richer, neither intellectually, nor life-experience-wise.  I think I am going to give reading the rest of Simmons' books a pause.  A long pause.  A very long pause. 

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

 One word : overhyped.  Two words: nothing special.  Full sentence: The most overhyped, nothing special, self-aggrandizing, intentionally complicated for no reason, chaotic, mostly boring with few good parts, definitely no horror (at least for 85% of the length), some kind of weak love story, so-called book.

I don't get one thing: how can anyone call this book scary or horror? The house and the "monster" are complete bull, not good enough even for a low-budget B movie. What is scary in the book? The claw mark next to Zampano's body?  The weird shifting interior of the house that eventually dissolves into nothing? Give me a break! I found Bram Stoker's Dracula more scary than this book, even though it is written 150 years ago, and in that insufferable British long-winded style with way too much verboseness for no good reason. 

I spent almost a month and a half reading it, and not actually because it is too long (yes, it is too long, almost 800 pages with bunch of appendices, BS notes, excerpts, quotes, etc), but because it is so effin boring! Yes, there are a few good parts, the initial discovery of Zampano's body, the five and a half minute corridor appearance, even Johhny's obsession with Thumper, however those parts are nested amongst hundreds of pages of BS, academic quotes from hundreds of made up books, most with no relevance to the story.

I get it that Danielewski wanted to get a revenge on the academic community that rejected him, however why should the reader suffer through all those hundreds of academic-format quotations which add absolutely nothing to the story, but only exist to keep reminding us how boring and stiff the academic world of writing is.  Well, some of us abandoned our academic career for similar reason, but we don't go writing an 800 page book to get back "at them". 

And the random excerpts at the end of the book definitely look cute and "original", but add nothing to the excitement about the story or make the novel more interesting. The author wanted to be very original and post-modern/experimental, but that only takes you part of the way.  You still have to have a good story, develop a plot, interesting characters and have interesting twists. 

I am not even sure with Johnny Truant, the narrator? I mean does he exist at all, since it is implied he is the baby with "holes in his brain" that died shortly after being born.  Then who is writing all these experiences with Zampano, the book, Thumper, Lude, etc.? Even if that is imagined, then who is the mother in the crazy house writing all those letters to? Give me a break!

Don't waste your time with this overhyped pile of steaming BS.

Enchridion by Epictetus

 This book consists of 53 chapters, each only a few paragraphs long.  It was meant to be internalized, rather than just read.  Epictetus, the famous Stoic, concocted this small volume as an extract for everyday use from his numerous and voluminous Stoic writing. 

The Stoic philosophy is simple: only worry and fret about the things that are in your control, which are very few, mostly your own thoughts, words and emotional responses.  Everything else you just take as a given, without complaining, bitching and moaning.  It is useless.  You cannot control the world anyway, so it is a waste of time and energy.

It s a very simple philosophy, but very difficult to implement. It requires enormous control over one self which cannot be achieved over night.  One has to start with small things and build toward larger ones.

Still, a very good volume to have in your library and remind yourself once in a while. 

Children of the Sky by Vernor Virge

 Second part of the "Fire Upon the Deep", written 20 years later, so thankfully not a trace of the deeply annoying and unimaginative Usenet posts disguised as and "Interstellar" Net (with 200Kb bandwidth - that's huge!).  Also no sex scenes, thanks God, Vernor realized that he is just a CompSci geek, so he is nowhere near having the proper experience to write proper sex scenes.  The few kisses described are more than enough.

The book describes a period 10 years after the first one. The Children have been woken from Cold Sleep and they are 10 years older, meaning Johanna is 24 and Jefri is 19.  Ravna is still 35 since she received an aging treatment in the "High Beyond" that should allow her to live for 500 years or more.  This is also a part of the envy of the other children, since they grow old much faster and will die sooner, since they are stuck in the "Slow Zone" where advanced technology doesn't work.  So a rebellion occurs, lead by the fork-tongued boyfriend of Johanna - Nevil, who actually murders quite a few people throughout the book, especially at the end with the beam, but everyone seems to be OK with just letting him leave and start another 'revisionist' colony - very strange and unrealistic.

The rest of the book is more like a medieval adventure book, rather than a science fiction one. There is almost no technology mentioned at all beyond the Tines' medieval level one. The book is full of twists, betrayals, double-betrayals, but it is all character-based, not really anything to do with science fiction.  As a whole it is a weaker book than the previous one, and especially since the Tines we came to love in the previous tome, like Pilgrim and Woodcarver, barely have any page-time in this volume.

The new big-baddy is Vendacious which apparently develops an entire empire, together with Scribers brood-brother Tycoon, relying only on the "Dataset" he stole from Johanna, pretty much the equivalent of an iPad with downloaded offline Wikipedia on it.  Pretty unrealistic.

Anyway, he does get punished at the end, pretty appropriately, but not enough gloating in his death, especially since he gouged eyes, cut limbs and murdered freely throughout the book.  We don't learn too much more about the Tines than in the previous book, but things introduced there are further developed here. The "Tropical Choir" is an interesting mega-hive-mind concept, but reminds too much of Clarke's "Childhood End."  And I really hoped for more page-time for Greenstalk who gets only a couple of pages (out of 500), which is total loss, IMHO.

Oh yeah, and to emphasize once again, Vernor, buddy, there is no such thing as "Technological Singularity" and there will never be one.  There's that.