Reading into the Past: Week of February 1, 1994

I think the new regime is that I'm going to try to do a "Reading Into the Past" post on Mondays where I don't have any new books to list as "Reviewing the Mail". We'll see if that works, but RitP is somewhat similar to RtM, in that they're both random lists of books that I know or remember only scattered things about.

Under the current scheme, I use a RNG to pick a year between 1990 (when I started keeping a reading notebook) and 2010 (roughly when I started listing every last thing I read here), and then write about the books I was reading "this" week in that year.

And, this time out, I have...1994.

Karen Kijewski, Katwalk (1/25)

The first in a mystery series, about private eye Kat Colorado of Sacramento. (I think there's still room for a series about the PI Cat Kalifornia of Boulder.) I was reading a lot of mysteries in those days, particularly PI books, and I was trying to read as many female PIs as I could. That's mostly because the energy in the field was in women writers and women protagonists, in the wake of Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky and Marcia Muller. I enjoyed this series, though I think it got more thriller-y as it went on -- but that happened to a lot of series in the '90s anyway. Kijewski wrote nine of these in a decade, and then apparently stopped. As I recall, they were good solid mystery novels, though they may seem seriously "of their time" thirty years later. 

Lawrence Block, The Specialists (1/25)

Carroll & Graf (I think) were reprinting a lot of random Larry Block books around this time -- mostly the non-series books, since those were cheap, but I think they also did the Chip Harrison books -- as part of a general blast of Block going on in the market. I was then (and am now) a pretty serious Block fan, and in those days I could read almost as fast as books could be published, so that made me happy. This is an odd thriller from 1968, originally published as a paperback original, that I have to believe was supposed to launch a series but never did. A wounded Colonel gathers five of his men -- all Green Berets, all decorated veterans from Vietnam -- to do semi-legal activities to help regular people and hurt organized crime and other nefarious types. Block was morally certain someone read this book and crayoned the idea for The A-Team afterward, which is possible. My memory is that this is a pretty pulpy '60s paperback thriller, but just fine on that basis.

Haruki Murakami, Dance, Dance, Dance (1/27)

This was Murakami's new book, and it was published in hardcover in January. My guess is that we did not see it for the club -- and I was awfully junior at that point, without contacts to bug at Knopf to get a free copy -- so I just bought the damn thing myself and read it during the month of publication. That's slightly sad, since this is the sequel to A Wild Sheep Chase, which had been not only a SFBC Alternate, but was my introduction to Murakami as a member of the SFBC. Well, I knew the deal when I went into the disreputable end of publishing. I feel like I need to re-read those early Murakami books -- Wild Sheep and this and Hard-Boiled Wonderland -- since they are in my head as the purest, most undiluted Murakami. I don't know when I'll have time to do that, but the urge is there. If you've never read this, read Wild Sheep first. If you've never read Murakami, in fact, read Wild Sheep. Start right now; the rest of this blog post can wait.

Paula E. Downing,  A Whisper of Time (loose galleys, 1/27)

Well, the entirety of my memory of this is "SF in mass market from Del Rey." And that seems to be true, for what that's worth. Downing changed her writing name to first Paula Downing King and then just Paula King later that decade, but her career seems to have fizzled from this point -- this was her last Del Rey book, then came a SF trilogy under the King name from Roc (not a great sign in those days) and a decade later a fantasy trilogy as Diana Marcessas. According to descriptions online, this is the story of a young alien (totally humanoid, a la Star Trek) woman raised by humans and how she investigates the ancient ruins she was discovered in as a child. I have no memory of the story whatsoever.

Paco Ignacio Taibo II, No Happy Ending (1/28)

Another mystery novel -- Taibo is a Mexican novelist, and this is a translated PI story about his series character Hector Belascoaran Shayne. This may have been the only Taibo novel I read, or maybe I read one or two others -- I definitely did not dig in, but I don't know how much of Taibo has been translated, at the time or since. My memory is that it was interesting and distinct, deeply Chandleresque with deeply crooked police and a corrupt society that Taibo's hero fought against in the ways he could.

Lisa Goldstein, Summer King, Winter Fool (typescript, 1/29)

I don't remember this book -- about a god who falls in love with the human world, causing various problems -- clearly, but I've always been impressed with Goldstein, who doers something different every book and always writes clearly and very well. Seeing her name here makes me want to re-read this, or read other Goldstein books.

James Morrow, Towing Jehovah (bound galleys, 1/30)

One of the great SFF novels of the '90s, full stop. One of the most audacious novels, in any genre, ever written. It also won the World Fantasy Award, and deserved it. God is dead, and his immense corpse is blocking the shipping lane of the North Atlantic -- so it needs to be moved out of the way. Quite possibly the quintessential sour Morrow novel, as Only Begotten Daughter was the unexpected quintessential sweet Morrow novel. (Note: it's not all that sweet.) Read it if you haven't.

Jim Thompson, Cropper's Cabin (1/31)

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard was in the middle of a massive Thompson reprint project, and I was on board for all of it. Before my 2011 flood, I had (I think) every Thompson novel they published, all in those matching trade-paper editions. Since there were around thirty of them, I may now have some slight trouble remembering exactly which one this was. I believe this was a fairly early book, about a young man from a hardscrabble Oklahoma town (like Thompson was himself) battling his own father and his girlfriend's father and his own anger. If I remember anything about Thompson, it doesn't end happily.

And, just for completeness's sake, the next book I finished was Macintosh User's Guide to Macintosh Performa Computers on 2/3, because I either just had bought one or was just about to buy one. And I've always been a do-a-lot-of-research kind of person. So, yes, I did read computer books cover-to-cover, and then wrote them down in my reading notebook. (Note: from some googling, this appears to be the pack-in manual that came with the computer, which makes it even sillier that I read it cover-to-cover and wrote it down in the notebook. What can I say? I was 24 and in love with keeping track of things.)