One of the stranger books I’ve read.

Apparently someone is really hooked on old school crime novels and has become a strange new writer of that genre.  Very unique voice, this writer.

Clocking in at like 100 pages this thing peels out right from the git go and then, well, kinda just keeps peeling out.  Its not a long book so he can really keep it up. (Except for the part where he describes in brutal detail a rather lengthy game of blackjack punctuated by a sociopath and our hero lucky Dennis having some serious words).

This is definitely fun for boys but it opens and closes with descriptive pornographic scenes that make me wonder if this is a genre I previously didn’t know about called maybe like “trucker novellas” or something.  I did read a lot of Penthouse Letters when I was a boy scout on newspaper recycling drives so I’m pretty familiar with the style.

I’m not done with it but so far it sure is fun.  I’ll letcha know how it goes.

And how about that the hero is called Dennis?  Quick what’s the last guy name you’d ever think of?  Yup.

COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR

This was the most depressing week of my life. I should’ve just dug in and got it over with in like a day. God it’s an amazing story but wow is it ever brutal.

Somehow I think it’s important to know how things really went down with the whole independence from England thing and this book seems to have the greatest number of personal letters and memoirs as well as a conservative writer who stays out of his own way and lets you just get way inside this beast.

I hugely recommend it but try to get it over with as quickly as possible cuz knowing how it ends doesn’t really help.

COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR

I’m having vacation. It’s awesome. I also am so glad to be back in the calm and conservatively witty elegance of an Elkins novel.

That last one I read was pretty full on (It kinda fell apart toward the end but the guy just kept writing down amazing ideas anyway) and before that one I had lived thru a Cussler novel which was probably the lowest writing I’ve ever read even from him (or rather his very impressive Warhol-like assembly line/sweatshop factory of pop novels).

So here I am with not an airplane or desert island novel but really just my perfect vacation novel from the ACTUAL inventor of the show BONES.

It’s like heaven but where there’s still the occasional murder.

COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR

Drinking with Strangers
by Butch Walker

This is the book that got me home from our recent European tour. It was the perfect book for the job. It actually made me want the flight to be a little longer.

Basically it’s the life story of a small town 80’s cheese rocker who always gets in, but never gets all the way to the top, and ultimately finds out that he’s way better off where he is. (Which is: one of the most successful pop songwriter/producers in the world today, so….). But anyway, this guy is awesome, the stories are superfun, his life has been filled with stories of being tricked, fucked, lied to, lied about, ripped off, manipulated and screwed over that I thought only happened to The Dandy Warhols. Nice to know we weren’t the only sucker dipshits in the game.

Anyhoo, I’ve never heard any of his music and he does occasionally say some pretty silly shit but I can honestly say I’m a fan of him, his “voice” and his attitude about life so get this book. It’s great.

COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR

Holy Moses. What a journey. Are you fugging kidding me. Whose genius idea was this? To write a book about WWII told by the greatest winemakers in history. Incredible. It’s not a linear story so much as a collection laid out in mostly chronological order and including everything from the Lafites to Perrier to Adolf and Hermann to the children of Domaine Drouhin.

COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR

This guy can really write an amazing sentence or fifty. So much smart n snappy dialogue that I find myself skimming over it sometimes in the hope of getting to a pocket of plot.

Now there are several pretty major subplots intertwining til ya don’t know which is imperative and I usually like that, but there’s some kind of cheese in the mix here thats not working for my palette. It gets boring-ish fairly regularly but he’s just such a great thinker and writer of amazing sentences that I’m definitely sticking it out til the end. I’m halfway thru now.

COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR