It’s that time again to share my recent music additions. I’ve been exploring older American music such as ragtime, boogie woogie, early swing, gospel, and blues. My main source recently has been Freegal.com, but I’ve found stuff through Free Music Archive and YouTube, among other sources. Most of the modern, i.e. recorded in recent years, music is new recordings of old music. I removed some things that I got tired of, too, but I won’t bother listing those. Here’s the recent list I just added.

The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Anna is the recent widow of a successful novelist. She resents much of what has happened to her in life, but now she’s wealthy and independent. She has no particular plans, but decides a writers’ workshop might be a fun break from the New York hustle and bustle. She didn’t actually intend to write while there, but she thinks, how hard can it be? Not that hard, it turns out, at least, not for her. Not with her rich life history of tragic loss. We soon find Anna to be a successful writer herself. Her book tour goes swimmingly … until it doesn’t. Someone appears and spitefully reminds her of her past, a past when she wasn’t Anna, literary widow.

That’s a great setup and the writing matched the concept. Anna feels herself undervalued and badly used; she is not one to suffer maltreatment lightly, or at all. I really enjoyed Anna’s dogged pursuit of those trying to take away her newfound happiness … until I didn’t. I should say, I still enjoyed the book, but the ending devolved quickly into a disappointing mishmash of absurdly unbelievable scenes of “justice” being dispensed. Overall, it kept me guessing kept me anxious for the next chapter, and wrapped things up tidily, if more in the realm of satire than fiction.

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Rough Trade by Todd Robinson
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Boo and Junior are bouncers/security specialists for a tough bar in the Boston area. They and a couple of their friends bonded when they were together in a group home. They like to get in fistfights and swear a lot. That’s about all there is to this book. The author likes hyperbole and obscene insults, the more offensive the better. No plot. All the characters make stupid decisions. I only made it halfway through.

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The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This fictionalized biography of the very real person Mila Pavlichenko, a female Russian sniper during World War II, follows real life fairly closely, or at least the version described in Mila’s own autobiography as well as other historical sources. With over 300 confirmed kills, she was the darling of Washington when she came as part of a “goodwill tour” designed to bring America into the European theater at a time they were only fighting the Japanese. My book club chose this book, but I had read the author’s recent book The Rose Code and greatly enjoyed that so I was among those voting for it, and I’m very glad I did.

It reads very much like a novel, not a biography, with plenty of action scenes and romantic entanglements. While I’m not much of a fan of romance, that part was not forefront in the writing and in any event was largely based on Mila’s autobiography. Do bear in mind that Mila’s book was probably passed by Soviet censors during the Cold War so take it with a grain of salt. Quinn also admits to combining some real-life characters, creating one or two out of whole cloth, and swapping timelines and locations for some events. There is a rather fantastical action scene near the end that defies credibility (and is totally fictional) but doesn’t ruin the story. Don’t nitpick the history; just enjoy the story.

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Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions by John Grisham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book contains several true stories of innocent people who were framed by police, prosecutors, “expert” witnesses, even judges. The stories are interesting and the writing is good. But I could not finish it or give it five stars because the content is just so depressing and misleading. I have no doubt the facts in the book are true and that these innocent people were framed, not just accidentally caught up in the criminal justice system by happenstance. But the book gives the impression that all police and prosecutors are corrupt and no witnesses should ever be believed. My 26 years in law enforcement allows me to know this is a false impression. The vast majority of police, sheriffs, and others in law enforcement are honest and give defendants their rights. The real danger from books like this is to sow seeds of doubt in the public such that criminals cannot be convicted and crime has no consequences.

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I Need You to Read This by Jessa Maxwell
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I needed a print book to read while I was waiting at the doctor’s office, so I grabbed this off the library shelf. It was an easy read and filled the bill, but that’s the best I can say about it. Alex is a skittish young woman with some sort of secret in her past. She lands a dream job at a New York newspaper, filling the vacancy left by the advice columnist she so much admired. The plot from there deteriorates badly, and in fact is outright preposterous. The author clearly did no research into anything she wrote about. Her paper’s newsroom is vacant after 7:00pm! Really? It’s still 4:00pm on the west coast. The paper’s web site has to be updated constantly overnight. Any real big city newsroom is bustling 24/7. She has a police arrest scene where two cops try to make an arrest of a major drug dealer by themselves. No SWAT team, not even any way to get through the door. A real arrest of that type would involve a tactical squad of at least six and battering rams for both front and back doors. The ending got even worse. Everything was predictable – not one of the promised “twists.”

The real problem is that this is chick lit, not that it’s bad to write exclusively for young women. But at least don’t market it as a mystery instead of a coming-of-age story. There was way too much discussion of clothes and fashion brands and some cute guy’s stubble. It’s my fault for not checking the promo material better. There are six praising blurbs on the back cover and every single one is written by a woman. That was a very big clue. In fact, one of those authors, Hank Phillippi Ryan, wrote an equally terrible book I made the error of reading. How do these women get published? Anyway, guys, if you ever see a book cover with all-women blurbs, avoid it like a ten-foot mascara brush.

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