After Death

Today, half a century after Raymond Chandler wrote The Long Goodbye, twenty-four hours a day somebody is still running in Los Angeles.

If I keep posting every weekend, it means I should at least post fifty-two times this year. Which means, I should, at the very least, finish a book within a week. Which means I should be able to finish at least fifty-two books in 2012. Hmmmm.

I take back my simplified calculations and instead focus on this post. Hahaha.

This week I braved the crime-laden streets of Los Angeles; read about real-life detectives and the handful of murders they encountered in one year of their careers. I have never heard of Miles Corwin before (then again, I have not heard of a lot of non-fiction authors). I mean, this is just one of those books I bought to spend some of my idle, waiting time in court for the next hearing. I did not expect it to grab me by the throat and hurtle me to the dark side of the human psyche or something similar to that.

The title alone is a dead giveaway (pardon the pun) but it does not portray how deeply moving the crimes and stories are stitched together in this book. While it's a book about crimes basically, it is inherently the stories of the men who made it their mission to catch criminals.

Men, yes. The detectives featured here are all men. And it's quite a treat to peek into their lives: their different backgrounds, how they became cops, how they take a break from the crimes they encounter daily and so forth. On a personal note, given that I was raised practically watching and reading whodunits, I would've liked some women detectives featured as well.

Chapters are divided into certain parts of Los Angeles, where the jurisdiction of the LAPD lies. A certain crime becomes the starting point of everything: a dead prostitute found in her apartment, a mother and child in an apparent suicide, a wrongly-misplaced folder opening up a cold case, the murder of a has-been actor's wife, and more. Crimes like murder are always gruesome. Murder is never a pretty sight and it can be a bit uncomfortable reading about it. It is one thing reading fiction and another reading about an actual murder of an actual woman killed in her own apartment, left for dead for two or so days, with no witnesses and no one even hearing a gunshot. Personal vulnerability comes into play. Victims who had friends and relatives who carry on and try to make sense of the violence. You put yourself in the victim's place and think "This could very well happen to me." It is a kind of morbid thinking I cannot escape, reading true crime stories.

The detectives featured here are just plain dedicated. Tried and tested, so to speak. I have no idea if any of them are still in active duty since the book, rather the research was done in 2001. But I truly felt for them; when they get stumped yet hopeful that pieces of evidence will show up or fall into place somehow, learned from the tips and tricks they employ to hook a confession or when investigations lead them to different possibilities, or, as in a couple of cases, managed to solve a crime after tireless work. I also appreciated the humanizing factor: the detectives' other lives - who they are outside their office. Reading up on their varied backgrounds made me smile at times (one of the detectives wanted to be a fashion photographer, one of them trained and became a sous chef). It's the side we rarely see but often imagine.

It's a good read and yet, given the time frame for the entire research (one year), most of the cases mentioned in the book are still undergoing investigation and/or trial. I had to Google the ruling on one case even and found myself shocked at the result.

Here's an excerpt, on how a criminalist see their tv counterparts:

"I was watching CSI the other night and laughed my head off," the photographer tells the detectives. "They picked up a dead baby and didn't even look for trace evidence. There was no coroner around, no photos, no nothing. Then they barge in on the detectives, push them aside, and interview the witnesses. On another show, they picked up hairs with tweezers. Obviously, you use gloves so you don't damage the hair. One detective told me it was so bad he wanted to shoot his TV."

Life not imitating art.

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Homicide Special: A Year with the LAPD's Elite Detective Unit by Miles Corwin

Color Him Red

Imaginative thought is to be discouraged. No good ever comes of it – Munsell Book of Wisdom

It took sometime for me to finish this, not because it was not good but because I was just not in the mood. But when my grey cells finally snapped in the right place, I found myself flipping pages like crazy and err, hoping it's years into the future and I already have a copy of both the second and third books planned for this series. It's that bad. I mean, my wanting to read the entire series. If I wanted to I could have finished this last year except that I chose to sit down and write a yearend post. I think I was done with this the first day of the year. That, after on-again and off-again reading early last year. Ok, enough of the rambling.

Before I start let me say outright, I'm a big fan of Jasper Fforde. I've read most of the Thursday Next novels and the two Nursery Crimes books. Last year, when I couldn't wrap my head around a world with chromatic hierarchy, I thought I was losing my marbles, so to speak. You see, I was used to his stories being somehow safe. No, that does not sound right. Safe is not the proper word. More like, I believed that the characters in his stories will somehow come out of their predicaments scarred yet safe. You get my drift? Sort of a happy ending or a semblance of a hopeful ending. And in the case of the Thursday Next stories, literary characters' happy endings, old stories falling into place as if nothing happened to them in Jurisfiction. I mean, Thursday's husband time travels so even if he disappeared in some books, they were reunited (I hope I'm remembering the stories right).

Maybe I was not ready for this side of Jasper Fforde. Any maybe that's why I did not want to read this last year. From the very first pages of Eddie Russett's narrative there's danger involved. Yes it was funny alright. That's one of the reasons I'm a big fan of the man. It's not easy being funny when your character is being eaten by a carnivorous tree, but he does it so effortlessly (at least as it appears to me as I wouldn't have any idea how agonizing it was to write or eh, how effortlessly even, hahaha). So there.

Can you imagine a world without colors? A drab, grey world? That or you can only see certain shades of the primary colors and that there are colors you do not see at all? And that one's social standing is based on the vibrancy of that particular color that you see? That you cannot see at night when blackness envelops the entire town? This is the world that Fforde imagined. Our world really, hundreds of years into the future until an event happened that reduced the population into a state of chromatic hierarchy: Reds, Blues, Greens, Yellows and Greys, among others. In this world of chromatic hierarchy, obviously there are rules. And the rules are rigid, which I think is key to every dystopian novel out there.

A community where everyone has their place, everyone knows their place, and everyone works ceaselessly to maintain continuance. If you were to dispassionately consider the principal aim of the society to be longevity rather than fairness, then everything is downgraded to simply a means of attaining that goal.

It is a dystopian novel. Like every dystopian novel, nobody is safe. It made me laugh at times, yes. Delightful to read about wrongly-titled books found by the characters (even a reference to a Nursery Crime title, if I remember correctly). And the colorful references are just plain inventive – Mrs. Lapis Lazuli, Lucy Ocher, Violet DeMauve – to remember their places in society. That does not mean it's not serious as hell.

The story starts out simply enough: Eddie Russett, a Red, is sent to a place called Outer Fringes, literally the outer fringes, to learn a little bit of humility. In a world where prefects take score with merits earned and demerits freely given, there really is no place for Eddie and his curiosity. Then he falls for a Grey named Jane which is tough luck on his part. Greys are the lowliest of lows in the scheme of things. And while he tries to forget about love and instead pines for a perfectly chromatically-arranged marriage with a better-suited Red in Constance Oxblood, his curiosity will get him into far more trouble and enlightenment.

It's a refreshing take on a pretty dark future with a slight chance of hope in the end. And while saying this sounds lame and all, I cannot wait for the succeeding books in the series to come out.

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Shades of Grey is the first book of a planned trilogy by Jasper Fforde

Endings and Beginnings

I write this with barely three or so hours left before the year ends. It feels weird to sit down and finally gather my thoughts. It seems I have been avoiding it for the better part of the year. You see, I only posted fifteen times this year, a handful of them just plain Status Updates if I remember correctly. To think that when I started this blog it was just an offshoot of my online journal as I wanted something dedicated to books. Then I killed the online journal altogether and retained this. While I've had thoughts of rebooting this I didn't find the time. Life caught up with me this year, and now that I'm on a break, it feels right to write, at last.

I haven't read much books this year, yes, compared to last year at least. I still have read more than the average reader (though considerably quite less than the average book blogger, hahaha). Then again, how many books does an average reader eh, average in a year? A book a week? A book a month? I've read, alright. My issue is that I haven't blogged much. And it felt like I lost a lot if not all of my virtual friends in the process. Virtual only in the sense that we are bound by circuits of this world wide web. Virtual but no lesser in any respect as far as friends and/or acquaintances are concerned. I know that blogging is a bridge that connects me with a lot of you, dear readers. We've shared a lot these past years I've consistently raved and ranted about books and authors I adore and detest. When I failed to blog, the end result is that I failed to connect. You see, it's not just the lack of posts this year I barely skimmed the surface of blogs I follow as well. And a part of me feels that unfilled space meant for books I intend to get, characters to admire or revile, and bloggers to follow and share stories with.

I have no excuses really. I just didn't blog. If I wanted to, I could have. But life happened. And I broke a lot of blogging promises in the course of the year already to vow yet again that I will blog regularly. I just hope that this will do, for now.

In the meantime, I read some great books.

2011 will always be the year that I was so enthralled with Alan Bradley's wonderful Flavia de Luce. I read all three books this year, starting with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie sometime earlier and the last two (The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag and A Red Herring Without Mustard) during the Readers Imbibing Peril challenge, a failed challenge on my end (one book posted, two books read with nothing to show for it, hahaha). All three books were easy reads, if I may say so.

Emma Donoghue's Room is a favorite. So with Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin.

This year I finished Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy with Monsters of Men. I never really talked much about the series save for the one-liners I did as my yearend post last year for the first two books. Suffice it to say that I loved the ending, despite uh, the fact that I did not like the way the Mayor died. Well, it is justice and the Mayor really has a powerful mind. Dying on his own terms, Todd's goodness retained. Still.

I also read Suzanne Collins's Mockingjay this year. Next year I'll reread the first book, in time for the film version. Yes, I am looking forward to the film version of the trilogy. While Jennifer Lawrence was not my Katniss of choice, the stills and trailers I see nowadays are more than promising.

Oh and because of the HBO series, I started reading George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones. I love Jon Snow. I love Arya. And goodness, the character Tyrion Lannister is such a pleasure to read. I am done with and greatly enjoyed the second book as well – A Clash of Kings. I started thumbing through a couple of chapters of the third book (A Storm of Swords) but I haven't gone back yet. There were other things to tempt my brain in the meantime.

As far as graphic novels are concerned, I finished Fables: Rose Red. Prior to that, The Great Fables Crossover and Fables: Witches. That's why I named my stuffed elephant Bigby at the start of the year. If that's a spoiler, ooops! Hahaha! As an aside, I started watching Once Upon a Time. I'm done with three episodes and looking forward to watching the rest of the available seven, so far (I download torrents, the series has yet to air here in my part of the world) and I've read this interesting interview of Bill Willingham (with himself) regarding the show. On another Fables-related note, James Jean is coming to Manila! But he'll be visiting another part of the metro and I am not sure if I will be able to catch him. I'm also looking forward to reading Fables: Super Team next year.

I also skimmed through a handful of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead. I'm watching the series too. My favorite character in the show is not a character in the comics. I think it's quite obvious that I'm referring to Daryl Dixon (ably played by Norman Reedus). Ergo, I stopped reading the comics.

What else do I remember? I want to know if it's a good thing to continue reading the series that started with A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. I liked it, yes. I don't know if I like it enough to pursue the story though.

Wallflower at the Orgy by Nora Ephron took me to the not-so-distant past and she still made me laugh. I have always liked Nora Ephron's writings. This book is actually a collection of some of her earlier magazine articles way back in the 70's. It's more newsy, compared to the essays I've grown accustomed to reading from her.

As far as great rereads go, I went through the last two books of Harry Potter prior to watching the final installment of the film. Enough said. And yes, I still cried reading that part of Snape's story. And went misty-eyed while watching the film.

I think I'm already rambling as I don't want to go through the other books or graphic novels I finished. It is also evident that I spent more time watching tv than reading. Technically, I watch shows through my laptop but that is beside the point. I still fill my head with stories. So I'll start the wishes of the year with words borrowed from one of my favorite authors.

What am I reading now? What do I hope to finish next year?

Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey. Scott Westerfeld's Behemoth. Gerry Alanguilan's Elmer. David Masiel's 2182 Kilohertz. Chelsea Handler's Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea. George R.R. Martin's A Storm of Swords. And Sarah Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot, at least for January.

I'm also looking forward to reading Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger, and Terry Pratchett's Nation.

I have a great stack of books by my bedside in the metro (I'm not there, hence I cannot rattle of titles and titles of my TBR nor take a picture of the pile). My TBR gets bigger and bigger by the minute. I can opt not to buy a lot of other stuff but I just can't seem to stop myself from getting new/old books.

So there. A post to end the year with hope for a better reading year next year. Less than three hours before 2012 creeps in.

May you all have a prosperous new year reading, writing, and loving stories further.

May this ending post bring forth a better beginning for 2012.

And, may we all have time to read our TBRs next year before the world ends, if the world will end.

Shock Me

Dear Flavia,

I adore you. I am enthralled by you. I wish I was more like you when I was your age. But I wasn't. If I had the penchant for poison way back then I would've been committed to a mental hospital, no, scratch that, probably worse. That or exorcised. They would've called me "witch" or "bruha," not to my face but in whispered conversations when I pass by a throng of people.

With just a handful of weeks after discovering a dead body in your garden here you are again, witnessing a murder! And yet, unlike other people's horrid reaction, your continuous fascination with death is truly noteworthy! So, like an adoring pup, I followed you around, even if I am way older than your precocious eleven years!

And what a revelation yet again! At times I forget that you are indeed young. That you are as fascinated with poisons as with tricks of a puppeteer! If only Inspector Hewitt could hire you on the spot, to help him solve the murder of that horrid Rupert Porson! Seriously, he has your grudging respect.

Oh, Flavia, I can see Bishop Lacey in my mind's eye! I wander its meandering roads with Gladys as well. But I fear for you for every dead body you find! In your first foray in our midst you almost died! This time, while you weren't placed in the exact same predicament, I also feared for your safety! Despite that, I laud your powers of deduction! Sherlock Holmes himself would be proud to have you as a companion (though I doubt if he has that much patience with girls your age - then again, he might make an exception - as you're an exceptional girl!)

I also find comfort in your poisons. If I have a laboratory for a bedroom I'd probably tinker with flasks of dangerous substances as well.

Oh and how you are so enamored of Antigone!

Thank goodness for introducing me to another relative. Your aunt Felicity is quite a handful, surely, but the things she said about you and Harriet were quite priceless!

I think I must end here as I'm embarrassing myself! Just know that you kept my heart racing and my mind whirling with hundreds of scenarios while you try to solve not just the puppeteer's death ahead of the authorities, but also that of a supposed suicide of a young, sweet boy lovingly remembered in your parish.

I cannot wait for your next adventure. In fact, I'm in the middle of it now! Oh you crazy girl! And I mean that lovingly.

Your adoring fan,
Lightheaded

PS
Dogger is growing on me. He is such a good sidekick, even if he doesn't know it yet.

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The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley is part of my pool for Readers Imbibing Peril Challenge.

Back from the Dead

Sort of.

It's the second day of September this side of the world and I'm officially signing up for Carl's Readers Imbibing Peril. Excited? Yes. Does this mean I'll go back to blogging about books regularly? Let's hope so. Do I have a pool already? Not quite. But still, I'm in and it's my fifth time in six years (I missed the first year, I read about it a few days before it ended, hahaha). As always, this is my chosen peril: Though I'll put in a handful of short stories in the process, not to mention some scary films as well. 

Books I might read include the following: The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley, The Fall by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. For now.

But before I start the challenge (is it a challenge still if you love doing it?) I'll finish reading A Game of Thrones first, hopefully by weekend.