Being Dead is a well-written, at times even engrossing, novel, but is essentially bleak. Author Jim Crace provides a literary “quivering” for Joseph and Celise, the murdered protagonists, going back in stages to fill in details of both their last day and their 30 year marraige.

The problem for me is that the author’s “secular” (from book jacket blurb) view of life and death is depressing. Maybe some find the idea that we live, we die, and that is all there is to it, comforting. I find it grim. Add to my fundamental disagreement in outlook the fact that neither Joseph nor Celise was very happy with their marraige, their daughter, or life in general, and the whole thing is a real downer.

This one didn’t do anything for me. It was like window shopping — mildly entertaining as a distraction, but without leaving anything to show for it. Hard to believe it won a Pulitzer.

The story marches from the hero’s childhood, through his early career years and successes as a young entrepreneur, to his “final downfall” as it says on the dust jacket. But this march follows a perfectly straight path. Martin is restless at his job; he moves to a better job. Martin is bored with his new job; he opens his new business. Martin is unsatisfied with his business, he expands it. He moves on to bigger and bigger enterprises until he moves on to one that is too big. He never faces any substantive opposition and never has a set back. He just moves forward until the end of the story.

What’s missing is conflict and character development. The characters, pretty flat to begin with, are all the same at the end of the book as they are at the beginning. Many just fade away without any mention of them. Martin’s parents, for example, never make an appearance in his adult life. His mother-in-law, who is a major character through the middle part of the book, disappears after he marries her daughter, who literally sleeps through their marriage. Not only do the characters not grow as individuals, every relationship Martin has with another character is static.

There is really nothing to this other than some marginally interesting descriptions of New York City at the turn of the Twentieth Century, and the detailed descriptions of the elaborate attractions of Martin’s hotels. But all that is shine — there’s no shoe.

I started to read this, hoping to compile a “To Watch” list of film noir movies set in San Francisco. Unfortunately for my purposes, it gives plot summaries of each of the movies — real spoilers! Although slim, it is packed with information about the movies and their connection with the city. It makes a thorough reference book, but not good reading for someone who hasn’t watched, but wants to watch, the movies discussed.

There is a list at the front of the book of all the movies discussed. I’ll have to use that to make my list. Then I’ll read the corresponding chapter after I see the movie. It might take years.

This mystery, the first of the Kate Martinelli series, does not have the most intricate plot, but the characters make it worth reading. Vaun Adams is a reclusive artist living in a neo-hippy community (not quite a commune) in the coastal mountains near San Jose. Because of her past troubles, she is the first suspect when three little girls are found murdered in the isolated community. Martinelli and her curmudgeony partner, Al Hawkin, dig into Vaun’s past and learn they may have the story turned around.

Like many “first in a series” novels, several characters are introduced with enough detail to make them interesting, but not filled out enough to make them really compelling. For instance, we learn a lot about Martinelli’s personal history and private life, but we don’t see her demonstrate any of the talent and intelligence that, supposedly, has made her a rising star in the San Francisco Police Department. She spends most of her time driving her partner or babysitting Vaun Adams. In Hawkins, on the other hand, we learn very little of his past or his personal life, but we see layers to his personality as he acts as a skilled interrogator, a compulsive workaholic, something of a ladies’ man, and both a boss and friend to Martinelli. Hopefully, the characters will develop further in the later novels.

In Sophie’s Choice, William Styron does a masterful job of telling a horrific tale in bearable way. Sophie is a Polish Christian who survived 18 months in Auschwitz before the camp was liberated by the Allies. Of course her story is heartbreaking. But Styron unfolds the tale in a way that allows the reader to take it all in without being crushed by the sadness of it.

First, instead of marching out the story of Sophie’s capture and imprisonment in chronological order, Styron layers it on, each layer building on the next. When the 22-year-old narrator, Stingo, a Southerner who moved to Brooklyn to write novels, first meets Sophie in the summer of 1947, she gives him only the briefest of versions of her experience in the war. It is only as they grow closer as friends that Sophie, through a series of drunken encounters, provides more details to Stingo, each time admitting that she had lied to him before in earlier versions of her tale.

By presenting the horrifying particulars bit by bit, Styron seems mindful of the warning, and even quotes Stalin as saying, that a “single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” The reader sees the tragedy of Sophie’s experience because, by offering just a little at a time, Styron allows the reader to digest her story, along with a great deal of information about the Holocaust in general. If Styron had presented her story in full from the beginning, the awfulness would be numbing.

Also, Styron balances Sophie’s tragic past with her tragic present in Brooklyn. In love with Nathan, a brilliant drug addict subject to violent fits of jealousy, Sophie has no chance of building a “normal” life in America. But, given her experiences in the concentration camp, it is impossible to imagine how she could. Rather than present an unbelievable fairy tale of survival, Styron uses the tortured relationship between Nathan and Sophie as the catalyst for her revelations to Stingo, as well as the vehicle of her ultimate, and well-foreshadowed, undoing.

Finally, for all its sadness, there is plenty of humor in the book. Some of Stingo’s failed romantic adventures are downright funny, as are his self-deprecating descriptions of his writing efforts. Again, without these side stories offering a respite from the main narrative, Sophie’s story would be unbearable.

Sophie’s Choice is going in my Top 10 favorite novels of all times. I don’t know yet what it is bumping off the list, but it is definitely going on.

I didn’t like this book and I do not see the point of it. Near the end, the main character, Michael K, questions whether the moral of the story is that there is time for everything. But if that is the moral of this story, then it wasn’t clear a all. Michael K has nothing but time, but he doesn’t do anything. He seems incapable of doing anything. He cannot cope with living in any kind of society; nor does he succeed in living on his own in the wilderness.

Read literally, the book is horribly depressing, because Michael seems to be mentally ill or mentally deficient (because he cannot provide for himself and he has no will to survive), but no one is able to help him. Read symbolically, I just don’t get it. If Michael is supposed to represent some greater meaning, as the doctor/narrator suggests in the second part of the book, what is that meaning? The book doesn’t answer that question.

This little book is mostly pictures of some amazing cowboy boots. But it also has interesting information about how cowboy boots have changed over the years and the current resurgence of custom boot makers. I was particularly struck by the comparison made between tattoos and custom boots. Hmmmmmm. I’ll have to ponder that one.

A great gift book for a cowboy boot fiend.