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October Roundup

  • Schuyler Pagenstecher
  • Nov 18, 2023
  • 4 min read

I finished 3 novels, and 4 nonfiction books this October. Read on for books about lawyers, birds, and hot dogs.

Novels


Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch is Hot Write Now's favorite detective, and my gateway to Connelly's Lincoln Lawyer series. Based on this first installment, these legal thrillers featuring a Los Angeles-based defense attorney named Mickey Haller (the titular Lincoln Lawyer) are not to be missed, and the series has also gotten the streaming treatment.


I watched the Bosch TV show on Prime before reading the books, but I'm trying to reverse this and read the Lincoln books before starting the Netflix adaptation. It's going to be hard to hold the line on this media consumption strategy, especially since Neve Campbell* plays Mickey Haller's ex-wife and prosecutor Maggie McPherson.


I really enjoyed Haller as a protagonist. Like The Wire's Detective Jimmy McNulty, Mickey Haller is flawed yet endearing:

I keep the boxes of files from dead cases in the warehouse as well as two other Lincoln Town Cars. Last year when I was flush I bought four Lincolns at once so I could get a fleet rate. (Page 158)

and also thrifty, that Lincoln Lawyer! I love characters with a code, like Bosch pontificating on his "everybody counts or nobody counts" crede, and Mickey Haller (the titular Lincoln Lawyer) follows a code from his defense attorney dad, "There is no client as scary as an innocent man."


Bosch and Haller (and their codes, I assume) team up in later books, and I can't wait to read about them solving mysteries. Michael Connelly's got me!


*I watched some of Campbell's work for my annual October scary movie programming - The Craft (1996), Wild Things (1998) - and she's a great actress. Perfect casting for Maggie McPherson.


Silver Nitrate is a great read for movie lovers. I read Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic last October, and I find her writing to be nicely suited for Octooky programming.

The end of October was their season, when sugar skulls adorned the windows of bakeries for the Day of the Dead and the video stores tried to push their horror catalogue onto customers. On Channel 5, there might be a late-night movie marathon. The Cineteca and the art clubs went for higher brow fare, Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, or Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. It was the time to read out loud the mordant rhymes about death printed in the morning edition and smile at the cartoons done in the style of Posada, but also the perfect week to pop a copy of A Nightmare on Elm Street into the videocassette player, followed by the remake of The Blob.

The main characters Montserrat (which I embarassingly read as Monster-rat for too long), and Tristan (named for Tristan und Isolde) work in the entertainment industry as a sound designer, and an actor, respectively. After meeting a former horror movie director, the duo have a magic and occult-fueled adventure throug Mexico City.


Think Aleister Crowley. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons


This is a fun book that will inspire you to add lots of movies to your watchlist, and the author's note at the end has some excellent music recommendations too.


I wrote an entire post about this book! Read it here.


Nonfiction

Birds are fascinating, and I love reading about them. Some of my favorites are Owls of the Eastern Ice, Becoming Wild, and The Falcon Thief, but Remarkable Creature is my new favorite bird book, because these birds of prey - caracaras - are so cool. Part travelogue, part natural/human history, author and musician Jonathan Meiburg covers these members of the falcon family that live in South America in charming detail.


Here's a picture of a caracara that highlights their distinctive long legs (which I find to be exceptionally cute):

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons. Look at the legs!


To give an example of how smart these birds are, I'll paraphrase Meiburg recounting a scientist observing the communication and teamwork these birds display. While working in the Andes, the scientist sees a caracara try to flip over a stone with it's beak, but the stone is too heavy. So the curious caracara calls out to his caracara friends, who fly over to help. Collectively, the group of caracaras flip over the stone, and then feast on the yummy grubs underneath.


Going Infinite is an interesting story, told in the Michael Lewis method that I enjoy. Lewis frames his narrative around a real person, and pulls in specifics to engage the reader with a rich setting. It's great.


Lewis's Going Infinte research is backed by his time spent with the real life protagonist, businessman and convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried, and Lewis is direct in his intention to tell Sam's story. I assume Lewis faced some competitive pressure or other leverage* that caused the book to end where it ends, but my primary complaint of Infinite is that it wraps up long before Bankman-Fried's high profile trial and conviction.


*Like saving the trial for podcast material.


If you read my September Roundup you may notice that revolution is on my mind (Les Miserables, A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution). I stumbled across The Shining Path while looking for other titles about revolutions. The geography of Peru has always been interesting to me, and this book bumped my knowledge of the history above zero.


Sharing a name with it's primary subject - the communist political party and guerilla army Shining Path - Starn and La Serna's book is focused on the party's founder Abimael Guzmán, a college professor, a corner of a love triangle, and a revolutionary who took to violence like a fish to water. Shining Path's terror attacks and the reprisal tactics of the Peruvian police and military are absolutely brutal, and Abimael ends up captured and dies in prison after a brief display in a Hannibal Lecter-style cage on top of a skyscraper. Interesting book!


I wrote an entire post about this book! Read it here.


Conclusion

Thanks for reading, and check back next month for a recap of November. Title picture sourced from Wikimedia Commons. This blog post uses Amazon Associates. Buy the books to support the blog!

 
 
 

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