The River Swimmer - Jim Harrison

This book contains two novellas - one concerning an aging art professor and the other explores a gifted, young swimmer whose wisdom belies his years.

Harrison seems to use his characters as proxies of himself lately and these two novellas are no different - lustful outdoors-men who enjoy their whiskey, wine and food. At first I was scared that this his writing was beginning to become a parody of itself, but even if these tropes show up often, his insights and prose lay the parody notion to rest. Mr. Harrison, please keep writing about struggles of the heart, the mysteries of life and if whiskey, women and French cheeses seem to often appear in the mix, so be it. What a ridiculous complaint, eh?

No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy

Although the "Aw shucks, this country is going to hell" theme got on my nerves by the end, McCarthy's prose is amazing:

"The raw rock mountains shadowed in the late sun and to the east the shimmering abscissa of the desert plains under a sky where raincurtains hung dark as soot all along the quadrant."¹

It took me a couple of rereads and a dictionary to parse that sentence. It's impressive.

The plot shouldn't be examined too closely - let the prose and a villain for the ages pull you through this.

¹Mccarthy, Cormac (2007-11-29). No Country for Old Men (Vintage International) (Kindle Locations 517-518). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Reamde - Neal Stephenson

There must have been SOMETHING for me to finish a 1000+ page book, but this was exposition upon exposition. I cannot think of anything more boring than reading hundreds of pages concerning the economy of a FICTITIOUS MMORPG.
I'm an action nut, so I kept going, but shame on me.