Erik Larson's Blog

Just finished reading Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project, and loved it. I can't describe the plot, because to do so would be to give away too much of the essential character of the book. Suffice it to say, the story is charming. It's a brisk read that'll take just a few hours of your time, yet leave you seeing the world through protagonist Don Tillman's eyes for days afterward.

Next up, a different sort of book: William Styron's Lie Down in Darkness.

I also recently finished reading Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects, which I loved. Tough, cool, twisted--like my women. But really, Flynn is one hell of a writer. Her prose is brisk, clean, sinuous. The first book of hers that I read was Gone Girl. I loved that one too, and for the same reason: The sheer power and spell of the writing. Ms. Flynn is an original, and deserves attention.

Just finished reading Tana French's "In the Woods," on the recommendation of a friend. It's a detective novel set in Dublin, featuring a male-female pair of police detectives who get involved in a decidedly spooky case. It is French's first novel. I'm not sure I needed to know that fact, but, based on this first effort, I will definitely read the next in what appears to be a series.

The first couple hundred pages are clean and clear with a lot of good development of central characters, but the pace is a tad slow. One last pass by a ruthless editor likely would have helped speed things along. Fifty pages could easily be buried along with the corpse in question.

The last two hundred pages, however, crackle right along, with a lot of good narrative tension.

Overall, it's a nice moody read, ideal for that summer weekend in the woods. Or maybe not so ideal. Just keep your windows closed and your doors locked. And no, that's by no means a spoiler.

One question: Anyone else out there feel they'd be a lot happier NOT knowing that a book was someone's first novel? Frankly, it's a little like telling an editor, hey, this is only a rough draft. Or am I alone in that? When I know a book is a debut I keep looking for flaws, and I usually find them. Very distracting.

Now reading: The Bat, by Joe Nesbo. In the Woods

A couple of weeks ago, while browsing the shelves of a used-book store here in Paris, I came across a detective novel by Andrea Camilleri, called The Snack Thief. One of my daughters, a State Department expert on international crime who is fluent in Italian and very good at Italian cooking, was with me, and recommended it. (She, of course, had read it in Italian.) I loved it, and totally fell for its protagonist, Inspector Montalbano, a police detective in a coastal town in Italy. He's smart, volatile, and funny, but above all, he loves and honors masterful Italian cooking. An encounter with fried mullet can put him in a coma of pleasure for an entire day. My kind of guy. I found myself laughing out loud.

Now, I've become a Camilleri junkie. I'm midway through one of his better known Montalbano novels, The Terracotta Dog. I won't talk about the plot, because I don't want to give anything away, but suffice it to say, everything that I loved about The Snack Thief is here, multiplied by two.

I haven't enjoyed a fictional character this much in a long time, and I think it's because I feel an especially powerful resonance with his obsession with excellent food. I'm not an expert chef, though I do love to cook, and when I travel, I travel for food. I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Here in Paris, where we're living for six months so that I can more efficiently research my next book, I spend most of the day looking forward to lunch and dinner and scouring various sources, from Zagat to Le Fooding, to determine where to get the best meal for an appropriate price. Everything else--museums, tours, parks--is foreplay, and a means of keeping my weight down. So far so good: I can still wear jeans with a 32 waist. I can remember meals and restaurants from decades ago, including, by the way, my first-ever encounter with fresh salmon (1981) at a San Francisco place called the Hayes Street Grill.

So I proclaim it here: Io sono Montalbano! (I AM Montalbano.)

E.

As some of you may know, my wife and I have temporarily moved to Paris, where I'll be conducting highly secret research for my next project, and where she'll be working on a writing project of her own while on sabbatical. I brought with me Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, which I first read in college, and loved. It's not his best book, surely, but it's richly evocative of a very compelling time. Truly, it's the literary equivalent of Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.

I'm reading it in small bursts, rationing it, because it's such a delight to be here in Hemingway's city, reading about his walks and encounters. We're a block east of his beloved Jardin du Luxembourg, where my wife and I walk at least once every day. Many of the places he loved are still here, remarkably. Tomorrow, for example, I plan to stroll past Gertrude Stein's building, at 27 rue de Fleurus, west of the park in the swanky Sixth Arrondisement. The other day we stopped at Shakespeare and Company, and browsed the shelves along with numerous hipsters and their French equivalent, bobo's.

Anyone have any suggestions for another highly evocative Paris book, for when I'm done with this? (BTW, I'm also reading the Paris stories of Mavis Gallant.)

Last weekend, to honor Nora Ephron, my wife and I and our youngest daughter (not so young--18 and heading off to college in September) watched “Sleepless in Seattle,” and found it once again utterly charming, though our awareness that there will be no more screenplays by Ms. Ephron dulled the cheery gleam of the ending. So last night, I decided to re-read her novel, Heartburn, obliquely based on her own life and her divorce from Watergate hero Carl Bernstein. I first read it soon after it was published, in 1983. 1983. Good lord--that was 29 years ago.

The year was fraught with angst and doubt. I met my wife-to-be on a blind date, though I had no idea that we’d eventually get married and that we’d endure three broken engagements--to each other--before we did. I was on the cusp of a decision to give up daily journalism and try my hand at other kinds of writing, which meant I'd have to quit my job at The Wall Street Journal, where I worked in the paper’s San Francisco bureau. At a party at a prospective agent's house, while talking to a very attractive woman, I leaned back against the controls of a gas range and set my tweed jacket on fire. “You’re smoking,” she said. Damn straight, I thought, until I realized she meant it literally. It was that kind of year.

I loved Heartburn, and deeply envied its gentle humor and its author’s seeming ability to soar above the landscape of writerly travail with a wink and a smile. Though I never met Ms. Ephron, I adored her--especially her eyes, those gleaming crescents (much like my wife’s, in fact; I’m a sucker for crescent eyes). And, I hated her. Not really, of course. Metaphorically. At the time, I bled ambition and envy. I loved her book, I hated her book. And now, I’m reading it again, and loving it, and wishing that more Ephron books, more Ephron screenplays, more Ephron everything, lay on the horizon.

Before starting this new reading of Heartburn, I did some thumbing ahead. There’s a point toward the end of the book where the heroine’s best friend asks her with annoyance why she has to turn everything into a story.

“Because if I tell the story, I control the version.
“Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me.
“Because if I tell the story, it doesn’t hurt as much.
“Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.”

And so, on with it we get, without Ms. Ephron. But we can tell the story and maybe it won’t hurt as much.

Just started reading James Lee Burke's The Glass Rainbow, one of his Dave Robicheaux novels, about a police detective in a Louisiana parish. I think I've read nine so far, of which my absolute favorite is easily In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead. Burke is to Louisiana what Jo Nesbo is to Norway. Or something like that.

What I like most about Burke's books is the powerful, almost tactile, sense of southern Louisiana that he manages to impart on just about every page. After reading a few chapters I always feel like zipping off to the nearest Cajun restaurant and having a plate of crawfish and an ice-cold beer.

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Speaking of Jo Nesbo: Yesterday, in the midst of a really annoying long-lasting downpour, I popped into Moonraker Books in Langley, Wa., on Whidbey Island (where I bought Burke's Glass Rainbow) and noticed that Nesbo's The Leopard is now--at last--available in the U.S. I read it a couple of months ago as an advance galley and loved it. Very dark. Very good. After reading it, I wanted to run out to my local Norwegian restaurant and have some herring.

Alas, while there is indeed a Cajun place a few blocks from my home here in Seattle, there is no Norwegian restaurant. There is, however, the Ballard neighborhood, fifteen minutes north of my home, which is full of Swedes and Norwegians, and which every year has a parade, featuring trolls, Norwegian dress, and such. Not quite the stuff of a Nesbo novel, I guess. But, I suppose it'll do.

Onward, into the summer reading season!

I'm rereading, for the umpteenth time, The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett. I don't know what it is about that book, but every time I read it the characters seem just as fresh and rich, the prose as clean and spare, as the first few times around. Once, about twenty years ago, I'd actually memorized that long closing scene where Sam Spade tells Brigid O'Shaugnessy he's turning her in. "When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it...." It's a wonderful book. And the characters don't spend all their time on iPhones.

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Also, I know it doesn't qualify necessarily as a "Good Read," at least not in the classic sense, but may I just say that Dorie Greenspan's cookbook Around my French Table is one of the best cookbooks I've ever read/used. Last night: Pork loin stuffed with swiss chard, onion, and garlic. Superb.

Phew, what a year. I've seriously neglected my Goodreads presence, and my Facebook presence, and my Flickr presence, and, and, and....But, turning over a new leaf, I've resolved to revive my online life. I've even joined Twitter (@exlarson), and, strangely enough, I think I like it. Just yesterday I learned via Twitter that Simon Pegg is making a sequel to Shaun of the Dead, and today, by following Le Monde, I got access to live updates of scores in the French Open. Both of which make me immensely happy.

So, books. Right now I'm reading Olin Steinhauer's The Tourist, and loving it: I sense dark things are about to happen. I also just finished Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, which I read in the form of an advance galley, but it's due out very soon. Possibly this week? I loved it; I haven't enjoyed a book that much in a long time. If John Updike had written a noir novel about a really dysfunctional relationship, this would be that novel. Lovely and malevolent, with some arresting bits of prose magic.

And, may I say, I recently finished The Hunger Games series. Wow, what a ride. I think it may actually be a more powerful read for parents than for kids, given the nightmarish premise at the core of the work. Don't think I'll see the movie, though. I'm not sure I could stand having to go through it all again!

Back to work--I'm printing out images of a thousand or so documents I picked up in Washington, for my next book. My new iMac makes this all a lot easier. I do believe I have left the PC world for good.

Onward,
E.

Hard to believe it's already mid-August, and the back-to-school ads have already begun to appear--much to my youngest daughter's chagrin. For me, though, it seems like summer's just begun, because at last the rigors of launching a new book are receding AND because here in Seattle the weather, oh-so-belatedly, is starting to deliver the sunny, dry, cool days that make Seattle's summers so amazing, and that make the city's rainy and dark winters tolerable.

At the moment, I'm looking forward to a month of completely escapist lit. Right now I'm twenty pages from the end of a 1970's-era thriller, Black Sunday, by Thomas Harris, best known for his later novel, Silence of the Lambs. Talk about thrillers--this one is dynamite (no pun intended). And speaking of thrillers, I just finished another good one, The Informationist, by Taylor Stevens. If you liked Lisbet Salander in the three Girl Who books, I think you'll like the heroine of this novel as well.

I'm thirty pages into The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, and am thoroughly hooked, like through the eyeball. This is one of those books for which I'll ration my nightly reading, because I don't want to reach the ending too soon.

I've also started reading The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, and I confess I'm pretty much entranced. It's a great book for anyone who finds his or her personal dreams under assault from the naysayers and doom-mongers among us who don't like it when we dream big.

Also in my personal line-up for the next month:

The Leopard, by Jo Nesbo. This is his newest Inspector Harry Hole novel.

Robopocalypse, by Daniel H. Wilson. By the way, I met Wilson for lunch in Toronto last spring, where we both turned up while promoting our books. He's way too smart and talented for someone so young.

And finally, The Last Werewolf, by Glen Duncan. Okay, who doesn't love a book about a werewolf?

Quick note: To all of you who have pointed out the several typos in my newest book, In the Garden of Beasts, thank you!--but please know that thanks to alert early Goodreaders, we were able to correct them all long ago, for readers of forthcoming printings!

Happy end of summer! And for all you kids, I'm so so sorry--but school is only weeks away! Mooohahahahahahaha......