The Sunday Salon: A dream deferred this week

This week’s Sunday Salon will be deferred until next week, thanks to a combination of circumstances: following up on a story of a soldier from the area where I live who was injured as the result of a suicide bombing attack in Afghanistan (I am a correspondent for a newspaper, whose full-time reporter is on vacation for the next two weeks), mowing our lawn (a necessary evil) and a nap brought on by the resulting headache from allergies.

I was planning on continuing to read The Outfit by Richard Stark, the third Parker novel (1963) as written by one of the many pseudonyms of Donald E. Westlake (the first nine of 27 have been rereleased last year and this year by the University of Chicago Press). I have written previously about Westlake/Parker here. I just finished the second Parker, The Man with the Getaway Face, last night and jumped right into this third one.

Alas, it was not to be today.

Despite that, this week was a pretty good week, reading- and blog-wise. I actually wrote two posts: Tuesday’s Meme Things: Traveling down Zzyyzx Road, finding loot and trivia, and Library Loot/Friday Finds Redux: New and improved! Now with a photo! and finished four books:

1. Dead Sleep by Greg Iles
2. The Narrows by Michael Connelly
3. Last Shot by Gregg Hurwitz
4. The Man with the Getaway Face by Richard Stark

I will leave you with a sample from The Outfit, a part in which Parker is going to see a mobster named Fairfax:

The heavy-set man came back, followed by Fairfax. Fairfax was tall and stately, graying at the temples, with a smartly clipped pepper-and-salt moustache. He was about fifty-five, and had obviously spent a lot of time in gymnasiums. He was wearing a silk Japanese robe and wicker sandals. He looked at Parker and frowned, “Do I know you.”

The new face came in handy sometimes. Parker said, “I work for Mr. St. Clair. You might of seen me around with him.”

“Mmmm.” Fairfox touched his mustache with the tips of his fingers. “Well’s what’s the message?”

Parker glanced meaningfully at the bodyguards. “Mr. St. Clair said I should keep it private.”

“You can speak in front of these men.”

“Well– it has to do with Parker.”

Fairfax smiled thinly. “Parker is the reason these men are here,” he said. “What about him?”

“He knocked over The Three Kings tonight.”

“He what?”

“He beat up Mr. St. Clair and the bartender. He walked off with thirty-four hundred dollars.”

“So he’s in New York.” Fairfax mused, stroking his moustache.

“He did, eh?” Fairfax glanced around at his three bodyguards. He smiled again, with scornful amusement. “I think we’re ready for him if he does come,” he said. “Don’t you.”

“No.”

Parker fired through his pocket…

Library Loot/Friday Finds Redux: New and improved! Now with a photo!

I already did Library Loot hosted by Eva and Marg and Friday Finds hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading with my last post. However, as I mentioned then, my wife had the camera or so I thought (actually it was in my desk drawer, but I didn’t know it). Now that I have the camera, I thought I’d update my loot and finds with the photo and a review of what I’ve read and watched so far this week.

First, here’s the photo:

In addition to what I’ve already finished (The Narrows by Michael Connelly and the movie The Express), I still have left from the library, including several that I took out tonight:

• The Visitor, a movie that, in short, is about a man who returns to his NYC apartment to find two people living in it and the relationship that develops between him and the couple. For more on the movie, visit the site (click on the link).
• Milk, for which Sean Penn won a Best Leading Actor Oscar last year for his portrayal as the gay activist Harvey Milk and Dustin Black won a Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen Oscar.
• Flyboys, which stars James Franco and that’s all my wife needed to know for me to get it from the library.
• both Connelly’s The Closers and Echo Park, continuing the Harry Bosch series.
• The Bourne Legacy by Eric Van Lustbader, the continuation of Robert Ludlum’s Bourne series.
• Emperor: The Gates of Rome by Conn Iggulden, the first of a series about Julius Caesar.
• Lush Life by Richard Price, who also wrote Clockers and this book, which my wife read when I took it out of the library a couple of months ago (she said it was very good, so now I’m going to see for myself). Price also was a writer on the HBO series The Wire.
• and four by Agatha Christie: Murder at the Vicarage, Peril at End House, Thirteen at Dinner and Murder on the Orient Express. Sadly, I had to order The Sittaford Mystery, which chronologically comes between the first two mentioned, through interlibrary loan and will have to await reading until it arrives. However, I wanted to have them ready and waiting (okay, I’m obsessed) as part of the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge in which I am participating.

On Tuesday, I already mentioned  the books that my brother-in-law, Warren, loaned me this past weekend:

• a Parker novel by Richard Stark, The Man with The Getaway Face.
• another Parker novel by Richard Stark, The Outfit.
• Lemons Never Lie, another Stark novel.
• The Cutie by Westlake.
• Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler, which was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel when it came out in 2001.

As for the last book pictured, it is the book that I am reading currently: Last Shot by Gregg Hurwitz. It is the fourth of a series, but Warren, who also loaned me this, told me that it is the faster paced of the first four. So I am going (waaaaay) out on a limb and trusting his judgment on this one. Usually I am a stickler for reading series in order, even before the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge, but for you, Warren, I will break my rule (at least this once).

So far, the book is a good one and better than the last book I read: Dead Sleep by Greg Iles that I finished earlier this week. I think I’ve been spoiled by Connelly, but that book by Iles (the first one I’ve read by him) didn’t hold up for me as well as I thought it might when I started it. It was decent, but it was by no means great, and I wouldn’t tell anyone to rush out and pick up a copy. Last Shot is somewhere between good and great at this point, but I’m only about three-quarters of the way through it so I’ll suspend my judgment until the end.

So what have you found at the library this week or just in general that has you obsessed?