I normally don’t like mysteries. They don’t grab me.<\/p>\n
For a period of time, I was thinking this was a sign of my superiority, but then I realized it’s more a sign that i’m bad at finding the clues. You know? I just never catch on to whodunit.<\/p>\n
I read books for the pleasure of the journey, and I don’t want to know where it is going to end up. That is why I don’t like formulaic books at all.<\/p>\n
UNLESS! they are done with style. Which brings me to my point:<\/p>\n
Raymond Chandler. Wow and wow again.<\/p>\n
I was reading White Oleander<\/i> a while back, and it starts out by talking about the Santa Ana winds. I was telling Chris about it, and he immediately said, “that’s from Raymond Chandler.”<\/p>\n
He’d mentioned Raymond Chandler to me, telling me I should read it. So now, he dug up a paperback of short stories and I read it, once I got through White Oleander<\/i>.<\/p>\n
I loved it for so many reasons. I don’t like formulaic stories, but some formulas are so true to life. Like, some people, especially people who are bent on doing the wrong thing, are so predictable.<\/p>\n
Like the dispirited blonde lady cop who falls in love with a con and keeps on wanting to reform him. She may be more complicated than that, but while she’s on the reform path, that’s pretty much all she is.<\/p>\n
During moments, people can be just the one thing, not full complex people. Chandler captures that so well. People makes types of themselves, narrow themselves down. I get the idea that the stories emerge from the character’s choices, not the manipulations of the author.<\/p>\n
And he boiled it down to such lovely sentences.<\/p>\n
Plus, now that I live in LA and work across the block from where he lived, I find glimpses of my city in his books. He practicaly gives driving directions to crime scenes. It’s a vieled realism that’s really exciting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I normally don’t like mysteries. They don’t grab me. For a period of time, I was thinking this was a sign of my superiority, but then I realized it’s more a sign that i’m bad at finding the clues. You … Continue reading