Late Saturday afternoon I was sitting at Walgreens waiting for a prescription. It was not really the best time, the place was crowded, and I just wanted to be home. I entertained myself by settling into one of the chairs in the pharmacy department with a Stone Barrington novel by Stuart Woods. This one, Hot Pursuit was fairly typical, although I've apparently missed quite a few recent installments regarding Stone's life. No great loss there. Bourbon, women, wine, food, a bit of high society. The book is predictable, the characters suitably vague so that one can project upon them what one will, and entertaining in a glossy surface kind of way. In fact perfect for tuning out the surrounding drama at a Walgreen's on a Saturday night. I was about a third of the way through the book when I left the store, and finished it up when I got home. The experience was, in fact, a lot like eating a bag of potato chips, without the residual feeling of "what was I thinking". Stone is the same, an aging lothario who doesn't seem to know that he is aging, and whose life actually seems pretty shallow and uninteresting, except that the reader is distracted by the gloss and the name-dropping and hint of power-plays. Not bad for an hour and a half when reality is less appealing than a bit of fantasy, and probably an improvement over staring mindlessly at the tv, in that at least something can be left to the imagination.
It was, in fact, an improvement over the last two Reacher novels, both of which I read in the evenings of my drive to and from Texas in November. Like Stone Barrington, Jack Reacher hasn't really evolved at all, and that is not necessarily bad in that I like the way Reacher is willing to stand for his own personal code. But the books are getting tired, and it seemed like Lee Child was really reaching for plot ideas, especially in the first of the two books I read, Personal which put Reacher in a situation where he was really the target, a situation that was the opposite of everything Reacher believes in. The second book, Make Me, was more typical in terms of plot, but still seemed like a bit of a stretch, as if the author is having trouble keeping the series going. Like Barrington, Reacher is not evolving. That is probably realistic; I suspect most of us don't really evolve or change much as we age. Unfortunately it doesn't make for particularly interesting reading. Or perhaps the lack of sugar (the name-dropping gloss of the Barrington novels) makes the emptiness of the read all the more apparent.
On a lighter note, Graeme Simsion's romantic comedy, The Rosie Project, was light-hearted and charming and proved to be a cheerfully entertaining read. I had some doubts about it, despite the hype. Or was that because of the hype? The main character, Don Tillman is a socially awkward scientist, who has Asperger's, but isn't particularly aware that he has Asperger's, and the author seemed to do a good job of getting into his head and making his oddness charming in a rather self-deprecating way. There were perhaps a few too many jokes at his expense, but they were pulled off with grace. Most of the characterizations are shallow and rather predictably stereotypical, but again, they are handled with a light hand, and the general humor carries them. This is not true in the sequel, which I do not recommend at all, as it devolves into a rather painful morass of cliche and incomprehensible obliviousness, and seems to dive into all the pits the first novel manages to (barely) avoid.
Of these books, I would say The Rosie Project would be the only one I would recommend. It too is a fast read and probably will not stand up to critical reading, but it is the only one that seems to have claimed any particular place in my memory. Or perhaps, given my own penchant for reflection, Don Tillman reminds me that our own conception of ourselves is perhaps more telling in terms of who we become, even when our perceptions fly in the face of other's perceptions of us.
