Today I finally finished Schindler’s List, but won’t do a review of it, since as I said earlier, I must be the only person on the planet who neither read the book nor saw the movie. I hope now to one day see the movie. The only thing I will say is that even Thomas Harris could never imagine a villain like Amon Goeth, the sadistic Commandant of the work camp in Cracow, Poland, where the story begins. He once saw two women through a window, a mother and daughter, peeling potatoes, and he thought they were doing so too slowly. So he leaned in through the window and shot them both dead. He shot and killed an orderly because he found a flea on one of his two dogs. He was the master of random cruelty, whereas the Reich itself was the master of plodding, relentless cruelty.
This week I went to the libary to choose my next books, and selected Robert Parker’s Brimstone, the third in his series of Westerns that began with Appaloosa, which was followed by Resolution. Hitch and Cole (lawmen for hire) are on the trail of Allie, who ran off with another man at the end of Resolution after stealing Cole’s heart.
Second I picked up a book, on the recommendation of ptfan1, by Lee Child. I believe this may be his latest, it’s called Nothing To Lose.
Third, I picked up a book called The Cure For Grief, by a first-time novelist. I very much like first novels. Sometimes you find that the novelist runs out of steam afterwards and never quite matches the brilliance of that first try. The description of its plot rather reminded me of something Anne Tyler might have written. Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist will probably always be on my Top Ten Books list. I really ought to make that list…
Finally, a Dana Stabenow crime novel called Whisper To The Blood. I’ve read many of Stabenow’s novels before. For the most part they take place in Alaska.
Sometimes, given choices as good as these, it’s hard to know where to begin. This time it’s a no-brainer. Given a choice between Robert B. Parker and anyone else, anyone else comes in second.
