A Life Spent Reading

This mystery-thriller by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child is the latest in a sorta-kinda series that makes use of certain characters (and one setting) from previous books. The main character, FBI Special Agent Pendergast, is a unique and compelling creation, and the other returnees are both plausible and entertaining. But it’s been so long since I read Relic (which was really good) and Thunderhead that I had trouble summoning up any real continuity for them. I didn’t remember anything about any of them, other than Pendergast’s unusually white skin.

The basic premise is interesting; a serial killer, seemingly from the 1800s but still alive, is stalking the streets of New York. Clues to his identity and possible ways to stop him may be contained at an old construction site and within a “cabinet of curiosities” housed in the New York Museum of Natural History. This is the main fun of the book; learning about the late 19th century, the state of science at the time, the interest in natural history, the way the city was at that point. Preston and Child do their usual great job with the science, and there is one particularly memorable section in which Pendergast uses a sort of hypnosis on himself to go back in time and search for clues. It’s an interesting idea, and they pull it off well.

The Cabinet of Curiosities kept me reading steadily more or less all the way through, but there were one or two things that bothered me. Preston and Child have a habit of crafting each chapter so that it ends with a hook. While I understand that it’s good thriller practice, it actually started to bring me out of the narrative about halfway through the book. Also, although there are a couple of admirable twists, especially toward the end, that made me sit up and take notice, there was a certain clockwork, workman-like feel to the plot. The material is good enough on its own to keep people reading; I would prefer it if Preston and Child had enough confidence in it to use a more natural style of pacing at times, and to let their characters go off on the little tangents that make the really classic literary characters so memorable.

This was J. A. Konrath’s debut novel, and it goes down as easy as a mint julep in the shade. The pacing never flags over 275 pages of murder mystery, as Konrath strikes just the right balance between character development and keeping the plot going. There are also (very needed) bits of humor along the way, which is nice. While the characters are stock in many ways, Konrath handles them well, giving each enough room for development that they don’t seem jarringly stereotypical. Since Whiskey Sour is the beginning of a series with returning characters, I’m sure that those areas where a lack of development may exist will be taken care of as the series goes on.

Konrath also has a real gift for creating suspense on the page. I can’t remember the last time I got wound up enough in a book to actually skip forward to see what happens, but that’s exactly what I did in one place because I just couldn’t stand it. If I’d been at a movie I’d've been crushing the ends of the armrests right about then.

There are some authors who seem to be able to dish out this sort of quick and suspensful fare on a regular basis (Robert Crais and John Sandford come to mind), and Konrath exhibits all the earmarks of becoming one of them. Whiskey Sour is a perfect beach or plane book, and I will definitely buy his next one.

Okay, these have nothing to do with books, but I just got a couple pairs of Lynx Grips and have been trying them in my workouts. Here’s my product review:

First of all, Lynx Grips, put out by Lynx Technologies, are small (10.5cm long; 9.5cm wide; 0.25cm thick) rubber pads that you put in your palm while lifting weights. As the manufacturer claims, they do definitely make some exercises more comfortable. A set of heavy bench presses, for example, feels much better on the palm than it does with your bare hands. (I don’t wear gloves during my workouts, so I can’t compare the grips to gloves.) While the grips are easy to use and do pretty much exactly what the company claims (adhere to your hands, wrap easily around the bar), they do take a little getting used to. It can take a bit of extra time to get them into the precise position where they feel natural.

Using one pair will change the diameter of the bar slightly, but my idea was to use two pair at once and really change it. The idea worked reasonably well, giving me a cheap and easy way of approximating a “fat bar” like strongman competitors use in some of their training. Of course it’s not really a fully-fledged fat bar; even using two of the grips in each hand only increases the diameter of the bar about a centimeter, but considering that a true fat bar will run well over a hundred dollars, a couple pairs of grips at fifteen bucks per pair is an economical alternative. However, unlike the website’s claim, you will NOT get more reps at a given weight by using the grips. Quite the opposite; a fatter grip usually means that you get fewer reps (because of the added difficulty in holding on to the bar), so you will need to log the fact that you’re using the grips for a given workout in your workout book in order to keep accurate records.

One other advantage of changing the bar width (even with one pair) is that it makes the forearm muscles work slightly differently, thus helping to head off pattern-overload injuries. And, of course, the grips will allow you to avoid developing calluses if you use them often enough. I’m ambivalent about this last point, though. I guess women would want to avoid the calluses, but a lot of men probably wouldn’t. On the other hand, I also do a little rock climbing at my gym, which really tears my hands up, and any savings to the skin is a good thing in my case.

One minor gripe is that, because of the sticky rubber used, the grips do tend to accumulate dust in the gym bag, but on the other hand they are easily cleaned with soap and water. And on the plus side, a handy non-gym use is for opening jars that are sealed too tightly. Put one of the grips on the lid and it becomes impossible for your hand to slip.

All in all, the grips are cheap, easy to use and would probably be of some benefit to most people. Having a couple pair means that you can more or less double the number of upper-body exercises you can do because of the “fat bar” variations. And they will definitely make some exercises more comfortable. At $15/pair it’s probably worth it for most people to get a pair or two and check them out.

Grave Peril is the third book in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series. For those not familiar with it, Harry Dresden is a Chicago-based wizard, one who specializes in investigations involving the paranormal. Sort of a modern-day, supernatural Sam Spade.

I generally don’t enjoy urban fantasy all that much. Something about the mixing of the real world with the magical just doesn’t gel for me. But Butcher does it better than most. His books are quick, entertaining reads, and if there isn’t much real depth to them (although the series is getting better in that regard), well, it’s not the end of the world. No one’s going to pick one up thinking that they’re getting Paradise Lost.

Butcher’s main strengths are his pacing, an off-beat and unexpected sense of humor, and an ability to write almost cinematic action sequences. It’s no surprise that Hollywood is making a TV series out of his books; every time Harry does battle with a ghost or demon , Butcher has you right there, seated in the first row of the theater, watching the CGI. He has a particular gift for describing force and motion, which is likely due to his background in the martial arts.

Possibly for the same reason, Harry also gets beaten up a lot, something that I could do without. I know it contributes to story tension if the hero isn’t at full strength (“I didn’t know if I could have whipped this demon even with a full night’s rest; how was I going to do it on half an hour of sleep, faint from hunger and with my leg in a cast?!”), but I just get tired of spending so much of the story reading about Harry being in pain and how racked out he becomes. This time the fatigue was more psychic than physical, but the problem remains. On and on about how tired he is, how much he hurts, how hard it is to go on – all so he can rise above it and win. A personal request to Jim Butcher: just make the demons a little stronger and scrap all the abuse. Please.

The ROC imprint did a fairly crappy job of copy editing the book, and at times the errors really take you out of the narrative. With a book like this, you honestly don’t know if “hellbounds” is a mistake or something supernatural – at least until they magically turn into “hellhounds” further down the page. Also, apparently no one on the ROC staff knows how to spell “Encyclopaedia” Brittanica. There’s an “a” in the middle there, folks. It’s British.

Sigh.

Still, the mistakes are mostly at the beginning, and they did an okay job with the rest of it. There’s a nice cover, and the font is easy to read. This is the third book in the series; I’ve read all three (loved the werewolves in book two) and will be back for the fourth.