“I’m not very materially minded,” [[Robert]] Smith [[of The Cure]] says. “As long as I’ve got enough money to buy books and eat, I’m not really bothered.”
https://www.spin.com/2019/07/the-cure-robert-smith-kiss-me-kiss-me-kiss-me-july-1987-interview/
I heard about this thriller in Publishers Weekly. Gave it 4 out of 5 stars. I appreciated how the author touched on class in a Canadian upper crusty suburb. The identity of the serial killer made sense, but some parts of the ending seemed to throw logic out with the recyclables. The death of the bohemian waitress didn't seem to make sense when her son kept quiet about some of the circumstances. Another thing I didn't like is that both the detective and the therapist went to great lengths to protect their families — I think the detective's behavior should have been a little different. But these are minor quibbles. You know it's a good book when you can't wait for the workday to end so you can crawl into your reading corner.
I reserved Ken Kalfus' 2 A.M. in Little America after reading it in today's New York Times Book Review: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/10/books/review/ken-kalfus-2am-little-america.html
I gave this novel two-and-a-half stars out of five. I italicize novel because it's more of short story collection. For the most part, characters only appear in one chapter. The story looks at humanity during and after a plague. The author has an excellent imagination on how society might deal with a disease that wipes out a great number of people. However, I get the sense that he wanted it to be melancholic, but I found most of the stories depressing. BTW: if you want to read true melancholy, check out Olaf Olafsson's The Sacrament.
One cool thing about How High We Go in the Dark is that a lot of the characters are Asian, with many being Japanese. Nice to learn a little about a different culture.
Oh, and some chapters were pretty touching, like the one with the pig. That pig was more memorable that some bestselling novels I've read.
Returned this novel to the library after 50 pages. I live in Philadelphia, so I took umbrage about "Little Russia" in 1960's Northeast Philly. Yes, there are a lot of Slavs in the Greater Northeast, but my understanding is that most Eastern Europeans didn't come here until the USSR collapsed.
Another thing I didn't like was comic books being central to the plot. Since I'm not 12 years old, I don't consider comics a top-tier art form.
I really enjoyed Hell's Half-Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier by Susan Jonusas. Never heard of the Bender family before reading it. Jonusas does a good job of keeping the book engaging with so little info after the family hightailed it out of Kansas after their murders started to come to light. I gave the book four out of five stars on LibraryThing because it's a little infuriating that the Benders got away with it, though it sounds like living life on the lam wasn't a cakewalk in the wild frontier. What I liked about the book is that it showed how much lawlessness there was in the 19th century Midwest, not just the West.
