From Pulp Addict, where I chronicle the stuff that flows in and out of my bookstore. This week: Augusten Burroughs, Steve Martin, Jennifer Weiner, and Robert B. Parker.

Stranger In Paradise, Robert B. Parker (Putnam 2008) Mr. Parker is a heavyweight in the crowded world of crime thillers, having written over fifty books in the genre, but after plowing my way through this in two days, I’m not sure why. All the staples are there; tough, masculine detectives, quick with the solemn one-liners and burdened with the requisite drinking problem/ex-wife (in this case, both), oversexed female deputies who end up in bed with with a tough dude from the wrong side of the law, and of course, psychotic Hispanic gang members. Mr. Parker likes to include a lot of nodding in his prose, as in “Jesse nodded his head.” and “Jesse nodded, slowly.” and “Crow nodded.” and “Crow nodded at them both.” and my personal favorite, “Both men sat motionless, then nodded at each other.” Did I mention this all happens in the first chapter? It’s as if Mr. Parker doesn’t quite know how to convey, literarily, that someone is listening to someone else, and hears them correctly. Then again, this guy is a fucking millionaire and I’m writing a stupid blog. All told, it’s a pretty fun read and I think I answered my own question about why people love Robert Parker; because once he gets all the nodding out of the way he’s dependable and delivers the revenge killing in a timely and efficient manner.

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From Pulp Addict, a weekly documentation of cool stuff that comes through my bookstore. This week; Thompson, Anthony Bourdain, James Frey, and Bob Woodward.

Generation Of Swine: The Gonzo Papers Vol. 2, Hunter S. Thompson (Summit 1988) Just one of the seemingly endless collection of Thompson’s 80’s-era essays shares its most telling HST passage in the almost throwaway introduction, which begins with a line from Revelation of all places: “And I will give him the morning star.”, after which Hunter takes over: “I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starbursts of writing from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language–and it is not because I am a biblical scholar, or because of any religious faith, but because I love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music.” From there on HST is in typical form; relentlessly skewering Reagan era cold war paranoia, the ‘86 Senate elections, James Bakker’s epic fall from grace and the art (or act) of journalism itself: “I have spent my life trying to get away from journalism, but I am still mired in it–a low trade and a habit worse than heroin–a strange world full of misfits and drunks and failures.”

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By Shannon Cole

Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson (2003)

If you’ve heard of this book, I know what you’re thinking: the girl gets to recommend books to the city of Providence, and she talks up some book about Chicago?? But hear me out. Larson’s chronicle of the 1893 Colombian Exposition (aka the first World’s Fair) is part historical drama, part crime thriller, and an intense page-turner. Larson weaves together the tales of the two men whom popular history has all but forgotten, but to whom we owe so much: chief architect of the fair Daniel Burnham and H.H. Holmes, the first American serial killer. (more…)

Here at the Dose we don’t just waste our days away trolling the Internet for inane blather. I do, but the others don’t. They read! Books! Welcome new contributor Shannon Cole who’ll be checking is with us from time to time to tell us what we should be reading. Now I gotta go find me some lolcats…

Nicole Krauss’ novel The History of Love (2005) is the history of one love that weaves through languages and across continents in the form of a book (also titled The History of Love), and the lives it alters along the way. But don’t get confused. It’s not a romance novel — as evidenced by the repeated mentions of farting and the running list of tips on How to Survive in the Wild — and it never gets, you know, mushy. (more…)