Degrees of Separation

Featuring retired homicide detective Baruch "Buck" Schatz

Sometimes you can read a book and it will lead you to another book (or movie) that may make sense to no one but you.  For example, I recently finished a book called Don't Ever Get Old by Daniel Friedman.  The title alone sounds like a self-help book aimed at helping you turn back the hands of time with diet and exercise.  Don't be fooled by the title.  It's a convoluted, comedic mystery set in the south whose protagonist is a cross between "Pop" from Grumpy Old Men and Clint Eastwood's character Walt Kowalski from Gran Torino.  The mystery is layered with stolen Nazi gold, interspersed with flashbacks of a German POW camp, and topped off with a present-day serial killer.  Throughout the book, there is a sense of profound personal loss intertwined with laugh-out-loud moments as Buck interacts in his unique way with the other characters, particularly his grandson "Tequila".

From here we segue into the next book recommendation.  In the course of expounding the many virtues of the above book to one of my coworkers, we started discussing WWII memoirs and how memories blur after a number of years.  The book Treblinka had been recommended to me years ago by a friend.  It has since become a book that I go back to every few years in between my other reading pursuits.  This is the kind of book that will stay with you after you turn off your light at night.  Ever since our library held a book discussion on The Seamstress by Sara Tuvel Bernstein, the two of us have had an ongoing conversation regarding accuracy in memoirs and general historical writings.  (The core of the discussion being, if someone makes themselves or their life events sound too good to be true, then it may not be completely accurate.)  Memoirs can be tricky that way.

This leads me to the next volume, Killing Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard.  The writing is so overly dramatic (at one point they describe Abraham Lincoln as "traipsing" down a hallway) as to be ridiculous.  They attempt to assign various feelings and motivations to different characters with little actual proof to back up their assumptions.  As a reader of non-fiction, I prefer that an author let the facts speak for themselves.  Comments, quotations, and writings by contemporaries of the time period are always helpful but the discerning reader of history must remember that there will be an element of human fallibility in those writings as well.  When the author interjects too much emotion into the historical event, I become a very skeptical reader.Finally, this leads to one of the best Abraham Lincoln books that I have read recently.  Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith is packed with action and adventure as it follows the life of Abraham Lincoln.  The author does an excellent job of using historical detail to lend his vampire tale authenticity.  Abraham Lincoln is a noble, larger-than-life hero who sets out to avenge the death of his mother at the hands of a nefarious vampire.  The vampires will continue to be the bane of Abraham's existence throughout his life since they are also the cause of the American Civil War.  Thank heavens Old Abe was so handy with an axe!

Also by this author-Pride and Prejudice and Zombies



That is how you get from a mystery featuring a grumpy old man to a fictional vampire hunter in just a few books.  Have a book conversation with another reader.  You'll go from dystopias to politics to adventure to romance in the blink of an eye.