Hello and welcome to the fifth issue of A Shot of Jack, my monthly newsletter of what I’m up to, what I’ve been consuming, and what I’m thinking about. And welcome to a new year. For this issue I’m going to do a little something different. I’m going to briefly talk about all the books I read in 2021.
But before we get that, let me give you a little update on what’s been going on with me.
I spent some time and created an all new personal website over at JackCameron.com. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time now and I’m happy to have it up and running.
Creatively, I was pulled back to my still unpublished novel, A Better Lie when I came up with a new ending for it. One of the only positive things about it remaining unpublished is that I have this opportunity to ‘fix’ it.
Given what happened with A Better Lie (I signed a publishing contract then the publisher changed their minds.), I’m querying literary agents so that they can help out the next time something like that happens. This process takes weeks, sometimes months, or years, but as soon as I’m represented, I’ll let you know. (And if you know an agent who might be interested in representing me, let me know.)
I’ve managed to get a freelance writing gig (Thanks, Matt) while applying for other jobs. This should give me enough money to not be totally broke, but not much more than that.
I suppose I should also mention that in just a couple weeks I’ll be attending my graduation at Fort Worden in Port Townsend for my MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. This particular journey has taken two and a half years and is the culmination of my college experience for now.
Okay. That’s enough about what’s going on with me. Let’s dive into the books that occupied my time last year and you might want to use to occupy your time this year.
What I’m Reading
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
I had seen the Matt Damon movie, but Patricia Highsmith’s casual sociopath on the page is fantastic. She writes Ripley with such charm that the reader is almost seduced by his charm if it weren’t for his gruesome deeds spelled out in such great detail.
The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins
Another classic crime novel that I had not previously read but was a big fan of the movie. The Friends of Eddie Coyle is told in such a matter-of-fact manner that it feels like you’re being told the story by the most dangerous guy in a dive bar. Wonderful stuff.
Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain
Sadly, I didn’t really get into Anthony Bourdain stuff until right around the time he died. I had grabbed his legendary cooking memoir Kitchen Confidential on a whim and really enjoyed it. Medium Raw is more of the same and I mean that in the best possible way.
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
A professor of mine at Goddard named John McManus said during a workshop that if he manages to get just one thing across during the residency, it was that everyone should read Exit West. And so I did. It’s largely unlike any book I’ve ever read. Though I truly hate the term, the magical realism in this works. But my favorite thing is Hamid’s ability to make one long jaw breaker sentence that transports the characters and the readers from one place to another in what other writers might do in a full chapter.
Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson
Somehow up until 2021 I had never read a Jim Thompson novel. It read like a combination of Talented Mr. Ripley and Friends of Eddie Coyle in that it was about a casual sociopath told in very plain, matter-of-fact language. Good and creepy stuff.
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
This novel was recommended to me by my Goddard advisor, Victoria Nelson. More than anything what I remember of this novel is the terrible neighborhoods that our boy protagonist, Shuggie lives in. These ghettos of Scotland have likely never been so thoroughly described as they are in this novel. By the end of it, I felt I could walk those streets and know where I was going, but I wouldn’t want to without a weapon.
Becoming Nisei: Japanese American Urban Lives in Prewar Tacoma by Lisa Hoffman and Mary Hanneman
I’m a third-generation Tacoman and someone who likes reading about Tacoma history. So imagine my surprise when I encountered this book about an entire community in Tacoma that existed for over fifty years and I knew nothing about. This book had me looking at the streets I’ve driven and walked my whole life and imagining the world that was utterly destroyed by the wrong-headed choice to put the Japanese on the west coast in internment camps during World War II. Hoffman and Hanneman bring this world to life with maps, documents, photos, and interviews of survivors of that community.
A Promised Land by Barack Obama
Obama’s book gives a personal look at his personal history and his experiences during the first term of his presidency. More than anything, what I got from this book is his desire to genuinely do good. Though he did not always make the correct choices and occasionally even acknowledges that, this is a solid document of his time in office until 2008. I look forward to the next one.
Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen
There are few people who embody the rock n roll of my lifetime better than Bruce Springsteen. He and his E Street Band are legends for a reason. There’s a relentlessness to Bruce when it comes to his music. This is a guy who would not stop until he got where he was going. From his humble beginnings playing in local bars to playing to over a hundred thousand people in Europe, the guy just doesn’t stop. Inspiring and intimidating at the same time.
The Cartel by Don Winslow
The Border by Don Winslow
I’ve already talked about The Cartel in a previous newsletter, but having read The Border, the final book in his Cartel trilogy, I can say that Don Winslow has created the quintessential Mexican drug war epic. With expert research and a great ear for dialog, he creates a compelling narrative that is as educational as it is entertaining. Great stuff.
The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavich
More than any other book I read in 2021, Lidia Yuknavich’s searing memoir The Chronology of Water blew me away. It was easily my favorite book last year. Her writing is so personal yet crafted so well that by the end of it I immediately bought a copy for my best friend and sent it to her. She loved it so much that she shared it with a good friend of hers. The only book I read twice last year.
The Anatomy of Story by John Truby
Speaking of craft, this book on the screenwriting craft has so much good writing advice in it that all writers should have it in their library. Rather than relying on formulas, Truby takes a much more holistic approach to storytelling. It helped me understand story as well as anything I learned at Goddard.
Freedom by Sebastian Junger
I enjoy Junger’s writing and loved some of the things he had to say about belonging and humanity in his book Tribe, so I picked up his latest tiny book, Freedom which depicts his journey down hundreds of miles of railroad tracks with a few friends. While not as good as Tribe, I still found quite a lot to enjoy in this.
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino
Unlike Friends of Eddie Coyle or The Talented Mr. Ripley, this book didn’t exist before the movie. There’s a lot to like about Tarantino’s novelization of his own screenplay. Some scenes are more fleshed out. He actually changes the story structure a bit and it has a different ending, but overall it retains that somewhat laid back LA feeling that the film had.
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Yet another book where I watched the movie first. Greene’s prescient whodunit novel about a British correspondent in Vietnam in the late 1950s is every bit as riveting as the Michael Caine starring movie of the same name. More than anything, reading this made me realize just how great the adaptation was of this novel.
Bad Luck & Trouble by Lee Child
I’d never read a Jack Reacher novel before and after asking a few people who had, I ended up reading this one. Child isn’t doing anything I haven’t seen before in Bad Luck & Trouble, but he’s doing it very well. A good weekend read.
The End is Always Near by Dan Carlin
Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast is one of the few must-listen podcasts on my list. It makes sense that he’d do a book eventually and that the book would be about all the times the world almost ended. That’s exactly his kind of thing. I didn’t find this book to be as engaging as his podcast, but it was still worthwhile.
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
After reading The Nickel Boys, I was willing to go wherever Colson Whitehead wanted to go. And in Harlem Shuffle he goes to Harlem in the late 1950s and early 1960s in a hard boiled crime novel that’s every bit as good as any classic of the genre. You can feel the humidity of the summer in Harlem as things heat up in all senses of the word. This was a book I read to my girlfriend before bed and all too often we’d end up awake far later than expected just wanting to know what happened next.
Have you read any of these books? What’d you think?
Next time we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming.