45, WG22, M25, E42

Thomas Harris, Black Sunday

Es ist zwar wirklich eine ganze Weile her - vermutlich sogar noch im letzten Jahrtausend - dass ich das Buch zum letzten Mal las, aber trotzdem war es fast bestürzend wieviel ich daraus komplett vergessen hatte. Ich weiß allerdings auch, dass mich schon damals beeindruckte wie zeitlos die Story und der Plot wirkten. Und die Idee von einer Bombe in einem Luftschiff beim Superbowl, darauf muss man erstmal kommen ...

Air controllers and tower radio operators always liked to talk to the blimp, and many had a joke ready when they knew it was coming. People felt friendly toward it as they do toward a panda. For millions of Americans who saw it at sporting events and fairs, the blimp was an enormous, amiable, and slow-moving friend in the sky. Blimp metaphors are almost invariably "elephant" or "whale." No one ever says "bomb."

(Thomas Harris, Black Sunday, 1975)

43, WG21, F20, D3, B6

Astrid Lindgren, Ferien auf Saltkrokan

Eigentlich hätte ich das Buch schon längst einmal wiederlesen sollen, jedenfalls stellte ich beim wiederlesen - nach fast genau zehn Jahren - fest, dass ich ziemlich viel daraus vergessen hatte. Achje, und in den zehn Jahren hab ich es auch immer noch nicht selbst auf die Schären geschafft. Aber immerhin geht es diesen Sommer - so es die Aus- und Einreisebestimmungen bis dahin zulassen - nach Schweden, und da sogar nach Smaland. Ist ja schonmal ein Anfang.

Das Wasser war wie immer im Juni. Nur jungen Toren von zwölf, dreizehn Jahren stürzen sich freiwillig in so bitterkaltes Nass. Aber genau solche jungen Toren waren sie ja und sie starben nicht daran, im Gegenteil, sie lebten und sie glühten. Und sie stürzten sich jubelnd von den Felsen und tauchten und schwammen und spielten und platschten im Wasser herum, bis sie vor Kälte blau waren. Da zündeten sie sich auf einem geschützten Felshang ihr Lagerfeuer an und setzten sich drum herum und in ihrem Blut spürten sie sämtliche Indianer und Neusiedler und Pelztierjäger und Steinzeitmenschen, die um Lagerfeuer gesessen haben, seit das Menschengeschlecht auf dieser Erde lebt. Sie waren jetzt Fischer und Jäger und Fänger, sie führten das freie Leben der Wildnis und grillten ihre Beute über der Glut, während Seeschwalben und Mantelmöven und Silbermöven kreischend über ihnen kreisten und versuchten ihnen zu sagen, dass aller gegrillte Dorsch auf dieser Insel eigentlich ihnen gehöre.

(Astrid Lindgren, Ferien auf Saltkrokan, 1964)

40, WG18, M23, E40

Stephen King, End of Watch (Bill Hodges Trilogy Book 3)

Der letzte Band mit Bill Hodges und vielleicht der beste, definitiv der traurigste. Und immer wieder gut zu lesen.
Übrigens fiel mir einmal mehr der Name Frederica Bimmel auf. Aber natürlich ist das Buch ja auch Thomas Harris gewidmet.
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He looks over at the card players as he says this, especially the two baldies. One looks good (as Hodges himself looks good), but the other is cadaverous and hollow-eyed. One foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, Hodges's father would have said. And the thought that comes to him is too complicated - too fraught with a terrible mixture of anger and sorrow - to be articulated. It's about how some people carelessly squander what others would sell their souls to have: a healthy, pain-free body. And why? Because they're too blind, too emotionally scarred, or too self-involved to see past the earth's dark curve to the next sunrise. Which always comes, if one continues to draw breath.

(Stephen King, End of Watch, 2015)

39, WG17, M22, E39

Stephen King, Finders Keepers (Bill Hodges Trilogy Book 2)

Bei diesem Band interessierte mich neben Holly - die hier ein wenig in den Hintergrund gedrängt wird - die Story von Peter Saubers Zufallsfund und wie er mit dem Geld seine Familie über Wasser hält. Morris Bellamys Teil eher weniger, obwohl es dort auch schöne Stellen gibt.

For readers, one of life's most electrifying discoveries is that they are readers - not just capable of doing it (which Morris already knew), but in love with it. Hopelessly. Head over heels. The first book that does that is never forgotten, and each page seems to bring a fresh revelation, one that burns and exalts: Yes! That's how it is! Yes! I saw that too! And of course, That's what I think! That's what I feel!
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The things of the world fell by the wayside, you lost your speed and your eyesight and your fucking Electric Boogaloo, but literature was eternal, and that was what was waiting for him: a lost geography as yet seen by no eye but its creator's.
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Under such circumstances the question is beyond bizarre, but it's also sincere. Honest. Pete realizes that the fictional Andrea, Jimmy's first love, is real to this man in a way Pete's sister is not. No human being is as real to Red Lips as Jimmy Gold, Andrea Stone, Mr. Meeker, Pierre Retonne (also known as the Car Salesman of Doom), and all the rest. This is surely a marker of true, deep insanity, but that must make Pete crazy, too, because he knows how this lunatic feels. Exactly how. He lit up with the same excitement, the same amazement, when Jimmy glimpsed Andrea in Grant Park, during the Chicago riots of 1968. Tears actually came to his eyes. Such tears, Pete realizes - yes, even now, especially now, because their lives hang upon it - mark the core power of make-believe. It's what caused thousands to weep when they learned that Charles Dickens had died of a stroke. It's why, for years, a stranger put a rose on Edgar Allan Poe's grave every January 19th., Poe's birthday. It's also what would make Pete hate this man even if he wasn't pointing a gun at his sister's trembling, vulnerable midsection. Red Lips took the life of a great writer, and why? Because Rothstein dared to follow a character who went in a direction Red Lips didn't like? Yes, that was it. He did it out of his own core belief: that the writing was somehow more important than the writer.
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(Stephen King, Finders Keepers, 2015)

37, WG15, M20, E37

John Grisham, The Runaway Jury

Und es kam, wie es kommen musste, nach The Client wollte auch dieser Band wiedergelesen werden zum wahrscheinlich xten Mal. Ich kann immer noch nicht genau sagen, was mich daran so besonders fasziniert. Vielleicht diese geniale Idee, oder wie sich eine Gruppe so bunt zusammengewürfelter Menschen so arrangiert - mithilfe des Manipulators in ihrer Mitte - dass sie es schafft einer Horde ausgekochter Anwälte und Jury-Konsultanten Paroli zu bieten und das Rechtssystem wenn nicht zu brechen aber doch ziemlich zu dehnen. Auch schön, dass Grisham dabei auf dem Teppich bleibt und es zu keinem unglaubwürdigem 12 zu 0 Ergebnis kommen lässt.

Loreen Duke tired of picking at her chicken salad. She looked across the table at Jerry Fernandez, and said, 'Can I ask you something?' Her voice broke a weary silence.
'Sure,' he said.
'How old were you when you started smoking?'
'Fourteen.'
'Why did you start?'
'The Marlboro Man. Every kid I hung around with smoked Marlboros. We were country kids, liked horses and rodeos. The Marlboro Man was too cool to resist.'
At that moment, every juror could see the billboards - the rugged face, the chin, the hat, the horse, the worn leather, maybe the mountains and some snow, the independence of lighting up a Marlboro while the world left him alone. Why wouldn't a young boy of fourteen want to be the Marlboro Man?
....
'Did anybody here start smoking after the age of eighteen?' Loreen asked.
Not a word.

(John Grisham, The Runaway Jury, 1996)

34, NG21, M17, E34

Stephen King, If it Bleeds

Ich hatte den neuen King-Band schon vor einiger Zeit blind vorgestellt und guckte auch jetzt nicht vor dem lesen in die Synopsis. Darum war ich etwas überrascht, dass es sich hier nicht um einen Roman sondern um längere Kurzgeschichten oder, im Fall von der Titelstory, eine Novelle handelte. Und dann noch überraschter, als sich die Titel-Novelle als neue Holly Gibney-Story entpuppte. Die anderen drei Stories hätten mir auch schon gereicht, aber spätestens da hatte ich das Gefühl, es könnte nicht besser kommen. Okay, vielleicht mit noch einer Holly-Story - aber wir wollen mal nicht zu gierig sein...
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Man, talk about your trips down Memory Lane. I saw emails from long ago, photos of my dad from before his hair started to go gray, and IMs back and forth between me and Billy Bogan. No news in them really, just jokes, and illuminating information like I just farted, and incisive questions like Did you do your algebra. We'd been like a couple of kids with Del Monte cans connected by a length of waxed string. Which is what most of our modern communications amount to, when you stop to think of it; chatter for the sake of chatter.
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(aus: Mr Harrigan's Phone)
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"I love you, Mom," Holly says, and ends the call.
Is that true? Yes. It's liking that got lost, and love without liking is like a chain with a manacle at each end. Could she break the chain? Strike off the manacle? Perhaps. She's discussed that possibility with Allie Winters many times, especially after her mother told her - proudly - that she voted for Donald Trump (oough). Will she do it? Not now, maybe never. When Holly was growing up, Charlotte Gibney taught her - patiently, perhaps even with good intentions - that she was thoughtless, helpless, hapless, careless. That she was less. Holly believed that until she met Bill Hodges, who thought she was more. Now she has a life, and it is more often than not a happy one. If she broke with her mother, it would lessen her.
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(aus: If it Bleeds)
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I love Holly. It's as simple as that. She was supposed to be a minor character in 'Mr. Mercedes', no more than a quirky walk-on. Instead, she stole my heart (and almost stole the book). I'm always curious about what she's doing and how she's getting along. When I go back to her, I'm relieved to find she's still taking her Lexapro and still not smoking. I was curious, frankly, about the circumstances that made her what she is, and thought I could explore that a little ... as long as it added to the story, that is. This is Holly's first solo outing, and I hope I did it justice.
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(aus: Author's note)
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(Stephen King, If It Bleeds, 2020)
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33, NG20, F17, E33

Lisa Jewell, Watching You

Im Gegensatz zu The Passage reichte dieses Buch grade mal zwei Tage. Wie immer wurde ich regelrecht in die Handlung hineingesaugt, die diesmal schon fast wie ein echter Krimi daherkam, Red Herrings und Täuschungsmanöver inklusive. Bei der Schilderung von Tom Fitzwilliam musste ich immer wieder an die Bezeichnung denken, die Mary Stewart diesem Typ Mann in 'Thornyhold' nennt - Homme Fatale. Genau wie in Thornyhold ist sich dieser Typ Mann seiner Wirkung überhaupt nicht bewußt, zumindest stellt sich das am Ende heraus, nachdem Jewell mal wieder alle Vorerwartungen auf den Kopf stellt.
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But what do you do with an unattainable crush once it's yours to keep? What does it become? Should there perhaps be a word to describe it? Because that's the thing with getting what you want: all that yearning and dreaming and fantasising leaves a great big hole that can only be filled with more yearning and dreaming and fantasising. And maybe that's what lay at the root of Joey's sudden and unexpected obsession with Tom Fitzwilliam. Maybe he arrived at the precise moment that the hole in Joey's interior fantasy life needed filling.
And if it hadn't been him, maybe it would have been someone else instead.
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And he'd smiled sadly and said,'I didn't choose her. She chose me.'
She'd started at that. So similar to what Tom had said about Nicola. She wondered if that was how it worked, that while most women spent their lives searching for the perfect man, men sat around waiting to be chosen and then made the best of it.
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(Lisa Jewell, Watching You, 2018)