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lgpiper

Reading Slothfully

I was told in elementary school that I only could read at half the speed for success in college. Oh well, one benefit of slow reading is you get to live with the characters a longer period of time. I read in a vain attempt to better understand people. At my other homes, I'm known as a spouse, pop, guy in the choir, physical chemist, computer/web dilettante and child-care provider. In theory, I'm a published author, if you consider stuff like Quenching Cross Sections for Electronic Energy Transfer Reactions Between Metastable Argon Atoms and Noble Gases and Small Molecules to count as publications. I've strewn dozens of such fascinating things to the winds.

Currently reading

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
Jules Verne
The Spirit of the Border
Zane Grey
Ramona the Brave (Ramona, #3)
Beverly Cleary
The Underground Man (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
Ross Macdonald
Delilah of the Snows
Harold Bindloss
Mrs. Miniver
Jan Struther
Betsy-Tacy Treasury (P.S.)
Maud Hart Lovelace
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
The Way Some People Die
Ross Macdonald
Envy of Angels
Matt Wallace

A Red Death

A Red Death - Walter Mosley It seems that the IRS are wondering why Easy Rawlings seems to own property. He has never appeared to have had enough income to justify his buying the property. An IRS agent, Reginald Lawrence, is threatening to throw Easy in jail muy pronto, unless Easy can come up with proper documentation, documentation that Easy doesn’t actually have. In reality, Easy pretends someone else owns the properties, and that he’s just a janitor.

But, before the IRS agent can get too far, the FBI grabs Easy and says they will delay the IRS audit if he’ll work for them, trying to uncover the perfidy of a den of Reds...or something. It seems they’re interested in a Jewish survivor from the German death camps who is preaching Socialism. It wasn't necessarily the Russian version of Marxist/Leninism, but in the 1950s, many in America couldn’t tell the difference. Actually they can’t now, given that many pretend that Bernie Sanders is the second coming of Stalin.

Whatever, Chaim Wenzler is working with an African-American church and Easy becomes the guy’s driver on various acts of charity, mostly delivering clothes to needy folks and the like. Easy and Chaim become friends and Easy is hard pressed to see his way to turn the guy in. But he investigates here and there and finds out things, some folks end up mysteriously dead, Easy is shot at, and so forth. Pretty typical Easy Rawlings, but a pretty GoodRead all in all.