The Grouchy Editor

by Suetonius

Complain all you want about our current leaders, but their flaws are chicken feed compared to those of the power-crazed, toga-clad rulers of ancient Rome.  For proof, we have this series of short biographies of the Roman emperors, written by someone who was actually there, the Roman scholar Suetonius.

As I read, I would sometimes begin to cut a given ruler some slack, deciding that – at least compared to the others – he wasn’t so bad.  And then I’d learn that he tortured and executed some unfortunate peasant for a trivial offense.  And that he helped himself to a senator’s comely wife.  And that he did worse.  Much, much worse.

But I’ll give the emperors this:  They didn’t discriminate with their atrocities.  Most of them were apparently bisexual, using men, women, relatives, and children as sex toys, and they were just as likely to decapitate a general as a fruit seller.

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by Janet Evanovich

I’m not sure who’s more foolish, Stephanie Plum or me, because I continue to read this silly series.  Eighteen is more of the same-old slapstick, but what’s new is that, for some inexplicable reason, Evanovich has made her plot ridiculously complex.

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by Dan Ariely

In all honesty, this book was a letdown.  The human propensity for lying and cheating should be a juicy topic, but Ariely manages to squash reader interest by (mostly) confining his experiments to sterile classrooms, where one group of student volunteers after another pencil in answers to one dull test after another, usually involving dotted matrixes, one-dollar bills, and paper shredders.  When Ariely and colleagues do leave the artificial environment of the classroom – sending a blind girl into a farmers’ market to buy tomatoes, for example – their research yields some interesting results.

But back to that classroom … our intrepid social scientist’s big discovery is this:  We all cheat, but only a little bit.  And if we can just get a few reminders that cheating is bad, maybe we won’t do it so much.

That’s not exactly a scientific breakthrough; it’s simple common sense.  And that’s the brutal truth.

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by Margery Allingham

British mystery novelist Allingham is less interested in clever plot twists than in her characters, which is both good and bad.  Good, because she’s created an unusually strong villain, the knife-wielding, tortured-soul Jack Havoc (a.k.a. “Johnny Cash” – I kid you not), but bad because her heroes are a bland bunch.  Whenever the action shifts to the story’s quartet of lovebirds, I was reminded of those old Marx Brothers movies – pure genius whenever the boys were on screen, but barely tolerable when the obligatory lovers took center stage.

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

                                                                 by Thomas Harris                                                                      

I suppose this is an example of why you should always read the book before you see the movie.  Harris’s Lambs is intelligent, suspenseful, and clearly one of the better serial-killer novels.  Yet in my Hollywood-influenced mind’s eye, F.B.I. trainee Clarice Starling has morphed into Jodie Foster, malevolent Hannibal Lecter is  Anthony Hopkins, and every dramatic chapter is accompanied by images from the film.  But kudos to Harris, because even though the book holds no surprises for anyone familiar with the movie, it’s still a gripping read.

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by Jess Walter

Pasquale is an insecure young man drifting dreamily through life in his small, Italian fishing village.  Dee Moray is an up-and-coming starlet on the set of Hollywood’s infamous epic, the Richard Burton and Liz Taylor vehicle, Cleopatra.  Pasquale and Dee would seem to have little in common, but in author Jess Walter’s capable hands, their journey from 1962 to the present is a fanciful treat.  Ruins isn’t perfect; there are passages that resemble an old Doris Day-Rock Hudson farce with contrived situations, but Walter’s hopscotching, time-traveling story is mostly funny, bittersweet, and wise.

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by Hilary Mantel
                                                                        

This fictional account of life under England’s King Henry VIII, centering on royal advisor Thomas Cromwell, is an “admirable” book – but reading it was more chore than pleasure.

The upside:

Mantel’s dialogue is sharp and often witty.  The repartee between members of the king’s court, Cromwell family members, and even lowly commoners, is consistently engaging.

The sense of time and place is vivid.  I have no idea how accurate any of it is, but as a work of fiction, Wolf Hall opens the doors to palaces, chambers, and courtyards in Renaissance England and makes you believe that you are actually there.

The downside:

Mantel’s vocabulary is impressive, but I grew frustrated over her abuse of the simple pronoun, “he.”  I challenge anyone to read this novel without, at least occasionally, being surprised to learn that the “he” Mantel is writing about is not the “he” you had imagined.

Wolf Hall snagged numerous awards, including the Man Booker Prize.  But I side with scholar Susan Bassnett, who writes, “I have yet to meet anyone outside the Booker panel who managed to get to the end of this tedious tome.”

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