Books I’ve Read: June 2017
Confession: I didn’t spend much time reading this month, and I’m already 10 days behind on writing a review, so I’m not expecting any revelation here.

Eddie & The Cruisers
by P.F. Kluge, 1980
The movie has been something of a family classic for me. I’ve watched it at least 40 times, and I share the passion with my brother. (Our spouses, however, are somewhat disconcerted by our fanaticism.) I could watch it again right now just thinking about it! Strangely, I never knew it was based on a novel until recently.
Despite my familiarity with the material, it’s not hard to separate the book from the film in my mind. Reading the story was like taking a cast of characters I know intimately and placing them in an alternate reality where things are not what you expect! The book is much darker, much deeper, and much more dangerous than the film. Eddie Wilson is a flawed human being, not the mythical phenom portrayed by Michael Paré. Even the music has been changed from the R&B crossover of the book to the electric rock experiment of the film. The two media are just so different. “I didn’t say better. I said different.”
Kluge is a thoughtful writer. He takes the idea of the glory of what could have been and interprets and extrapolates it differently for each of several well-rounded characters. Interestingly, not one of them is an uplifting theme.
“Nostalgia is the impurest form of memory. Selecting and sentimentalizing, first you victimized yourself. And then, if you acted on your feelings, you entered a world of tacky souvenirs, cheap rituals, monuments to nothing.
He has some great lines of wisdom and poetry, but the lyrics to his Cruisers’ song are simply atrocious. I am thankful that the film producers had real musicians write real music for the movie.
Would I recommend this book? Yes and maybe. I definitely recommend for fans of the movie. The book opens up the characters in profound ways and will bring depth to your next viewing. But if you are not familiar with the movie (or even worse: disliked it), I don’t know how this book would fly. I just can’t be that objective about it.

Eaters of the Dead
by Michael Crichton, 1976
This book also inspired a film, The 13th Warrior with Antonio Banderas, which I have not seen, so I can not speak to. It was a reading for my geeky book club.
The concept of the book is unusual. It is based both on a real account by a 10th century Arab who traveled to the Volga Vikings and on the Old English poem from the same time period, Beowulf. Crichton somewhat fictionalizes the Arabic account while also trying to add realism to the classic poem. He does this under the guise of a true historic account, complete with citations and footnotes.
At its best, the story sheds light on the 10th century Vikings, and the details are simply fascinating. (You must read the footnotes.) But the reader is left wondering what they can trust as truth or fiction, and according to the epilog by Crichton himself, he also lost track of what was real and what was imagined. He leaves some elements open to interpretation as supernatural, mundane, or simply far-fetched reality (specifically, the identity of the “eaters of the dead”). I liked that it was left open-ended.
At its worst, the novel is disjointed with a very obvious line between the two sources. The first half is quite slow and uneventful and the second half is a whirlwind of action and build-up with all-too-simple climax.
For entertainment value, however, I would recommend the book. The Vikings were a terrifying and hedonistic tribe of people and thus endlessly delightful to read about.

The Spring of the Tiger
by Victoria Holt, 1979
For my obligatory monthly romance, I read a new author. Similar to my beloved Phyllis Whitney, Victoria Holt (aka Eleanor Hibbert) writes under several pseudonyms.
The similarities stop there, however. Holt uses more flowery language and seems more interested in setting the stage of the romance than she is in the romance itself.
This particular story was quite sad. Spoiler synopsis: Set in pre-industrial England, a young girl is raised by her actress mother who eventually dies because of tragic circumstances. She is reunited with her father, who runs a tea plantation in Ceylon. He also dies tragically and she is wed to the owner of a neighboring plantation through some manipulation and some naïveté, though nothing too uproarious. Right before the wedding, she is reunited with her childhood tutor who declares his love … too late. She goes to live in Ceylon and is plagued by a devious person. Is it her husband, her sister, the strange “servants” (slaves?) of one of the plantations? No, it is her other tutor who has been the daughter of someone her mother wronged a long time ago! Oh! Then, the devious husband sacrifices his life for hers and she is able to marry the original tutor, and they go live quiet conventional lives.
I would not recommend. Frankly, I was not entertained and will not be reading another Holt book. In all honesty, I tend to read romances to 1) gain insight into past eras (clothing, social conventions, even food), 2) find myself somewhat aroused by satisfied romantic tension, or 3) to be self-righteously startled by the sexism. None of these reasons was satisfied by this book.
