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Not a real banner month for awesome books, this time out. During June’s thirty-day span I finished reading the following:

Noir, Robert Coover. This was a kind of intentionally over-the-top send-up of the hardboiled PI novel, per Hammett and Chandler. It had its moments of real wit, but in the end was a fairly pointless exercise. I won’t tell anyone to avoid it, but won’t advise them to make an effort at finding it, either.

Young Irelanders, Gerard Donovan. A collection of short stories, written over the course of many years, about the author’s fellow countrymen and their lives in a changing Land of Erin. This one seemed tremendously promising for the first two or three entries, demonstrating some fantastic storytelling, and then… I’m not sure. Maybe it just lost steam, or maybe I just got bored with what the book turned out to be. In fairness, it may be that stories of bored people squabbling halfheartedly over sex, dating and marriages within a generic setting nearly indistinguishable from every colorless suburb in America actually is an accurate picture of Irish life in recent decades. But it just didn’t do a lot for me.

Embers, Sandor Marai. This one also flagged a little, but still had a lot to offer. For whatever reason, I guess that I enjoy atmospheric, almost meditative accounts of an isolated character reflecting on his life and routine, when well-written. (Hmmmm.) There was a good deal of that in this story of an old, retired Austrian general, though the core of the book turned into a strange near-monologue on the main character’s relation to an old estranged friend and, ultimately, to life’s purpose and meaning (if any exists). A good work, all the same.

By the Sword, Richard Cohen. A big, if by-no-means comprehensive, tour of the history of fencing. Mostly this book was quite enjoyable, its only real weakness being the lack of any sort of unifying narrative, which made it easy to set aside. While I was on vacation and could actually just sit and read without being concerned by other priorities, I finished the book quite easily.

The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler. Comparing this with Noir, in this instance the original is far more enjoyable than the parody. Beyond that, it’s a Philip Marlowe novel; I won’t say they’re all interchangeable but on the whole all of them share the same strengths. A few minor flaws did stick out while reading this one, especially toward the end, but maybe I’ve just read enough of these to see things that I overlooked previously.

A Conspiracy of Paper, David Liss. Yet another historical mystery novel, but a fine effort in the genre. Given that the author acknowledges this book as being an outgrowth of his research into Georgian-era economic transitions and the evolution of people’s concepts of money and value, it achieves a quite effective balance. The mystery plot and the characters were better-than-average, and the socioeconomic history content (similar, however, to territory explored in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle) was interesting without getting in the story’s way.

Tales of Times Square, Josh Friedman. A 1986 examination of the seedy world of Times Square; this work of historical nonfiction has now become something of an curious historical artefact itself, given the further changes to the square and its reputation during past quarter-century. Interesting, though frequently somewhat nauseating in its frank, almost bored, documentation of every form of sexual private enterprise on offer in 1970s Times Square.

I would offer this book as Exhibit A in defending my long-held belief that fellow liberals’ frequent lament about “gentrification” is largely (not exclusively, but largely) daft. Toward the end of the book, the author shakes off his otherwise detached tone to express his own disapproval of the destruction of the area’s history by what would be called, more recently, the “Disneyfication” of Times Square. And yet, while I’m sure most land developers really are greedy fiends, and I definitely support historic preservation, Friedman’s complaint seems absolutely random and incredible in the context of his depiction of a neighborhood completely rotten with misery, exploitation, crime and, even speaking as a decided non-prude, irredeemable filth. The glories and historic treasures of Times Square weren’t threatened by urban renewal, guy; they were already long-dead anyway. Even a hasty burial is better than leaving them decomposing on the street.