Warm Bodies ruled the box office this weekend, following the footsteps of surprise success of Zombieland. Zombies never die! The rest of the top five were similar to last week - the abominable Hansel and Gretel stayed strong at #2, and Silver Linings..., Mama, and Zero Dark Thirty rounded out the five. The Stallone vehicle, Bullet to the Head, was DOA, finishing sixth. Oscar nominations helped other films stay on course and hang around in the top ten - Les Mis, Lincoln, Django...
Book Reviews for today:
J.R. Moehringer's Sutton (2012) is sure to be one of the most enjoyable novels I'll encounter this year. I knew nothing about real-life bank robber Willie Sutton; by the time the novel's 334 pages came to a close, I felt that I knew him fully. On Christmas Eve 1969, after a decade-plus stint at Attica Prison in New York, Sutton was released and followed by a reporter, whose paper had exclusive rights to Sutton's story, across New York City. Moehringer imagines what might have happened that day.
Sutton leads the reporter (and a photographer) on a chronological journey across the city, narrating his story: his birth in the Irish slums, early friendships, the love of his life, early crimes, prison stints, the daring escapes, the fame. What emerges is a loving, straightforward, jovial, scrappy portrait of an individual who when asked why he stole from banks, answered famously, "because that's where the money is."
It's almost impossible not to like this book. The narrative flows really well, the characters are interesting, there's romance and it's informative. It's an accurate, colorful re-creation of a time and place too - Depression-era New York most of the time. Moehringer researched the book well (I had no idea that the marble lions outside the New York Metropolitan Library were named Patience and Fortitude were named by Mayor LaGuardia as symbols of the traits New Yorkers would need to get through the Depression) but he shows a lot of creative prowess in his limning of a character like. Willie emerges as a grand storyteller, though you can't always trust him. Plucky, pithy, courageous, and plotting, Willie Sutton is presented here as more colorful than he might actually have been, but that's fiction for you. I would recommend this book to anyone.
Grade: A-
*
Donald Westlake's 2003 novel Money For Nothing has a great premise: an ordinary Joe mysteriously starts receiving checks from an untraceable government agency for $1000 once a month. The checks continue to come, month after month, for seven years. One day, on the ferry out to Fire Island, he is approached by a lumpy, olive-skinned foreigner and informed that he is now "active."
I liked the book - Westlake can write a drum-tight, bleakly funny plot - but I guess I didn't quite find the second-half of the novel - long after the storyline (which ends up involving an assassination attempt on a hated despot at Yankee Stadium) - as enjoyable, as worthy of the great premise. Overall, not bad, though the main character was the least interesting one in the book.
Grade: B-
Images courtesy of:
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