Susan Albert > Recent Status Updates

"One of the state’s best trial lawyers was arguing one of the state’s strangest cases, and the state’s most famous author was there to write about it. She would spend a year in town investigating the case, and many more turning it into prose. The mystery in the courtroom that day was what would become of the man who shot the Reverend Willie Maxwell. But for decades after the verdict, the mystery was ..."

" . . .[T]he consumers of crime stories are decidedly female. Women make up the majority of the readers of true crime books and the listeners of true crime podcasts. Television executives and writers, forensic scientists and activists and exonerees all agree: true crime is a genre that overwhelmingly appeals to women."

True crime, manmade environmental disaster. Impressive collection of detail about British post-war life.

Enjoying this realistic (if comically exaggerated) view of Rose. Love it that he's read my book, A WILDER ROSE, and is using it as a source.

Excessively detailed characterizations. The reader has to do her own editing; the author's editor didn't do her job and the author never met a fact he thought was irrelevant. But there's more than enough fascinating legal work to keep me reading.

"Just keep your chip up, Ann, and you can face anything," Mum had said. "And don't look back, no matter what you do." Her mum had never been one for hugs or soft words, but she had been honest, and most of the time she'd been right, too. So chin up it was, and no looking back.”

“Worrying about what would become of her work once it was finished was a waste of time, she told herself. The act of creation was what mattered.”

Love Orlean's knack for the perfect description " . . . one of the few directors who was figuring out the transition from pre-Internet to omnipresent-Internet, and who was successfully rigging the library to sail into the future not as a gigantic, groaning, fusty pile of books but as a sleek ship of information and imagination."

Love Orlean's knack for the perfect description: " . . . one of the few directors who was figuring out the transition from pre-Internet to omnipresent-Internet, and who was successfully rigging the library to sail into the future not as a gigantic, groaning, fusty pile of books but as a sleek ship of information and imagination."

Love the way Orlean captures a scene: "People think that libraries are quiet, but they really aren’t. They rumble with voices and footsteps and a whole orchestral range of book-related noises—the snap of covers clapping shut; the breathy whisk of pages fanning open; the distinctive thunk of one book being stacked on another; the grumble of book carts in the corridors."

"The library is a gathering pool of narratives and of the people who come to find them. It is where we can glimpse immortality; in the library, we can live forever."

Using lies,--spontaneous, carefully crafted, badly contrived--to produce the truth. "Nobody ever tells you when you go into police work that it will require dishonesty. The objective, it would seem, is the opposite, utter honesty. But once you get into the really interesting stuff, you descend, by necessity, a moral ladder onto slippery ground where the truth is a liability."

This is a book about patiently ceaselessly, sifting the truth out of a haystack of lies. "Nobody ever tells you when you go into police work that it will require dishonesty. The objective, it would seem, is the opposite, utter honesty. But once you get into the really interesting stuff, you descend, by necessity, a moral ladder onto slippery ground where the truth is a liability."

The reporter should never assume he knows which version is most accurate. The best a good reporter can do is gather all the information and present every side of the story.--p 16

Renner calls himself a "gonzo journalist." Wikipedia: a style of journalism that is written without claims of objectivity, often including the reporter as part of the story via a first-person narrative. It is an energetic first-person participatory writing style in which the author is a protagonist, and it draws its power from a combination of social critique and self-satire." Interesting style for "true" crime.

A memoir/true=crime about obsession, compulsion, the need to know, and the impossibility of knowing it (whatever "it" is).

"Here was a girl who survived her ordeal when so many others, snatched away from their lives, do not. Then for her to die so soon after her rescue, her story subsumed by a novel, one of the most iconic, important works of the twentieth century? Sally Horner got under my skin in a way that few stories ever have."

The real crux of this book: “The appreciation of art can make a sucker out of those who forget the darkness of real life."

As certain as weather coming from the west, the things people know for sure will change. There is no knowing for a fact. The only dependable things are humility and looking.

Once you've bought a book in your pajamas, there's no turning back.

The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a great story.

What else is there to say, to a bear? “Apologize! I tell him, people very stupid. They forget everything—where they come from, where they go. I say: Don’t worry. Human being leaving this world, very soon. Then the bear get top bunk to himself again.” p. 38

"What else is there to say to a bear? 'Apologize!' I tell him. People very stupid. They forget everything--where they come from, where they go. I say, 'Don't worry. People leaving this world very soon. Then the bear get top bunk to himself again.'" p. 38

Interesting: the way Powers begins to bring the characters together, assembling an ensemble w/various essential skills, gifts. Haven't enjoyed a book more in a very long time.

Incredibly detailed characterizations--structure reminds me of the movie Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind

Amazing. Deep immersion in character in relatively short segments. Where is this going?

Background reading for the next China Bayles mystery.

An impressive story about the commercialization of what is arguably the most significant scientific discovery of the 20th century, and the women who suffered and died for it. Superb research, fascinating reading.