I don’t understand.
For some time now I have been overloaded on my Twitter feed with boring, repetitious encomiums to the recent novel by Jake Tapper, The Hellfire Club. If only for shits and grins, I fully intended to read the novel but if you followed the official and unofficial press you’d be convinced the Tapper’s work was the height of literary accomplishments akin to Tolstoy or Mann.
Tapper has reconstructed the Washington, D. C. scene of the mid-fifties and, as popular novels must therefore do, is full of references to events, sites, and objects that are quintessential 1950s. The right music, the correct fashions, the mixed drinks that would be served, the favored breakfast cereals, and events right out of the newspapers of the day. It provides a nice, easy nostalgic flow the lulls the reader into just the right state for the jarring events suggested as the novel commenced.
How many years have I been scanning new book lists, digging through my personal library, noting suggestions from the newspapers or booksellers, and creating a daily reading selection to feed my own TBR list and also to provide suggestions to other readers?
Suggested Reading: What does that mean to me?