Getting to know me

Dale Spindel

 

    As I sit here writing my first blog entry for Dead Guy, I am humbled by what I consider to be the biggest mystery of all, namely how in heck have I ended up here?   If anything, I might have expected an invitation to blog for Hey, There’s a Dead Plant in the Living Room or maybe even Hey, There’s a Dead Spider in the Living Room, but Dead Guy?   After all, I was that kid in 8^th grade who got nightmares from reading Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” and, to this day, I’ve never watched a single episode of Law and Order.   Yeah, I guess that alone makes me some kind of latter day freak.

 

    The fact of the matter is that while I love to read, I have never gravitated toward mysteries and even as a child I was never motivated to explore the genre beyond a single reading of Nancy Drew and the Secret of the Old Clock.    I suspect that my initial  youthful disinterest regarding mysteries can be traced back, not to any sense of squeamishness (Nancy Drew was pretty tame, after all), but from my own feelings of  discomfort at not being able to figure out on my own exactly what that old clock’s secret really was.   I considered myself to be a smart kid in school who was used to getting all the answers right.  Why would I voluntarily seek out books which made me feel a lot less smart than I already thought I was?

 

    Aside from my Poe phobia, by 8^th grade I had turned myself into what I considered to be a “serious” reader (no paperback teen romance novels for me, thank you very much), working my way through most of the shorter novels of John Steinbeck as well as through such mid-1960s reading list classics as James Hilton’s Lost Horizons and Goodbye Mr. Chips, Orwell’s Animal Farm, and a bunch of high minded tomes like The Good Earth and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.  It was these latter titles for which, at least in   8^th grade, I was sorely lacking in the type of life experiences required to be able to remotely understand what these books were really about.  

 

     (Somehow, I managed to complete junior high school without having read either Of Mice and Men or Lord of the Flies although I sat through so many oral book reports for both these books that it didn’t matter.)

 

    So moving ahead quickly, here I am in late middle age both a compulsive reader and a compulsive listener of audiobooks.   And I still gravitate toward gravitas; a partial list of my favorite authors includes Philip Roth, Jonathan Safran Foer, John Irving, Tom Perrotta, Nathan Englander, Mary Gordon, and Marilynne Robinson.  As I’ve opined  to the members of my library’s book discussion group, if the  author can tell me a good story,  create believable characters who I can care about even if I don’t like them as people, and use language in unexpectedly beautiful ways, then I am going to love his or her books.   If, as I am turning the last pages of a book, I feel that my way of looking at the world has been somehow transformed, so much the better.  If a novelist can take me someplace that is emotionally dark but make me laugh at the same time (I’m talking to you, Philip Roth and Jonathan Safran Foer), then I’m in absolute readers heaven.

 

    So it was with a certain sense of surprise and delight after reading or listening to Just After Sunset, Lisey’s Story, Cell, and Under the Dome that I came to the realization that Steven King needed to be added to that list of authors who I love, and that I loved him precisely because of the way that he was able to scare the sh—out of me.  Okay, so maybe I’m just a late bloomer.

 

    But what does all this have to do with my writing for a mystery blog? It’s not like I’ve spent my adult life without ever having read any mysteries.   I got through 11 or 12 Stephanie Plums and laughed my head off  until I eventually found myself losing patience with Stephanie’s inability to learn from her past mistakes, all the  while also developing  a deep resentment of Stephanie’s extraordinary ability to string along her two super hot boyfriends for a ridiculously long period of time.  It is more than a little ironic that at the same time that I was working my way through Evanovich I was also sampling the novels of Faye Kellerman and repeatedly muttering under my breath that Rina really needed to lighten up.  I’ve laughed my way through Jeffrey Cohen’s Aaron Tucker mysteries and sampled Laura Lippman, but that hardly makes me an expert.

 

    But here I am, willing to learn and looking for adventure, both figuratively and literally.   Participating in this blog will give me the chance to more fully examine why I read, what I read, and what it all means to me.  If you’ve made it this far, thanks for listening.

Comments

[Lartonmedia]

Welcome, Dale! I stopped reading the Kellerman books because the oh-so-perfect Rina made my teeth hurt! I'm still hanging in there with Stephanie Plum, but you're absolutely right . . .

[Patty Andersen]

Welcome Dale. I've spent years trying to explain to people why I read Stephen King, yet no other horror writers. It is the language, the character development and the humor. Tommyknockers wasn't his best story but the image of a Coke machine floating through the woods ready to attack people just left this image in my head that lives forever. Glad you are here it is nice to see some different authors mentioned occasionally.

[Roy Innes]

Add my name to your welcomes, Dale. I like your style.
My introduction to Stephen King was his treatise, On Writing. Never read a single one of his novels before that and I bought On Writing only to add to my reference library. One read-through, however, and I realized the man is truly writer to be admired. Reminded me a lot of Raymond Carver's Call if You Need Me.

[Jeff Cohen]

Welcome, Dale! Looking forward enthusiastically to seeing you here every week!

[Patti Abbott]

Some of my favorite writers too. I have one foot in and one foot out of this world. And I will be most happy to hear what you have to say in the coming weeks.

[Gina Pangione]

Dale, I enjoyed your first post very much, and I look forward to reading more of you along with the others at Dead Guy every week. I've been an avid fan of SK for decades, and, aside from Under The Dome, It and The Stand, Dreamcatcher is a very interesting read (just don't rent the movie, it's awful). But, if there's one book that I can say truly scared me(and still does every time I reread it), it's SK's Salem's Lot--a true classic. Best wishes!

[Annay Dawson]

Hi,
I so agree with you with the Evanovich stories. I wish she would just get to the point or put the anti. Problem is we all need to have candy' occasionally or we forget what good 'food' taste like.

[Dale Spindel]

Yes, I agree about needing candy sometimes and I also have to give credit where credit is due - Evanovich is a total genius when it comes to creating an ensemble of vivid, comic supporting characters.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

[Barbara W.]

Dale!
Delighted to see your thoughts in print, on the Internet yet! Consider me a fan. You keep writing and I'll keep reading...