Dave's Fiction Warehouse

Really, he’s fine. “One of life’s most unappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter.” – Sen. Mitch McConnell. T hat may be true. It may also be true that some people have more of this talent than others. Mitch McConnell isn’t one of them.  Last March, McConnell was hospitalized after falling down at a fundraiser where there were no stairs in the immediate vicinity.   In July, he froze up at the podium while concerned aides had to restrain themselves from slapping him back to sentience.  In August, Mitch again went blank at the lectern, staring into infinity like a Disney robot on the fritz. If McConnell had a talent for knowing when to shuffle off to Louisville, he’s kept it pretty well hidden. Only now is he ready to throw in the towel. And really, not even now: He’ll still be minority leader until the election, and he’ll still be a senator until his term ends in 2027. It’ll be interesting to see how many falls and fugue states ...

That’s me on the left. G ood evening and welcome to the 2024 Oscar Rundown for Older Viewers Who Could Not Be Bothered to See Very Many of the Nominated Films.  Actually, only four: “Barbie,” “Oppenheimer,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and “The Holdovers.” All were pretty cheap to stream and these days I much prefer the comfort of my living room to any multiplex on the planet. Also, I find the closed captions on my medium-size Samsung work pretty well. That’s not always the case in theaters. Anyway, the envelopes please: Least favorite: “Oppenheimer.” The part with the Trinity test was great; the rest of the film was way too talky.  Most favorite: “The Holdovers” – Funny, poignant and unpredictable. Paul Giamatti. You should check it out. Least memorable: “Barbie.” Fun while it lasted, but really it’s just a cartoon with a fairly simplistic message.  Most memorable: “Killers of the Flower Moon.”  Kind of like “Schindler’s List” in that it’s pretty long and you can...

E verything being written about AI (artificial intelligence) will probably seem quaint and stupid a year from now. Especially everything written on this site, which is generated entirely with NaGDoI (not a great deal of intelligence). Still, allow me to blather.  First, it’s already everywhere. All of us are already interacting with AI every single day, mostly without being explicitly aware of it. This morning, for example, I was scanning my Google news feed and was struck by how many of the “news” cards were in fact listicles – you know, those irresistible rabbit holes with titles like “10 Best Places for Serial Killers to Retire,” or “Seven Signs You May Have Diarrhea.” The one I caught myself reading today was “9 Divisive Seasons of Great TV Shows That Are Worth Rewatching Today.” The TV shows listed were not particularly great, and the reasons they should be rewatched were not wholly convincing. Oddly generic, in fact. Almost as if – and bear with me here – someone had been tas...

It's a Christmas miracle W ho among us has not wished to receive disability checks without the inconvenience of being actually disabled? It’s the American dream. An Irish one too. Kamila Grabska, 36, had been collecting disability checks since a 2017 traffic accident in County Clare. She said the injury left her unable to work, or sometimes even get out of bed. She sued an insurance company for back pay, the whole amount coming to around $800 grand.  Then surfaced this picture of Ms. Grabska winning the 2018 Irish Christmas Tree Throwing Championship. Oops.  I like the judge’s opinion as he tossed out the claim. You can practically hear an amiable Irish lilt in his words:   “It is a very large, natural Christmas tree and it is being thrown by her in a very agile movement. I’m afraid I cannot but conclude the claims were entirely exaggerated.” Sorry, Kamila, but at least you can keep the trophy. Not sure why it took so long for the photograph to surface. And I really ...

T here are two kinds of books: Those you want to end, and those you don’t.  “Chenneville” by Paulette Jiles is in the latter category. I expect it will be the standard by which I judge any other book I read this year.  It has everything I love in a historical novel:  irresistible story, crystalline writing, sharply defined peripheral characters, a determined but fallible protagonist.   Like Jiles’ excellent “News of the World” in 2016, “Chenneville” is set in post-Civil War Texas, a land ruled mostly by violence amid the general scarcity of civil authority. John Chenneville is a Union soldier recovering from a severe head wound. He returns home to find his sister and her family have been murdered months before. When he learns the probable identity of the killer, the odyssey is on. He’s going to find this guy, and he’s going to kill him. The quest is complicated by the land and the weather and a relentless U.S. marshal who comes to believe that Chenneville himsel...

Not a tough choice, unless you're a Republican I hate writing anything about Trump. I hate even thinking about him. I hate his braying voice, the way he stands with that odd forward tilt. I hate his stupid hair hat and the long red tie and the drunk-uncle speeches that manage just enough coherence to incite civil-war fantasies among his dim-bulb fans. I hate that he thinks he’s funny. And so I dared dream that Nikki Haley might hurt him a little in South Carolina. Of course it wasn’t going to happen. That was like dreaming a high-school varsity squad might win the Super Bowl. Today’s Republicans will not be distracted from their own dream of one-party rule, and their childish conviction that this pie-faced loon from Mar-a-Lago is the one to get them there. I salute Haley for at least trying to coax a little sanity back to the GOP. Sanity is good. But, like most people who coddled Trump during his ramshackle presidency, she is way too little and way too late. Upset wins do not come ...

An unpleasant day at the Fagin residence E very year or so I reach back into the mists of time and find a famous classic book I’ve not yet read. There are an embarrassing number of those. So, since December, I’ve finished “A Tale of Two Cities,” “The Count of Monte Cristo,” “Great Expectations,” and just yesterday, “Oliver Twist.”  Three Dickens and one Dumas: Probably enough Victorian literature for a while. But until now I’d read no Dumas books and only two by Dickens (“A Christmas Carol,” of course, and “Hard Times”). I thought the long winter nights might be a good time to catch up.  As most of you already know, Dumas and Dickens tend to write long. Like, really long. Their books seem even longer when read on a Kindle and you can’t judge your progress by the thickness of the remaining pages. You proceed on faith alone, taking one chapter at a time until sleep arrives. And then repeat. The dialog can be surprisingly sharp and witty; Dickens in particular had a keen sense of...

T o celebrate President’s Day 2024, I decided to forgo the usual fireworks, gift-giving and ceremonial dances. Instead I started moving all the posts on this 17-year-old blog to one big text file on Google drive. I’m thinking maybe I’ll get them printed at some point.  It’s every bit as tedious as it sounds. By now the blog has almost 900 posts; I’m having to copy and paste each one. As I go through them, starting with the first one from June 2007, I’ve noticed a few things.  First, I used to post almost every day. I posted more in the first three years than in the following eleven.  I started out focusing on crime fiction and writing, but then gradually let things devolve into the desultory – TV shows now long defunct, movies and politics and pop culture. A long road trip out west. A death in the family. And, starting in 2015 or so, a certain malignant clown who continues to bedevil us to this day.   Second, I’ve been kind of repetitious. The preceding paragrap...

Now it's all on your head I have a rich history of ridiculing new Apple products, most of which then go on to be hugely successful. Nevertheless, allow me to deride the Apple Vision Pro. I’ll take my chances. You’ve heard of this, right? It’s a virtual-reality headset. It starts at $3,499 (because $3500 would be too much). When you strap it to your head, you can interact with computer imagery superimposed over your view of the real world – which in your case will consist of your cluttered living room.  Of course, you can tune out the living room and just go with the computer imagery. Which, I should point out, is already available without a high-tech headset that messes up your hair and won’t accommodate your glasses. All that stuff is on your computer, just not with the illusion of 3D. It’s on any of the myriad iPhones and iPads you already possess and for which you can never seem to find the right charging cord. (And yes, the Vision Pro requires yet another proprietary cable.)...