{"id":3641,"date":"2014-08-08T20:02:38","date_gmt":"2014-08-09T00:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3641"},"modified":"2015-01-03T06:12:32","modified_gmt":"2015-01-03T11:12:32","slug":"michael-connelly-and-life-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3641","title":{"rendered":"Michael Connelly and Life Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Michael<\/a>A big fan of Michael Connelly\u2014and his fictional crew, Harry Bosch and \u201cLincoln Lawyer\u201d Mickey Haller\u2014I was eager to study his selection<\/a> of \u201c Books that Changed My Life\u201d on Audible.com. Connelly is one of more than 50 authors from whom Audible has gathered this information\u2014everyone from Philippa Gregory to James Patterson to another of my favorites, Alan Furst. The authors were asked to name the smallish number of books, generally two to four, that fit the life-changing rubric.<\/p>\n

Connelly\u2019s picks are Neely Tucker\u2019s first novel, The Ways of the Dead<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>because of the way that, despite the fast-moving Washington D.C.-based story, Tucker \u201calways takes the time for wry observation of the humanity of the streets.\u201d Washington Post<\/em> review here<\/a>. He also singled out Alafair Burke\u2019s All Day and a Night<\/em><\/a> (New York Journal of Books review here<\/a>). For both of these choices, one of Connelly\u2019s main criteria was how well the authors conveyed a sense of their cities, for example, saying Tucker \u201cknows the turf inside and out.\u201d Much like Bosch and Haller know Los Angeles, I\u2019d say.<\/p>\n

His third selection is Michael Koryta\u2019s Those Who Wish Me Dead <\/em><\/a>(NPR review here<\/a>)\u2014\u201cfull of surprises,\u201d Connelly says. The funny thing about these three choices is that they were all published last June. Either Connelly has an attention span similar to mine, or June was a epochal month for him. At least, he seems to have a different definition of \u201clife-changing\u201d than Audible\u2019s mavens intended.<\/p>\n

As it happens, Koryta is another author asked for life-changers, and his picks are Fitzgerald\u2019s The Great Gatsby<\/em> (\u201crhythm and word choice\u201d), King\u2019s The Shining<\/em> (\u201ca clinic in suspense\u201d), and Cormac McCarthy\u2019s Border Trilogy<\/a>, with its \u201cpeerless prose,\u201d which in the audio version is narrated by Brad Pitt. The three novels are All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing <\/em>(my *****review<\/a>), and Cities of the Plains<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As a postscript, I note the perennial difficulty of finding a review of the one book written by a woman, an issue that helped launch a great organization, Sisters in Crime<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A big fan of Michael Connelly\u2014and his fictional crew, Harry Bosch and \u201cLincoln Lawyer\u201d Mickey Haller\u2014I was eager to study his selection of \u201c Books that Changed My Life\u201d on Audible.com. Connelly is one of more than 50 authors from … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Michael Connelly and Life Change","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,54,40,104],"tags":[99],"class_list":["post-3641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-detective","category-fiction","category-the-morgue","tag-urban-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-WJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3642,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3641\/revisions\/3642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}