Book 747: Camino Island – John Grisham

I read this after a coworker passed it on because he knew I loved books and this is a book about a book theft from a world class library and then set in a bookstore featuring mostly authors and booksellers. I mean come on that’s like catnip to a book blogger, right?

Unfortunately, this book was 100% forgettable. I’m not sure if it has to do with it not being a legal thriller or if it has to do with the weird split narrative. But whatever it was I just wasn’t feeling it.

I’m writing this a few days after I finished and I don’t remember any of the characters names and really only remember the first theft, a lot of dialogue from boisterous authors gossiping about each other, some pretty unthreatening thuggery, a half-assed love affair, and pseudo-spy story. And really that’s all you need to know because not much matters other than ultimately some people are successful and others aren’t. Meh.

I took note of a lot of the titles mentioned in this book, but doubt I’ll read most of them:

• In Cold Blood – Truman Capote88*
• Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison*
• The Sound and the Fury – William Falkner
• The Beautiful and the Damned – F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald*
• The Last Tycoon – F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
• This Side of Paradise – F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
• Catch-22 – Joseph Heller*
• A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemmingway
• For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemmingway
• Papa Hemmingway – A.E. Hotchner
• The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer
• The Paris Wife – Paula McClain
• The Moviegoer – Walker Percy
• Goodbye, Columbus – Philip Roth
• The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger*
• Cup of Gold – John Steinbeck
• The Confessions of Nat Turner – William Styron
• Rabbit, Run – John Updike

Maybe it’s because it’s just a bunch of old dead white men, but meh. Doubt I’ll pursue many of these other than those I want to re-read (*) because we read them in school (or when I was younger) and I have a feeling I’ll have more appreciation (or at least understanding) of them now.

Recommendation: Pass. This really is a forgettable book. I did see there was a follow up to this one, but I have no desire to read it. If you like Grisham you might like this as a light beach read, but it was a bit of a struggle for me to stay interested in it.

Opening Line: “The imposter borrowed the name Neville Manchin, an actual professor of American literature at Portland state and soon-to-be doctoral student at Stanford.”

Closing Line: “She watched him ease between the tables and leave the coffeehouse.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)