Every Last Drop by Charlie Huston.
In this fascinatingly flawed fourth episode in the bloody horror-noir chronicles of New York vampire PI Joe Pitt... relations between the city's vampire clans are unraveling. The Cure is researching antidotes to the ravenous vampire-creating Vyrus, while the better-nourished Coalition seeks the Cure's downfall and the Society plays both sides. Dodging death threats and brokering shaky deals, Pitt shuttles among all three until he learns the Coalition's secret..."
I dig me some vampires. And noir, as a genre, is one of my favorites. And Huston writes a good yarn. So, easily, I dug on this book. My only complaint, and this applies to the previous book in the series, as well as this one, is that the endings are entirely too cliffhanger-y. After putting in the time, I expect, not to have everything wrapped up, but not to be left hanging with an obvious "big deal" coming up and unresolved. [Jim Butcher does a great job of this in his Dresden Files books. Lots of ongoing subplots, but the main plot is pretty much done in one.] Whereas in Every Last Drop, the big revealed secret [while kind of ghastly, didn't seem like much of a secret, or a reveal] causes a very obvious chain of events, and just as that chain reaction starts, the book ends. If felt like a bit of a cheat, to be honest. Kind of frustrating. Can't be too mad, as it's a given I'm gonna pick up the next book in the series, but I didn't really like the way it ended at all.
Finally finished off two books that can both be termed, loosely, positive psychology. Or at least that's the way I look at them... Ask and It Is Given by Esther Hicks and Jerry Hicks, and The Science of Success by James Arthur Ray.
So, yeah, I tend to read a lot of stuff in the psychology, self-improvement, positive psych genre. I have it on good authority [Hi Sandy!] that I am entirely too negative, pessimistic, cynical and smart-assed for my own good. And I can see that. There's a lot of accuracy in that assertion. I can see why folks might think that.
But oddly enough, and on the other hand, I've probably not felt more optimistic and positive in my life, I think, than during this time around in Japan. Which I attribute almost all of to the fact that on a daily basis I work with kids. Cheerful, cherubic faces makes it hard to be a bastard, they do.
Optimism is something I try, and fail, and try again and again to cultivate. In the words of Tony Robbins [who I do think has some good ideas] pessimism is just you being too much of a coward to hope and possibly be disappointed.
My favorite philosopher, Robert Anton Wilson, said of optimism
"The reason for optimism lies in the biological fact that it keeps you happy and busy, whereas pessimism just leads to lying around and bitching. I'd rather keep happy and busy than lie around bitching, but I know this will not convince those who really like lying around and bitching. As Nietzsche said that optimism and good health always go together, and so do pessimism and morbidity, in the medical sense of the word."
So yeah, positive psych books make up some of my library. I enjoyed both the Hicks and Ray books, in different ways. Hicks has a "New Age" spin, that if you like [or can see past] has a lot of good stuff. Ray comes across as a more metaphysical Tony Robbins, which can be a good thing, though I liked his book Practical Spirituality better than Science of Success.
More from RAW on optimism... worth reading.
"There are a lot of reasons for my optimism. One is, as long as things are unknown you might as well assume the best, because if you assume the worst you’re just making yourself miserable and ruining your digestion. It can even lead to ulcers. In extreme cases it even leads to heart attacks. I think pessimism is very, very dangerous, on health grounds. There’s actually research showing that optimists recover from diseases much faster than pessimists. So it’s a health measure, I try to preserve my optimism as a way of guarding my health.
Then again because the literary establishment, especially in New York--the people who define themselves as "the intellectuals," who think there is nobody with any brains anywhere in the country--they’re all so resolutely pessimistic. I feel somebody has got to raise a dissenting voice, just so there will be a dialogue at least. So I try to present a case for optimism.
...Another grounds for my optimism, is that people always do the most intelligent thing, after they’ve have tried all the stupid alternatives and none of them have worked. And I think that the present system on the planet has obviously shown that it doesn’t work. And the only alternative is more communication, and more honesty and more fair dealing. But it begins with honest communication. People saying what they really think and feel.
You know why Hannibal Lecter is so charming in spite of his bad habits? Because he thoroughly enjoys life. Most people don’t. Once they start communicating with one another they will start to enjoy life a little more, because they’ll feel less alone and less hopeless."
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