Alphonso Joseph D’Abruzzo is well known as Hawkeye Pierce from the old TV Show M.A.S.H.

I’d heard good reviews of his autobiography, published 2005. And finally listened to an abridged audio version with Alda reading.

Alan Alda’s autobiography travels a path less taken. Instead of a sensationalist, name-dropping page-turner, Alda writes about his life as a memory play, an exercise in recollecting his childhood, his parents (dad Robert was a veteran on stage, film, and vaudeville), and his career. You want to know about Alda’s most famous work, the eleven years on M*A*S*H? You have exactly 16 pages to do so, and guess what: It’s one of the least entertaining parts of the book. …

Really, who else would name his memoir after an unfortunate trip to the taxidermist? The year the book was published during a revival for the 69-year-old; he was nominated for an Oscar, Emmy, and Tony in the same year.

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I’ve Learned

He was the prototype starving actor who financed his lousy career by inventing “systems” to win at the horse track.

Very interesting and engaging.

I loved his story of the morning of the Academy Awards … (He had been nominated for his supporting role as Senator Ralph Owen Brewster in Martin Scorsese’s film The Aviator.) … While at the grocery store he was mistaken for an elderly shop clerk.

Alan Alda is a likable actor. And an entertaining writer. Highly recommended for one and all.

His second autobiographical book, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, looks to be less appealing.

Since I was in Edinburgh, I listened to one of the classic ‘Tartan Noir‘ Inspector Rebus books, A Question of Blood.

Given his contempt for authority, his tendency to pursue investigative avenues of his own choosing, and his habitually ornery manner, it’s a wonder that John Rebus hasn’t been booted unceremoniously from his job as an Edinburgh cop. He certainly tempts that fate again in A Question of Blood, which finds him and his younger partner, Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke, trying to close the case of a withdrawn ex-soldier named Lee Herdman, who apparently shot three teenage boys at a Scottish private school, leaving two of them dead, before turning the pistol on himself.

“There’s no mystery,” Siobhan insists at the start of this 14th Rebus novel (following Resurrection Men). “Herdman lost his marbles, that’s all.” However, the hard-drinking, chain-smoking Rebus, who’d once sought entry into the same elite regiment in which Herdman served (but ultimately cracked under psychological interrogation), thinks there’s more motive than mania behind this classroom slaughter. …

A Question of Blood

Excellent.

I could not get into the Ian Rankin presentation at the Edinburgh Book Festival. (Everything popular is sold out quickly.) Same problem with another big name there, Margaret Atwood.

I understand that Exit Music (2007) is supposed to be the 17th and last Rebus book. I’ll put that on my audible wish list.

UPDATE – Exit Music turned out to be his retirement book. But Rebus keeps popping up in subsequent books. 

The man most identified with the cyberpunk genre of literature is never boring.

Pattern Recognition is a novel by science fiction writer William Gibson published in 2003. Set in August and September 2002, the story follows Cayce Pollard, a 32-year-old marketing consultant who has a psychological sensitivity to corporate symbols. The action takes place in London, Tokyo, and Moscow as Cayce judges the effectiveness of a proposed corporate symbol and is hired to seek the creators of film clips anonymously posted to the internet. …

Amazon – Pattern Recognition

It’s quite good.

My only caveat in recommending Gibson is to suggest you read his books soon after publication.

He’s keen to reveal cutting trends in technology in his stories. This book highlighted Netscape and Hotmail.

hmmm