Whatcha Readin' November 2011 Edition

Happy Halloween all!

I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to start November’s thread. We’ve been without power since 3PM Saturday. And I was hearing Tuesday or Wednesday for it to come back.

But I got a nice surprise coming home - it is on.

Finished: Heat Rises (Nikki Heat 3) the third from Richard Castle. I liked this one the best. Although it still seems to read like an episode of Castle, I thought the writing had improved. If you are a fan, you will likely read this anyway - but it gets my recommendation.

Finished: A Monster Calls: Inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd. I thought it was a beautifully written book, and even though I have entered a phase in my life when I want to come away from a book feeling good, and even though this book made me weep, I will still recommend it. A well-written book should make you feel and this book does, every step of the way. I could relate, in some way, to almost every page.

Finished: Darling Jim an odd little tale of murder and revenge. I’m not yet sure what I want to say about it. I didn’t hate it, I didn’t exactly *enjoy *it, but it was well-written and kept me hooked. Will I recommend it? I just don’t know yet.

November is here - have a great Thanksgiving!

Missed the edit window.

Linkto October’s thread.

Hope your power stays on, K.

I’m about halfway through The Dead Path, by Stephen M. Irwin. (I just read A Monster Calls, which makes this the second book in a row for me that references the Green Man mythology. Eerie!) I read a lot of horror, but I’m actually finding this spooky and very well-done. I think I’ll be adding this author’s name to my list of “writers to watch in future”.

I read Monster Calls because of your post. And so I’ll add this one to my queue too.

Forgot: Finished The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan. (Of course I’ve over-used the term but…) Again I’ll say a well-written novel, told from the point of view of the a werewolf who finds out all others of his kind have been hunted down and killed.

It was quick and compelling and although sometimes the author’s attempt at wit fell short, I still mostly enjoyed it.

It’s November here already, going on 10am on the 1st. I’m about 3/5 through Lord of the Flies, by William Golding.

:o Whoa, now I really hope it turns out good!

I started Reamde by Neal Stephenson. Good so far, although I didn’t realize it was 800+ pages when I started it (that’s the thing about ereaders, they can be very deceptive). With this author, I don’t know why I’m surprised, but I was.

I have Ready Player One coming up next, but at this rate, I’ll still be posting about Reamde in the December thread.

Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom should probably be the next big book a la Freakonomics. It’s chock full of tidbits that are fascinating about marketing and ourselves.

I did quite a bit of reading in the last couple of weeks without posting here, so I’ll quickly lump all of it into this thread:

Finished:
David Simon’s Homicide. Embedded reporting in the late 1980s Baltimore PD Homicide division. Must have been republished because of The Wire, and fans of that show will find their favorite people in here as well. Utterly fascinating and disillusioning book about homicide detecting–and about the 50% of cases were homicide cops need no detecting at all, because some dumb-ass criminal makes it easy.
“Richard Castle”'s Heat Wave. Reads like a Castle episode, plus badly written sex. Nice enough, but not necessarily something I would recommend. Got it cheap, though.
Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in Science-Fictional Universe. This I thought had a far more intriguing premise than it finally delivered. It wasn’t a bad read by any means, but it seemed to try far to hard to be clever and sophisticated.
Jeffrey Toobin’s The Nine, on the last twenty-thirty years of the Supreme Court. Also an excellent read, and does away with a couple of the prejudices I clearly had about the current justices–even as it confirms other conceptions about them. It’s also a little bit scary, like most behind-the-scenes looks, by establishing just how stupid and human many of the protagonists in politics and the jurisdiction are.
Nickolas Cook’s Alice in Zombieland. Of the various mashups I’ve read so far, the weakest. Not clear what it’s supposed to tell me about Alice, or anybody else.
F. Paul Wilson’s All the Rage and The Keep, and Reborn. The Keep was excellent, even a bit scary; Reborn was mostly just very sad, and All the Rage opened an interesting perspective into the future of the series.

Currently, I’m reading Holger Herwig’s The Battle of the Marne, which I like rather better than Barbara Tuchman’s Guns of August, and would recommend, much as I dislike saying something negative about Tuchman. But Herwig balances narrative and analysis much more nicely.
Also up: Colson Whitehead’s zombie novel Zone One, which constructs an interesting post-apolyptical landscape. Three-person teams clear New York blocks from “skels,” sponsored by multinational corporations, while the provisional government in Buffalo tries to get a hold on things.
Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. Can’t get into it…may dump it at some point…

Currently I’m in the middle of the Hollows series. Unfortunately, it’s going slow as I only have most of the books in ebook format, my kindle is dead, and I have no way to replace it until next year at the earliest. With 5 people in the house and one computer, my read time on it is limited.

When I’m not reading that, I’m rereading The Gathering Storm.

Me, too - I am about “30%” done with it, but since I never checked if there are sections included after the book, I don’t know if I am really ~1/3 done or maybe more.

It is a fine read, moving a long, but not much is really happening and I am getting a stockpile of books I really want to get started on, so if I get to 50% and don’t find myself digging in deeper, I may <gasp> walk away.

I want to read the new book The Swerve about the rediscovery of the ancient Roman poem De Rarem Natura by an early-Renaissance book dealer. There is also a new book about Translations and what they tell us about meaning and words that was just reviewed in the NYTimes that sounds great…oh, and I just stumbled across this collection of stories which “best illustrate the Zen mind” called Zen Flesh Zen Bones which i want to check out, and, and, and…

Too many books.

You knew about this show too, right?: Homicide: Life on the Street - Wikipedia

I’ve pushed The Nine into the hands of many friends. A near-perfect blend of law, history, politics and gossip - very, very good stuff.

I read The Keep in high school and really liked it. I should re-read it sometime. My favorite scene was where the old Jewish scholar and the vampire are talking, and the vampire muses about going to Berlin to overthrow “Lord Hitler”… wow!

Now I want to read this book. It’s never-ending!

I am just now finishing Mary McCarthy’s very enjoyable The Group (they remind me so much of some of my school-girl friends!). Am about to begin Michael Arlen’s scandalous The Green Hat.

I know, right?

I finished Sharon Kay Penman’s Lionheart over the weekend. It’s 600 pages of small print, so it’s quite a long book - and it’s only half of Richard’s story. It breaks with the ending of the Third Crusade, and will pick up in her next novel: The King’s Ransom.

The book was very well written and I enjoyed it, even though I’m not sure it’s successful as a novel, exactly. The flow and structure is not quite right. For instance, Penman would occasionally pull out of the story to relate a contemporary chronicler’s account of certain events. It was an entertaining way to learn a little history, though.

I’m re-reading Jane Eyre for the first time in years, this time not allowing myself to skip the ~133 pages (not that I counted or anything :p) before Mr. Rochester shows up.

I had forgotten what an emotionally turbulent little girl Jane was. She only became master of her feelings by modelling her demeanor after the lovely Miss Temple at Lowood Institution.

Picked up 40 books at a library sale a couple weeks ago and have been tearing through them. When you only pay a quarter for a book, there’s no pressure to (1) like it or (2) finish it or (3) make it last. The books are in plastic bags on the porch and I’m just grabbing and reading. What fun!

One was Italian Fever by Valerie Martin. I really liked Property by her, but this one wasn’t that good. An American woman travels to Italy when her boss (a writer) dies in an accident. She has an affair with a married Italian man, goes to museums and eats good Italian food. The “plot” revolved around her suspicions about her boss’s death, but mostly I think she wrote the book because she’d been to Italy and wanted to write about it.

Another was Down by the River where the Dead Men Go by George Pelecanos. This is in the Nick Stefanos series. Nick is a PI, alcoholic, all around substance abuser, quite the loose cannon. I like him.

Dumped The Accidental by Ali Smith after just two pages. Went to Amazon to read the one-star reviews so I wouldn’t feel guilty about not trying harder.

I just finished The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall. It certainly has its flaws, but on the whole I’d recommend it enthusiastically as one of the best novels of the last few years.