I’ve read the series before but I couldn’t fifnish the last book. It’s been 10 years since I’ve read these books. Thankfully The Gunslinger is short…I’m almost done with it.
This morning I finished The One I Left Behind by Jennifer McMahon (about a woman whose mother turns up alive twenty years after having been taken by a serial killer). As I said in last month’s thread, this author is hit or miss. I’d call this one of the better ones, because I was dying to know what was going to happen throughout the last hundred pages. On the other hand, now that I’ve got my answers, I don’t think I believe them. This is not a great book, but decently well written and I did enjoy reading it.
Next up (well maybe) The Mirror, a time-travel novel by Marlys Millhiser. A blurb on the cover compares it to Jack Finney’s Time and Again; another is praise from Phyllis A. Whitney, whose books I loved as a kid. However, twenty pages in, I’m not feeling the confidence in it that I’d like to…
I couldn’t stand A Discovery of Witches. I think my issues with it involved incorrect word usage for sense of place, something like the American character installed at Oxford kept using the wrong terminology for stuff. It’s not like I’m English myself (Australian, living in California) but something about this kind of error drives me batty, just seems to symbolize sloppy sense of place, which is something that’s important to me as a reader.
I did, however, love the Grossman Magicians books, I hope you continue to enjoy them! Book 3 was, I think, a bit better than book 2, in terms of pacing and characterization.
There’s a new Ann Patchett out! Just stuck it on the Kindle. I found out about it through this funny Jezebel post. I guess I’ll finish the book I’m in the middle of before I start it - City of Stairs. It’s… OK so far. Not jumping out at me.
Just finished Half a King by Joe Abercrombie. I loved it. Foresaw one of the twists but not the other. Abercrombie uses just the right amount of authorial brushstrokes to paint a world, and then he fills it with compelling characters who have flaws as well as strengths. Adored his First Law trilogy, and though this was in theory written for YA, it was every bit as fascinating and richly peopled.
I’m stuck in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. Okay, not IN it precisely: on it? 
I love the idea of unreliable narrators, layered storylines, and growing menace, but I’m short-circuited on the characters, I think. Not a one that I find interesting enough to draw me into the interwoven stories.
I’m alternating the above with Enemies at Home, the new Flavia Albia by Lindsey Davis. It’s decent but not up to the level of her Marcus Didius Falco mysteries. I don’t find Albia’s personality as colorful, or her struggles as fraught, as her foster father’s were.
Dead stopped on Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. I’ve had only 100 pages to go for a month, I’ll bet, and I can’t bring myself to pick it up and finish it. Still don’t understand why I haven’t been able to get into this. I love magic realism and normally rush to read things set in India, but this hasn’t grabbed me at all. I don’t care for Saleem Sinai whatsoever for some reason (or his family for that matter) 
Because I saw it mentioned by Grrlbrarian in this thread a few months ago, I picked up The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton. I liked it well enough, the setting was interesting (17th century Amsterdam) and I liked the characters. I was a little :dubious: at the big reveal that
The miniaturist, who seemed to be a mysterious woman with uncanny insights into the lives of others, turned out to be … a mysterious woman with uncanny insights into the lives of others. It doesn’t even make sense, really. Was this supposed to be supernatural, or what?
I am currently reading The Book Of Strange New Things by Michel Faber (author of The Crimson Petal and the White, which I loved), and so far it’s good but I’m not that far in. This is more of a science fiction setting – relatively near future, when there is a colony getting started on some other planet and a Christian minister is sent to be a pastor of sorts to a community of aliens (well, they are native to the planet in question).
I love Rushdie, but I couldn’t get into Midnight’s Children either. How that won the Booker of Bookers is beyond me.
I just finished Tibetan Peach Pie a sort of memoir by Tom Robbins. It was OK, but it did make me want to reread some of his books. I wonder if they have stood up to the test of time.
Please ignore my hasty enthusiasm. I’m about half way through now and ready to punch the idiotic heroine in the neck and trade books with Macca26. 
I’m 100 pages in so far. I went into it with a couple expectations:
(1) The reviews I’ve read by other readers indicate that a lot of the story is more historical fiction and name-dropping than real advancement of the story line.
(2) My enjoyment of the first book was greatly hindered by the relationship between Matthew and Diana. I hated how Diana was described as feisty and free-spirited, but every time she interacted with Matthew she was meek and obedient.
So I went into the book with the intention of enjoying the light-hearted stories of witchcraft, magic, and time-traveling, and expecting Diana to be spineless and Matthew to be creepy.
With those expectations, I am still engaged and enjoying the book 100 pages in. However, I would say that the first chapter is pretty indicative of the tone and pacing of the book as a whole, so if you lost interest in the first chapter, then it’s probably a good indication that you won’t enjoy the rest of the book, either.
The Hot Zone is a great read, would like to see Preston update it to cover the more recent Ebola outbreaks. You might also enjoy The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett; it explores the careers of McCormick and other CDC virologists that Preston mentions, and covers lots of other diseases like hantavirus and dengue fever.
Two thirds through The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell and greatly enjoying it, though POV and time shifts are a bit jarring. He did the same sort of thing in Jacob DeZoet, though less frequently and without time jumps. The current chapter seems moving the disparate threads back to conclusion. Also like how all of Mitchell’s works loosely inhabit the same universe, so the actions of characters in say Cloud Atlas can be reinterpreted from what we know now about them.
I’ve given up on Hoka! Hoka! Hoka! Whenever I pick it up I see a vision of Graham Chapman yelling “Stop that! It’s silly!”
I read somewhere - it seems like Carl Zimmer mentioned it - that Preston is doing precisely that, updating The Hot Zone. For plagues and virology, I enjoyed David Quammen’s Spillover as well.
Thank you! I hate to “give up” on books (especially ones I barely started), but this one might just stay at the bottom of my To Read list for a while…
And another one goes to the “dump it back in the library’s book drop” pile: God Is Red: A Native View of Religion. It was going pretty well until Deloria decided to support the absolutely inane imaginings of Velikovsky* and then brought in the ancient aliens. :smack: I couldn’t bring myself to finish it after that.
*If you haven’t heard of this before, read the link. “Inane” is being generous.
Wow. I made it through the first sentence.
Despite not being much of a fantasy fan, I really like Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller series. I made the mistake of pre-ordering his latest, which I knew going in was just a small side novella: The Slow Regard of Silent Things.
Oy. So bad. Unbearably twee. Revoltingly treacly. I actually feel bad for him because I know from his extensive blog postings that he has an army of beta readers and trusted people surrounding him that he has read his stuff first and apparently no one stepped up and told him, “No. No no.” It’s telling that he apologizes for the book in both the Foreword and the End Note, so I guess he senses on some level that this book should never have seen the light of day.
I’m still looking forward to the final installment of the series, but I’m concerned that Rothfuss has become such a juggernaut that he’s no longer being meaningfully edited.
Oh no! It’s non-fiction! Worse, it’s short format non-fiction - a collection of her essays/article. (I didn’t read the amazon link as I bought it to avoid spoilers.)
I’ll read it, grudgingly. But it’s not the same. NOVEL, PLEASE.
I finished The Mirror, a time-travel story in which a young woman in 1978 switches bodies and lives with her own grandmother and is transported to the year 1900. The writing and characterization weren’t top-caliber, but the situation was just so interesting I didn’t care. Whenever I had to put this book down and live my own stupid life, I kept on thinking about it and wondering what was going to happen next.
The decks are now cleared for Stephen King’s Revival, which is supposed to be here tomorrow.
I’m about 80% through Bolano’s 2666. Had a long haul flight last week so really got into it - Lord have mercy it is an intense book.
Whether I’m feeling it as the masterpiece everyone says it is, I’m not sure yet - I suspect so but need to see how it ends up.
If you’re interested, they are doing a read-along of 2666 here. It’s one of those books that’s been on my list forever, but I suspect I’ll never get to without some external motivation.