Grrrrr my email delivers all the junk but none of the good stuff!
Anyway, I finished Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke. It was a nice children’s book, Could have done with more action and a greater sense of dread, but I still enjoyed it.
I also finished Killing Rain by Barry Eisler. Lots of action and shooting, and some introspection that fortunately didn’t carry on overly long. Much of it takes place in Bangkok, with stops in Manila and Hong Kong.
I just startedThe Narrows by Michael Connelly and as it is in anime, my favorite character gets killed sigh
Thanks Erdosain, I’ll check that out when I’ve finished it for some insights.
Think it’s one of those books that will need some distancing to weigh it up properly - it packs such an emotional wallop that you can lose your bearings a bit on what it’s actually saying. Delivered in a brilliantly matter of fact prose style as well (IMHO, guess the translator has a big hand in this).
Just finished The Bat which is the first Harry Hole crime novel. I wasn’t really impressed. The characters were pretty stereotypical of this kind of crime novel, and the main character’s inner demons (since they all have one) was kinda paltry, and giving into it was only “meh” and the ending was only so-so.
So I’m reading The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling it’s by a guy who has a wrestling podcast and writes wrestling on Grantland.com and I like him, so I’ll support him.
After that it’s back to my boy Lars Keplar for his latest Joona Linna novel!
Finished reading Daniel Friedman’s novel Don’t Ever Look Back, about an 88-year-old former police officer in Memphis. The novel takes place mainly in 2009 but has many flashbacks to 1965–a bank robbery, a labor protest, and the narrator’s son’s bar mitzvah. The narrator is cranky and crotchety and thoroughly unpleasant, partly because of his dwindling physical and cognitive abilities and partly because he’s just kind of a jerk, but I found myself liking him anyway.
I thought the book was excellent and worked on a lot of different levels, not just as a crime novel (which is how it’s billed). Then I discovered it was a sequel to another book, Don’t Ever Grow Old, which I probably should’ve read first but oh well. I got that one from the library today–will start it soon.
I finished The Book Of Strange New Things by Michel Faber, I’m still not sure what I think of it. He’s an excellent writer, so the unfolding of the story is certainly high quality. It’s about a somewhat bumbling Christian minister who takes an assignment to work with a community of aliens on a distant colony, and it’s one of those books where not a lot happens, but you get a lot of back story on the various people. Somewhat spoiler-y, although not overly detailed: [spoiler] Throughout the book, the aliens are SO receptive to the message of Christianity that you, the reader, are waiting for the other shoe to drop – WHAT is going on here? And it’s very intentionally crafted - it doesn’t occur to the minister that this is somewhat bizarre, because he’s seeing this through his evangelical lens, of COURSE a bunch of aliens would sign up for Jesus, it’s the work of a universal God!
So finally, when this question is answered, at first I was like “oh, that’s all?” But then, thinking about it, I realized it genuinely tied all the themes of the entire book together, and I was really impressed. Wow! But after thinking about it more, I still don’t know if it’s so subtle that it’s really amazing and impressive … or so subtle that it didn’t exactly need an entire long book to deal with it. [/spoiler]
Just finished The Brothers Cabal by Jonathan L. Howard, the fourth in the series started by Johannes Cabal The Necromancer. It was a fun read, but not as good as some of the other entries in this series. The writing in this particular outing turns up the volume on the archness – Howard is trying so hard to be amusing that it detaches the reader from the story. It’s a bit like P.G. Wodehouse writing a horror story (which may be exactly what he’s aiming for), but without an editor who could tell him that he’s repeating essentially the same joke two or three times on the same page.
While there is a plot arc that is more or less satisfactorily resolved, there's some heavy-handed setting up of a sequel which means that this volume doesn't completely stand on its own.
How could I miss this month’s book thread for so long? Gah!
Today I finished the Doug Moench, Pat Broderick et al. 1987 graphic novel of George R.R. Martin’s great sf/horro novella Sandkings, and was, alas, disappointed. The artwork is garish and the changes to the story were not for the best.
Also zipped through Ohio Statehouse: A Building for the Ages by Cheryl J. Straker and Chris Matheney, a pretty good profile of the Buckeye capitol.
Still enjoying The Children of Men by P.D. James. Very different from the movie but worthwhile, I’d say.
I liked Preston’s The Hot Zone very much when I read it a decade or so ago, BTW, and thought of it again recently with the recent Ebola headlines.
This is actually what got me back into following pro wrasslin’–well, the book and the fact that I happened to have the fortunate timing to read it, and then check out a Raw, in the early part of this year, on the road to WM30. Had I read it at some other time during the year, when Raws had become pretty dire, it might not have had the same effect.
Good book, though, and interesting if you’re interested in the history of the business and the toll it (used to, especially) takes on the men and women who put their bodies on the line to entertain us.
Bother. I wanted to ask if this was basically a gospel tract disguised as a sci-fi novel and forgot that quoting reveals spoilers. That sort of answered my question, though not entirely. Hey, is this basically a gospel tract disguised as a sci-fi novel?
This is in my pile, I’m looking forward to it. Good to know there’s another one coming as well, I’ve enjoyed them all so far.
Started Stephen King’s Revival this morning. I’m around page 70, and it’s lovely so far. (Okay, “lovely” probably isn’t the best description of events. )
I find it interesting that King believes in God and his daughter is a pastor. From his writing you might think him an atheist.
Just finisheded “This Boy’s Life” (the book that DiCaprio’s movie was made from) and I liked it more than I expected to. Nice read.
Just quit Richard Russo’s “Mohawk” half-way through. He’s a very good writer, but the book just plodded through meaningless conversations involving uninteresting people.
Just started “Death Ship”, one of the B. Traven books that is not “Treasure of Sierra Madre” – The guy was a good wrirer, with a wry cynical style before his time (1930s).
So yeah, the author is not pushing any sort of gospel agenda. The main character IS a Christian minister, so Christian images and themes do come up a lot, but a lot of the book is about personalities and relationships as well. I’m trying to think of something similar. Um, let’s see. Like how Eco’s The Name of The Rose has religious characters in a religious setting, but the book wouldn’t be considered a tract in any way.
Witness by David Smith (with Carol Ann Lee). Mostly written by Carol Ann Lee with interspersed memoirs of David Smith, who was the chief prosecution witness in the Ian Brady & Myra Hindley Moors Murders trial.
I can now cross The Sorrows of Young Werther off the List of Classic Books I Always Meant to Read. Despite the fact that Young Werther was an overdramatic little twit, I actually liked the book. It helps that I’m sick today and reading about his misery made my own seem bearable.
If you haven’t read any of Hobb’s Farseer/Elderlings stuff before, this isn’t the volume to start with. I imagine an uninformed reader thinking, “Enough with this old soldier obsessing about his family and his house. When’s something gonna happen?” Of course I did stick with it, although two of the new characters turned out to be “interesting” in the sense of, “want to shake them until their teeth chime”. After all the buildup I saw the end coming but it was still a gut punch.
My faith in the author was tested when the word Miskatonic made its first appearance, but Priest’s writing won me over again. Tense and horrific, yes, but less emphasis on the “supernatural” part and more on the struggle of human reason and human emotional bonds against overwhelming danger.
Right now I am reading yet another fantasy, The Ripper Affair by Lilith Saintcrow.
I noticed that I had Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge still lying around unfinished and finished that between a couple of train rides and quiet evenings. It’s okay, it’s Pynchon. Nifty little sentences and scenes, a weirdish plot, and overall quite puzzling. He managed to make 9/11 fit into the book very well, largely by making it the momentary big deal that it was, with a quick segue into the everyday. I’d recommend it to Pynchon likers, but otherwise it’s maybe not the first choice.
I had to replace my aging Kindle when that stopped to work, so I’m just now getting to understand how the Paperwhite works, while reading Philip K. Dick’s Ubik. Liking it so far, but only about 10% in.
I’ve also almost finished Roger Knight’s Britain Against Napoleon: The Organization of Victory, 1793-1815. This is an utterly outstanding book, a must-buy for any Napoleonic Era-interested history buff. It’s not narrative, but it contains such a wealth of information on all the things that you usually don’t even think about. Did you know that it cost 27 pound to ship a single English soldier to Egypt in 1801 (that’s about twice the yearly salary for an untrained worker, I think)? How much money the British spent on reinforcing Dover castle, well into 1808 and 1809? What the working hours at the Admiralty were (10am to 6pm for most First Lords, apparently)? If not, get this book.
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