Pollock is superb. Hope he wins awards.
That’s a good comparison. Also – Larry Brown and William Gay.
So when is the next Hap and Leonard book due? It’s been awhile.
I really liked Speaker for the Dead, but not so much the next two.
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wrobleski.
A great first time novel, and I use that term extremely sparingly. I predict awards for this book. Best forst novel I’ve read in years.
I just finished that book (Sawtelle) – I loved most of it. I’m pretty sure any shortcoming is mine as a reader rather than Wroblewski as a writer.
The series took a sharp downward decline once Ender married The Whiniest Woman in the Universe. He should have stayed with Jane.
My problems with Speaker for the Dead were two fold: the plot required that large numbers of professionals be completely incompetent at the basic functions of their job to work and the deus ex Ender.
Dropping the details into a spoiler box here since there’s a reader in the thread who may pick it up…
[spoiler]The first is that the plot hinges on biologists not understanding the basic life cycle of all of the living things on that planet. Not just the piggies, but the animals they’ve domesticated, the plants they’re breeding, and the ones they’ve genetically engineered. You do not skip over understandings that have been at the center of agriculture since 4000BC to go straight to gene tampering. It’s horrifically foolish.
But that’s just the plot. My bigger problem is the characters particularly Ender who is so perfect that he magically fixes any problem that he encounters just by being there. A broken home formed by decades of lies, neglect and abuse suddenly becomes better because Ender sits down and visits with them for twenty minutes. The people who are harmed by a lifetime of deception to the point that the lies may kill them are more than willing to forgive just because Ender states facts. Ender shows up so there are no consequences for anyone else; things just are magically better.[/spoiler]
I’m about halfway through Tim Dorsey’s latest, Atomic Lobster. Serge and Coleman out on the road again, with the accompanying mayhem, history lessons, sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.
Next up is George R. Stewart’s classic, Names on the Land.
Awesome, I made a note of this. I love Lansdale, or possibly I just love Leonard.
I’m currently reading (very nearly done) Summer of Night by Dan Simmons. Horror novel, set in 1960, a group of 6th grade boys battle an demonic entity that has taken up residence in their small Midwestern town. It’s not a great work of literature, but I’m finding it pretty engaging and moving along briskly.
I also picked up The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, the sequel to the National Book award winner. It’s very adorable in the same way so far. It’s a children’s novel, set in the present day, but it has a very retro feel to it (which extends to the cover art and design). It’s possibly a little twee, but very nice if you are a fan of Ellen Tibbits-type children’s fiction.
And in between the June and July threads I read Stephen Carter’s New England White. It was somewhat similar in tone to his first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park, but the plot came together a little better. The wife of an Ivy league college president investigates the murder of a controversial faculty member.
I’ve got two on the go at the moment:
The Quest for Shakespeare: the Bard of Avon and the Church of Rome, by Joseph Pearce. A fascinating work that examines Shakespeare’s religious views.
Old Friends and New Fancies, by Sybil Brinton. It was one of the first Jane Austen “sequel” works, written in 1913. The author manages to weave together the main characters from all six of Austen’s novels.
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon. It’s an odd mix of alternative history (Israel collapsed in 1948 and a homeland was created for the Jews in the Alaska panhandle) and detective story. It’s taking me a long time to get through it just because my attention span hasn’t been much lately, but it’s an excellent book.
I finished Imajica and enjoyed it, although I think it could have benefitted from a 100 page trim. While I’m waiting for the sequel, I started The Plot Against America by Philip Roth.
A year or two ago, I saw everyone and their mother reading this book on the train and I was under the very false impression that it was nonfiction. :smack: I’m just a chapter in and I like the tone so far. Think it will be a qucik and interesting read.
I gave up on All Men Are Mortal when I realized that the immortal guy just happened to be in the thick of things during the most important parts of European history. Just happened to get frustrated with his old life and latch on to a guy who just happened to be one of the movers and shakers in the next big phase of things, you know. :rolleyes:
Finished Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus as well. Started on the next book in that pile in which Lucky Starr visits The Big Sun of Mercury. This volume also starts off with a forward apologizing for the out-of-date science.
Finished Knockemstiff and it was really good. I’ll be keeping an eye out for more by Donald Pollock.
Then I read:
Aftermath Inc.: cleaning up after CSI goes home, by Gil Reavill. It was okay.
A Nation of Wimps: the high cost of invasive parenting, by Hara Estroff Marano. Also just okay. I’m a fearful and overprotective parent sometimes, so I thought there’d be more here for me, but it mostly focused on parents who run their kids’ school lives. It did make me decide that I shouldn’t have my sixteen year old call me every day when she gets home.
Wolves of the Calla, by Stephen King. This was my audiobook; I’m re-“reading” the Dark Tower series this year. The writing style irritated the hell out of me, and I just didn’t find this a particularly fascinating installment of the series.
Just starting on The question of God : C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud debate God, love, sex, and the meaning of life, by Armand Nicholi. I’m not sure who I’m rooting for here. 
Reading An Expert in Murder: A Josephine Tey Mystery by Nicola Upson. Takes real-life Scottish author and playwright Tey and involves her in a murder mystery. Good, but I’m not really engaged so far.
Finished Summer of Night by Dan Simmons, a decent if not particularly innovative horror novel, and The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, a delightful if not particularly action-packed children’s novel.
I started Dreamland by Kevin Baker. It’s historical fiction, set in New York City in the 1890s. So far it’s okay … but I think it has that historical fiction overkill thing going on. One of the characters works at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Of course she does! Where else could she possibly work? Oh noes, the General Slocum is on fire! Of course it is!
I just finished Map of Bones by James Rollins. Mostly a fluff adventure book with some pseudo-science thrown in. I started reading The Sky People by Stirling, but I have no idea why I picked it up. I have no interest in it at all. So I shelved it until I run out of other things to read. I think I’ll start The Last Oracle by Rollins (again). I picked it up a week or so ago.
Finished Myth-Chief a few days ago. Typical Myth book, although I was sad that this is the way the series ends with his death.
Sorry that you didn’t care for the Lost Fleet series Eleanor, but I’m going to grab the first of the Honor Harrington books from Baen Free Library to see if I like it.
I suspect that this will be one of those things that whatever the first way you read something was, that’s the only way you’ll enjoy it.
Just finished Bugliosi’s The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, and am finally starting Jules Verne’s Meridiana. This has to be one of his most obscure works – Amazon doesn’t list any recent reprintings – everythings from arounfd 1875. (I’m on a big Verne kick of late. I’ve read six Verne books I haven’t read before, or at least new translations, and have two more in my queue after this – The Golden Mountain and The Mighty Orinoco – both translated (in this form) for the first time into English in the past couple of years.
Not as rare as I thought --Meridiana has been published under other titles. The 1964 ARCO edition and a more recent paperback edition:
I’m reading Georgette Heyer’s novel Venetia, and it may turn out to be my favorite Heyer book yet. If you like Jane Austen you should give Heyer’s Regency romances a try.
This one has a hilarious Regency version of the melodramatic teenager. In this passage he’s returning home after proposing rather violently to Venetia and receiving a severe “set down” from her:
“It had been Oswald’s intention to have maintained an impenetrable silence on the events that had shattered his faith in women and transformed him, at one blow, from an ardent lover into an incurable misogynist; and had his parents, or even his two oldest sisters, had enough sensibility to enable them to perceive that the care-free youth who had ridden away from his home before noon returned at dinner-time an embittered cynic he would have refused to answer any of their anxious questions, but would have fobbed them off instead in a manner calculated to convince them that he had passed through a soul-searing experience. Unfortunately, the sensibilities of all four were so blunted that they noticed nothing unusual in his haggard mien and monosyllabic utterances, but talked throughout dinner of commonplaces, and in a cheerful style which could not but make him wonder how he came to be born into such an insensate family.”