Finished Pink Ladies and Crimson Gents: Portraits and Legends of 50 Roses , by Molly and Don Glentzer. Stunning photography of roses, with interesting descriptions of their namesakes.
Now I’m reading Robert B. Parker’s Angel Eyes, by Ace Atkins. (It’s a Spenser mystery.)
Finished The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher and thought it was marvelous, disturbing, and funny. Her novel The Twisted Ones was based on the short story The White People, by Arthur Machen, and this novel was based on a short horror story by Algernon Blackwood called The Willows. I’m a little nervous, wondering if she’s read The Ash-tree…
Next up, something …less classy, Secret Santa, by Andrew Shaffer. It’s a campy horror novel which I think has name-checked Stephen King on every other page so far.
It’s Ursula, I would bet she has 
I know, and I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from reading the novel she might base on it! 
Dung Beetle! New Jonathon Stroud coming next year!
Mr. Stroud, shut up and take my money! 
Yep!
Just finished: The Falcon Always Wings Twice, by Donna Andrews.
Now starting: Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, by John M Barry
Next up: Perhaps Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett.
I’m currently reading The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft. I’m only a couple of chapters into it but I’m very much enjoying it so far. It’s decidedly ominous!
I finished listening to Paul Stanley’s autobiography, Face the Music. I doubt anyone would really be interested in this unless they were a hardcore KISS fan at one point in their life. I, for one, was in that club from about '75 through Love Gun, whenever that was. I was really more of an Ace guy, but I thought I would enjoy Stanley’s take on the phenomenon that they were. He doesn’t hold too much back. He has many kind things to say about his band mates but mostly he runs them down pretty much every chance he gets. Gene is a poser who doesn’t know shit about marketing but pretends he does; Ace and Peter were two jerks who almost ruined the band.
Stanley writes about his childhood with a lot of scorn as well. He doesn’t shy away from talking about his insecurities and his disabilities (he was born without a right ear and he was deaf on that side), but for the most part - I have to say - he comes across as pretty much a rich asshole for most of the book. And he’s a bit inconsistent. He goes on about his loneliness and how he was never able to form friendships and had no social life and three paragraphs later he tells the story about how he was hanging out at Studio 51 with his friends and blah blah blah. He only passingly gives any sort of mention to his obvious sex addiction.
In the end he sort of redeems himself with some decent introspection and some reasonable life advice, but that sort of thing is easy to give sitting in the villa on the French Riviera that you’ve rented for the family for the summer.
On the other hand, I’ve also fallen into a major Spotify/YouTube KISS jag. I listened to entire first seven records, including Alive, at work the other day. I don’t care what anyone says, those were some good rock and roll tunes.
I just finished Smacked by Eilene Zimmerman, a nonfiction account about her Alpha Male ex-husband’s death due to cocaine and meth addiction, and how she, her kids and his law firm colleagues never suspected a thing. She has some interesting things to say about how law school and high-pressure legal careers can nudge some - too many - into addiction. Recommended.
Yesterday I also finished From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming. James Bond is assigned to help a beautiful Soviet cryptographer defect via Istanbul and the Orient Express, but it turns out to be a SMERSH trap (no surprise there). Not Fleming’s best work, but it has its moments.
Still enjoying reading Arthur Rex by Thomas Berger, an often tongue-in-cheek but mostly respectful retelling of Arthurian legend, aloud with my teenage son.
Just started A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold, the first Vorkosigan novel I’ve read. Not sure yet if I’ll stick with it.
It certainly is - one of my favorite Lovecraft tales. A bonus: the protagonist goes to Oberlin College, my alma mater!
Arthur Rex is interesting in its somewhat cynical, class-based retelling of the Arthur legends, but it does clearly derive from Mallory and the other texts.
One part not from the usual sources is the chapter on Sir Gawsaine and the Green Knight, which comes from the medieval tale of that title. Berger’s version ramps up the sexuality in the story to 11 or higher (the original legends is relatively chaste. I’ve got a stack of translations of it, including one by Tolkien). That portion was excerpted in Playboy when the book came out (not surprisingly), with a sexy illustration by Frank Frazetta
I’ve always liked KISS, but I think the less I know about them the better. 
Yes, thanks, CalMeacham. Hadn’t seen the Franzetta painting before! The chapters on Sir Gawaine in the Castle of Sin, and his later wedding, are two of my favorites in the book.
Yes. The site I found the picture on gives the wrong year. Berger’s book, the Frazetta painting, and the Playboy excerpt were all in 1978, not 1986.
Read and enjoyed Joe Posnanski’s The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini. It’s more impressionistic than linear, but it does a good job of describing Houdini’s life and work as well as exploring the reasons why Houdini still remains famous after lo these many years. Posnanski’s mostly a sportswriter, and a very good one–I recommend his books on the Big Red Machine and on Buck O’Neill–so this is a departure for him.
Lisa Taddeo Three Women. Which I received as a spot prize at a quiz for my daughter’s primary school.
I’m pretty confident her teachers had no idea what it’s about. At least I certainly hope so anyhow.
Finished Robert B. Parker’s Angel Eyes , by Ace Atkins, which was okay.
Now I’m reading 100 Selected Poems by e.e. cummings. (That’s how his name appears on the title page. I’m used to seeing his name without the periods.)
Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA Neil Shubin
A brief but highly informative look at how we have learned about the development of life on Earth through the study of fossils, genes, and DNA.
Finished 100 Selected Poems by e.e. cummings. I’d read his more famous poems before, but I really enjoyed some of the more obscure poems here.
Now I’m reading Footprints in the Sky, edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail. It’s a science fiction anthology.