I’m still plodding through Julian Fellowes’s Past Imperfect. It’s just right for reading on the Metro, so I imagine I’ll continue it in fits and starts over the next couple weeks.
I read Prophecy Girl by Cecily White over the weekend. Full disclosure: this isn’t the sort of thing that would necessarily be on my radar, but the author is an old friend of mine and I was terribly curious to read it. I don’t think I’ve ever read a piece of fiction by someone I actually know - it was an interesting experience to really be able to compare the protagonist to the author. Anyway, it was a fun read with good characters and action and I’ll admit that there was a plot twist that I never saw coming. There was a bit too much romance for my personal preferences, but overall I’d recommend it for those of you who enjoy the occasional YA fantasy.
I’m also in the process of reading Harry Potter to my not quite 11 year old son. He’s always refused to have anything to do with Harry Potter before, so I’m excited about this change of heart.
Fiction: Just read Girl With A Secret by Charlotte Armstrong. A bit fluffy compared to suspense books today (copyright date is 1957) but still good. The ending was moralistic but satisfying.
Nonfiction: The Braindead Microphone by George Saunders. One laugh-out-loud moment ten pages in, expecting more.
Today I started Double Feature by Owen King. I’m on page 37, admitting to myself that I would not continue this if Owen were not a King child. It isn’t badly done, but I have no interest in filmmaking. I will go a bit further and see if it hooks me.
Over the weekend zipped through Not In Front of the Corgis by Brian Hoey, a scattershot, somewhat repetitive collection of British royalty trivia and behind-the-scenes factoids. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re totally into that kind of thing.
I have stalled on the Myths, Lies and Oil Wars and a Century of War by F. William Engdal. I am pretty sure my brain is not formatted for such well written, lack of sarcasticness in it.
So, I picked up, again. Good Omens and then found myself wanting to read World War Z by Max Brooks and found it at the store ( library was too long in waiting. Bastards.)
I really like World War Z. It is the eyewitness account of where people were when the Zombie Pandemic started. It does seem to lack enough female voices, but I’m a quarter into it.
I had read Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom quite a while ago and picked up **The Corrections **for a few dollars when Borders was failing. I finally finished it last night – whew I thought I’d never finish! I enjoy his style.
ETA: I haven’t been reading it since Borders went under – for a few weeks maybe. I read at bedtime and sometimes don’t make it very far!!
Ghostman by Roger Hobbs. It’s about a master criminal who cleans up messes made by other criminals. It’s awful. The guy is a total Gary Sue, and Hobbs’ writing “style” is to put every mundane detail on the page so the reader doesn’t have to think.
Started Kind of Kin by Rilla Askew. It’s much better. So far, the story is told from two points of view. One is a 12-year-old whose grandpa is in jail for harboring illegal immigrants, and Askew writes him perfectly. The other is his aunt – can’t adequately describe her except to say I like her. She’s pragmatic but has more heart than is usually found with pragmatic people. I was worried that this was going to be preachy or smarmy and it’s not. The point (according to the blurb) is “who is family”.
Finished Gene Wolfe’s Sword of the Lictor and started The Citadel of the Autarch. A bit heavy on the navel gazing, but I love the world too much to be turned off by it.
Zooming through light sf/fantasy comedy Doughnut by Tom Holt. It’s years since I read anything by him and this one’s quite fun!
Next up will be Christopher Fowler’s 2nd volume of autobiography, Film Freak. He’s a British horror writer who started work in the UK film industry back in the early 1970s when a lot of it was fairly seedy. Paperboy, the first volume was very good - growing up in English suburbia in the 1950s & 60s.
Just finished the 7th Thursday Next book “The Woman Who Died a Lot” which my wife found at the library. Just about to start the sixth, “One of our Thursdays is Missing” which I found cheap at Half Price Books when halfway through with the other. Oh well, I’ve hardly read any of this series in sequence.
I’m taking a brief break from **Lucifer’s Hammer **to re-read another favorite from the 1970s, **To Your Scattered Bodies Go **by Philip Jose Farmer. I remember being stunned by the basic premise–EVERYONE who has ever lived is resurrected simultaneously along a million-mile river. This was followed, as I recall, by some dismal sequels.
I’m also reading a collection of Jean Shepherd’s very funny stories about growing up during The Depression in a Northern Indiana steel mill town (Hammond, cunningly disguised as Hohman, Indiana.) A number of the short stories appeared in Playboy in the seventies.
Speaking of zombies (and this has nothing to do with them) Zombie by Joyce Carol Oats is one of the most chilling, scarily belivable books I’ve ever read. It’s written through the eyes of a serial killer.
I thought of it because of the mention of Faceless Killers which I’m definitely going to look up. Thanks koeeoaddi.
At 128 pages, I had to give up. Owen is a competent writer but I just don’t like these characters.
Besides, next up is Mary Roach’s Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal which is a guaranteed good time. I just started this morning. So far, Mary is telling me that there’s a ton of stuff I miss out on by not having a sense of smell.
Does she say that? I haven’t seen it yet. I’m pretty sure I could tell the difference in a blind taste test, though I’ve never taken one. (I’m envisioning ice cream here).
Still working on: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (reading it aloud to my son, 1 chapter/night) Les Miserables (I’ll be reading this for a long time I think) Going Clear by Lawrence Wright
ETA: Gulp is on deck after Wright’s book, I think.