I just finished Joe Hill’s “Horns”, and I’m waiting for the library to deliver on “NOS4A2”. He is quite good, indeed. Like you say, I can definitely see some of the Old Man in his writing, but he has his own voice.
I’ve paused about 1/2 way though re-reading A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute, which I first read many years ago and have just started The Quarry by Iain Banks, which turned up this mornng…
I got a little sidetracked - I’m still reading my way through Confucius and Marcus Arelius, but I also got sucked into reading Ariana Franklin’s City of Shadows, an atmospheric mystery set in Berlin in the late 1920’s. What can I say? One moment, I was looking at the first couple of pages, the next thing I know, I’ve missed a deadline because I was reading instead of working…
Yep, and Doctor Sleep (sequel to The Shining) coming later this year. Steve’s been kicking ass lately but I’m still a little wary about this one.
Oh, I love that book!
I finished Farthing, which is the take on a classic English country manor murder mystery, only set in an alternate time where the UK brokered a peace with Nazi Germany. I liked it well enough, although I had a few issues with the story that may or may not be resolved in the sequels, so now I feel suckered into reading them all to find out! I think it was Eleanor of Aquitaine who first mentioned this book – do you remember what was the deal with the tea? I can’t figure out if I’m not getting it because I’m dense, or because I’m American. It kept making a big thing about everyone drinking weak tea.
I just finished “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.” While quite similar to the film, it has more detail and characters, as would be expected. It was quite droll. I liked it and would recommend it. I don’t finish books I don’t enjoy anymore, but I read the entirety of this one in a day or two.
I remember the preoccupation with tea in the first book, but I didn’t see the significance of it either, except that the way Carmichael takes tea seems to be gay, somehow. I’m not sure why tea with lemon is gayer than tea with milk.
I have mixed feelings about these books. They’re very readable, and I liked some aspects, but overall I found them unconvincing and unsatisfying.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever joined in these discussions, but I have several lists of books to read based on these threads. So, I decided to offer up some gems that I’ve been reading lately.
Because I teach middle school and high school, I am TRYING to read more YA novels. To that end, I stumbled upon Me & Emma by Elizabeth Flock. I enjoyed the story, but was completely knocked out by the ending. Throughout there are a lot of things that you must infer, but the ending just amps up the whole book tenfold. I was afraid to reread it (though I immediately wanted to) because I knew I couldn’t have the same experience with it, and I didn’t want to be disappointed.
Also, as a HUGE, MONSTER FAN of Harlan Coben, I was pleasantly surprised to see his forays into YA literature with Shelter and Seconds Away, the first two books in a Mickey Bolitar series (if you like Coben, you’ll recognize Mickey as the nephew of sports agent Myron Bolitar- another excellent series). Now, I love (LOVE) Harlan Coben, and was leery of YA versions of his writing, but I have to admit he does a great job of still creating an excellent story even when taking into account his slightly younger audience. If you’ve not read him before, I highly recommend Gone for Good to start with, and if you are hooked, go for the Myron Bolitar series (all have various sports settings- fantastic novels even if you don’t like sports!). Coben has absolutely never let me down.
Now, also in my YA quest, I picked up The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan. This books seems to have a lot of critical acclaim, but honestly if I were on the lifeboat, I would have sacrificed myself on day three. I finished the book, but by the end, I really didn’t give a crap.
A YA book I read and decided to use in my sophomore class this coming year is Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Fascinating book, and works well on a lot of instructional levels.
Finally, another teacher had me read Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley. I was annoyed at first, as I had a hard time falling into the narrator’s voice, and found him… obnoxious. However, after the first quarter of the book, I realized I wanted a few answers. As I continued to read, the book became more and more compelling- and that is what I told my colleague my opinion of the book was. I don’t know if I liked it, but it was compelling. Then we sat and talked about it for two hours… and I had to admit that it was something that really stayed with you. I’m still not sure if I liked it, but it is a book that stays with you, that haunts you, that makes you think. I would actually love some opinions of Dopers on this book.
Sounds interesting, but I don’t think I can read a book on that topic.
This one seems interesting too. I added it to my TBR pile. Could be quite a while before I get to it, though!
Haven’t read the book, but could it be a subtle way of showing how much under the Nazi thumb the UK remains, in that they can’t even get good strong English tea of the type they enjoyed before the war?
Finished my browsing of David McCullough’s John Adams, which was good, and have now begun Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, the pick of one of my book clubs. It’s about an unhappily married couple, forced to move from New York City to the husband’s small Missouri hometown after the 2008 recession hits. The wife disappears one day, perhaps just run away but perhaps killed, and the husband falls under suspicion. I’m only 30 pages in, but I like it so far.
I think it must be something along these lines … although it’s the kind of thing where it’s probably not working well as a literary device if it’s so hard to interpret (with the caveat that maybe it is more obvious to British people). My best guess is that they can only get the weak tea, and now they all think they prefer it … as kind of a symbol of being a nation that knew the “right” thing to do (not compromise with Hitler) but did it anyway, so now they all fool themselves into thinking they got what they wanted, when in reality what they got is terrible. In the book, it’s not very consistent with the characters as far as I can tell. It comes up about every other page, so it must have been significant to the author.
Finished it. Well-written but unsatisfying. Danger was constantly hinted at but never materialized.
About halfway through The House of Special Purpose by John Boyne. It’s almost fantasy. A Russian peasant boy saves the life of a Romanov and is rewarded by being taken to St. Petersburg, where he becomes a companion to the youngest Romanov (the one with hemophilia). The story moves back and forth in time with an underlying mystery about what he did during the Revolution. I love Boyne’s writing, very compelling.
I’m in the middle of both NOS4A2 by Joe Hill and Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes. I had to put them both down, had enough of death for a bit, and am currently re-reading The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. I’ll come back to the other two in a while. So far they are both excellent reads.
On Deck, The Long War and Abbadon’s Gate.
yanceylebeef, I heard about Shining Girls on NPR yesterday and looked at some Amazon reviews. Detractors are complaining about the graphic rape and torture scenes. Is there a lot of that in the book?
I just read the Amazon description and all the blurbs, and it sounds pretty intriguing.
I’m currently listening to A Mortal Bane, by Roberta Gellis, after reading a recommendation for it here at the Dope. It’s delightful - a murder mystery set in a tony medieval London whorehouse. I’m very happy to see it has several sequels, so I’ll be all set for entertainment during household drudgery for some time to come.
I’m reading A Season in Carcosa, an anthology of modern fiction based on the Robert W. Chambers collection The King in Yellow. One story in, and it was very efficiently creepy. Looking forward to more. And, I get an extra little thrill every time I pick it up because I got it via Interlibrary Loan, a system that seems to good to be true to me and makes me giddy every time I use it. My library didn’t have this book, so they went and got it from the Chicago Public Library for me!
The Company Man, by Robert Jackson Bennett. It’s a noir mystery set in 1919 in an alternate universe America. I’m about five chapters in and enjoying it a lot.
I’m most of the way through The Long Earth by pTerry and Stephen Baxter - both of whom I read extensively. It is a bit slow, though it is an interesting concept - the invention and release on the net of a device (powered by a potato) that lets you “step” into alternate and unpopulated earths. The Baxter Clarke collaboration was mostly Baxter, but this one has a lot more of Pratchett than I was expecting, in that the characters and a bit of wackiness are not what Baxter can usually pull off.
AuntiePam, I’m about 30 percent through according to my kindle. It hasn’t been especially graphic up to this point, but the overall atmosphere is very creepy and oppressive.
I usually like that sort of thing, but having dealt with an inordinate amount of death in the last month or so, it kind of got to me.
If you aren’t in the same place, I wouldn’t think it would bother you.
It’s not as bad as the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo scenes, which actually made me put that book down for a month or so.
Dung Beetle, I’ll be curious about your take on the Whaley book. 