I just finished Hunting Shadows, by Charles Todd and I think I’m done with this author. I love the main character in the series, Rutledge, and Hamish, the ghost from the trenches of WWI who both haunts and advises him. The secondary characters, though, are interchangeable and dull and there is way too much boring interrogatory and bumbling in and out of ‘motor cars’.
I finished Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance earlier today and was pretty disappointed. It’s a well-written book, though I thought it could have done with less scatological references. I was really enjoying it right up to the last 75 or so pages, but the last bit felt forced and needlessly dark, especially compared to the rest of the book.
I’m planning to sort of cleanse the palate with a good non-fiction book next, but I’m not sure which one. I’ve got one about elephants and another about the fossils of the Burgess Shale that I’m considering.
I’ve started Stephen King’s 11/22/63 and am just leaving on vacation, so I hope to make some good progress on the trip. It’s a big book!
That’ll make a great vacation page turner. It’s one of King’s best, IMO, and no matter how long some of his books are they read really quickly. I loved it and I hope you do also.
:eek:OWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW:eek:
This was written by a man, wasn’t it?
Oh yes, one who needs an anatomy lesson!
I’ve noticed that 90% of Trollope’s novels boil down to:
“Should I marry this nice person?”
[500 pages of dithering later…]
“Sure, why not.”
For the Palliser novels, I thought “Phineas Finn” was the highlight since it had some interesting insights on the ins and outs of running for office in the old days layered on top of the usual “will they, won’t they” plot. The ending was a bit lame (no spoilers) and presumably Trollope thought so too since he undoes it later.
The least interesting books in the Palliser series were “Can You Forgive Her” (which seemed to drag on way too long) and “The Duke’s Children” (I thought the characters were kind of boring).
Just for curiosity, have you ever read any of Rennie Airth’s books? Similar period, similar feel, but I find Airth is a much better writer.
I’ve only ever read the first of the Charles Todd books - I remember liking it, but you can never tell what a series is going to evolve (or devolve) into…
I’m reading Everyday Jews: Scenes from a Vanished Life by Yehoshue Perle, something I wouldn’t have found on my own but it showed up in my Amazon recommendations, probably because of the Edith Hahn Beer memoir. For once, an Amazon rec worked.
Finished The Adventures of Maximillian Bacchus and His Traveling Circus by Clive Barker, four fantastical short stories featuring a talking crocodile, a strong man, an acrobat, an orang-outan, and a man with eyes that serve as flashlights. Only $4.99 on the Kindle and really, really good. I stopped reading Barker many years ago and now I want to go back and catch up.
Yes, thanks, I love Rennie Airth! Also, Pat Barker and Jonathan Hull have excellent novels in that time peroid. Charles Todd is lighter reading, which is fine. I’ve liked several of his books (well, their books, Charles Todd is a mother/son team). I’ve just been disappointd by the last few.
That’s the synopsis for 90% of Victorian literature in general.
I have seen vaginal piercings.
Well hell, you live in Thailand. You’ve probably seen a lot more than that!
Servants: A Downstairs View of Twentieth Century Britain by Lucy Lethbridge. Sad, well written, heartbreaking and yet quite reassuring considering the system is dead today. My find of the day was *Houses of the Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America and the Way They Lived *by Hugh Howard. A beautiful coffee table book in wonderful condition sold for a mere fifty cents at my local library. Nearly new and not a mark on it. Ha!
I finished J.V. Jones’ epic doorstop A Cavern of Black Ice yesterday. She is not at all kind to her characters. If you survive the entire series, you have *earned *it.
Next up is A Fortress of Grey Ice which is less doorstoppy.
Really? Up inside? Because the vagina is an internal organ. I’ve seen labial and vulva piercings however.
Um so reading… do scanlations count?
Okay, okay, so I guess it’s labial and vulva piercings I saw. We didn’t really chat about the specific body label.
April’s thread is now up and running.