Finished the Stars are Too High and Letters from England, and I’m pretty well into in the Cube.
On audiobooks I’ve been reading a series of Clive Cussler novels, since they’re available at the library and wildly improbable. The Silent Sea, Medusa, Devil’s Tower, The Jungle. I’m now listening to Poseidon’s Arrow.
I’m also trying to, at long last, finish up The Annotated Huckleberry Finn, which is slow going because of all the footnotes. One reason is that I see that the second volume of Mark Twain’s Autobiogaphy is finally available. I think I’ll ask for it for my birthday or Christmas.
Besides, I’ve got a stack of other books I want to get to, including The Annotated Peter Pan and the first two volumes of Isaac Asimov’s Autobiography, which I got at a book sale.
Finished The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell. Was fun, half history of the first years of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, half Vowell’s musings on the connection between the philosophy of the first Puritan colonists and modern America.
And Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. It was alright, but I liked the first book a lot more. Don’t think I’ll bother with the next two instalments unless someone in this thread tells me they’re awesome and shouldn’t be missed.
Got a Kindle for my birthday, from my parnets. My girlfriend offered to get me a book for it as part of my present, so I went over my wishlist and picked out the heaviest. Longstoryshort, I’m reading Anathem.
On the hard-copy side, I’ve finally gotten around to All the King’s Men.
I had to force myself to finish that one. I agree that it was well written, but I didn’t buy the premise. Presumably smart reporter gets an anonymous phone call saying that the cult filmmaker is a predator, then goes on TV and says the filmmaker needs to die. His career hits the skids and he becomes obsessed with said filmmaker.
Then what, five years later, the reporter hasn’t found steady work but he still has a place to live in NYC and money to throw around chasing down Cordova’s associates?
The part I liked best was the hallucinatory bit toward the end. That was nicely creepy, and the only tension in the book, IMHO anyway.
Thru library hold serendipity, I ended up reading The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer and [Life after Life](The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells) by Kate Atkinson at the same time - they both deal with some form of time travel by women protagonists. Both novels must have required quite a bit of plotting and diagramming ahead of time to make things turn out just right and it’s been interesting to compare and contrast the two novels.
In The Impossible Lives the main character goes thru electro-convulsive therapy in 1985 and finds herself living alternate versions of her life in 1918 and 1941 - swapping between the three on a semi-regular schedule. She slowly discovers the common elements of her existence going in different directions in each timeline; of course, she (all 3 of her) can’t help but meddle a bit, and must ultimately decide which version of herself she wants to be.
I found the parallels of Influenza (1918) War (1918 & 1941) & AIDS (1985) and their influences on NYC society to be an intriguing theme carried through each storyline. I also really enjoyed the character development and the little details* of each timeframe setting. While the ending felt a little pat, it was satisfying and I would consider re-reading this novel at some point, tho I don’t feel the need to purchase my own copy.
Life After Life has Ursula Todd re-living her life over and over, starting with her first death caused by her umbilical cord being wrapped around her neck. She makes it a little further each time, eventually developing a sense of deja vu. The prologue gives her a very specific goal; and I’m quite curious to see how it pans out, especially considering a minor character referenced in at least one of the timelines.
I’m listening to the audiobook version of this, and it does add a dimension to hear the upper & lower class accents of the characters. The repetition of returning to Ursula’s birth after each death is borderline annoying; tho Atkinson does find different facets to focus on each time. The first few go-rounds touch on the same pivot points in Ursula’s life; showing how different choices prevent her death (tho the 'flu takes multiple tries). The characters are very well-drawn, and I’m quite drawn into the story.
Speaking of details, the Disney lover in me wants to think that the young man dressed as a Genie and named Howard at the Halloween party was a tribute to Howard Ashman
That sounds interesting. It reminds me of “Replay,” which I really enjoyed. In it, a man keeps doing on a certain date in the 80s. I won’t say more, but it’s really good.
I just finished ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ - my thanks to all of you who recommended it; it really was as good as everybody said it was. That was a first novel?!? ‘Wow’ is about all I can say to that.
I’m now reading ‘Why Does the World Exist?’ - about twenty pages in, I’m already thinking ‘This is all going to be a bit short on proof, isn’t it?’ Still, an interesting summary of the current state of theology/cosmology.
I’ve also started ‘The Quarry’, Iain Banks’ last book. Again, only about ten pages in, but the experience of reading it is rather bittersweet. I remember reading ‘The Wasp Factory’ a year or two after it came out, then I read through everything else that had been published, then I kept an ear to the ground for when the next one would come out, and now, I’m reading the last one. That’s happened to me with far too many authors…
A big thank you to those in a previous thread who recommended The Rook: I read it a couple of months ago, completely loved it, and now I follow Daniel O’Malley’s blog for news about his progress on the second Chequy book.
I’m another who enjoyed Replay, and will now look into Life After Life. Thanks, Politzania!
To be fair, I picked up *Life After Life * thanks to reccos from **Meurglys ** and **Ann Hedonia ** … so thanks go to them! And I did read Replay way back in 2007, so may have to revisit it once I’m done.
I forgot to post about reading Screwed, the second in Eoin Colfer’s Daniel McEvoy series when I read it last month. Recommended by FoieGrasIsEvil, I didn’t realize it was part of a series til I was already in it, but it didn’t as if I were missing anything crucial.
Colfer feels a bit like a literary chameleon - I’ve read his extension of the Hitchhiker’s series And Another Thing… as well as two YA books - Artemis Fowl and Airman and they all had pretty distinctive voices/styles - as did this gritty, modern-noir novel. I haven’t read much in this genre, and in that respect, I was reminded a bit of Tim Dorsey & Carl Hiaasen, but set in Jersey.
A former military man (UN Ireland), MCEvoy is now a New Jersey bouncer/soon-to-be club owner. He is surrounded by colorful characters, and finds himself mixed up in some shady situations, caught between competing mobsters. Equally powered by brawn and brains, McEvoy is one of those guys that stuff just seems to happen to - unsavory and potentially deadly stuff.
Colfer is a fun storyteller, and can build a solid, non-fantasy world as well as his fantastical universes. His characters are on the quirky side, but still believable and as well-rounded as they need to be. I’ll probably go back and check out the first novel in this series - Plugged, possibly in audiobook form, as I’m curious to “hear” McEvoy himself.
I decided not to finish the book about the lady who gave up mirrors. I wasn’t feeling too connected to the author and this really convenient opportunity to return it to the library came up, so…
This morning, I started The Thicket by Joe R. Lansdale. A blurb described it as a cross between True Grit and Stand By Me. I really have to doubt that, but wouldn’t it be nice?
Finished The Great Bridge, by David McCullough, his history of the Brooklyn Bride. Another excellent read by him. But again, I got a little bogged down in the technical details of the bridge, which he himself said were difficult to write, him not having an engineering background. But these passages were not many, and I recommend the book.
I did buy a complete set of George RR Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire. Bought the set with the third book, A Storm of Swords, split into two volumes. So I will this weekend start the first book, A Game of Thrones. Will take it with us to read on the beach, as this weekend we’re also leaving for a week at a nice resort on a small island in the Gulf of Thailand near the Cambodian border. So if you don’t see me for a few days, I’ll be back.
Just finished the slightly disappointing Proxima by Stephen Baxter. It’s a couple of hundred years in the future and the first extra-solar colony is on it’s way… The begining section bore a lot of resemblances to a 1960s novel by D.G.Compton called Farewell, Earth’s Bliss, which I re-read only 6 months ago, so initially I was continually comparing the two. And at the end there’s a giant WTF moment on almost literally the last page which leads me to assume there will be sequels although there’s no clue given that this was only the first in a set.
But now I’ve started Dan Simmons latest, Abominable. It’s a long time since I’ve read anything by him but this starts off well wth Simmons explaining how years ago he supposedly interviewed an old man who had been on a pre-war expedition to the Antarctic. Simmons apparently wanted to write an Antarctic thriller but ended up writing Terror, set in the Arctic, instead!
Much more recently he comes into possession of the man’s notebooks, which form the bulk of the narrative. It’s all about early 20th C climbing expeditions, etc. (rather than his exploits in Antarctica) especially a clandestine expedition to Mount Everest following the 1924 deaths of Mallory and Irving near it’s summit.
The first 50 pages are good; hope the next 400+ are as well!
Finished The Thicket. It was okay, kept me nicely entertained for a few days. Some gory parts.
Next up: The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, edited by Paula Guran. It’ll be what such anthologies usually are. I’ll cherry-pick the hell out of it with low expectations and send it back to the library on time.
I skipped The Terror when it came out partly because I had read so much about the Franklin expedition, and other polar explorers, and didn’t really want to read fiction about it at the time. If I like this one, I may change my mind.
I’ve also read a fair bit about Mallory & Irvine* (and gone to talks, etc. about them and about Everest) but not recently and it’s ages since I’ve read a good mountaineering yarn. Or whatever this turns into!
sorry for the mis-spelling in my first post; I always forget if it’s Irvine or Irving.
