Did you know there was a movie last year?: Dark Places (2015) - IMDb
Given up on The End Of the Affair. The MC is a total arsehole, and 50 pages of his anguished navel-gazing was all I could stomach. I’ve started Fevre Dream by George RR Martin and so far I’m enjoying it a lot.
As did I. A great book - vampires along the Mississippi River before the Civil War! Atmosphere, clever dialogue and chills galore. Love it.
I finished My Antonia. It was good right through to the end, although I thought the parts of the story that took place on the farm were more interesting than what happened in town.
I thought there might have been judging by the cover on the book. Have you seen it? Do you think it’s worth watching after I finish the book?
I am thoroughly enjoying Tower: an Epic History of the Tower of London by Nigel Jones.
Thing is, it has a slightly misleading title: it isn’t really about the Tower, but rather, a collection of historical anecdotes centered on the Tower. He often wanders away from the Tower to discuss the history of the moment.
The anecdotes are lively and fun: the author is more interested in telling a rollicking story than in presenting balanced debate on contentious issues (don’t read the chapters on the Wars of the Roses if you are a Richardian - your head may explode 
).
This is a very dog-earable version of history, lots of bits to savor for fun. What it isn’t, is a history of the Tower itself - it lacks, for example, a single diagram or map of the Tower (though that’s a lack easily remedied with one’s computer, but still).
Gotta be better than the turkey I just fnished: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith…
Ther review is HERE, should you be interested. Potential spoilers may exist.
I just finished The Dirty Streets of Heaven by Tad Williams, and enjoyed it greatly. Williams is a fantasy writer,and this one involved angels, demons, heavenly politics and bureaucracies, plus gunfights in a Northern California city, an illicit angel/demon love affair, high crimes and misdemeanors all over the place. Looking forward to the sequels: **Happy Hour in Heaven and[B**]Sleeping Late on Judgement Day.].
Also, another enthusiastic vote for The Golem and the Jinni.
No, I didn’t see it, although the reviews were pretty good.
Now if he can just get back to A Game of Thrones. :mad:
Well, he wrote it before he even started GOT (published in 1982), but your point is well-taken.
Had a short holiday so put a good dent into within a budding grove (vol2 of Proust). Mesmerising, immersive writing when you have the time to really get into it. Going to be harder reading it at home, as picking it up here and there won’t work, so will need to try and set aside more reading time [something I should do anyway].
I read the whole shebang over the course of a year. Well worth it.
I finished reading The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad – a phlegmatic agent provocateur has been undercover with a group of toothless revolutionaries for years when his new boss demands more bang for his buck.
I thought it was not bad (a mix of the satirical and the tragic), although the attitude towards terrorists seemed a bit dated compared to a world with al-Qaeda, ISIS, etc. I thought it was interesting that Ted Kaczynski identified himself closely with a character in the book (“The Professor”), though.
Just finished and thoroughly enjoyed Making History, by Stephen Fry. A time travel story (kind of) with the goal of not killing Hitler, but preventing him from being born. And of course the law of unintended consequences kicks in, big time.
PSST! Dung Beetle! New Lockwood & Co coming this Autumn, September I believe.
I’ve finished the SF anthology Eros in Orbit — Sex and Science Fiction from the early 1970s! it was Geeks meet the Sexual Revolution. Actually, for what ought to be an upbeat anthology – SF generally emphasizes optimism, and sex is fun, after all, the stories are all pretty downbeat. It’s as if they feel guilty for writing about sex. Definitely a product of its times (as the advertising insert for Kent cigarettes proves)
Now on to Who P-p-p-plugged Roger Rabbit? by Gary K. Wolf, the guy who wrote the original novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, upon which the Disney movie was based. Of course
(kinda spoiler alert)
if you read that original book, you know that Roger died in it (Yes! True! The book is WAY different from the movie they made), but Gary wolf’s attitude is like that of David Morrell, who wrote the novel First Blood, on which the Stallone movie was based. Morrell killed off Rambo in that book, but it certainly didn’t bother him when the character a.) didn’t die in the movie and b.) went on to a set of sequels.
So Wolf isn’t bothered by foolish inconsistencies about continuity – his character is a cartoon, after all! (your joke about Stallone/Rambo goes here) His attitude towards the difference between the movie and his book is to create a world that sort of bridges the difference between them. His 'toons still talk in visible word balloons, for instance, but in voices you can hear as well. He mentions more Disney toons than before. It’s interesting, so far.
I bought the book from the hand of Gary Wolf at a convention two months ago, and it’s autographed by him – and by Roger. Gary used a stamp to press an image of Roger on the inside flap and added a word balloon and then a magic marker to make a paw print alongside his own signature. The book is out of print (it came out in 1991, and I’d wanted a copy back then). He promised a second sequel, which just came out recently, but I didn’t buy that one.
On audio, I finished Cussler’s Corsair and Spartan Gold (both found at a used book store)and have moved on to his Eye of Heaven (which I got from a library). His books continue to be more ludicrous than Gary Wolf’s.
I started reading The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever series again. It’s a fantasy series about a cynical and very bitter man who gets thrust into a fantasy world in which he refuses to believe, hence the title. I started reading it a few years back but lost the first book when I moved. The first book is called Lord Foul’s Bane.
I finished We Are The Ants, a YA novel about a teenager in Florida who is bullied in school, lost his boyfriend to suicide, and has a series of alien encounters. I’d say it’s very much in the John Green/David Levithan camp. It was a great read, although it dragged a little in the last third.
I finished The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, a very entertaining little comic novella about the Queen discovering the love of books and deciding to become a writer herself. Highly recommended for any bibliophile, or anyone interested in the British monarchy. I also just finished an audiobook of Robert Heinlein’s 1966 classic The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. Just as good as I remember, although it’s a little dated now in some ways, and I realized anew just how heavy-handed ol’ RAH was with his libertarian politics.
On the home stretch of Conversations with Kennedy by Benjamin C. Bradlee, which has a lot of great stories about JFK relaxing with friends, talking about politics, diplomacy, journalism and pop culture. You really get a sense of his cool, his wit and his wicked sense of humor.
I’m also enjoying Randall Munroe’s What If?, a collection of XKCD columns, and am about to start David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers.