On audio: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I’m not sure who the reader is, but the book is clearly phenomenal and the reader only adds to it.
In print: The Bone Doll’s Twin by Lynn Flewelling. Very dark fantasy, wherein the ‘good guys’ do some horrible things for apparently good reasons and the ‘bad guys’ are deeply wicked. Some horror fusion here, though I don’t find it scary. Lots of interesting yet sometimes disturbing concepts.
Nonfiction: Still working on The Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin. The more I read, the more Dickens comes off as quite the hypocritical cad. Typical of a gentleman of his era, I suppose, but a cad nonetheless. I’m still not sure what to make of Nelly Ternan, exactly.
At work on the treadmill: Lovely Mover by Bill James. I think this ought to be my last Harpur & Iles for a while. I’m beginning to find every character contemptible, including Harpur. I can easily see where Harpur’s situations, especially undercover, would lead to moral compromise, and the jockeying for power by Iles and the underworld comes off as true-to-life. Too much ‘grey area’ in all of my reading perhaps.
I’m collecting the Penguin Great Journeys series for a personal reading marathon. Five in hand; 15 in the mail.
Let’s see–Legend and To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity on the iPod, Dhon Hiyala aai Alifulhu on the computer, Kluge as a physical book, and Lock in on the tablet.
Almost done with the audiobook of Cinder by Marissa Meyer (Book 1 of the Lunar Chronicles). Lin Cinder, of the title, is a teenage cyborg orphan, living in New Beijing. Cinder works as a mechanic in the market and is swept into a tale of intrigue and danger when Prince Kai brings her an android to repair. Adding to the drama is (as you might expect) a stepmother and stepsister who despise and betray her. As the story progresses and Cinder becomes involved in a race for the cure to a deadly disease, hints are dropped that this girl may be more than she seems.
Narrated by Rebecca Soler - I’m enjoying the story overall. The world-building is intriguing (especially as we learn more about the Lunars and their powers of “magic”) and the introduction of a deadly disease ramps up the plot (with a semi-surprising death along the way). I’m a fan of mashups, so I’m OK with the fairy tale aspects (such as the Prince falling in love almost immediately with Cinder) - tho it would be grating outside of that context.
There’s the occasional odd word choice (farmers **toiling **the fields instead of **tilling **the fields, for example) and the references to the East Asian cultures that are the apparent setting of the book seem a bit shallow, but it’s a decent story overall - worth borrowing from the library & if they have the sequels, I may check them out as well.
I did, Elendil’s Heir! Watching the movie spurred me to finally read the book. Thought the movie was very good. I recognized some of the interiors from my recent trip to Doughty Street in London.
I finished ** Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail ** by Marcus Rediker. Rediker is very definitely a revionist historian, which makes me curious to read more of his work. Linking piracy and anti press gang riots to the roots of the American Revolution is pretty revolutionary in itself. I had a couple major problems with the structure of the book which I enumerate in my Goodreads review if anyone is interested in reading.
I am about 26 pages into Barry Eisler’s Hard Rain and in love again with John Rain or as much as one can be in love with an assasin…(in spite of Eisler’s annoying habit of throwing back story at you right up front)
Legend was the biggest waste of paper I’ve seen in 2014. Though since I listened to it, I should more technically call is the biggest waste of electricity.
Just zipped through Joss Whedon’s, Brett Matthews’s and Will Conrad’s Serenity: Those Left Behind, a graphic novel prequel to the movie Serenity, based on the unfortunately short-lived sf TV series Firefly. The comics had a decent plot but the artwork was only so-so; some of the characters looked very little like the real thing.
