I agree. I’ve read Gone Girl, Sharp Objects, and Dark Places, and while I think all three of those books were worth reading, Gone Girl was the best.
The Zimmerman Telegram, by Barbara Tuchman. I’ve read (and enjoyed) almost all of her works, but never got around to this one until now. It’s very good, as expected.
Reading Biff to the Future. A graphic novel that tells the story of the alternate timeline in BTTF II where Biff is rich and powerful.
Finished Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons; which as I previously noted should be subtitled “and Other Stories”, since it’s an anthology. Still, most of the stories weren’t bad, and I really enjoyed the title one. Many of the other stories read like letters I’ve seen in advice columns recently, in terms of the issues they address.
Started The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries, edited by Otto Penzler.
Finished this. Fun enough, a solid B. I doubt I’ll remember it in a year.
The Company, however–now this is what I’m talking about. A no-magic (so far) fantasy about retired soldiers who follow one soldier’s dream to set up a communal farm colony on an island, only they’re all, in addition to being brilliant and insanely brave, kind of fuckups. It’s grim but really funny (bone-dry humor) and wonderfully characterized. I’m enjoying it a helluva lot. Will have to hunt down more stuff by KJ Parker.
I was waiting for your opinion, Kindle has it on sale right now. Sounds like I ought to grab it.
Rip Ford’s Texas, by John Salmon Ford. Little known today Ford was the archetypal Texas Ranger, serving in the Mexican War under Coffee Hays, fighting Comanches and outlaws, commanding the Confederates in the last battle of the American Civil War. Leader of the Secession Movement in Texas he never drank The Noble Cause kool-aid and so has been dropped from history, but his book is the truest picture of the Old West you can find, also sadly laying bear the racist foundation that blights much of the history of The Rangers.
Hey DzedNConfused, I used to get drunk and stoned with the real Slater back in the day…
awesome!!
I finished reading a couple of books:
Sailor’s Knots, a collection of short stories by W. W. Jacobs. Nowadays he’s most known for the horror story “The Monkey’s Paw”, but apparently in his day he was mostly a humorist. Some of the stories were about sailors getting into trouble in port, hence the name. The stories weren’t anything special, really – typical sitcom fare, some using the formula of a sailor trying to take advantage of another person and getting the tables turned on him. They were definitely dated (from the early 1900s), though; the worst one was about a man-hungry African woman chasing after a British sailor in blackface.
News From Nowhere by noted wallpaper designer (and socialist) William Morris. A man falls asleep in 1890 and wakes up in a 21st century bucolic anarcho-socialist paradise. The gist is that after the great British socialist civil war of 1952, all the huddled masses leave their factory jobs in the cities to become small farmers and handicrafters in the country. And having people do the kind of work that they’re interested in results in an explosion of productivity, because work is fun [citation needed]. He kind of vaguely accepts that not all work is equally fun and maybe the less-fun stuff is sort of mechanised or something. Also, women will do all the women’s work because they’re awesome at it. I did not find it particularly convincing, but it was an interesting idea.
Finished it, and enjoyed it. What particularly struck me was that, although an extremely skilled secret agent, Bond is sometimes really scared, remorseful or exhausted - not the superhuman killing machine he often is in the movies. Now I think I’ll go back and read Casino Royale, the first in the series.
Just started an audiobook of Mario Puzo’s original The Godfather. Never read it before, although I’ve seen the movie; Puzo isn’t the greatest writer but the characters are interesting and the plot moves along briskly. Joe Mantegna is the reader and sometimes sounds a bit like his Fat Tony character from The Simpsons.
I’m also about halfway through The Deluge Drivers, the last in Alan Dean Foster’s sf trilogy set on the iceworld of Tran-Ky-Ky. I like it so far.
Finished Travels with Charley in Search of America, by John Steinbeck. Very good. Not a major work but enjoyable. Steinbeck crosses the country twice with his poodle Charley in 1960, exploring an America he last explored 25 years earlier. An interesting view of the nation at the start of what would prove a tumultuous decade. He was 58 at the time, with his health recently starting to decline. His oldest son has claimed he knew he was dying and wanted to see the country one last time, and indeed he did die in 1968.
Next up is Grant, by one of my favorite historians, Ron Chernow. Will start it later this week.
I finished *Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy *by Simon Blackburn. Ehh. The department of redundancy dept might approve it, but I got bored.
Stranded by Bracken MacLeod was highly recommended by HorrorNovelReviews.com.
I was ready to be scared, frightened, sleep with the Kindle locked in a safe just in case kind of book. What I got was an interesting tale. It makes me wonder what makes something scary for someone. The Exorcist is usually bandied about when it comes to horror movies, but it always seemed silly to me. Maybe because I’m an atheist so it’s not plausible? Not sure. The last thing I read that really more disturbed than scared me was that short story Guts by Chuck Palahniuk. But torture/Last House on the Left/Go Ask Alice type stories depress me more than scare me. So if anyone has a good horror book to recommend, I’m all [strike]ears[/strike] eyes.
Currently, I’m half-way through The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness by Paula Poundstone. It’s the perfect plane ride book (I started this on the way back from London). The kind where you can read a chapter, time goes by, food is served, a nap is taken, and then you read another chapter.
I read “It Takes Two to Tumble” the latest Regency romance from Cat Sebastian. A decent plot, likeable characters and some steamy sex, everything I need in a “potato chips” book. 
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon is about family ties, long-held secrets and the darker corners of the Internet. Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin is about vampires along the Mississippi River before the Civil War. Both are excellent.
Finished with Caitlyn Doughty’s non-fiction book about funerary customs in different cultures, From Here to Eternity: traveling the world to find the good death. It was due back at the library and I hadn’t succeeded in reading more than half. It was a fine book, though I didn’t enjoy it as much as her first. I was unable to focus on it (both literally and figuratively, life stress and vision problems)!
Today I started on City of Brass, a fantasy novel that’s off to a great start, although for the same reasons, I’m not sure I’ll make it to the finish! It’s going down a lot easier though, reminds me of The Golem and the Jinni, which I loved.
I finished Republic the 8th Emperor’s Edge book by Lindsay Buroker. Overall a tight, well plotted story with a heavy element of WTFery. Very enjoyable, and enough strings left to branch out and write more about the characters.
Recommendations are gonna be different if you’re looking for a book in the horror genre (in which case I’ll recommend The Last Werewolf, a bloody raunchy vicious werewolf novel), or something that’s genuinely scary (in which case I’ll recommend The Secret History, more of a thriller, but full of dread). If you want freako weird stuff, there’s Annihilation, part of the New Weird movement. Definitely not for everyone, but I found it discordant and unbalancing and fascinating.
Anyway, I finished The Company a few days ago. That’s some bleak stuff right there, Conan the Barbarian written by the Coen Brothers maybe. Now I’m reading The Clockwork Dynasty, a forgettable confection about ancient sentient robots or some such bullshit. It’s fine for passing the time, but pretty dumb.
Finished: *The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness *by Paula Poundstone. I liked it, but I’m also a biased fan of her work.
I just finished up chapter 7 of this. I’m not sure where it’s going, but I’m definitely intrigued. It looks like the book was released in 2009, in 2004 a singer named Josh Rouse released a song called Michigan that had the lyrics:
I’ve gotta wonder if the author was inspired.
Hmm. There’s not an Uncle Ray or Aunt Terry in the book, is there?
I’m halfway through The Book of Dust by Philip Pullman, a prequel to The Golden Compass and His Dark Materials trilogy.
I enjoyed His Dark Materials but didn’t love it. Good entertainment in a YA-sort of way. For whatever reason, The Book of Dust is really holding my attention. It has great characters and more emphasis on the battle between the Magisterium and the good guys.