I’m up to book 7, Hell is Empty, in Craig Johnson’s Longmire series. It’s one long action scene as an injured Longmire chases escaped armed convicts through the woods up a mountain on foot during a blizzard without waiting for backup, 'cause that’s just the way Longmire rolls. It was fun, but it’s not one of my favorites - for one thing, there’s almost nothing of Henry Standing Bear or any of the other secondary characters.
I read and enjoyed the second of Laurie King’s Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes books, A Monstrous Regiment of Women. I’m lukewarm on the plot but I like King’s writing and the setting: 1921 London. I love the title. The story concerns a women’s rights activist, and the book has great anti-feminist quotes at the beginning of each chapter, everything from St. Paul’s “Women should keep silent in church” to Shakespeare’s “Thy husband is thy lord”. This second story belongs to Russell, with Holmes in a supporting role, albeit an important one. I’m surprised by how well the Russell/Holmes pairing works, although I’m uncomfortable with the 40-year age gap.
I just finished Pandora’s Star, by Peter F. Hamilton, which is a giant space opera epic, and it’s only the first half of the story. I really like the plot, and I will go ahead and read the next book soon, although I have many complaints about Hamilton’s writing.
Finished Harold Holzer’s Lincoln and the Power of the Press, which was a bit heavy going at times, but overall worthwhile. I learned a lot, esp. as to the very blurred line between journalism and politics in the American Civil War era. Many big-newspaper publishers also ran for and held elective office, and their papers were quite open about supporting a particular party and pushing the party line. Henry Raymond, for instance, the publisher of The New York Times, was a big Republican backer of Lincoln, chaired the Republican National Committee in Lincoln’s reelection year of 1864, and was himself elected to the House of Representatives that year.
I finished reading Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. It was a fascinating story about the western European idea of honour and how one should act in a crisis, although it was chock full of racist attitudes: brown people who are crafty, cowardly, bloodthirsty, stoic, treacherous, whiny, etc. or almost as good as a white person (which is the highest compliment you can possibly give, naturally).
I am about a third of the way through Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves and it is stressing me out. I am going to need to read something profoundly cheerful next.
About halfway through my first re-read of Richard K. Morgan’s cyperbunk sci-fi noir, “Altered Carbon”. Enjoying it more the second time around – I was inspired to pick it back up, after at least 5 years or so, when I heard that it would be adapted into a Netflix series.
Finally finished the slog through Radical. It was informative, certainly, but the tiny print nearly did me in. I’ve started a novel, The Life We Bury, by Allen Eskens, and have Kon-Tiki in the queue, which I somehow missed reading long ago.
I’m reading and enjoying The Dark Horse. I particularly adore Vic in the books and wish they had done a better job capturing her in the series.
I’m also about done Carly Simon’s memoir, Boys in the Trees. It’s a well written but uncomfortable read. She is explicit and detailed about some parts of her early life and marriage to James Taylor, but almost coy/secretive about others. I wish there was more about the songs. Where they came from. What was going on in her life when she wrote them. She does talk about a few of them and, for me, they are the most interesting parts of the book.
Yeah, I thought the role was badly miscast. The actor (or maybe it’s the writers) just doesn’t capture the essential character of Vic, which tells me that she hasn’t bothered to read any of the books. I will say that since the series moved to Netflix, they’ve let the character be a bit more gritty, but still not the “fuck you” Vic who is delightfully abrupt and earthy.
I’ve just finished ‘Gormenghast’, the second book in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. I. Loved. It! I honestly cannot praise it highly enough. I’ve never encountered a writer quite like Peake. His descriptive skills and sense of the grotesque is unparalleled. This may just be my limited experience talking, but no-one else comes within light years of him, IMO. The characters are all unforgettable. The story is, by turns, suspenseful, thrilling, tragic, poignant, and bleakly hilarious. My sole regret is that I can only read it for the first time once. It’s an absolute gem, and as close to a perfect book as I’ve ever read. An unequivocal 10 out of 10.
Gormenghast has taken up nearly all my reading time in the last few days so I’ve not read any more of Killing Floor, and I’ve only read another 50 pages of The Magician since my last post, which is disappointing. However, I’ve got a completely free weekend and I plan to finish at least one of them. After them, I’m going to tackle Richard Wright’s ‘Native Son’ and, because I’m a messy bastard, ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up’ by Marie Kondo.
The Gormenghast trilogy (well, the first two) is one of my personal favorites as well: an utterly unique work of fantasy. Definitely not for everyone though!
One of my favorite bits is when Lady Fuchsia Groan was reading “The Frivolous Cake”, one of her old nursery rhymes: both absurd and deeply, uncomfortably perverse. A Freudian would have a field day with it.
I FINALLY finished The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Die hard fans need not go check out my review on Goodreads
He is good at stringing words together and many parts of the book were beautiful but Sweet Buddha on a cracker Kvothe is the biggest Mary Sue! If you swapped genders there’s not a publishing house in the US that would put a book out about such a talented and perfect girl.
See post 18 upthread. Then, if you love the book, check out Scalzi’s short ebook Unlocked (available on Amazon), which has some great background detail on the world of Lock In.
For a book that was written 65 years ago, it was able to educate me from the outset. That’s impressive. I had never bothered to learn about Polynesia and the origins of its people. Heyerdahl proposed heretical ideas and then set out to prove them.
