Just finished John Grisham’s The Brethren, about three disgraced judges running a con game by mail from inside a Federal low-security prison. It took some interesting twists and turns and I enjoyed it, although the ending was a little disappointing.
I’m almost done with Patrick O’Brian’s Desolation Island. Capt. Aubrey, Dr. Maturin and the crew of the hard-luck HMS *Leopard * have just barely survived a major (and vividly described) storm.
Next up: a re-read of John Scalzi’s excellent The Collapsing Empire, so it’s fresh in my mind before I go on to the sequel, The Consuming Fire.
Just finished A Different Flesh by Harry Turtledove. Seven short stories, in chronological order from 1610 to 1988, set in an alternative time-line in which the Americas, discovered from Europe from the late 15th century on, are found to be inhabited not by Homo sapiens, but by Homo erectus (the latter called “sims”, by the people in the stories). Still abundant at the time of discovery, are megafauna which the “sims” have had neither the brawn nor (unlike “our time-line” 's Hom. sap. Native Americans) the ingenuity to exterminate. The stories explore the ramifications of things being found thus, when Europeans reach the Americas. In the country overall quite like the USA (differing in many details) which develops in median North America; predictably, the “sims” are, in the main, not treated well by the colonising Hom. sap.
A quite absorbing read; but, to me, with its disappointing side. For a generally acclaimed “master of alternative history”, Turtledove’s imagination-supply appears IMHO, frankly somewhat limited – he seems more prolific, and on easier ground, writing with “real history” 's events as a quite close template; making greater use of his imagination and coming up with more-original material – as in these stories – has him producing excellent stuff, but rather meagrely. I feel that I could have happily devoured twice the number of stories on this theme, than the collection actually holds; and with his having established the survival of the megafauna, I find it disappointing how relatively little Turtledove exploits this feature.
Finished the above book, Land Sharks, by Katharine M. Nohr. This was very good. I enjoyed it immensely. Great story, held my interest from beginning to end. During the Honolulu Olympic trials, a car plows into the bicycling hopefuls, causing death and injury. One seriously injured participant sues the event organizers claiming negligence, and the insurance litigators must prove it was no accident but an intentional criminal act. The “land sharks” in the title refers to overly aggressive attorneys, although lawyers in general are portrayed largely as good guys. Nohr may very well be Hawaii’s answer to John Grisham. An insurance attorney herself as well as a sometime judge, she owns her own law firm and one or two other claims agencies and is an expert on sports and triathlon risk management. It’s always fun to read of locations I am very familiar with in real life in a novel.
That said, I have to say the editing is terrible. Misspellings, grammatical errors and odd punctuation are all too common throughout. Even a case or two that looks like a Spell Check error such as “candidacy” where “candor” was obviously meant. I blame the publishing house, WD Publishing. It’s odd there is no other publishing info at the beginning of the book, no place of publication, nothing like that. I assumed it was published locally, but googling I see the WD stands for Written Dreams, and they are a small house in Green Bay, Wisconsin apparently specializing in new writers. I’ve seen the same thing with small houses in Bangkok, not much care taken with the editing.
My neighbor who hosted that Christmas party the author and I both attended asked me the other day how I liked the book. I said it was great but a shame about the editing. To my embarrassment, she went and told the author, “Siam Sam loves your book but says the editing is bad.” Wonderful. But she apparently took it in stride, telling my neighbor she already knew but that it had been too late to fix. Contract already signed or something. She’s generously offered to loan me the other two books in what is a trilogy, already published too, and I think I will take her up on that.
Meanwhile, speaking of John Grisham, next up is his The Rooster Bar. But it will probably be a few days before I can start that, as this will be an exceptionally busy week for me.
This morning I finished Patrick O’Brian’s Desolation Island. A very interesting, satisfying book about life aboard a British warship during the Napoleonic Wars.
Also just finished John Scalzi’s excellent sf adventure The Collapsing Empire, and have begun the next book in what was supposed to be a two-book series but may, I’ve read, become a trilogy, The Consuming Fire. Good stuff: political intrigue, hardball mercantilism, religious mysticism and piracy in a distant-future interstellar empire.
Next up: Joe Hill’s horror novel Heart-Shaped Box, about which I’ve heard good things.
Finished* Robert B. Parker’s Old Black Magic* by Ace Atkins. While it had some enjoyable moments, the plot of everyone chasing a McGuffin was too convoluted and uninteresting.
I’m listening to Blood Meridian on audiobook. I tried the paperback but got pissed off with McCarthy never using speech marks, which makes it really hard to follow whose saying what. The audiobook is much easier and I’m really liking it. I’m about halfway in at the moment.
I am halfway through Hari Kunzru’s White Tears. It is a terrific confection of thriller and ghost story. The writing races along and apparently there are many twists and turns ahead.
I have checked out on Amazon the intro sample for each of Kunzru’s other books and look forward to reading them as well. All seem intriguing.
I just sent a sample (of a different book) to my Kindle, and Suitcase Charlie was among the “Top Picks For You” books on the confirmation page! Woah!
I think that’s a first for me in these threads!
Meanwhile, I’ve sent a sample of The Shadows We Hide to my Kindle. No idea when I’ll get around to it, but it’s on the list! Did you also read The Life We Bury? Normally I wouldn’t be willing to start with the second book in a series, but it seems like the stories aren’t connected except for the protagonist…?
It’s entirely possible that I missed someone mentioning this last year, but I just discovered that Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling) released book #4 in the Cormoran Strike series in September: Lethal White. I sent a sample to my Kindle, and will most likely start reading it whenever I finally finish The Brethren – which is taking a while not because of the book itself, but because lately I’ve been falling asleep without reading first.
I did read The Life We Bury and rated it highly also, but it’s been so long ago I remembered absolutely nothing about it. So you could read Shadows as a stand-alone. I hope you like it as much as I did.
Finished Howards End, by E.M. Forster. Brought back memories of the English courses I took in college. I kept seeing things I would’ve written a paper about, had I been assigned this particular book back then.
Now I’m reading Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan.
I finished John Scalzi’s excellent sf adventure, The Consuming Fire. A worthy sequel to The Collapsing Empire (with some interesting parallels to Brexit and global climate change, although it’s not strictly allegorical), and it ended just abruptly enough that I suspect and hope that a third book will be along eventually.
Gave up on Joe Hill’s horror novel Heart-Shaped Box after more than my customary 50 pages. Despite good reviews, I was unimpressed with the writing, and the story itself never really hooked me.
Next: Robert Parker’s 1981 Spenser private-eye book, Early Autumn.
Early Autumn is the first Spenser I read. It’s excellent.
Finished Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan. Not bad, but it didn’t interest me as much as Sourdough, which was the best book I read last year. One thing that interested me was that the books depicted on the cover glow in the dark–that was a surprise when I was carrying it down a dark hall.
Now I’m reading Smoke, a science fiction novel by Donald E. Westlake.
I finished Ghost Detective by Scott William Cater last night. I loved the set up, that the dead are ghosts going about their everyday lives alongside the living, and the mystery was fairly decent, but the characters were incredibly flat and rather boring. And I was totally sick of the MC’s ghost wife picking a fight with him continuously.
I am now reading a fun little paranormal mystery called Not a Werewolf by Madeline Kirby. She’s a cat lover…
I just finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night by Mark Haddon.
Plot Overview
The fifteen-year-old narrator of the story, Christopher John Francis Boone, discovers the slain body of his neighbor’s dog and sets out to uncover the murderer. His investigation is at times aided, and at other times hampered, by the mild form of autism he lives with.
Finished The Rooster Bar, by John Grisham. A small group of third-year law students who collectively owe several hundred thousand dollars in student loans decide to drop out at the beginning of their final semester, pose as actual lawyers and hit the criminal courts to troll for DUIs and other low-level offenders, bypassing the need to pass any pesky bar exams. What could possibly go wrong? After all, who really bothers to check a lawyer’s credentials? Chaos ensues. There is a subplot in which one of the group was born in the US but whose parents and siblings are undocumented aliens from Senegal. This was a very good story, enthralling from beginning to end. Grisham got too preachy for a while in some of his books 10 or 15 years ago but avoids that in this subplot, in which the travails of illegals and their treatment by ICE are explored. Quite a find for me too, as I picked up the hardback in a used-book store for just $1. With this novel and *Camino Island * before it, Grisham is on a roll.
