I started We Were Liars this morning. It’s not gripping and I don’t care for the narrator, but this is supposed to have a twist and be all clever and shit, so I will hang in there for that. It ought to be a quick read.
Over the weekend I read Jo Walton’s new book, My Real Children, which I liked pretty well. It reminded me of Kate Atkinson’s novel Life After Life, although the scope is smaller.
It begins with Patricia Cowen as an elderly, confused woman in a nursing home who has memories of living two very different lives. Her timeline split when she made the critical decision to marry - or not marry - her college boyfriend. Her choices lead to radically different life experiences, and in each timeline the history of the world diverges from our own reality.
The writing is weak in the beginning, especially at the point where Patricia makes her fateful decision. Then the details of two entire lifetimes are spilled out in a 300-page novel, so there is a fair amount of summary and exposition. But overall the book is an interesting read.
Am also fortunate to have a library (two actually, the county & town have separate libraries & I qualify for both) with Sunday hours - they both also have great selections & online catalogs with hold systems 
Breezed thru Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely in a few days of interrupted reading. The two separate threads intersected in an entertaining (if unlikely way) and while I had one of the twists figured out ahead of time, I still was a bit surprised by the end. The novel is definitely of its time, (and I don’t think I’d actually enjoy spending time with Marlowe) but that’s part of its charm.
Still really enjoying Chandler’s language - phrases like *“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and I went out… *” - just perfect for the genre!
Now to see if I can track down some Dashiell Hammett … which is what I was looking for when I picked up this Chandler two-fer – after having read Loren D. Estleman’s Ragtime Cowboys, in which Mr. Hammet is a main character.
I’m a sucker for alternative history. How are they different? Boxed spoilers welcomed.
I wouldn’t read this just for the alternate history aspect. The book is tightly focused on a character living in England, and we only get enough details to establish that in one timeline the world has become more violent and unstable (there have been nuclear exchanges, society is more repressive) and in the other the world is freer and more peaceful.
The point seems to be to provide contrast: in the timeline with the peaceful world, the protagonist has led a miserable life, but in the war-torn world she has greater personal happiness and fulfillment. In the last chapter: she seems to believe she must choose which of the timelines will become reality. That part didn’t work very well for me, because there is no explanation for why any of her decisions would have such a wide-ranging effect, just a mention of the “butterfly flaps its wings” conceit.
Thanks. Stephen King also mentions the Butterfly Effect several times in 11/22/63, about a time traveler trying to prevent JFK’s assassination.
I just zipped through two pretty good graphic novels: Big Bad Ironclad! by Nathan Hale, about the battle between the Monitor and the Virginia, and the gallant Cushing sinking the Albemarle (generally accurate, very well-drawn, with some good jokes sprinkled in), and The Hedge Knight, adapted from George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones prequel by Ben Avery (pretty true to the short story, with an almost fetishistic treatment of the armor and heraldry).
I happened to comment to The Fella a couple of days ago that I’d lost the Discworld book where Vimes meets Sybil and that I really wanted to reread that one. (One of the few I haven’t read the covers off of.) Lo and behold, I was going thru my shelves for books to take to HPB, and there it was! So, I’m rereading Guards, Guards!.
I’ll be reading that one for the first time soon.
I finished Skin Game on Sunday night, and on Monday night I started reading Supreme Justice. It’s set in the near future, which I hadn’t realized when I downloaded it but is adding an interesting little twist.
Gah, I keep forgetting that I have Maus sitting on a bookshelf waiting to be read! I’ll have to move it to the nightstand so I remember to read it when I’m done with Supreme Justice*.
*In the not-so-distant-past I used to be able to read multiple books simultaneously, but these days I only have the time/memory capacity to read one at a time. It sucks to get old.
I managed to get a pre-release copy of The Guns at Last Light through the National WWII Museum giveaway. Despite how excited I was (yes I’m sneak bragging, I don’t win many things), it’s a daunting book to look at. I think I’ll need some more fun fiction novels between me and The Soldier’s Story before I can do another war history book, to be honest. So it’ll sit on my shelf some more!
Still having at The Far Side of the World and liking it a lot more than the first novel in the series. I’d usually tend to read a series in order but the bookstore and library did not have Post Captain so I made do with the second most famous book in the series. It’s definitely boding well for reading more. I imagine if I had started with Beat to Quarters for Hornblower, I’d have been put off that series a little as well.
Just finished up a slew of books - The Alaska Bush Pilot Chronicles: More Adventures and Misadventures from the Big Empty, A History of the World in Twelve Maps, Pinkerton’s Great Detective: The Amazing Life and Times of James McParland, and My War at Sea 1914-1916: A Captain’s Life with the Royal Navy during the First World War.
Now I’m reading Voodoo Warriors: The Story of the McDonnell Voodoo Fast-jets, and History of the American Negro in the Great World War. All have been and are currently excellent reads.
Me too! I don’t want to read it in public, because I’m always complaining about Thais reading nothing but comic books and they wouldn’t understand the difference with this. And then I’m pretty beat by the end of the day and just space it out. I have both volumes of Maus and need to get on with reading them.
Me too! 
I always have two books going, and sometimes as many as four. What I read at any given time depends on my mood. When I get close to the end of a book I usually accelerate my reading of it - feels good to finish one.
I envy that. Should have finished my Grisham last week but just don’t have much time to read.
I just finished Vinge’s The Fire Upon the Deep, which mostly didn’t bog down. Now reading Paul Farmer’s Haiti after the Earthquake and the 9th Sandman collection.
I finished *We Were Liars *yesterday, and tossed it aside with great irritation. Nausea came later, when I was reading all the gushing reviews over at Goodreads. I didn’t figure out the “twist” before the end, but even so it didn’t blow my mind. The penultimate revelation upset me much more than the final reveal. Plus, The Bad Thing That Happened only happened because certain characters were dumber than a box of rocks. Auugh!
I’m glad to be starting on Skin Game today.
I only have the first one, for now: I’ve never read a graphic novel before, and I’m not sure whether I’ll like it. I did remember to move it to my nightstand, so there’s hope that I might actually start reading it when I’m done with Supreme Justice.
I’ve been on vacation so it’s been a while since I updated. I hope I’m not repeating anything.
Recent reads:
The Farm, by Tom Rob Smith. Like a psychological thriller, a young guy in London whose parents have retired to Sweden suddenly starts getting very different reports from each of his parents about recent disturbing events. His father says his mother is mentally ill, his mother says his father has become involved with shady characters who are worried she will reveal their criminal activities. This was actually pretty good, and this is not a genre I usually go for.
Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel Everett. This was okay, a little weird. Book by a linguist studying a tribe of people in a remote Amazon area. The linguistics and culture stuff was interesting, the author’s style was a little off-putting.
Murder on the Home Front: A True Story of Morgues, Murderers, and Mysteries During the London Blitz, by Molly Lefebure. This is one of those books that I hoped was going to be really good, but ended up being more eh, okay. It’s the memoir of a woman who went to work as a coroner’s assistant in London during WWII. There’s a lot of really neat information about daily life on the home front, and it does a great job of capturing the stress and coping people had to do to get by during the war and the air raids … but ultimately, she’s not that great of a writer. I think this re-release is trying to capitalize on the success of Call the Midwife, it has a similar feel.
Gahhhhh! I haven’t been getting notifications!
Grrlbrarian: Wasn’t The Rook FANTASTIC!?! My only disappointment was that he didn’t explore Gestalt further, I think the hive mind would be a great concept to continue with.
Dung Beetle: You will love the Watch books. Sam Vimes is a total stud… well after the first 50 pages or so. And Carrot has to be one of my favorite literary characters ever!
So me. I finished Fantasy in Death by J. D. Robb. This book falls somewhere between Origin and Treachery on the like scale. It was well written, tightly plotted, the action never flagged. And even though the end was a bit of a stretch, it was believable within the context of the world the author has created. But still it had some flaws.
Roarke is the very definition of a Mary Sue, in fact he IS such a Mary Sue that Robb felt the need to throw in a gratuituous, out of nowhere argument with Eve that had no provocation, did nothing for the plot and was so inappropriate it had to be the author saying “See! See, he isn’t THAT perfect.”
Robb needs to decide if she wants Peabody to be a Boy Wonder or a Stan Laurel type of sidekick because the going back and forth is a bit nauseating really. Also the banter between the two just comes off as awkward and embarrassing, it really needs to be left out. Equally I don’t really need to have EVERY woman in the book drooling over Mary Sue - I mean Roarke, how about some other guys drooling, this IS the 2000s, Ms Robb. 
Read Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life for some great scenes set during the London Blitz (and it’s a very good book overall).