I just finished Sandra Newman’s The Country of Ice Cream Star, as recommended by Delphica. It was wonderful, and swallowed me up for the better part of two weeks. The dialect nearly bucked me off at first, but once I got the hang of it I really liked it. My only complaint was that the story bogs down a bit in the middle, and I don’t know what to think about the end…could be there’s a sequel coming.
Next up, The Devil’s Only Friend by Dan Wells. It’s fourth in the John Cleaver series about a sociopath who hunts demons.
I can’t begin to count the number of morons I’ve seen in national parks (and I’ve been to a shitload of them) who think it’s okay to step over the guard rails and venture out onto a crumbling edge, or place their kids in danger in order to get that “perfect” photo. I saw one woman outside of Yellowstone trying to sneak up on a bear to get a close photo. :smack: The depths of human stupidity just astounds me.
I read Motive by Jonathan Kellerman yesterday and today (I’m on summer vacation and too broke to go anywhere, so I’m reading). To be fair, he still writes a far better puzzle then JD Robb and without all the Mary Sueing. Not one of his best books, but still not one of the worst either. Milo and Alex’s persoalities are so defined at this point that there really aren’t any surprises and most of the other characters were defined only as much as absolutely necessary*, but the plot was decent, had a couple of false turns and some twists without the ultra twisty “Are you kidding me?” moments of books like Rage.
*Needs more Moe Reed
I’m glad you liked it. It seems like yeah, could definitely have a sequel, but I really liked the ending as somewhat open ended on what happens to Ice Cream.
I was on vacation, and one thing I have learned is that going on vacation with a small child is a whole different ballgame than going on vacation as a lazy childless person, so I get less reading in, not more.
I read Bone Gap, by Laura Ruby, which was pretty neat. It starts out almost like a thriller, but it ends up, in tone and plot, more like a fairy tale. Like a slight magical realism thing, where some of the events could be mystical, or they could be metaphors, I guess. Good writing for the most part, a quick read.
The Ghost Network, by Catie Disabato, was … different. It’s like a riff on a conspiracy theory book, with the central character (although she’s mostly absent from the events) being a pop diva (think Lady Gaga) who also happens to be obsessed with a revolutionary intellectual movement. It had a lot of potential, but there were a lot of aspects that made me think the author had taken on more than she could handle.
I started Cockroaches by Jo Nesbo yesterday. I know his stuff doesn’t get good until the 3rd or 4th book but I’m gonna try it anyway. I didn’t hateThe Bat, it had a lot of good pieces.
Finished Mr. Mercedes, by Stephen King. Very good. All mystery, no horror or supernatural. A retired detective starts receiving ominous messages from the perp of one of his great unsolved cases, a mass murderer who drove a stolen Mercedes-Benz into a crowd of unemployed people at a job fair. I understand King plans to make this a trilogy, with the second installment recently published.
Next up is An Officer and a Spy, by Robert Harris. Historical fiction centered on the Dreyfus affair.
I just started “The Name in the Wind.” I don’t know how or why I came across it. I don’t like fantasy books, but decided to pick it up. I’m about 12% into now and am enjoying it well enough. Apparently there are two more books in the series. I’ll see how I like this one first before I even contemplate reading another 1200 pages.
Just read Michael Okuda’s Star Trek: Ships of the Line, a great collection of starship illustrations with some explanatory text. Catnip for Trekkers like me.
On the last disc (of 22) of the audiobook of Salman Rushdie’s autobiography Joseph Anton. His third marriage is breaking up but he seems to be out from under the Iranian fatwa.
Well, if you’re reading “The Name of the Wind” by Rothfuss, I have some good news and some bad news about Book 3. The good news being that it will probably be a considerable amount of time before you have to put aside that time in your calendar, because Rothfuss makes George R. R. Martin look like a writing dynamo.
There is a small novella based in the same universe, but as it’s $18 for a handful of pages, I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.
Oh, there’s some bad news about Book 2 as well, largely that there are large sections devoted to what may very well be the most irritating love interest ever to appear in a work of fiction.
Finished Go Set a Watchman, a disturbing, but facsinating book that I’m glad I read and now would sort of like to forget. So it’s back to the Charles Manson biography. No unexpected ambiguity there and I know exactly who I’m dealing with.
I have mixed feelings about Heinlein’s last several books - the World As Myth series, some call it. I was first introduced to his juvies, so these novels, with their focus on (and enjoyment of) various non-standard permutations of sexual relations, make me think of RAH as a dirty old man. However, I do enjoy the stories themselves quite a bit, and Heinlein seemed to be having fun with them.
Mama Maureen Johnson Smith Long is the heroine of this particular novel - which ranges from the late 1800’s in Kansas City to the 3000’s on various timelines & planets. She’s a fun character - smart, competent, opinionated and horny as all get out; her seduction of a time traveler not only gives her and her associates (The Howard Family) a heads-up on future history, but a chance to escape her own fate (run over by a truck in her 90’s). However, she gets herself a bit out of her depth, time traveling to an alternate timeline where everything is either mandatory or forbidden and ending up in bed with a dead judge; she tells her life story while incarcerated for said “crime”.
I especially enjoyed Bernadette Dunn’s reading of this novel; she has the appropriate “woman of a certain age” voice that matches Mama Maureen well; and she’s able to portray the other characters in the novel reasonably well, too. I’d definitely recommend the audiobook version of this novel to anyone who appreciates Heinlein’s later work.
Yes, I’ve since realized I meant to revisit I Will Fear No Evil - it’s next on the list .
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