Heh, I liked Kean’s other two books. I think I’ll pick this one up. Thanks! 
I read this recently and enjoyed it a lot; it is very well written. Unfortunately, I am not sure how well-researched it is. I get the feeling that Manchester swallowed every scurrilous *Weekly World News *level story whole without second thoughts.
I am currently reading *Crown of Renewal *, the last of the 5-book *Paladin’s Legacy *series by Elizabeth Moon. I liked her *Deed of Paksennarion *a lot, and this series is a sequel to the previous series, but I don’t like this one nearly as much. She has too many characters, too many things going on–I just can’t keep straight who is doing what to whom.
I did read the *Paksennarion *trilogy all at one time, and this series as the books were published, so that might have made a difference, but I doubt if I will ever re-read this series.
My book club read that a few years ago, and we all - myself included - raved about it. A tragicomic masterpiece.
The Laughing Policeman was a very fast read (but not a partcularly good story), so back to classics. I just started The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter this morning.
I just finished Jeff Vandermeer’s Authority, second of the Southern Reach trilogy. Bits of it were interesting, notably the very end, but for the most part it was just a slog. I guess since there’s just one more book to go and it’s coming out soon, I’ll read it, but ugh. This one almost finished me.
Currently reading Dismantled by Jennifer McMahon, who has so far been very dependable. This one is about something bad a bunch of dirty hippies did in college.
That’s a shame as I liked the first volume.
Not been reading much this month - holidays! - but I’ve started Robert Reed’s The Memory of Sky. It’s ‘a Great Ship Trilogy’ in one volume and is the story of a strange little boy being brought up secretly by his parents on a generation starship. But all he knows is that he’s being brought up inside one of the dozens of giant trees all of humanity live in… I’m about a third of the way through the first novel of the set.
I finished Vicious Circle, the second of Mike Carey’s Felix Castor novels. Fix is hired to track down the kidnapped ghost of a little girl. But before that gets going, his demon-possessed friend Rafi has a bad episode (to put it lightly) in the mental institution he’s confined in and the director has given Fix twenty-eight days to find another place to put him or else he’ll be turned over to a research institution. Meanwhile Juliet, the succubus that Fix took on as an intern at the end of the first book, is dealing with a possessed church. Chaos happens in an entertaining fashion. I loved it as much as I did the first book. By the end, Fix has twenty-one days to find a place for Rafi, a nice cliffhanger for the next installment.
My local library only has the first two books.
I am most displeased with this development.
peers around shiftily
I am reading manga this weekend:
Ouran High School Host Club 9,10, 11 (for my inner teenage girl) by Bisco Hatori
Blue Exorcist 6 Kazue Kato
Natsume’s Book of Friends 16 by Yuki Midorikawa
And No 6 # 4 by Asuko Asano & Hinoki Kino
I re-read Ivanhoe a couple of months ago. The adventure parts are pretty good, but I have to admit that the undercurrent of sexual slavery struck me as creepy the second time around.
It had tons of creepy stuff in it. Potential burning at the stake for one main character and torture in a medieval dungeon for another, for starters; and of course one of the bad guys was carrying on his family tradition of kidnapping and raping women.
In fact, the plot was largely composed of creepy stuff! 
That’s what the heroes were for - to rescue the good guys from some extremely bad guys.
Then there was the conflicted bad guy, that Templer dude.
Reading a few new (to me) books at present.
Primary fiction read is Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. I’ve been working on this one for a while, and I still can’t quite get into it. I don’t know why. I love books set in or about India, and this magical realistic portrait of children (and one child in particular) born at the moment of Partition should captivate me. But somehow, it doesn’t. I find myself longing for one of RK Narayan’s Malgudi novels instead. Normally I love magic realism, too. Not sure what gives. Maybe I’ve got an unreasonable dislike of Saleem Sinai’s ‘cucumber-like’ nose or something!
Secondary fiction read is Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. It’s been an interesting journey with Shadow and Mr. Wednesday as they summon the old gods of America to defeat the new ones. In a neat cultural conjunction, I just watched Supernatural’s “Hammer of the Gods” episode last night to see many of the same personalities. Ultimate moral of either story: Never, ever mess with old gods.
Tertiary fiction reads are a couple of children’s / YA books: Un Lun Dun by China Mieville and Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenstein. Neither one quite grabs me, and I really WANTED to like both. I might be reading Un Lun Dun at too advanced an age, but it feels overlong and scattered to me (but then I’m not done yet, either). Not that I have to, but I don’t find most of the main characters likable either. Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library has some elements I’d normally love: cool libraries, puzzles, clever kids. This book feels derivative of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Jumanji to me (with maybe some of The Game of Sunken Places thrown in). I also get an uncomfortable feeling, reading along, as though it was written to be more filmed than read. Sorry, Mr. Grabenstein, but I think you’ve got a better script here than a book, though many 4th through 6th graders might disagree.
Nonfiction remains Good-bye to All That by Robert Graves. The more I read, the more respect I have for the men and women who endured World War I. Graves conveys the utter horror of daily reality in the trenches in such a matter-of-fact way that I literally find myself gulping and flinching from time to time. His bare prose conjures up such images - and yet the combatants were expected to bear it all with stiff upper lip and make a good show. :eek:
I read that one a few years ago, it was okay but I felt the ending was flat. Maybe the point just flew over my head…
I would like Neil Gaiman to follow up and write more about some of the side characters, Mr Toth and his cohort(name escapes me Anubis?) and the afreet and Middle Eastern fellow, that chapter ended MUCH to soon for me.
Mr. Ibis and Mr. Jacquel! I’d like that too. He’s prolific enough, he may do it, especially since we got a whole book of, well, Anansi’s Boys.
I’ve got 35 or so pages to go. I do think I see the stinger in the tail (at last) and if so, it promises cleverness. I’ll be disappointed if said cleverness is not delivered, particularly if I get flatness instead!
Mr Ibis yes! They were so fabulous.
Anansi’s Boys was one of his best in my opinion, I tore through it like a whirlwind! And loved every second of it.
No accounting for tastes.*** Midnight’s Children ***is NOT a book I expected to like as much as I did.
This is a strange comparison, but it reminded me a lot of*** Forrest Gump.***
I’m half way through Cinnamon and Gunpowder, by Eli Brown, about a master chef who is kidnapped by the pirate ‘Mad Hannah Mabbot’. While the book is not as complex or ambitious, I don’t think I’ve had as much fun on a 19th Century wooden vessel since English Passengers.
Except it’s way too late for poor Ulrica, who gets captured by Front-de-Boeuf’s father and forced into being his sexual plaything for years until Front-de-Boeuf kills his father and uses her as his own sex toy until she gets too old and ugly. And then when she meets Cedric (one of the good guys), he’s disgusted at her for not fighting back hard enough at her rapists. I thought that was horrifying.
I just finished reading “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”. I liked it, but I’ll definitely add it to the category “I Can’t Believe I Thought This Was A Kid’s Story!” along with Ivanhoe and The Three Musketeers, for instance.
It certainly was. My point is that there is much in that book that was horrifying - indeed, the majority of the plot, given that it centres around rape, murder and extortion by torture.
Ulrica shows what the stakes are, if the heroes fail. Cedric’s judgment of Ulrica is meant to be horrifying - this is a guy who disinherits his own son for not falling in with his vision of the world, so his judgment in-universe is already considered more than questionable - he’s generally speaking incredibly stubborn and judgmental.
Finished The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, and am now relaxing with Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan Carries On.
I just splurged and bought both Stephen King’s Mr Mercedes AND Greg Iles * Natchez Burning*. in hardcover. At the supermarket.
(Along with several other things that I don’t need but looked good. Andouille sausage, organic radishes, orange cauliflower, coconut milk, sesame oil, a cute tea towel…note to self: make a shopping list and stick to it.)
But I’ve been looking forward to reading both! Will start Mr Mercedes this evening.