Oh, that was a good one. I remember loving the first half, and the rest…not so much, but still it’s a darn fine read.
Oh good. Because in reality, I probably won’t get back to it again.
This morning I finished The Family Plot by Cherie Priest. I love a haunted house story, and the author was competent, so although I think the ending was weak, it was a pretty good book overall and I’m going to try some more by Ms. Priest.
Recently read Summer Lightning and Heavy Weather, and currently reading Uncle Fred in the Springtime – all part of the Blandings Castle series by P G Wodehouse.
Also reading Longbow Girl, a YA time-travel story by Linda Davies
Finished Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik, which I enjoyed even more than His Majesty’s Dragon. Also finished The Weird Wild West anthology. The first two stories are still the best.
Started The History of Medicine in 50 Objects by Gill Paul and Wait 'Til I Winch In the Bear: Appalachian Anecdotes by Andrew Thomas.
I finished Airframe, which plodded at times and also had some WTF moments - in particular, the heroine foolishly put herself in danger several times when she didn’t have to. The ending was so-so. Not Crichton’s best.
Still going with The Atrocity Archives.
Just starting an audiobook of David McCullough’s 1977 history The Path Between the Seas, about the people, politics and engineering behind the construction of the Panama Canal.
I’m about 60 pages into Giant of the Senate, by Al Franken. Autobiographical, interesting and amusing. He’s a good writer.
That’s a good one. I recall one of the backers of the canal also had a connection to the Johnstown Flood, which McCullough also wrote about.
I just finished Wayfaring Stranger by James Lee Burke. Great book! And the author also bears an uncanny resemblance to Tommy Lee Jones, who has also starred in a movie adaptation of one of his novels. Weird.
Finished Franken and started Head in The Cloud by William Poundstone (of Big Secrets fame). It’s about the value of knowledge in an age when you can look anything up. Only just started but interesting so far. I suspect many people on this board would like it as it touches on many topics we discuss on here.
I’m about halfway through Printer’s Error: Irreverent Stories from Book History. It’s written with a light tone and a lot of cultural references and jokes thrown in. That’s annoying to many Amazon reviewers, but I appreciate it…it’s keeping me from falling asleep while reading about this somewhat dry subject. I’m learning stuff too.
Finished The History of Medicine in 50 Objects by Gill Paul and Wait ‘Til I Winch In the Bear: Appalachian Anecdotes by Andrew Thomas. The former has some interesting anecdotes, like the fact that the Roman Empire didn’t allow dissection of the human body, but Galen learned a lot about anatomy by looking into gladiators’ wounds. The latter has some interesting stories about people the author knew, including the Hatfields and McCoys. The title isn’t a metaphor; one of the Hatfields chained a bear as a guard animal in his yard, and winched it in to let people inside. (Poor bear.)
Now I’m finishing two books I started a while ago: Memoirs of Solar Pons, by August Derleth, and Night of the Cooters and Other Stories by Howard Waldrop.
Just finished Assassin’s Fate, by Robin Hobb, her 9th book about the Fitz and the Fool. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It brought together her other book series’ about Live ships and dragons quite nicely.
I recently tried a John LeCazrre novel (Mission Song) and I found it pretty disappointing. There is a current crop of novelists who have well exlceeded the standards of those who were considered the best of several decades ago… But I am now rfe-reading Cormaqc McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian”, and it is still awesome.
I’m not sure how long it’s been, but I continue with my cozy mystery obsession. It’s hard because cozies are so often simply terrible. Why must this obsession continue?
Please share any good ones you come across, I too like a cozy but you’re right about the usual quality. My motto: no cats, no cooking; whimsy optional.
For me, I came here to recommend *The Manual of Detection: A Novel *by Jedediah Berry. It is among the very oddest things I have ever read, sort of Dark City meets Inception, all about dream-reading and sleep-induction and detectives and exotic criminals and a carnival, all taking place in a city where it’s always raining, with an engaging everyman as the central character. I am not quite finished, just about to embark on the final showdown between, well, maybe good and maybe evil. In a book like this, the ending is everything (does it keep the promise of all the weirdness up to this point, or does it crap out and ruin everything that came before?) I’ll pop in again once I’ve finished it.
I give the ending 7.5 out of ten. Pretty good, but not smashing. Still a wonderful read and highly recommended.
Kool, I added it to my Goodreads queue. 
I’m nearly halfway through a pretty good murder mystery, The Dry, by Jane Harper.
My vacation is nearly over and I hardly did any reading! :eek: I finished Grisham’s The Broker two days before my vacation started, but I wasn’t quite ready for something different yet so I decided to read The Hit: #2 in the Will Robie series, by David Baldacci (you’ll see more Will Robie books from me in these threads: #5 will be out in November, and I want to catch up by then).
When I finished that two nights ago, I finally *was *ready for something different: I started Lincoln in the Bardo. A co-worker recommended it a couple of months ago, so I’d already been planning to check it out, and then the other week a friend (whose taste I trust) raved about it on Facebook. I’m not very far into it yet, but so far I’m enjoying it immensely. Here is the Amazon description:
*February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy’s body.
From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul.*The content is sometimes historical nonfiction and sometimes supernatural fiction, and – so far, at least – the story is told entirely as quotes. It reads almost like a play, minus the stage directions (I read somewhere that the novel began as a play). The vocabulary, spelling, and grammar vary depending on the narrator. The style takes a few pages to get used to; it’s a little disorienting at first, but not frustrating. My vacation ends on Sunday, and I may well try to finish it by then!
approaches Lincoln in the Bardo*, sniffing cautiously*
I’m going to try this as an audiobook. From what I just read about it, seems like that would work well. They got some really big names to read it, too!
LOL!
Yes, I could also see it working well as an audiobook – as long as there is a decent variety of readers and voice types, to help distinguish among the many different narrators.
One way in which I wish the book were more like a play is that the “speaker” isn’t identified until after the narrative (which is why I used the term “quotes” before). Sometimes I find myself turning a page to see who is “talking” and then flipping back to read the actual content. It’s not too distracting, though.