I gave up on The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishigura. I think he thought he was writing fantasy but he wasn’t. Being honest, this book was boring. Another people-go-on-journey/quest-and-and-up-wandering-around-doing-nothing story. What little action there was was off camera and the most of the time the pages were filled with semi stream of consciousness musing, whining or quarrelling.
I’m reading those, too. I just finished the third one. I have mixed feelings about them - the village is charming, but some of the characterizations, particularly of the villains, are odd. I’m not sure I like the story arc about corruption in the Sûreté du Québec.
The Kindle edition of Station Eleven is on sale today for $2.99. I liked it very much.
I just finished Kushiel’s Dart, by Jaqueline Carey, a fantasy novel which has been sitting on my shelf for years. It’s overwrought, it’s 1000 pages long and sedately plotted, and hence it will bore lots of readers, but I rather liked it. It’s infamous for having as a protagonist a masochistic courtesan/spy, and there are some scenes of violent BDSM sex, but not as much, or as explicit, as I expected from some comments. It’s set in an alternate medieval Europe where another religion overtook Christianity. The casual gender equality is nice. There is a lot of political intrigue, but it was fairly easy to follow and I never needed the daunting dramatis personae.
I just started Pratchett’s Night Watch.
I still haven’t finished The Handmaid’s Tale. Maybe someday? I need my reading to be a little more pleasant and escapist right now. To that end, I blew through Lev Grossman’s The Magician’s Land, third installment in the trilogy, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
I started The Secret Servant by Daniel Silva… so far okay, but I’m only 34 pages in…
For a nonfiction version of this, see the very personal and quite gripping My Dark Places by James Ellroy.
Another excellent writer who gets my unreserved recommendation is Steve Hamilton. I just finished his The Lock Artist about a mute safecracker.
Finished the supplementary material at the end of my volume of Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville.
Have started Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys. Set in 1830s Jamaica and Dominica.
I ended up reading A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz. I really liked it. Part travelogue/part history lesson.
Now I’ve picked up a Pterry book that I haven’t read a bajillion times (only a jillion) I Shall Wear Midnight
Siam Sam, I’m impressed you made it through MobyDick.* You might like the book In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. I found it riveting.
CalMeacham I love Christopher Moore and didn’t know there was a sequel to Fool. The Fella is reading Lamb and cackling at bits and trying to read them to me.
Me: Yes, I know! I’m the person that told you to read it!
- I’ve tried and never have yet. I got through Les Miserables and The Moonstone, maybe I’ll get to the White Whale yet!
Finished this book last night and came close to throwing it across the room. If the author had been around to serve as a target, I would have. Most of this book is just the minutiae of one woman’s dull life as a mommy (unnecessarily told twice in a row, from different points of view). What keeps you going is wanting to know why the second woman is obsessed with her, and what she’s going to do about it. Author Harriet Lane basically tells you to go fuck yourself on both counts. The book ends very abruptly when something might have just happened, but we as lowly readers will have to make that part up ourselves because it doesn’t actually exist as words on a page. :mad:
Next up, Cat Out of Hell, by Lynne Truss.
Just finished the full-cast audio version of Airborn by Kenneth Oppel, recommended by Hopeful Crow & checked out from my local library.
It’s a YA alternate history/steampunkish adventure, set early in the 20th century, where grand airships make transoceanic voyages. Matt Cruse is a teenage cabin boy on the Aurora, the same ship his father served on before his untimely accident. Matt assists in the rescue of a stranded balloonist, an older man whose dying words speak of “beautiful creatures” soaring above a strange island. One year later, on another voyage along the same route, Matt encounters a remarkable young woman whose connection to that balloonist sparks the events of this action filled novel.
This is my first encounter with Oppel, and I believe I’ll be back for more. His worldbuilding is right up my alley. (I have a thing for airships!) The slight differences of Matt Cruse’s world and our own are laid out in a way that flows organically from the story. Once the action gets going, it can be a bit breathless at times, and I found myself shaking my head a bit at the occasional convenient plot elements - even when they had been referenced appropriately earlier in the narrative. Nevertheless, it was a “ripping yarn” along the lines of Verne and Stephenson, updated to more modern sensibilities.
Matt Cruse and Kate de Vries are very well drawn - strong protagonists, but with flaws as well. The supporting characters are equally enjoyable - I hope Oppel brings back Chef Vlad in the subsequent novels! The “beautiful creatures” turn out to be fascinating in and of themselves - I admire the work Oppel put into making them believable and (based on reading the description of the next book in the series) I hope they’ll be making further appearances.
The full cast recording was quite entertaining - David Kelly voiced Matt Cruse, as well as all the additional narration. One other reviewer found Kelly a bit much ( as if everything he said had umpteen exclamation marks), but I enjoyed the enthusiasm of young Cruse. Rachel Molten also did a fine job with Kate De Vries. Vikram Szpirglas, voiced by Ronald Sweet was also a lot of fun. My only minor complaint was with the voicing of Baz - the pseudo-Aussie accent grated on me (my luck, Alex Lieben is actually from Down Under :eek: )
If you’re looking for a fun, fairly straightforward adventure with a touch of alt-history/fantasy, and not a lot of angst and soul searching (I’m looking at you, Naomi Novik), then I’d recommend giving this novel a look-see. I just put the second novel in the series -Skybreaker - on hold at the library.
Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony In Russian Monarchy, Volume 2 - Richard Wortman.
I’m a real party animal.
So you could say that Moby-Dick is your own White Whale.
I finished reading New Grub Street by George Gissing. There’s something kind of timeless in the story of people heading to the big city to become famous writers. (The idea that people might want bite-sized pieces of celebrity fluff to read while commuting is also timeless!)
I thought the ending was a bit unusual; the pragmatists seem to end up (mostly) happily ever after and the idealists get the shaft.
Like you, I really enjoyed the first one but I’m afraid I went ‘grrr’ at some of the science in the sequel! Don’t want to spoil it for you as it is good fun, but you’ll know what I mean when you get there…
And how was The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert A. Wilson, OffByOne? I read them as they came out as three paperbacks back in the 70s but I’d imagine they might seem a bit dated now, with all the new conspiracy theories since then!
And I’m currently reading California Bones by Greg van Eekhout; it’s a heist story, but set in an independent, magical South California ruled by a now barely human wizard. Daniel is the assumed dead son of a powerful Osteomancer killed years ago and he is now trying to reclaim his birthright… Very good so far.
Can’t believe I haven’t posted yet! :eek:
Ah, how I envy the people reading Pratchett for the first time. 
I’m thinking about going back to do a total re-read this summer. Not sure whether the Watch or the Witches or the Tiffany Aching subset or the Death subset are my favorites. How I will miss Sir Terry’s writing style.
I violated my Book Grounding this month. I checked out The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond and devoured it. Can’t believe I haven’t read it before: it was a riveting mix of evolution, primatology, anthropology, and rather dour predictions about how humanity is bound to snuff itself out. I’m taking Intro to Physical Anthro this semester, so it was dead helpful.
I’m totally stuck in Gravity’s Rainbow. Less than 200 pages from the end but oh, what heavy lifting it is.
One of my tsundoku books was Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch. I didn’t like this quiiiite as much as the other Peter Grant books in the series - it’s not set in London for one thing - but it was still entertaining.
Dove into Chime yesterday by Franny Billingsley. Oh my: this is good. Loving the otherwordliness, the sense that All Is Not as It Seems, the terrible twisting guilt of the protagonist. I can scarcely put it down.
I’ve started my Pratchett tribute re-read with Small Gods, my favorite stand-alone Discworld book (although Lu-Tze makes a cameo appearance). I’m following it with Mort, which seems appropriate.
I’m skipping around in the sequence partly because I’m starting with the e-text versions of the books I own (and may detour to the audiobooks, depending on what the library has available), and partially to go thru the ones that I read the least-recently (there’s not an un-awkward way to say that…)
Am enjoying The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language by Melvyn Bragg. I was generally aware of the various external forces that have influenced my mother tongue, but am learning more of the overall history as well as some of the specific words. Amusingly enough, a grammarian vandal has gone thru this library copy and added Oxford commas throughout. :dubious:
If you haven’t heard the Tiffany Aching series on audio yet, it’s well worth an inter-library loan or four. If memory serves, same narrator for all, and they’re very well read. I wish I had all the Pratchett on audio, but I’m not sure all the Pratchetts have been PUT on audio. If they have, I haven’t been lucky enough to listen to them all!
I’ve listened to all but one of the Tiffany Aching audiobooks (and just placed Wintersmith on hold). The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents is also quite good, as is Nation in terms of Pterry’s other YA audiobooks.
I have a cassette audiobook version of The Thief of Time that I’d like to digitize someday - IIRC, Harlan Ellison does the footnotes!
PS: Thief of Time is currently ( 20 March) available on Amazon Kindle for $.99!! Nook is $3.49, but still a deal.
Thanks for posting this. I don’t know why Amazon doesn’t do a better job of publicizing deals on Kindle books. This isn’t listed under their Kindle Deal of the Day or any other deal I could find. They would get a lot more of my money if they would only tell me!
I just typed in Pratchett right now and discovered the following Kindle titles are currently $1.99:
Guards! Guards!
Night Watch
Reaper Man
Sourcery
Who knows how long they’ll stay there. Pratchett titles on Kindle seem to vary wildly between $4 and $8 with no rhyme or reason.
Finished Cat Out of Hell. Quick read, mildly entertaining.