Watermelon manages to be funny and light-hearted despite its dismal premise: a woman’s husband announces that he’s leaving her the day she gives birth to their daughter. But despite being light-hearted, it’s also – respectful to the brutal emotions that come after a situation like that, so it felt true-to-life as well. It’s such a fine line to walk, but Marian Keyes does it beautifully.
I love to read books on behavior economics, but I dare say that I think Dan Ariely is at the top of the genre. His book The Upside of Irrationality is so engaging that I essentially abandoned the fiction book I was reading because I kept wanting to read more of this educational, non-fiction book. Ariely’s first book, Predictably Irrational, is equally fascinating.
Finished Convenience Store Woman, by Sayaka Murata. It’s about a Japanese woman on the autistic spectrum who discovers she’s brilliant at working at a convenience store. I enjoyed it.
Started The Enormous Hourglass, by Ron Goulart. It’s science fiction about a hard boiled detective who time travels.
Finished Dark Sacred Night, by Michael Connelly, his newest novel, featuring Harry Bosch along with Renee Ballard, who was introduced in his The Late Show last year. Bosch and Ballard collaborate on a cold case, the nine-year-old abduction and murder of a 15-year-old runaway street hooker. At the same time, each has his and her own other cases, but the focus is on the collaboration. This is one of Connelly’s better efforts. Highly recommended.
Back in my publishing days, I was once tasked to edit a Goulart paperback original. Thank god I was drawing a salary, because there’s no way I would read a Goulart manuscript without getting paid.
I hate quitting a book partway through, but the only way I finished this one was by imagining the cast of Futurama acting it out. That helped a little, but not much.
Finished At the Bottom of the River, by Jamaica Kincaid.
Stories best described as surreal prose poems. Recommended for people who enjoy them.
One thing I did have a problem with was the cover. It’s a painting of a group of Caucasian women. This book is by a woman of color and about people of color.
Next up: Cloudbound, by Fran Wilde. It’s the sequel to Updraft, a fantasy I read last month.
Just finished Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings, after basically being buried in it round-the-clock since Friday. I’m normally not a fan of the fantasy genre but someone recommended this to me and I could not put it down. Had to make an emergency run to the local bookstore to buy the next one in the series.
Last night I started Jeffrey Archer’s latest Heads You Win. I like his books, and I was immediately sucked in. On Siam Sam’s recommendation, I read Camino Island last week. I enjoyed it but the ending made me want to throw the book across the room.
I finished reading Gogol’s “Dead Souls”: it’s a satire of Russian society based around a shifty guy buying dead serfs (at a steep discount, of course) that won’t be registered as dead until the next census. He deals with a variety of cartoonish landowners (foolish, crafty, diligent, lazy, etc.). Some of it was genuinely funny, but some of it was “I guess you had to be there” humour.
Oh, that is righteous.
I have a lot of catching up to do here, as I’ve been away. I loaded up my tablet with books in anticipation of getting lots of reading done, and then of course I didn’t. Going just from memory, and forgetting something probably, I read Driving to Geronimo’s Grave by Joe R. Lansdale (short stories and not a bad one in the bunch); The God Box by Barry B. Longyear (Nice but forgettable. Near the end I felt he was throwing in everything but the kitchen sink); A Historic Outing by Bill Egbert, YA about a teen with paranormal powers; and of course, Elevation, by Stephen King. It was short and sweet, not a lot of substance. I see it some places being categorized as horror, although I think the worst thing that happens is a man falling down on his way to the mailbox. :rolleyes:
Currently reading We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix, so that’s awesome.
:smack: Oh yeah, and We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis Taylor. Sci-fi about a guy who wakes from a cryogenic sleep to find a completely unexpected future, perfect for fans of Ready Player One. Reminded me of Tuf Voyaging also.
I started, then abandoned The Shambling Guide to New York City, about a woman who takes a job as a travel writer for the undead. There wasn’t anything particularly awful about it, but I was never particularly inclined to pick up the book and find out what happens next, so I stopped reading it.
I read The Male Brain By Louann Brizendine, a companion to her earlier book The Female Brain (and, amusingly, a shorter book). This was an interesting read that helped to explain some of the perceived differences between genders. For example, I found it interesting how from a very young age (like one year), boys are more interested in movement and spacial relations, while girls are more interested in people and facial expressions, which helps to explain why you see so many more boys than girls that are interested in things like auto-mechanics or taking apart and rebuilding electronics. It also talked about the difference between how often the average boy thinks about sex compared to the average girl, which wasn’t exactly a surprise, but the severity to which boys and girls differ here is impressive.
I read Every Note Played by Lisa Genova. Gotta say, Genova seems to have a genre all to herself right now (as far as I know) – writing books about neurological diseases that provide a lot of detail about the progression of the disease and treatment options. She has a Ph.D. in neuroscience, so she has the education to do this well. I would love to see some other authors succeed in this genre, too. I spend a good bit of my free time watching YouTube videos about different neurological conditions, even though I prefer reading to watching videos, just because there seem to be a lot more videos on the subject than fiction books. As far as this particular book goes, the premise is that a highly successful pianist gets ALS. As a result, the book has a lot to do with ALS, but also a lot to do with music. I feel like by not playing piano (or another musical instrument), there were chunks of the book where I didn’t appreciate what she was writing about, because she goes into a lot of detail about describing certain classical pieces. But I was able to skim or skip those parts, and overall it was worth the read.
I got the new Rivers of London book yesterday! Fortunately I’m on vacation for the next 9 days so I can read itand hopefully get caught up on NaNoWriMo too … I have dreams.
Finished Fran Wilde’s Cloudbound, the second volume in her Bone Universe fantasy trilogy. Worth reading, but not as interesting as the first book, Updraft. The world building in the first book is interesting. The second book is mostly plot, and not so interesting.
Have just finished something happened-upon by chance – telling of which, has me somewhat shamefaced: it’s a (British) chick-lit offering, and I’m male and seventy years old. Novel called Who Gets Fluffy? by one Judith Summers. Premise: an unusual married couple, divorcing in a way which would be thoroughly fair and amicable, except for a furious tug-of-love over their (coming across to me, as obnoxious) dog, the eponymous Fluffy. It would appear that this owes a good deal to the 1937 American comedy film The Awful Truth, which is referenced in the novel.
Tolstoy, it certainly isn’t: but I’ll admit to having enjoyed it – idiotic though the theme and subject-matter may be, the novel is competently written and witty, with perceptive observation of some of the odd ways of affluent Brits; and full of unexpected plot twists-and-turns.
I’ve been out of this thread for awhile–not been a very active reading month for me. But I just finished City of Brass, which I didn’t like as much as I thought I would.
On the surface, it’s right up my alley: a 17th (?) century con-artist in Cairo accidentally gets swept up into the politics of the Djinn, which is a spectacular premise. But it’s a first novel, and a little clumsy, and just never came fully alive for me. I can’t tell whether that’s more because of the book, or because I’m exhausted at this time of year and didn’t give it full attention.
I just started Empire of Silence this morning, and already am thinking I might abandon it. A bookish lad, son of the Galactic Emperor (or something), with a jockish and bullying younger brother, angsts about whether he’ll inherit the galaxy while he engages in energy-sword fights with his stern-but-wise tutor. I think I’ve read every single element of this written elsewhere, only better and less self-importantly.
