I know, right?
Well, my reading time is very limited this week, but I have to read something, so I started on The Fever Code by James Dashner. I really liked The Maze Runner, and though the series peaked with that first book, I read the whole series and this is the prequel. It passes the time and I’ll be able to lay it aside unfinished without much of a pang.
After book #5 I finally had enough of Scott Pratt and his Joe Dillard series (for now), but I didn’t stray from the genre: I’m currently reading John Grisham’s Witness to a Trial, a short story prequel to The Whistler (which gets released next week).
I had to walk away from Grisham for a while after abandoning the unbearable Gray Mountain earlier this year, but now that he’s back to “normal” I love him again.
Gave up on *The Rook *by Daniel O’Malley. A little over a third of the way through the book and I got bored and annoyed. The flow chugged along like a sticky carburetor on an old car. Action started and then there was more exposition. And more exposition. The backstory was interesting at first but started to just get in the way of the plot.
Moved on to Raymond Carver’s collection of unpublished short stories “Call Me if You Need Me”. It wasn’t next on the list, but I really needed the exact opposite of O’Malley where Carver is a master of the “show and not tell” presentation.
I finished a re-read of the Bernie Gunther series by Philip Kerr. I highly recommend it.
This series follows the unfortunate adventures of Mr. Gunther, who was a policeman and then a private eye in Germany … in the decade before WW2, during WW2, and after. As a liberal, he gets the fun of attempting to solve mysteries and keep himself alive while the Nazis seize power - and then, attempting to stay alive during WW2, and after the defeat - the series follows his fortunes deep into the Cold War era.
Bernie is deeply morally compromised by what he has to do to stay alive - although he hates the Nazis, he is forced to work for them … this is the darkest of noir.
I’m about a hundred pages into Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness: Values and Virtues by Jeffrey Wattles. It’s still a bit of a slog but I like it better now than I did before.
My book club has picked The Trouble With Testosterone by Robert M. Sapolsky, and I’ve started it. It’s a pop-science essay collection and also not that great. Sapolsky wants to be funny but usually misses the mark. So far, meh.
If he’s cooking beef ribs… is he at all conflicted about his job?
I recommend Len Deighton’s SS-GB and Robert Harris’s Fatherland, both of which are alt-hist novels about detectives working (very ambivalently) for the Nazis. Different times, different settings, but similar themes, and both are great reads.
I’ve read and enjoyed Fatherland, and I’ll check out SS-GB. Thanks!
After reading “La Peau de chagrin” a few months ago, I decided to dive back into “La Comedie humaine” by reading Balzac’s “Le Pere Goriot”. I thought it was a very moving combination of comedy, pathos and tragedy – definitely better than “La Peau de chagrin”. Once again I could definitely tell that I was missing out on wordplay and historical references, but I still very much enjoyed it.
Read another fairy tale retelling, this one Princess Ben, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. She’s really a very good YA author, if anyone likes YA. This was pretty good, but I’d highly recommend her outstanding Dairy Queen series.
Finished the second Charlotte Brody mystery by Cathy Pegau last night. The first was Murder on the Last Frontier, which was okay. The second, Borrowing Death, was just not very good. I think that will be the last one for me. A shame, because I love historical cozies.
Finished Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, by Martin Seligman, which is very good, but repetitive. I think this would be a great read for anyone who tends to find her or himself ruminating and obsessing over failure and mistakes.
I finally read Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. When it first came out, it didn’t seem particularly compelling. Now there’s a movie, and I do like Tim Burton, so I figured I’d pick up the book.
Well, it was okay. Teenage boy discovers family history of supernatural whatever involving a sort of time travel. This might be one of those times where I really do enjoy the movie better than the book, because I don’t have any particular attachment to the book.
Let us know what you think of the book. Are you doing the un-abridged version? [spoiler]They are very different indeed. The movie is mediocre. The book is very good. I really liked the semi-documentary feel of the book. Wait until you get to the part about the airplane pilot and the baseball fan that talks her out of danger. There is a punchline to that story like a scorpion’s tail.
If you like it - I hope you will - check out Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide for a wonderful, dead pan take on zombie movies and books, including his own.[/spoiler]For myself, I am reading the graphic novel The Preacher. I may not finish it - it is just too darn weird. On audiobook, I am finishing the very first issue of Astounding Stories from January 1930. So far, the best part is a short story from one of my favorites, Murray Leinster, called “Tanks”. The other stories are sort of meh - two about travel to other dimensions, and the other dimensions are sort of anti-climactic, and one about monsters in Mammoth Cave that was all build-up and no pay-off.
Regards,
Shodan
I didn’t like it either, I kept comparing it to The Rook and feeling terribly disappointed.
I’m about two thirds of the way through Zola’s Rougon-Macquart novels, I finished Germinal last night. I’m toying with trying Balzac after that but wouldn’t know where to start. What do you recommend as a taster to gauge whether someone would enjoy the whole vast series?
Let’s see. Currently reading:
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene. A journalist is killed by the mob, presumably over gambling, in this English seaside town in about the 1950s. The last woman to see him alive decides to investigate. Greene writes so well that I was drawn straight into this oh-no-now-what plot, and the town of Brighton is practically a character on its own. Definitely the seamy side of 1950s England compellingly presented.
I Am a Cat by Soseke Natsume. This Meiji period novel from a cat’s eye point of view (literally) is a bit of a slog but I find that as I’m reading it, I slowly get into the detail of life during that time period for academics, business-people, etc. I’m sure any satire is going straight past me at the speed of light as I know nothing about Meiji. Love the nameless cat narrator, who spies on humanity after insisting he will not.
A Carrion Death by Michael Stanley. Oh, dear. I was keen to read this mystery set in Botswana - for me, mysteries in exotic locales are the ultimate armchair travel. Michael Stanley is the pseudonym for two gents, and this is their first novel (together, anyway). Unfortunately I’m drawn straight out of the story by the clunkiness of the point of view, and the plentiful NOW I AM EXPLAINING ABOUT BOTSWANA feel to the description. I want to like Detective David ‘Kubu’ Bengu of the Botswana CID, but thus far he feels more like a cardboard cutout than an human being. 
To be honest, I couldn’t tell you – “La Peau de chagrin” and “Le Pere Goriot” are the only two I’ve read so far. I suspect “Pere Goriot” is as good a place as any to start; it’s a stand-alone story, even though many of the characters appear in other books, and it’s supposed to be one of his best.
I thought “Germinal” was very good, but it’s the only Zola book I’ve ever read. What other ones would you recommend?
I finished The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, and I liked it, though I’m not sure why.
I guess I expected more.
I have started King Leopold’s Ghost, about the colonization of the Belgian Congo. The author makes it plain that King Leopold ll would probably not be on his Christmas card list.
Of the twelve I’ve read so far Germinal is in the top three. Zola set out to describe all facets of the second Empires society framed by one family and their psychological pathologies. So each book is a part of a larger whole while being a complete story in it’s own right.
Having said that I recommend L’Assomoir/ The Dramshop for an unflinching portrayal of working class alcoholism and Nana for a look at the scandals of higher society. But really all of the novels in the cycle seem to range from goodish (The Ladies Paradise, The sins of Father Mouret) to great (Germinal, L’Assomoir, His Excellency). If your at all interested in 19th century France I think Zola is worth trying.
I finished Witness to a Trial, and while I’m waiting for the sequel to be released I decided to switch genres and start Johannes Cabal the Necromancer (thanks to recs here). I’m only a couple of chapters in, but so far it’s right up my alley. 
I’ll have to wait to start reading Whistler (which comes out on Tuesday), because I want to finish this first.
“Hamlet” in an Usborne reader version, with the Cub. Doesn’t have any actual Shakespearian phrases (so I add the ones I can remember, like “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”)
The Cub seems to be enjoying it and has asked for me to re-read it to him several times. He also enjoys doing the body count, to see exactly how many characters die.
I finished the third Parasol Protectorate book, Blameless by Gail Carriger today. Definitely better paced than the last one and a lot more fun all around.
Still working on The Complete Raffles, Broken Souls and Johannes Cabal The Fear Institute (Just haven’t had time to give the last one the attention it deserves)
King Leopold II?
You certainly would have to give him a hand.
[/runs away]