Finished Voyage of the Dogs, by Greg van Eekhout, which I enjoyed. It’s a science fiction, middle grade novel, and I recommend it for kids and dog lovers. Think “The Martian, but with dogs.”
Started The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson.
I just finished “Love In the Time of Cholera”. It was my first time read Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I enjoyed it very much.
I found out there was a movie based on the book starring Javier Bardem, so I watched it the other night. It was okay. I’ve seen much worse.
I just started “Death Comes for the Archbishop” by Willa Cather.
I’ll finish Educated tomorrow. I have about 10 books going right now, might be good to finish a few.
whistles innocently What!!!
I finally DNFed Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons at the halfway point. Apparently I am humour impaired as I found the book to be anything BUT witty. It was dry, dull and egotistical with boring, uninteresting characters doing boring, uninteresting things.
However, I blazed right through Holding Out For a Fairy Tale by AJ Thomas. M/M romance/suspense with a great plot and realistic characters. Parts of the end was a bit cheesy, but it worked so I’ll overlook it.
Finished Under the Dome, by Stephen King. A small town in western Maine is suddenly cut off from the rest of the world when an invisible “dome” suddenly comes down on it. Good, a very enjoyable read with a huge cast of characters, although the ending was a bit anticlimactic. The main antagonist in the book is a small-town Donald Chump clone. I pictured Chump and heard his voice the whole time, the description of the character fitting him to a T. The book was published in 2009, and at the end King gives the time period he spent writing the novel, 11/22/07-3/14/09, so this was eerily prescient.
One thing I noticed though. The novel makes clear Obama is president during the week the action unfolds. Into his second term too, as one of the characters drives a “Volvo (the sticker on the bumper, faded but still readable: OBAMA '12! YES WE ***STILL *** CAN) …” Elsewhere, another character is reading an article comparing certain 2011- and 2012- model cars. So it is sometime in the first half of this decade. Okay. The action begins on Saturday, October 21. That is not a typo since as the story progresses we learn Monday is the 23rd, Wednesday the 25th etc. However, the days fall that way, 10/21 being a Saturday etc, in 2006 under President Bush, and then not again until 2017, last year, under Chump. The days did not fall under those dates in any year of the Obama presidency. I wonder if King did this to obfuscate the exact year or if this was an error.
Next up is Fear: Trump in the White House, by Bob Woodward.
Finished Eddy et al’s The Falklands War, but was disappointed at how incomplete it seemed - proving once again that journalism is the first draft of history, coming out within months of the British victory as it did, missing a lot that had not yet come to light at the time.
Enjoying Clarke’s novelization of 2001: A Space Odyssey, with interesting near-future observations that didn’t make it into the final film: China is an actual empire, birth control is accepted by all the major religions but mass starvation due to overpopulation is looming worldwide within 15 years, and 30-some countries have nuclear weapons. Yikes!
Shlaes’s somewhat bland bio Coolidge is picking up steam now that I’ve reached 1920 and he’s become the GOP nominee for Vice President, running with Warren G. Harding.
We enjoyed (“enjoyed”)* Educated,* which is quite grim at times. Still working on Wallace’s The Second Lady and Vale’s werewolf shifter novel.
Finished The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson. Brilliant, and very recommended.
Started Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff.
Today I finished Martha Wells’ Artificial Condition, starting tomorrow on Rogue Protocol. These books have been recommended so often that it was a little hard for me to pick them up (I don’t know why I’m obstinate like that), but they’re quick and fun reads.
Finished* Bad Monkeys* by Matt Ruff. Interesting thriller. It also has a great example of
an unreliable narrator.
Next up: Updraft, by Fran Wilde.
I finished Band Sinister by K.J.Charles, who is officially my absolute favorite writer in the m/m romance genre. the book was a great send up og classic Gothic Georgette Heyer books.
Finished 2001, and liked it. Some significant and interesting differences between the movie and the book as to Bowman’s confrontation with HAL, and his passage through the star gate.
In the same vein, just started Christopher Frayling’s The 2001 File: Harry Lange and the Design of the Landmark Science Fiction Film, a big, lavishly-illustrated coffeetable book about a key production designer on the film. Good stuff, and a must for any Space Odyssey junkie like me.
In Coolidge, it’s 1923, the flinty Vermonter is President now after Harding’s death, and I’m finding it frustrating how little the author tells us about the transition and its impact on Coolidge and his family.
From what little I know of the stoical Coolidge, maybe not such a big impact. IIRC, he was asleep in the family home while on a visit to Vermont when someone woke the household with the news in the middle of the night, then his father, who was a notary public and justice of the peace, administered the oath to him, then all went back to bed. That may be representative of the impact.
Moving into the White House, having much, much more responsibility than before, and dealing with the mess left by his predecessor ought, even for Coolidge, to have a greater impact than the author tells us.
I just finished Temper, and while I liked the worldbuilding, I’m afraid the novel didn’t do much for me: it felt too disjointed, too rushed, and I never found myself caring much about any of the characters. I’m curious whether her previous book would be any more to my tastes.
Currently reading Witchmark, which is far more conventional, but fun and cozy.
I just finished Kate Atkinson’s new novel Transcription. She is one of my absolute favorite contemporary novelists. This book isn’t quite up to her tour de force Life after Life, but it’s still excellent. The main character works for MI5 in 1940, transcribing the conversations of Nazi sympathizers in a bugged apartment and later infiltrating the inner circle of a particular group. The action of the novel moves forward to 1950, when the heroine is working for the BBC and still occasionally for MI5, and back to 1940. Well plotted, terrific period detail, intriguing characters. The main character is a bit of a cypher, world weary at 18 but also extremely naive, protective of her actual beliefs to a degree that even the reader isn’t privy to all of them. Highly recommended.
Thanks for the reminder! I love Kate Atkinson, though I’ve only read the Jackson Brodie series (Life After Life and a couple of others sound a little too supernatural for me).
Update: Oops. I should have requested this title earlier. Turns out there are 175 people ahead of me in the request line at the library.
I reread The House with a Clock in its Walls by John Bellairs. Compared to the movie, I have to say I like Bellairs version better, the movie added a few good things, such as the soda shop, but the scat humor needed to be left on the cutting room floor. And I won’t comment on the Jack Black baby scenes shudder Bellairs knew how to write creepy, scary villians, the screenwriters went for a different definition of creepy mixed with campy and all over unsatidfying.
Finished the mildly amusing *The Second Lady. * Now reading Ann Leckie’s *Provenance. * My copy of Kurt Eichenwald’s book about his epilepsy is in the mail.