I was referring to the “distance never expressed by time” statement of the author in terms of living in the MidWest or other more wide-open spaces, I can say that Chicago is about 2 hours away from me, and Indianapolis a little over an hour and most people who live in the area know exactly what I mean (1 hr = approx 60 miles) - but I’m not sure those living in more urban areas would get it right away.
I think the “moved up” = Monday vs Fri is more an individual thing - my husband (Indiana born & bred) gave the opposite answer from me. It also hadn’t occurred to me that there were two potential answers to the question until I stopped & thought about it.
I finished Hard Rain by Barry Eisler, I liked it and will continue with the series. Our hero is a little brutal, but that’s to be expected in an assasin. The book did suffer from a few pacing issues but overall was enjoyable. It will go on my shelve intstead of into the pile to sell or donate.
I’m only 30 pages in but it’s… different. I keep think my other favorite police dee Harry would have torn Australia apart by now in frustration at being sidelined… I mean the circus, reallY?
Thanks to Grrlbrarian, I picked up Corvus: A Life with Birds by Esther Woolfson from the library & am almost done.
It’s a quick read - being a memoir about living in a Scotland city with various feathered friends over the years - primarily Chicken, a rook, but also a talking magpie named Spike, and a crow named Ziki, as well as some odd psittacines and of course, the residents of the dovecote.
It’s all a bit cozy - Woolfson throws in some scientific background here & there and a few literary references as well. The artwork is a nice addition to the material.
Worth a read if you’re into stories of people and their animal companions.
I’m currently about halfway through The Pain Scale by Tyler Dilts: it’s the second in his Long Beach Homicide series, and I started it within hours of finishing the first book in the series (A King of Infinite Space). I must admit I’m enjoying these stories and the main character, though Dilts’s writing is at times distracting: like when a character in the first book was born 7 years after me yet finished college 2 years before I did, and not because she was a prodigy (just an editor who’s bad at math, I suppose). There is also a recurring character he uses the same odd simile to describe in both books, and it was almost annoying. It might not have stood out to someone who hadn’t just read the first book, though. Anyway, like I said, I’m enjoying the series so far and am looking forward to finishing this and moving on to #3 (A Cold and Broken Hallelujah).
Before I started A King of Infinite Space, I attempted to read actor Dan Bucatinsky’s autobiography Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight?: Confessions of a Gay Dad. I really wanted to like both it and him, but about halfway through I gave up. I rarely give up on books. He sets a bad tone early on by describing an extraordinarily self-centered young Dan, of whom he’s either unapologetic or unaware (it’s hard to tell). The writing is ok, and the “character” gets better after he meets his partner and starts talking about the adoption process, but the stories he told were…kind of boring. And there remained just a whiff of the same old immaturity. It wasn’t enough to make me dislike him, but it was enough to make me stop reading the book.
I am 100 pages into The Bat by Jo Nesbo, and can someone tell me: is there a plot in there? And why if you were going to write a travel book about colorful Australian characters did you feel the need to tack on a rape/murder, sir?
Currently reading Hild by Nicola Griffith. It’s slow going but has picked up now that the title character is a bit older (it started when she was three).
It’s a hefty historical novel mainly set in the north/east of England about Saint Hilda of Whitby, who grew up as a pagan seeress but converted to Christianity, along with everyone else, when her uncle King Edwin converted in the mid-7th C.
Before that I was impressed by the slim horror novel We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory about a therapy group for victims of monsters, and slightly disappointed by Heirs of Grace by Tim Pratt. I had really enjoyed his Briarpatch a couple of years ago but this one was a YA novel about a young woman inheriting a very strange house and it’s contents…
I finished Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. I didn’t like it nearly as much as Far from the Madding Crowd or Mayor of Casterbridge; I thought the main characters were annoying and the melodrama and Important Social Issues ™ wore thin after a while.
Sounds like you were entertained at least to some degree, Politzania? Hope so.
Yesterday I finished The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton. The author did a decent job of establishing a sense of place, especially the interior of a Dutch home in 1678 (as far as I can tell). I also got a good sense of some of the characters, especially young wife Petronella Oortman Brandt and sister-in-law Marin Brandt. Briefly, this naive young wife comes to the Big City of Amsterdam to join her newly-betrothed husband. His household contains plenty of secrets, all of which seem mysteriously known to a miniaturist (think dollhouse miniatures) who lives in the city. When enigmatic husband Johannes gives new wife Nella a dollhouse replica of her new Amsterdam abode, the miniatures sent by the craftswoman help to reveal and even predict the outcomes of the household secrets. I liked it all right, but there were times when I felt that the author was practically shouting, “SEE HOW MUCH TROUBLE PEOPLE GOT INTO FOR THINGS IN THE 17TH CENTURY THAT ARE COMMONPLACE IN THE 21ST?!? ISN’T THAT SHOCKING? SEE SEE SEE!?!” That got a little bit wearing after a while, though I respected most of the resolutions that the author devised. As a dollhouse junkie, I was dead jealous of the miniatures and dollhouse too.
That is one of the most depressing books I’ve ever read, and I had to read it three times for three separate classes. Arrghh.
If you liked the other two by Hardy, look into The Return of the Native. That’s also “just a good yarn,” like the two you mentioned. Tess, of course, is pure melodrama, but somehow more “worth it” than Jude, to me.
It’s almost as bad, but not quite as bad as, Where Angels Fear To Tread. E. M. Forster is one of my favorite author–he wrote my favorite book of all time, Howard’s End–but damn. Talk about painful.
The wife and I took a long weekend outside of Bangkok in Amphawa. While there, I finished The Broker, by John Grisham. The Broker was a lawyer who used to be considered the second most powerful man in Washington, such was the power and influence he wielded. Then he got greedy and in the process pissed off several governments including his own, which eventually got him sentenced to 20 years in a federal maximum-security prison. He knows too much, and the CIA wants him dead, but the law forbids the agency from killing Americans. So the director strong-arms the outgoing president to give The Broker a full presidential pardon six years into his sentence, leaks the news to the pissed-off foreign governments, friends and foes alike, and sits back to see who will kill him first. Very good.
Then I read through another Grisham, his book of short stories entitled Ford County, set in the fictional northern-Mississippi county that has served as the setiing for a couple of his novels. Also very good.
Now it’s back to nonfiction, and this week I’ll start 1491, by Charles C. Mann, a copy of which I finally picked up in a local bookstore.
I didn’t think it was particularly depressing because it never seemed very plausible to me (I had the same issue with the end of the film “Requiem for a Dream”). I found An American Tragedy much more depressing because every choice made along the way seemed completely understandable to me.
Finished I Shall Wear Midnight, and it was wonderful of course. I really liked Preston, the palace guard, which is a shame because we may not get to hear any more about him.
Next was Floating Staircase by Ronald Malfi. By around page 50, I decided not to finish this one. However, it wasn’t a very convenient time for me to start a new book because I was expecting an interruption, so I just skimmed onward. The interruption never came and I skimmed all the way to the end of this 400+ page book. It was supposed to be a ghost story, but really it was a murder mystery. There was a small amount of animal abuse and child abuse was mentioned but not described. I found this book depressing for some reason beyond its subject matter. Despite the serviceable writing, this felt to me like something that would be sold on an airport paperbacks rack to people who don’t usually read. (Book-snobbish much? Well, I guess so.) I felt dirtier somehow for having read it.
This morning I started Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith. This is a book about the end of the world, as brought on by giant grasshoppers. This book is aimed squarely at teenage boys, like the narrator, especially if they are confused about their sexuality. I think the word “shit” is just barely edging out the word “horny” as most-used in this book. It’s sufficiently interesting.
