I’m not sure that Irving is meant to be taken seriously everywhere, though now that I’ve finished A Prayer for Owen Meany I’m having a few doubts about whether or not Irving’s trying to prosetylize here. It’s possible he’s only showing us that there are unexplainable things in the world, but it really sounds like he’s making a case for Christianity (and only Christianity…possibly even only a specific denomination of it). As has been said, the car story in the middle is fun, and there are other genuinely comic moments.
The thing that worries me more about Irving (having read Hotel New Hampshire, Meany, Ciderhouse Rules, and Until I Find You) is the frequency of kids having sex (or something close to sex), the odd and not at all reassuring mother figures, the frequent loss of or search for fathers, mothers, or both…ah well.
I’m done with Meany, so replacing it in my backpack is Vikram Seth’s Golden Gate, which I’ve been keeping half-read for too long.
Can’t help on the Margaret Atwood question, sorry. My mind is a sieve on plots of novels, all I can remember, usually, is “liked” or “didn’t like.”
While I’m knocking off Doper recommendations – started Mary Gordon’s Spending last night, which pseudotriton ruber ruber first mentioned about a year ago, when we were talking about books about artists.
It’s about a painter who’s giving a public talk, in which she starts complaining about how men artists get all the good muses – women who will support them, financially, emotionally, practically, and serve as their inspiration. Dammit, I want a muse, she says.
And a guy stands up and says, let me be your muse.
And then …
I was up way later than I should have been, last night, reading, just trying to get to a good place to stop.
SpazCat, I found that The DragonBone Chair totally ruined me for reading any of his other work. I liked the story and characters so much that I refuse to read anything else that is not set in that universe…I know…childish…but the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series was just that good.
I tried to get through The Art of Wargonzomax but I found it dreadfully boring. So my hat is off to you.
I started reading The Lost Diary of Don Juan but decided that the book had enough racy scenes that I don’t need to be reading it with my wife in her last month of being pregnant. She doesn’t need to be fending off my amorouse advances.
So I’m going to read the latest by C.E. Murphy Coyote Dreams. The latest in her Urban Shaman series. I wasn’t as fond of the last one, but I’ll give the series one more chance.
I’m working my way through the Aubrey/Maturin books; I just finished HMS Surprise and I’ve got The Mauritius Command on hold at the library. Besides that, I’ve currently got The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi by Jacqueline Park in my bag, and I finished off Kafka’s The Trial, The Watermelon King by Daniel Wallace, Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, How Right You Are, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse, Small Gods by Terry Pratchett, and a few others before that.
I’m looking forward to refreshing my memory with *Stardust *next, before the movie comes out, and getting through Treasure Island…
Agreed. It is in my queue, but if it isn’t better than the last, it may be the last one of hers that I read. Although I get a good two-fer out of her because once I’m done I pass it off to a friend who likes her.
I’m now reading Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin - the heir to the throne of England is sent to forge his character in the wilderness of America - a contemporary satire.
The reviews were good but I find myself unable to have more than a passing interest in the story. Perhaps his other novels are funnier, or else his style of humour just doesn’t appeal to me. I laughed much more when reading Christopher Buckley’s Little Green Men.
Since I see that Eric Ambler is mentioned in this thread - I have this collection of his
and I think that Judgement on Delthchev (the middle novel) is excellent - the other two novels were already recommended in this thread (A Coffin for Demetrios and Passage of Arms). Judgement on Deltchev is the story of an English playwright, hired by a newspaper to write an article on a political trial in a fictional Balkan country. Of course our journalist soon learns that everything is not as it seems, and that one should be wary when pretty young women ask favours of you.
Agree and agree – couldn’t get more than 50 pages into* F&F.* (I realized that if the thought of him running around naked, covered in feathers, outside the palace walls, wasn’t going to make me laugh, I wasn’t going to laugh). And LGM was absolutely a fave – I still comment sadly from time to time about how hard it is to find dwarfs who can pass the security clearance.
I just finished The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin, which I thought was excellent. I really, really enjoyed reading it. I think next on the list is probably going to be some Hellblazer graphic novels, The Golden Compass, and some Alastair Reynolds book my friend loaned to me.
I just finished *World War Z *and Fitzpatrick’s War. The latter was actually a recommendation from Amazon based on my looking up World War Z. Not bad. I like Future Histories.
Helprin wrote my favorite novel, A Soldier of the Great War. He also wrote A Winter’s Tale, another great book. Neither is a satire, so it’s not that his other books are funnier, it’s that they’re not trying to be funny at all. (There are certainly flashes of humor, bu those aren’t the primary thrust of the books.)
I made it about two-thirds of the way through Freddy and Fredericka before giving up on it. Since I admire his writing so much, I was disappointed to find that I simply could not like that book. Wish I could tell you it gets better, but IMO it doesn’t.
I actually plodded through all the way to the finish, because I figured there must be some kind of phenomenal ending to deserve all the praise it got. It was a decent ending, but I really felt it would have made a much, much better 150-page book. I got rid of it immediately and stridently urge everyone I know not to read it. What a monumental waste of time.
I know how you feel. I’m that way with several of my favorite fantasy authors. They write one world really well and everything else is just…meh.
I’m about to pick up The Stone Diaries this afternoon as part of my “go through Diane Rehm’s Reader’s Review*” list. What’s the word on it? Any good? Worth my time? Run as fast as I can and don’t look back?
(*That’s an interesting list to go through if you’re ever in the “what do I read next?” quandary. Some I’ve really liked and some I’ve tossed as hard as I could. Good mix.)
I will be finishing Freddy and Fredericka because I just hate abandoning a book in the middle, and otherwise it will be sitting there in my bookcase, forever giving me an accusing look. But I’ll try A Soldier of the Great War (thanks Jodi!)
I personally loved Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and recommended to every adult I know who likes the Harry Potter series. I also added to my collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu and if Susannah Clarke writes another book in the same vein I plan on reading it as well. I thought the pseudo-historical footnotes were very entertaining and gave the book a scholarly aspect.
Mark Helprin is my favorite living writer and I couldn’t get through Freddy and Fredericka. I love the humor in some of his other books, though. Memoir from Antproof Case had some very funny bits and was almost as good as Soldier of the Great War.
I just recently bought the His Dark Materials omnibus edition, and I finished The Golden Compass last night and I’m currently starting to read The Subtle Knife.
I’m also currently reading Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor. It’s pretty interesting - kind of agnostic Buddhism (how Buddhist principles can be useful, even if you don’t believe in the supernatural/religious aspects of Buddhism like reincarnation and karma)
I agree with you about Altered Carbon and Broken Angels. There’s a third book about Takeshi Kovacs - Woken Furies, which I thought was very, very good.
I like the TV series Bones* and I spotted this on sale at work so I thought I’d give it a spin.
Awful, simply awful. Totally unsympathetic characters, a plot that is trying to get more and more labarynthine and every freaking chapter ends with a cliffhanger.
Worst thing though? When I get to the end of a chapter I just can’t resist starting the next one to see what the outcome is, which means I read all the way through that chapter, get to the end and… OGDAMNIT! Edit: Forgot to add that I know what the outcome is every time, but I still turn the bloody page.
*OK not a great show, but I love the way they developed the relationship between Angela and Hodges, David Boreanaz does a good job switching from gruff to funny, And I’d love to bend Emily Deschanel over the “Magic Reconstruction Table” And show her the bone in my pocket