I finished Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. I am starting Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin.
I’ve read and really liked both, although they couldn’t be more dissimilar!
After finishing ‘The Business’ by Iain Banks, I moved on to ‘Illegal Action’ by Stella Rimington. I liked it, but I didn’t find it as relentlessly gripping as her earlier two, ‘At Risk’ and ‘Secret Asset’, which I absolutely adored and finished in a weekend. I notice from Fantastic Fiction that there are two more yet, ‘Dead Line’ and ‘Present Danger’, the latter being released in October of this year. No question that I’ll get them and read them, but I do cling to the hope that she returns to a tenser plot line.
Next up - ‘Name to a Face’ by Robert Goddard
I finished Captain Blood and Gods and Myths of Northern Europe over the weekend. Today I picked up The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time from the library and Deerskin by Robin McKinley off my bookshelf. I’m in the mood for creepy.
The aforementioned PM’d spoiler to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, lightly edited by yours truly, and posted with the permission of Shirley Ujest, who wrote:
[spoiler] Charlotte Lucas knows she has been infected with the mysterious plague and marries Mr. Collins anyway.
Charlotte goes through with her plans to marry Mr. Collins because he could give her a proper Christian burial, which involves a beheading and being set on fire, to prevent her from becoming the walking dead.
When Jane goes to visit Charlotte, it is more than obvious that Charlotte is badly infected, but Mr. Collins, being the greatest literary douche ever, does not notice.
Later on in the book, Mr. Collins writes the Bennets (maybe Jane, directly, I forget and I’ve lent the book to a neighbor) telling them of Charlotte’s death and how by the time Jane receives this letter he will be dead as he is off to hang himself from the apple tree. Has there ever been a more satisfactory conclusion to a character, I ask you?
Because of the entailment to the will for Mr. Bennet, allowing only a male heir to receive Longbourne, somehow with Mr. Collins’s death, the entailment allows the Bennets to keep the house now. It’s all fuzzy logic and you really don’t care since Mr. Collins is DEAD and it is most deserving. [/spoiler]
Finished Waiting for Autumn a new age-y type semi-autobiographical novel “In the tradition of Eat, Pray, Love and The Alchemist, Way of the Peaceful Warrior, and The Celestine Prophecy”
It was OK.
Just started The Ethical Assassin, by David Liss. I’m a big fan of Liss’s normal historical fiction, so I decided to give this comedic-thriller set in modern times a chance. I’m not loving it immediately, but I’m only 40 pages in so I’m prepared to change my mind.
I’m finally getting around to reading An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson. I was never moved to read it before because while I’d heard it was good, I’ve read a lot of other WWII histories and figured it would have nothing new to say. But I’m enjoying it much more than I expected.
Finished The Warded Man by Peter Brett. The guy really knows how to tell a story – it was hard to put down. I had one big complaint about the actions of one of the major characters. I guess I wasn’t the only one because Brett talked about it in his blog, and promises that it’ll be addressed in the next book. It really bugged me but I’d still recommend the book – there’s way more good than bad.
Started A Mercy by Toni Morrison. I’d probably like it better as an audio book. Florens’ chapters should be heard, not read.
Link to the late May thread.