I’m now reading Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, a collection of short stories set in the same English-magic milieu as her wonderful, gigantic, Austenian novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. The first story features Strange himself, and explains a throwaway footnote from JS&MN about why his brother-in-law became the rector of a different Anglican church after he and his wife visited. Good stuff!
I’ve also just started Theodore Sorensen’s Kennedy, a memoir of his time in the White House at JFK’s elbow. Also quite good.
Did you like it? I saw this in the (going-out-of-business) Borders and thought about buying it, because I looooooooooove Jeff Greenfield, but couldn’t tell before I got to the register whether I wanted to read it or not.
Haven’t been in one of these threads in a while – did I mention reading, and liking quite a bit, Susan Cheever’s book on Louisa May Alcott?
Just finished a book that’s probably going to make my top ten of the year list: I is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World by James Geary. About the centrality of metaphor in human thought and communication, touching on everything from politics to how kids pick up the ability to use metaphor developmentally to how the brain works to advertising to …
Interesting material, organized well, and the guy writes very well.
Finished Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer-winning All the King’s Men. An excellent read.
Today will start The Lincoln Lawyer, by Michael Connelly. I’d just read a favorable review of the film version, which recently came out in the US, when I saw it on sale for cheap in the bookstore. Looks like just the book to take upcountry with me later this week while escaping the dreaded Songkran holiday. No word about whether the film will play over here.
I just finished Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor. It’s a magical realism novel about a sorceress in a genocidal far-future post-apocalyptic Africa. I loved it.
When I looked for her Wiki page, I wasn’t surprised to see that Okorafor was influenced by the late Octavia Butler, who is the only person who, on seeing her name in the newspaper announcing the MacArthur grant winners, actually made me squee.
I read that one and loved it. He does an excellent job of explaining hard science in narrative form to the layperson. The last chapter contains some really interesting speculation about ways scientists might begin to find new elements and fill in some gaps in our current knowledge.
Middle book in a trilogy, what are you going to do? Still not done, saving it for a bit.
I can’t see Kvothe getting beyond 20 in the third book, not at this rate. He could have come back from Felurian a few years older, but then the next part of the book wouldn’t have worked. It’s slooooow.
We shall see in what? 2015 maybe? (hopefully sooner).
Yea, thats why the slowness of the middle book was kinda puzzling. Since we know where Kvothe ends up, it seemed like he had a lot of ground to cover at the end of the first book to get there, but he didn’t really start covering it till two thirds of the way through the second book. Guess I’m just paranoid he’ll pull a GRR Martin, and decide his trilogy will consist of 76 books.
True, the KingsKiller Trilogy may only be the first in a series; so he’s going to kill a king at some stage in book three I imagine. After that he’s setting up his kid’s inheritance and will release a book every couple of years with the continuing adventures of Kvothe. Or perhaps not.
Joe Abercrombie started with a trilogy too, I think. (Haven’t read that yet)
I love the little stories he tells like the boy chasing the moon. If he did a book of children’s stories it would be dynamite - but very hard to explain.
I ended up picking up Mark Danielewsky’s House of Leaves, indeed. I’m only about a fifth in, but it’s fascinating. My brother told me he gave it up just about where I am now, but it’s a novel that’s quoting Derrida and scary, to boot! Where can you go wrong? I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops…I hope it doesn’t end in the threat on books I thought I’d love…
Also read Walter Benn Michaels’s The Trouble with Diversity, a brillant essay on why America’s obsession with racial and cultural identity and its efforts to make sure that all races and cultures are perceived as equal ends up being a way to not have to deal with poverty. I’m badly simplifying, and Michaels’s prose is worth the price of admission by itself. Heartily recommended.
Rushed through Mosin Hamid The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Meh. Got it for 2$, and I think anything more would have been a rip off. I don’t know what the book wanted to tell me, except maybe that some people get to write about being poor oppressed Pakistani while living in London and making money writing books. Not impressed at all.
Finished A Storm of Swords and am 150 pages into A Feast for Crows. Not sure I like all the additional character viewpoints and the direction of the story in general by this point. It’s starting to really sink in that this series will just never end. It’s still entertaining, but the subsequent books don’t match the awesomeness of A Game of Thrones.
I completed Chernow’s Washington: A Life and would highly recommend it to anyone that likes historical biographies. Its very well done, compelling and insightful.
Now I am reading Give Me Tomorrow by Patrick O’Donnell and so far its brutally engaging and wonderful, telling the tale of a group of Marines in George Company of the 3/1st Marines during the Korean War.
I’ve got my first Clancy novel I have read in ages, Dead Or Alive, up next. Jeez, I don’t think I’ve read Clancy since *Red Storm Rising *or something. Its been awhile.
I had a week of vacation where I just stayed home (I refuse to say “staycation”), so I got a ton of reading done. Recently, I finished:
Cutting for Stone. I was extremely, extremely relieved that Cutting for Stone wasn’t a novel about two star-crossed lovers, torn apart only to be brought back together. This is what I feared when the character of Genet was introduced and continued to fear for almost 300 pages. There’s some Midnight’s Children in this book, also some Pat Conroy and John Irving.
The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick. Very accessible PKD, unlike Dr. Bloodmoney. I read that recently and did not like it.
Zombie Spaceship Wasteland by Patton Oswalt. Short and distracting, but I didn’t do more than chuckle at it. Part autobiography, part reflection on Oswalt’s comedy and part random stuff.
I am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells. A YA version of Dexter, the idea of a 15 year old sociopath is presented very well. It is easy to understand the main character’s condition and feel sympathy for him as a character while still remaining pretty creeped out by him. I would have liked this better if it hadn’t introduced a supernatural element to the story.
I read this because I got the third in this trilogy for Christmas (from someone who meant well, but really knows nothing about fantasy and/or my taste in books.)
I generally like Tanya Huff, but this had some problems from the beginning. One of them is: it seems to be the first book for a second trilogy (or a spin-off trilogy from another series.) This is only a problem because I haven’t read the first in the group.
I have not read the Twilight series, so I may be off, but this seems to me what Twilight would be if it were more gay.
Normally I would not mention a character’s sexual preference - but Ms. Huff makes sure we know the protagonist is gay so often that I sometimes thought she might just as well have simply called the character Gay Tony Foster.
The plot was rather thin - a wizard from another dimension is sending shadows to our world to scout for him, ultimately so he can come and conquer. Tony, who is the ex-lover (and ex-source of blood) of vampire Henry Fitzroy, gets caught up in saving the world.
The ending seemed rushed (although by that time I was glad for it to end) and overall I was disappointed. Alas, since I had been given book three, I bought books one and two and I suppose I will read the next two.