I interrupted my reading because I picked up a copy of Jennifer Toth’s The Mole People yesterday. I’d learned of it through Preston and Childs’ sequel to The Relic, Reliquary, and thought it sounded interesting and a bit questionable. It’s well-weritten, but I checked on the net and found that it was the subject of two Straight Dope Columns:
and a scathing critique by subway expert Joseph Brennan:
I’m still reading it, though with a critical eye.
Brennan’s site itself was worth that excursion. Not only because of the subway hisatory, but because he has the longest and apparently the most trustworthy history of New York’s Pneumatic Subway:
I just re-read Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World, and it’s still my favorite of his. I hadn’t read it in many years, but I still remembered everything that happened. If you haven’t read it, it’s about a boy’s love for his father and their grand adventure poaching pheasants.
I also just finished Robin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown, which I absolutely loved. I wish I would have read it as a kid, too. I’m looking forward to reading more of her books.
Based on the eight million references to him I see here, I started reading Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic. I can’t say I’m loving it. His prose style feels really jerky to me, and I end up having to re-read too much. I do like Rincewind, though. And the luggage made out of sapient pearwood.
Squeee!
I just got The New Deadcompilation from Subterranean Press, signed by all the authors! Stayed up way too late last night reading it. Great Zombie tales from the likes of Joe Hill, Max Brooks, Mike Carey, Tad Williams and tim Lebbon just to name a few.
I’ve also just started the Stieg Larsson trilogy. At first I dismissed it as the latest flash in the pan, but have heard lots of rave reviews here and elsewhere, so I decided to load up the kindle.
This weekend, I finished Breakfast at Sadie’s and Kat Got Your Tongue by Lee Weatherly, both YA novels. Fast-paced and interesting if not overly realistic…yum!
Then I read a non-fiction book, Working in the Shadows : a year of doing the jobs (most) Americans won’t do, by Gabriel Thompson, which I thought was terrific, especially the chapters about his time working in an Alabama chicken processing plant.
Started a new audiobook this morning, a YA novel called After, about a teenage girl who gives birth in secret. Sample sentence: “Devin breathed, in and out. Air rushed through her nostrils.” Okay, actually I made that one up. But that’s the level of detail I’m getting here. Very annoying so far, hope it picks up.
Finished The Reverse of the Medal, #11 in the Aubrey-Maturin series.
I’m waiting for some stuff from Amazon – two Tim Powers novels and Two Years Before the Mast, which I read as a kid but will appreciate more now, after reading Aubrey-Maturin.
While waiting, I got back into a collection of James M. Cain stories. One of them, The Baby in the Icebox, gave me nightmares! The stories are dark but they’re also funny. Cain’s favorite subjects appear to be California loser-types, hoboes and layabouts, but there was also a sweet (but dark) story about a young boy’s reaction to a girl who likes him.
Whirlwind; the Air War Against Japan; 1942-1945 billed as the final book to be written with actual interviews with those who were there. Worth your time.
I’ve just started reading Saturn Returns(Astropolis) by Sean Williams which is an enjoyable and well written space opera that frankly pisses all over the Hunt for Atlantis.
I just finished Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age. The first half was great. The second half, not so much. His prose is outstanding but the story completely fell apart.
I’ve started the second of Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January mysteries, Fever Season.
I’m reading The Apple: Crimson Petal stories by Michel Faber. I enjoyed his book The Crimson Petal and the White last year, so this is okay…diverting but pointless.
I read Craig Ferguson’s American on Purpose Thursday/Friday. Next on my list is Ransom by David Malouf. It’s an adaptation of a piece of The Iliad, and The New Yorker gave it a really terrific review about a week ago.
I finished John Harvey’s Rough Treatment - it was good, but I always find myself thinking ‘Was this written in a hurry? Only, I’m sure he’s capable of much more than this.’ I think the next mystery I read is going to be the 4th in the Dalziel and Pascoe series.
I also read Elizabeth Lunday’s Secret Lives of Great Composers - it constantly made me think of a similar book by David W. Barber called Bach, Beethoven and the Boys, which I much preferred. I kept reading passages where I’d think ‘Yeah, that’s a quick and dirty version of that incident, but it’s not strictly accurate and it plays up the eccentricity of that composer without acknowledging what made that person a respected composer.’ Interestingly, the book made reference to the play and film ‘Amadeus’ as fiction, while simultaneously falling into the same trap as ‘Amadeus’, eg. there was more to the historical Mozart than just the magnificent music, but ignoring the musical brilliance to portray him as just a puerile, foul-mouthed flake is equally a disservice to history. He was both, and that’s what’s interesting. Secret Lives of Composers went so far out of its way to make everyone mentioned seem like a nut job that I found myself doubting the truth of any of its stories. I’d recommend the Barber over this any day.
I just finished Gone With the Windsors by Laurie Graham. Very funny novel about a fictional American best friend of Wallis Windsor and King Edward VIII who witnesses Wallis’s seduction of the king and then his abdication.
Just finished reading H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines for the first time. While it’s certainly a product of its time and contains some fairly insulting stereotypes about Africans, it was for the most part very entertaining.
Now reading Arturo Perez-Reverte’s The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet, the latest in his Captain Alatriste series.
Good to know. I got that for my mom, who’s very interested in British royalty, a few years ago, but I don’t think she ever actually read it.
I’m now reading John Mortimer’s Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders, about the first great case of a cantankerous old London barrister, and Frank Cho’s Liberty Meadows, Vol. 2, a collection of well-drawn but not terribly funny cartoon strips about unrequited love on a nature preserve.