I loved that whole trilogy - the next two books are just as good as the first one.
I agree that Blindsight was much, much stronger than Starfish. Part of it may just be that Watts has grown as a novelist over time, but I think another important factor is that the world of Blindsight is just much, much more interesting than Starfish - the latter just feels like recycled cyberpunk whenever it isn’t stuck at the bottom of the ocean, while Blindsight has a genuinely unique feel to its world. Also, there’s much more a sense of dread to Blindsight, I think - it propels the story along nicely.
He’s working on a sequel to Blindsight, and I look forward to it. (But jeez, do I hate his website.)
Finished Discord’s Apple by Carrie Vaughn. I have read her Kitty Norville series and enjoy it well enough, so I gave this a shot. I haven’t decided yet what I think.
Vaughn’s story is set in a bleak world in the near-future, ravaged by wars. (For instance India and Pakistan have exchanged nukes.) There are security checks in all towns and rations on groceries.
Into this she brings beings of legend, some trying to obtain the apple out of Greek legend that started the Trojan war. This apple is guarded and stored by a family in Colorado who guard other artifacts from legend.
It had potential, I admit, but never really gained its stride and overall was a mediocre offering. I will admit that I was surprised by the ending, but didn’t really find it satisfying.
Blood Men by Paul Cleave. Now-adult son of a serial killer is in a bank with his wife when it’s robbed; she is killed. His incarcerated father urges him to seek revenge. Will he do it? (I don’t know!) I think this is the first book I’ve ever read that’s set in New Zealand. Booklist loved it; Publishers Weekly said it was disappointing. So far it’s fascinating.
I think I’m on an early American history binge. I’m now reading The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America by Walter R. Borneman and I’ve got Borneman’s previous book 1812: The War That Forged a Nation and Jack Rakove’s Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America in the queue.
Just finished Richard Ketchum’s Victory at Yorktown, a pretty good overview of the last years of the American Revolution, culminating in Washington’s and Rochambeau’s great 1781 triumph over Lord Cornwallis. Ketchum does a good job of showing the political, economic and military dimensions of the war, and emphasizes how everything went just right for the American and French forces, while the British made blunder after blunder.
In one day, I zipped through Clive Cussler’s 1978 thriller Vixen 03, which I read back when it first came out. Most of his recent stuff is crap IMHO, but this book (about a secret 1954 Air Force flight, insurgents trying to topple the Apartheid regime of South Africa, and a false-flag attack on Washington, D.C.) is just about as good as I remember, despite some clunky exposition and quaint chauvinism.
1812 is an excellent book, but if after it, you’re still interested in more on the War of 1812, I’d recommend Donald Hickey’s The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, which I liked better than Borneman’s book, simply because it was more thorough. Another interesting perspective is John Latimer’s 1812: War with America from the British perspective, an especially necessary corrective to the prevalent American views of the war.
Finished The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. It’s about a man who’s severely burned in a car accident. In the hospital, he’s visited by Marianne, a psychiatric patient. Marianne tells him they were lovers in past lives in Italy, Germany, Iceland, and Japan, and she relates these stories to him as he recovers. These parts of the book had a fairy tale quality and I really enjoyed them.
The other part of the story has to do with Marianne’s gargoyle sculptures, and that was less enjoyable. Funny that I could totally buy into the reincarnation aspect, but the sculpting part – the reason she did it – had me rolling my eyes. It wasn’t necessary to the story – I was already hooked with the past lives relationships.
Started The Good Wife by Stewart O’Nan. His writing is so good that it’s almost distracting. It’s about a young pregnant woman whose husband goes to prison for murder. Like a lot of O’Nan’s books, it’s a “slice of life” story – no plot to speak of, just excellent characters in rather ordinary situations, how they cope, what their relationships are like, and lots of detail. I love this guy.
I just finished the second book of the Rashi’s Daughters trilogy.
Rashi remains probably the most noted torah scholar ever. The books look at an 11th century French Jewish and Christian world from the viewpoint of his daughters. An excellent narrative that really brings you into how they understood the universe at the time.
She delves into medical issues, marital relations, marriage laws, wine making, dress making, animal husbandry, the role of women in the household and out of it as well as the customs of the people of the day. A Jewish background helps when you read the novels but I think they’re very accessible and well done historical fiction that anyone would enjoy reading.
I’ve already bought The War That Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War by Fred Anderson and will probably read it as soon as I finish the Borneman book. I sometimes read two books on the same subject in succession - it gives me a parallax on history. So I may do the same with Hickey’s or Latimer’s book.
Finished The Freightened Man, the start of a detective series set in early 1900’s London. A gruesome murder of a prostitute may or may indicate the return of Jack The Ripper. Denton, an American with a past in law enforcement and an author, is sucked into the investigation.
I’m not sure if Denton was supposed to represent a real person, or not. If he was, I didn’t have a clue who. The picture the author painted of the life of women in the 1900, while possibly accurate, was bleak and depressing. The mystery never really sucked me in. I am doubtful that I will read the next installment.
Haven’t dropped into one of these threads for a while, but I haven’t read anything exciting for a while, either. It’s great to hear about the variety of literary interests.
I just finished Gary Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories thanks to a mention in GQ, and I have to say it’s got me thinking good and hard about my diet and about the medical establishment. I have had faith in Western medicine and science, and a lot of skepticism about conspiracy theories and fad diets. However, this synthesis of history and science is making me question life-long assumptions. Something I enjoy in a book.
Also listening to Harry Potter on audio, which is something I do every summer, believe it or not (hiking season). Jim Dale ranks up there with Simon Prebble and Barbara Rosenblat as a performer, IMO. I love the books, and his readings are exquisite.
I’m looking forward to Collins’ third book (Mockingjay) as well.
Just finished Paco Underhill’s What Women Want: the global marketplace turns female-friendly. It was just okay. I like Mr. Underhill’s books about shopping, but by the time I got to the end of this one, I wasn’t sure if it had a point beyond, “Women prefer things to be clean and safe and have curvy lines.”
I’m now starting on Joe R. Lansdale’s Savage Season, the first of his Hap and Leonard books. This is one of those things I always meant to read…someday. Liking it so far.
Just started The Whisperers, latest in John Connolly’s Charlie Parker series. Yum.
I love these. Be sure to read them in order, so you won’t be like me and wonder “Whatever happened to . . . ?”
Finished the O’Nan and thought it was brilliant. Next up is Hunted Past Reason by Richard Matheson. I was suprised to find this at the library. It’s fairly recent, and I thought Matheson was dead. Glad he’s still around, and still writing. 
I just finished A Feast For Crows, and you know what? I don’t care if the last three books are ever published. It’d almost be worth not reading them just to never hear Arya’s stupid prayer about people she wants dead ever again, or the boyscout merit badge-like earning of chain links. Is Martin somehow under the impression that he’s being paid by the word or what? So many useless details are repeated over and over throughout the series, but no light is shown on more interesting questions, like: What exactly happened in Winterfell when Stark showed up with a baby that (or perhaps so he claimed) was his?
The Anderson book is great–as is his 900 page tome on the same conflict, Crucible of War. Leastways, that’ll leave you with very few questions, though it’s comparatively short on the military details. But still–very good books. And then you could segue into Robert Middlekauff’s The Glorious Cause and get your fill of Revolutionary history…
You know, I’m on board with you on this. There’s a slim chance, I guess, that he’ll pull it all off and give us a satisfying resolution to the whole, so that we don’t feel cheated by the amount of time spent on stuff that never, ever leads anywhere (and right now, he’s certainly got more leads than anything else). And besides: I’ve not read a book of his in four years, I think…my interest has slightly waned, and it might take some prodding to get into a fifth book when I know there’s years of waiting ahead again until book six…and no end until book seven, if then.
I felt that way with the first book - but I was under a lot of pain meds when I read it, so I thought it might just be that I was having hard time concentrating. None-the-less, I never got around to reading the rest.