This took a little getting into for me too, but at some point it just hooked me in. It’s not his best book, but I ended up enjoying it quite a lot.
Over the weekend I finished reading South of Broad by Pat Conroy. Wow. That book still has me thinking - I had to go back and reread several sections of it after finishing it. Conroy’s prose is sometimes a little too descriptive for me, but he spins a great story with some wonderful characters that I didn’t want to leave behind.
I’m not sure what’s next - I’ve got The Fourth Part of the World and A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book ready on my Kindle. Or maybe I’ll try once again to get into This Republic of Suffering…
At first I thought I had missed something because it was inconceivable (heh) that the mystery wasn’t solved. Then I was irked because I really wanted to hear the explanation of the odder details that the witnesses recalled from their childhood. I soon realized that I really liked how there was no magical wand waving that resulted in the perfect solution of the case along with a skipping-into-the-sunset healing moment for the main character.
(Besides, I have to wonder that if a solution was offered if it would live up to my expectations!)
I finished the book a couple days ago and can’t stop thinking about it. It probably doesn’t bear close scrutiny – there are a lot of improbabilities and a lot of ways that the vengeance seeker’s plotting could have gone wrong – but the final chapter makes up for it.
I’m almost finished with Post Captain and will move on to H.M.S. Surprise.
I finished the second Abercrombie book, and it was excellent, despite the toothiness.
Before I start the last book in the trilogy I’m going to try to go back to my Wellington biography - I got distracted by shiny fiction and left him hunkered down behind the Lines of Torres Vedras in Portugal.
I pulled my Hemingway stash outta the attic. Currently finishing up the Short Stories collection, but in the last 6 weeks or so I’ve read To Have and Have Not, The Green Hills of Africa, and The Sun Also Rises. Next up is For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Just finished Star Trek Myriad Universes: Echoes and Refractions, an alt-universe collection of short stories by Geoff Trowbridge, Keith R.A. DeCandido and Chris Roberson. Meh. None of them really blew me away, and some of the dialogue was painfully amateurish. I don’t know if my standards are improving, or if Trek fiction is going downhill. Maybe a bit of both.
Just finished an advance copy of e2 by Matt Beaumont, sequel to e, which I will now have to read. Viciously funny and very, very wrong. Now starting an advance of Beguiled, a suspense novel by Deeanne Gist and J. Mark Bertrand.
I just finished Genesis illustrated by R. Crumb. Much more enjoyable than trying to read it in a bible. The text is complete and the pictures add to the experience. I finally managed to get through all the damn lineages.
I’m about 3/4 of the way through “The Hot Zone” by Richard Preston - I find it terrifyingly fascinating. Viruses are so very, very cool - I love what the study of them can tell us about the origins of life on this planet, and about the grey zone between “alive” and “not”.
My book club read The Hot Zone a few years ago and we all liked it very much. It’s all the scarier because it’s true. When you realize the narrow margin between containment and pandemic… brrrrrr.
Khadaji, it’s an epistolary novel all written in emails. You can breezy through in two sittings. One, if you don’t stop every few minutes to read part of it out loud to whoever is in the room.
ETA: Oh, you meant The Brain that Changes Itself. :smack: No, not difficult at all. Very readable and blessedly fairly jargon free.
All right, I did like it a little better as it went on, and I enjoyed the things about that are uniquely Russo, but overall, I’m going to count this as a swing and a miss for this author.
On The Brain That Changes Itself, in my book journal I noted it was somewhat similar to Oliver Sacks’s work, with a lot of interesting stories about people with unusual brain situations, BUT unlike a Sacks book, it included very vivid details about the animal research that led some of the discoveries about the brain.
I am officially giving up on Stephen King’s Under the Dome. I gave it my best shot, but the bad guys are so bad, they’re boring and the good guys don’t get a lot of mental screen time, so I’m not very attached to them.
I did it! I finished “The Count of Monte Cristo.” All 1,264 pages of it. It wasn’t a difficult read by any means and I enjoyed it, but I definitely could have done without some of the characters and plot lines.
Not sure what I will pick up next, exactly. I need to go to the library today. I’m thinking something short.
I finished Sin in the Second City, which I enjoyed quite a bit. I found the idea of rampant “white slavery” interesting; I guess every generation needs to stage their own witch hunts. I would not recommend this book for those who like hard lined, well-footnoted nonfiction… this reads a bit like a novel. Abbott takes liberties with character’s intentions and inner thoughts.
I’ve also read:
The Boleyn Inheritance, by Philippa Gregory. I realize all her books are just chick-lit disguised as historical fiction, but I enjoy them anyway. This one got three out of five stars from me.
Caught Stealing, by Charlie Huston. A pulpy “wrong man in the wrong place” crime novel. A real gritty page-turner.
Now starting an advance of Beguiled, a suspense novel by Deeanne Gist and J. Mark Bertrand.