Since I just got a Kindle, I’ve been picking up books left and right (mostly classics 'cuz they’re free, but I’ve gotten a few others as well).
I just read Bill Bryson’s At Home: A Short History of Private Life, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I found the discussion of early hunter-gatherers and the domestication of crops to be especially interesting.
I also just finished Gulliver’s Travels. While the ending pissed me off a little bit initially (I find his treatment of his wife appalling), I read a little bit of analysis on it, and found it fairly interesting, so now I have a bit more respect for it. I suppose I ought not to have been surprised at Gulliver’s sexism and racism anyway, considering the time period in which the book was written.
I’m now reading a Straight Dope literary staple: Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. The writing’s a bit dry, but the topic is interesting.
I finished it over the weekend. It was okay. Nothing to shout about but not bad. Didn’t like the first story, 1922. Too long and I felt that the farmer did what he did just so King could write about rats and guilt and bodies dumped in wells because there was no other reason why Wilf murdered his wife. There was no indication they were in a rut (in fact, they had a healthy sex life). So she wakes up, decides to sell the farm and the husband thinks, “That’s it. Marriage has been great so far but that’s the last straw. I’m gonna kill the bitch!”
The other three stories in the collection were better. I liked A Good Marriage. Creepiest one. How well do we know our spouses, anyway?
Today, gonna crack open Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl
I felt the same way about this book. If you pressed me, I liked it. I liked his brother’s book better though… Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman. Read that one? It is to comic books what The Magicians is to kid’s fantasy novels.
I wanted to like *The Magicians, *I had heard great things about it, I but found it dull and none of the characters engaging. In the end, I gave it a pretty poor review.
There’s a tiny reference in one of her time travel books, in Blackout, I think: one of the historians is assigned a costume that comes with a cell phone, and the technician assures the historian that it’s a fake and perfectly safe. Insinuating, I suppose, that in the future cell phones have been abandoned because they’re dangerous. Mostly Willis just ignores their existence, as her plots (and humor) depend heavily on poor communication between her characters.
I’m reading Sympathy For The Devil, a compendium of short stories about…well, The Devil. Pretty good so far. The book includes classics like Young Goodman Brown and many modern takes on Mr. Beelzebub. I love shit like this.
Reading ‘An April Shroud’ by Reginald Hill. This is number 4 in the Dalziel and Pascoe, although at page 175 it’s been almost all Dalziel. I love Hill’s writing.
If you’ll forgive a brief hijack, I’m also reading the Anthology Thread of the most recent SDMB Short Fiction contest, and I highly recommend it to all of you. If you have any spare reading time in the next ten days, please, have a look, comment on any of the stories and vote for your favourites.
Currently reading Unseen Academicals. Would be interesting to go back and read all of them again. He grew so much as a writter since the beginning. Which makes his condition even more depressing.
I spent the holidays reading Robert Rodi’s What They Did to Princess Paragon, a rather fun novel set in the comics industry: a comics writer intent on furthering his reputation as cutting-edge changes a Wonder Woman stand-in into a lesbian, and hilarious events ensue with a fan. Quite nice, but I’ve had better comics-themed books in my hands.
Also finished Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. I’d started this one once before and didn’t get into it, but this time around, it was a joy to read. I especially liked the ways in which Chabon implied a totally changed world history since 1948, but we really don’t get to know any of it. Made it much more mysterious. Recommended.
Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza. Excellent, though depressing.
Joe Hill’s Locke & Key. Liked this so much that I have already ordered the next volume.
I’m probably going to keep reading Justin Cronin’s The Passage for the rest of the week–very enjoyable, but also somewhat scary for wusses like me…
I’ve just finished The Girl Who Played With Fire, which I thought was v. good. Not sure if it’s better than the first one, it felt more like a traditional thriller and I had more of a sense of Sweden as a place from the first book.
Planning to start on the final book in the trilogy soon, but am dipping into some Jeffery Deaver short stories while I wait.
Lady Godiva: A Literary History by Donoghue. Great info on the Bareback Rider and her times, and how the theme has been treated since.
Heretics of Dune – I never read the end of the Dune cycle, and am just now getting to it.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon – although I know the stories of Rip Van Winkle and The Headless Horseman, I realized that I never read them, or the rest of Washington Irving’s classic. I was also curious about the Christmas sections, which inspired Dickens’ own A Christmas Carol.
Mark Twain’s Autobiography Vol. I. A gift for my birthday. I read the existing autobio a couple of years ago, but Twain wanted much material sealed until a century after his death – that’s last year. The first volume alone is about twice the length of his old one.
Next up is another paperback, Maria McCann’s As Meat Loves Salt. I’m not usually into period pieces, but the reviews are excellent and it sounds…interesting. I learned about it in a friend’s journal, when he mentioned getting it for Christmas, and after looking it up I asked if I could borrow it when he was done. Turns out he’d also bought a copy for himself (not expecting to get it as a gift), so he gave me the “extra” copy when I saw him yesterday.
Last night I finished* Monsters of Men*, the last book of the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness. I really liked this series, though it made me cry, dammit! Added Mr. Ness to my list of authors to watch for.
Started a new audiobook as well, One Thousand White Women, by Jim Fergus. It’s about a fictional agreement between President Ulysses Grant and the Cheyennes to send brides to the Indians in trade for horses.
Then read 9 Dragons by Michael Connolly. It got a lot of hate. I don’t think it’s his best, but I don’t think it was that bad. Harry Bosch’s daughter gets kidnapped and he has to go to Hong Kong to rescue her; Chinese triad gangs are involved. There’s too much of calling her “his daughter” for emotional effect and not enough using her name, and I don’t like being manipulated like that – actually, I can’t be manipulated like that, but the action was pretty good. I think Connolly was especially eager to kill off Bosch’s ex-wife. I don’t know why.
Getting ready to start Ken Follett’s new Fall of Giants.
Or maybe not, it’s starting to get on my nerves already.
ETA: Huck Finn seems like it might be a good choice. It’s been so long since I read it I don’t remember anything, and I certainly want to get to it before it gets all sanitized.
I learned about it in a friend’s journal, when he mentioned getting it for Christmas, and after looking it up I asked if I could borrow it when he was done. Turns out he’d also bought a copy for himself (not expecting to get it as a gift), so he gave me the “extra” copy when I saw him yesterday.