I would never term any admiration of Amy Adams ridiculous!
Finished *Grave Witch (Alex Craft, Book 1) *a serviceable Urban Fantasy by Kalayna Price. Alex Craft is Grave Witch - a witch who communicates with the dead - who makes her living raising the shades of the departed to query them; sometimes to find out who killed them, sometimes to ask them other questions. She stumbles into a case involving the ritual murder of young women and must solve the case and save the world. Helping her is Detective Falin Andrews, various friends and even Death himself shows up on a regular basis.
It started slow, but picked up towards the middle. The book hints at what might be an interesting-but-not-new take on the afterlife (Death is a job description, not a person) and eventually an interesting plot.
I won’t go out of my way to search for the future books, but I’ll pick one up if I see it.
Finished Life, which gave me a heightened appreciation for the Rolling Stones, but left me with an acute dislike of Keith Richards himself. He accuses Jagger of selling out while setting himself up as the lone guardian of the band’s soul, performing out of a love for the music. Meanwhile, though, he’s using the band’s earnings to keep himself in top-grade narcotics, as well as buy himself out of countless drug-related legal scrapes. And he virtually ignores his first two kids while they’re young, having little to no involvement in raising them.
I had hoped for more insight into the creation of the music, but the book comes across more as an exercise in trying to make himself look cool and dangerous, with very little discussion of the music.
Moving on, I have started Pirates of the Levant, by Arturo Perez-Reverte. He’s one of my favorite authors, but this is the 6th book in his Captain Alatriste series (about a 17th Century Spanish swashbuckler) and it feels like he ran out of steam a couple of books ago. I’m up to page 220 or so and still haven’t run across any actual plot.
I’m re-reading Mary Stewart’s four books about Merlin, The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment and The Wicked Day – an interesting take on the Arthurian legends. I suppose when I finish, I’ll have to re-read The Once and Future King.
I read those for the first time last summer, and loved them!
Me: The new Deanna Raybourn (mysteries set in the late Victorian novel with kind of a romance vibe – plucky titled heroine, tall dark handsome detective), Dark Road to Darjeeling. I think a couple of you have checked out the series already – this is a good addition. If not, but it sounds like something you might enjoy – quality trashy reading! – start with the first one, Silent in the Grave, since there’s an overall story arc about the heroine and hero.
Also Steve Martin’s new novel, Object of Beauty, which was okay, not great. Set in the art world of the '80s to present, which he knows a great deal about, so that part was rather interesting. The plot, though, is premised on Event X happening fairly early on, but not being explained as to what exactly the event was until the end of the book. I had guessed part of it, and I’m not entirely sure how well the book was served by plotting it that way. Plus the main character is neither likable nor sympathetic, which makes for additional literary challenges for the author. (It can be done – Vanity Fair – but it’s not an easy trick.) Finished it, but … meh. Sorry, Steve.
I really enjoyed the first 3. I’m not sure I ever finished the last one.
I highly recommend Thomas Berger’s Arthur Rex, an R-rated, slightly-tongue-in-cheek but well-crafted and basically respectful retelling of the Arthurian legends. I discovered it in high school and seem to re-read it every seven or eight years or so. (Berger is still better known for Little Big Man).
Just finished book two of the Locke & Key graphic novel collections, Head Games, by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez. Just as good as book one, Welcome to Lovecraft. Very, very good stuff: dark, creepy and multi-layered.
I just finished **Hitch-22 **and the classic SF short story anthology Dangerous Visions.
I’m starting **The Name Of The Rose **by Umberto Eco and so far it is turning out to be just as good as Foucault’s Pendulum, of which I look back fondly on the reading thereof.
Finished Game Change. Highly entertaining and informative. Criticisms of the book are that the authors offer few cites or sources, but to me that’s understandable, since those people still need jobs to pay their bills. Next up: a junk novel, methinks.
A quick read today: Matte Painting: d’artiste, ed. by Daniel Wade (Ballistic Publ. 2005). A very interesting, step-by-step, well-illustrated primer on movie matte paintings, now almost entirely done digitally. It included examples from The Return of the King and Revenge of the Sith, as well as a lot of original stuff that would improve any movie in which it appeared.
Finished Dancing with Were Wolves a confused mess of an urban fantasy.
Delilah Street is a paranormal investigator that moves to Las Vegas to find out why a woman who looks just like her played a dead woman on TV. There she encounters a man who douses for dead people, werewolves and vampires.
The plot wandered all over and the book leaned heavily towards a romance novel. I won’t be reading more of this series.
Finished The Zombie Survival Guide last weekend. The “survival guide” part was kind of ho-hum, but the “recorded attacks” section at the end was fun. Looking forward to reading World War Z soon.
Currently, I just started reading Pirate Latitudes, Michael Crichton’s last novel–published posthumously, I think. It’s been several years since I’ve read any Crichton. I think *Timeline *was the last I read, and I didn’t like that much. I got *Pirate Latitudes *as a Christmas gift, and I’m liking it so far.
I admit I haven’t read all that much Crichton, but I liked Timeline, all in all (although I’ve read that the movie sucked). My favorite of his is still The Andromeda Strain, although Jurassic Park was good semi-scientific fun.
I just finished Barbara Hambly’s newest novel, Blood Maidens, which is the third in her vampire series that’s set in Europe just before WWI. The series starts with Those Who Hunt the Night. Don’t let the melodramatic titles put you off - Hambly is an excellent writer, and Don Simon Ysidro is one of my favorite literary vampires. These are lush period novels, not romances, but something between mystery and horror. The vampires are wicked, murderous, and yet fascinating creatures.
I also read Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet, another of the old Rabbi Small novels. These are quiet little murder mysteries, set in a small town in Massachusetts in the 1960’s-70’s. They’re quick reads, simply written, and the stories are used as a framework for giving the reader gentle lessons in Judaism. The rabbi solves the mysteries using “Talmudic reasoning and insight”.
I’m still working my way slowly through Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island. This is my first Bryson book, and I dunno, maybe I picked the wrong one to start with. It’s funny at times, and the narrative is interesting to an Anglophile, but the author just seems irritable. He complains constantly, and he’s annoyed, rather than charmed, by the eccentric people he meets. I keep putting the book down, hoping that I’m just in the wrong mood to appreciate it, but every time I pick it back up I get the same bad vibe from the guy.
Eleanor: Try A Walk in the Woods as your intro to Bryson – if you don’t think it’s funny, he’s just not your cup of tea.
His early books all have that crankiness, including A Walk in the Woods, IMO. He really shines in A Short History of Nearly Everything, In a Sunburned Country, and At Home. These are his three best books to date, for my money.
I’m going to work my way through the Sci-Fi Masterworks that I haven’t read, so I’m reading The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin and The Stars, My Destination by Alfred Bester.
I’ll take a break from that with Children of Men by P.D. James and American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Then another two Sci-Fi Masterworks. Except for the Philip K. Dick books, because I can’t stand him.
I saw The King’s Speech this weekend (and it was excellent) and I had to rush back to this thread to find the name of this biography that you mentioned.
Edited to add:
…which appears to be only available used and expensive on Amazon. Boo.
Huh, I had no idea the book was rare. There’s a seller on Alibris and Half.com (betterworldbooks) who claims to have a cheap copy.
Amazon does have The King’s Speech, with a movie cover, which was apparently written by Logue’s grandson. I’ve been thinking about getting this one. There’s a long ship date on the paperback, but they have a Kindle edition.
I saw the movie this weekend, too, and I liked it very much.
Thanks for the update, I read the first one and definitely felt that it was just shoehorned into a rambling story unnecessarily. I gave up after that, but maybe I’ll give the other stories a try.
I really enjoyed that ride. I took it with me on a vacation to Jamaica and it was the perfect beach book.
I had the same feeling. I originally heard the first story read by Sedaris himself and enjoyed it. The Elaine Stritch version just didn’t have the same oomph. Sedaris just has great timing when he’s reading his stuff.
[QUOTE=twickster]
Eleanor: Try A Walk in the Woods as your intro to Bryson – if you don’t think it’s funny, he’s just not your cup of tea.
[/QUOTE]
Yea but I hated…
…the way it ended with him not finishing the AT. It spoiled the rest of the book for me.
I’m currently reading Superfreakonomics and How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming