Saying nothing specific, I wouldn’t read past book two.
I have and am enjoying them very much, along with Connelly’s other series that I’ve read.
Bill Clinton is a fan too, as Connelly spotted him on the news while Clinton was president holding a copy of The Concrete Blond that he’d personally just bought at a bookstore. Impressed to have such a high-ranking fan, he eventually managed a brief meeting with Clinton.
No, no. Book two of Dexter. Just… pretend it’s the last one.
Ah, my mistake. I thought Connelly because I did not know there were other Dexters. Since I didn’t know there were more, that will be easy to do.
Meacham’s biography of Thomas Jefferson, which my best beloved gave me for Christmas.
I have enjoyed it, though the premise is weak–i.e. Jefferson was not a hypocrite, merely an able politician. This is weak because because a) hypocrite and able politician are pretty much synonymous; and b) he wasn’t really a very good politician at all.
Seems like biographies that admit their subjects were simply flawed (however clever and important) ought to be marketable.
Can anyone recommend some mysteries (preferably classic whodunnits or police procedurals)? I am in mourning over the passing of Reginald Hill
Michael Connelly, as mentioned above and in several other posts. The ongoing Harry Bosch series are detective procedurals in Los Angeles. He also has a Lincoln Lawyer series featuring Bosch’s half-brother, defense attorney Mickey Haller, which are mysteries too.
There’s also the old Tony Hillerman series of Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee mysteries set on and around the Navajo Reservation in the Southwest.
After you’ve read that, check out Ray Bradbury’s short story “Usher II,” which isn’t really a sequel but which plays with some of the concepts in an interesting way.
I once read an interview with Clinton in which he said one of his favorite things about being President was being able to invite his favorite authors to the White House for lunch. No one ever said no.
Just went to this book-swap club last night, and it was fun. I’ll probably go back: http://www.freshwatercleveland.com/filter/default.aspx#813227a8-1914-4c61-95b1-b8635ba086d0
Try Joseph Wambaugh and Ed McBain.
If you don’t mind going back in time, I liked the Berlin Noir novels by Philip Kerr and the Civil War mystery novels by Owen Parry. The first is A Faded Coat of Blue.
There’s a series set in Scotland but I’m blanking on the author’s name – Dina or Mina something maybe? Very gritty and dark. A Doper knows, because this is where I heard of them.
It’s been quite a few days since I finished this, but I loved Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. I am trying desperately to find a follow-up read to this…will probably re-read The Giant’s House.
I’ve started and discarded two books this weekend:
-The Cold Six Thousand, by James Ellroy. Set in Dallas during JFK’s assassination (at least beginning there), its combination of realistic casual racism and an ostentatious style that I’m currently finding annoying was too much for me. Not a bad book, but not right for me for now.
-Hell, by Chuck Pahlaniuk. Read the first four chapters, and now I’m thinking that Chuck is actually a bad person. He seems to think that he’s hilarious, but the jokes are amazingly lame, as is his central conceit–that a 13-year-old of today would be totally obsessed with The Breakfast Club instead of either Chuck himself being so obsessed, or the 13-year-old of today being obsessed with Twilight or whatever. I mean, it’s possible, but it’s also lame. I had to stop reading, because I was focusing less on the story and more on my dislike for the author.
But I just finished Waking Leviathan, which is the best SF I’ve read since Spin; really excellent stuff, and I highly recommend it as space opera with interesting characters. It’s actually by Daniel Abraham (and somebody else), which I didn’t know until I’d finished it.
And I just started Kill the Dead, by Richard Kadrey. I read the previous book in the series–Sandman Slim–and enjoyed it. He’s kind of writing a knockoff of the Dresden Files, except far nastier and more violent and profane. Silly and fun stuff.
With a less lame hero hopefully?
Don’t get me wrong–I enjoy the hell out of the Dresden Files–but yeah, the hero of these is your standard wizard-who’s-been-to-hell-and-back kind of leather jacket wearing asshole. Much more antihero than Dresden.
I will have to check them out. Dresden pisses me the hell off, he’s just so limp.
Finished The Heretic: A Templar Chronicles novel - a fantasy/action book. Cade Williams and his wife are attacked by a supernatural entity. His wife is killed and Cade joins the Knights Templar to fight evil and seek revenge.
It was a light read, full of action and magic. I didn’t hate it, but didn’t like it well enough to look for more in the series.
Thanks. I’ve pretty much read Wambaugh and McBain though they are not on my top ten. I know the Scottish series I think but can’t recall her name just at the moment either.
Maybe as good as Hill if you happen to have missed them are Ruth Rendell’s earllier books. I’m reading and enjoying Ian Rankin but will soon have got through those too, so thanks also for the Kerr and Parry tips, will check them out.
Love Denise Mina!!!
Just started The Wrath of Angels, John Connolly’s newest Charlie Parker thriller. (Autographed copy! 
)
I opened this thread to post about this book - I got it from the library yesterday, and I’m about 3/4 of the way through it now. It’s THAT kind of book. The only thing I don’t like about it is the portrayal of current technology (it’s set in the present) as wizardlike and incredibly easy and fast if you happen to know how to program, and how it takes on the idea that working for a large hip tech company is pretty much just a bunch of ultra-smart geeks doing things like riding unicycles, working on incredibly complex yet super cool projects, and generally having a great time with no deadlines, drudge work, or anything like that. I get tired of those attitudes, but it hasn’t ruined the book for me.
Have you read Ready Player One? If not, I’d recommend that as a follow-up read. Nerd fiction at its best.
I finished The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I absolutely loved it until about the last 20 pages. Then it just went a little…I don’t know if “too far” is the right term, but it took it one step beyond believable. I’ve started The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, by Kao Kalia Yang.
Dark Cities Underground by Lisa Goldstein. Urban fantasy given to me long ago that I never read
The wonderfully-titled The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison by John Emsley
The 1920 book **The Art of Animatioon[/BN], of which I’d heard before, but never saw. It’s one of the books Walt Disney read to learn his craft.
I’ve just finished reading and re-reading a whole stack of Science Fiction dramas. I’m on a panel that wil be discussing SF in the Theater at this weekend’s Arisia Science Fiction Convention. I’m planning on dragging along my whole collection. The history of SF in the theater is pretty sparse. I’ve come to the conclusion that SF on Broadway divides into four categories:
1.) SF that is incidental to the play, piggybacking on the rest of the production
2.) Big-budget musicals based on Pop Culture stuff from other media (Spiderman: Turn off the Dark, Young Frankenstein, etc.)
3.) Plays by Big Names (H.G. Wells, Gore Vidal, George Bernard Shaw)
4.) Flops
The last is by far the biggest group, and the plays in it have often had fewer than ten (10 !!!) performances before closing. SF plays have been a bigger draw in smaller American venues, and in Europe.