Now reading:
Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris
I’ve heard a little about this story, and wanted to know more.
Having read two chapters so far, I’m impressed with the quality of the writing, and I’m looking forward to getting back to it very soon now.
You’re welcome, Not Dennis.
Finished Child Of Fire the second in the Twenty Palaces series. I thought the first had potential and was excited to see a new urban fantasy series that wasn’t Magic+Harlequin romance. The ending disappointed, but I thought it could gain momentum.
This second was a rambling mess that could have easily been edited down to a kindle short by taking out everything between the first two chapters and last two (or so.)
I will probably give the third one a shot, but if it doesn’t get batter I’m done.
Khadaji, have you tried Justina Robson’s Quantum Gravity series, starting with* Keeping It Real*? It struck me as a real standout amidst all the urban fantasy as you describe it. Robson writes smart, compelling fiction, and this is kind of a mix of science fiction and urban fantasy.
The blurb describes the backstory well: The Quantum Bomb of 2015 changed everything. The fabric that kept the universe’s different dimensions apart was torn and now, six years later, the people of earth exist in uneasy company with the inhabitants of, amongst others, the elfin, elemental, and demonic realms. Magic is real and can be even more dangerous than technology. Elves are exotic, erotic, dangerous, and really bored with the constant “Lord of the Rings” references. Elementals are a law unto themselves and demons are best left well to themselves. Special agent Lila Black used to be pretty, but now she’s not so sure. Her body is more than half restless carbon and metal alloy machinery, a machine she’s barely in control of. It goes into combat mode, enough weapons for a small army springing from within itself, at the merest provocation.
Thanks for the recommendation - I put it in my queue.
I’ve just started Ready Player One, based on some enthusiasm in these threads. So far, so good.
Picked up and finished Oliver Sacks’ The Mind’s Eye yesterday. It’s been a while since I read his essays, and I enjoyed them. His story about his own experience with sensation and vision through ocular melanoma is emotionally hard to read, but still interesting. I’ll probably revisit some early works - I have Migraine, but I haven’t read An Anthropologist on Mars.
Also in the stack from my first gift certificate run to the bookstore: Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire and The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2011, edited by Mary Roach.
I spent 1/2 hour at the store the other day, and I have to say that while there are a lot of books I’d like to read, there aren’t so many I’m driven to own. I’ll be looking to the threads more frequently for inspiration. Or maybe I should just plan on donating the ones I’ve read and don’t want to keep.
Having read quite a bit more of it, I’m far less impressed by the writing. More to the point, whoever proofread/edited it left some very annoying illiteracies in the text.
“Flaunt” the law? Really? The correct word is “flout” and “flaunt” means something very different.
Still, the story itself is interesting enough to keep me reading despite the occasional vocabulary failure.
I’m about 1/3 done with The Night Circus, and enjoying it, after learning from this thread a few months ago that it doesn’t contain clowns.
I also started Stephen King’s 11/22/63 which I got for Christmas. I am enjoying this too, although it is slow going because I read it in the evenings. It’s a bit large to carry on my daily commute (always an issue with SK).
I recently finished:
The first two Dresden books by Jim Butcher, based on multiple recommendations from friends and from ongoing mentions in this thread. I thought they were fun, and from what I understand, the series continues to get better.
Chime, by Frannie Billingsley. YA supernatural/fantasy, it’s dorky and romantic and overly mannered, but it’s a lot better than garbage like Twilight.
Another YA, this one more in the Hunger Games vein – Divergent, by Veronica Roth. This was just silly - teen girl in a post-apocalyptic Chicago, competes in a series of physical/mental challenges. And she meets a boy, natch.
The Mostly True Story of Jack, by Kelly Barnhill. Eh, this genre isn’t really my thing, kidlit fantasy about an entire Midwestern town swept up in a magical contest of wills. It’s probably okay for 10 - 12 year old readers who do like this sort of magic story.
NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson. I picked this up after seeing it mentioned on the SDMB. I was very interested in the presentation of new research in child development, however I could have done with a little less of the author’s insistence on being SHOCKING! (It wasn’t that shocking in most cases.)
I’m re reading The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough.
Just finished Appointment in Samarra, my very first John O’Hara. The story takes place over three days in a small Pennsylvania town in 1930, and follows a man whose life is falling apart.
I loved this description of the mother of one of the characters:
"She would be a good bridge player and a woman who knew the first two lines of many songs, who read her way in and out of every new book without being singed, pinched, bumped, or tickled by any line or chapter. Between doing the last thing and the next she would beat her hands together in little claps, rubbing her pure, once pretty fingers together for the warmth she generated in her fingertips, and making you expect her to say something good and wise about life. But what she would say would be: “Oh, fish! I must have my rings cleaned.”
I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo over the weekend. I liked it pretty well, but I don’t see what all the fuss is about. The setting was charming and the mystery was decent, but the first 100 pages were dull, and overall there was way too much exposition.
I’ve been reading the Inspector Lynley books in order from the beginning, but I think they would each stand alone well enough. There are a few story arcs involving the recurring characters, but they are a minor part of each novel.
My favorites so far have been the 7th-10th novels, especially Deception on His Mind, which features Sergeant Havers rather than Lynley. But then I was not thrilled by the 11th and 12th novels, so I am taking a break from the series. The books are very cynical in tone, especially about marriage and romantic relationships.
I kind of felt the same - and since you do feel that way, I recommend you stop. IMO, the next two really won’t be worth it for you.
If it hadn’t been for the raves of my acquaintances, I would have quit Girl during the long introductory slog. Unfortunately I read the whole thing, which never seemed special in any way.
Thanks for the helpful input on the Inspector Lynley books!
Thank you. Between the statements here and the comment of an editor friend, I’m going to skip the trilogy. Unless it’s a slow day and I find the books at a garage sale.
I’m about to dig into Eric Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts. I don’t think he is great shakes as a writer, but his background research is always thorough, which I admire.
I did finish 1Q84 a day or two after I posted about it, and I would say my impression didn’t change. It’s a sprawling book with some fascinating and absorbing parts and some flat parts. Up next I think I will either read The Satanic Verses or Infinite Jest, which we don’t have could end up buying soon because we’re both interested in reading it.
I agree. I thought the first one was pretty decent and the next two were more of the same, only not as good. I would have been satisfied just reading The Girl w/ the Dragon Tattoo and stopping there.
Reading The Confession, latest Inspector Rutledge mystery by Charles Todd.
Finished The Appeal, by John Grisham. An evil chemical company that caused deadly cancer clusters to appear in a rural Mississippi community was sued, lost and was then socked with a record punitive penalty. To bolster its appeal before the state supreme court, the company engineers the election of a justice who can serve as a swing vote in its favor. Good but maybe not up there with some of his others that I’ve read. A little disappointing, but I can’t say why without revealing plot points.
Now it’s less than three months before we leave for our US East Coast tour, so I’m going to spend some time perusing the guidebooks again. Maybe pick up another regular book in a couple of weeks or so.
“From time to time Mark Spitz happened on these places in Zone One, where he strolled down a movie set, earning scale as an extra in a period piece about the dead world.”
Not only am I a fan of the post-apocalypse genre, but I’ve also read & enjoyed a couple of Colson Whitehead’s previous novels, so when I heard (via his interview on NPR’s Fresh Air - 19 Oct 2011) that his latest novel, **Zone One ** was set in a post-apocalytic world beset by zombies, my interest was definitely piqued.
Whitehead leads his readers gently into the story, starting with the main character’s recollections of visiting his uncle in New York City. From there, the timeline jumps between the current day – where Mark Spitz (an odd nickname, but explained at one point) works on a secondary clean-up team in the titular area of NYC – and flashbacks to his survival experiences after Last Night - the day of the zombie outbreak. I found the idea of the “American Phoenix” (and the resultant term “pheenie”) quite believable in the post 9/11 world.
This is probably the most literary zombie novel I’ve ever read; its slow pace, almost lethargic at times, is very different from a lot of what I’ve read, but it fits the atmosphere of the novel so very, very well.
I’m glad I read it in Kindle format, as I was able to easily highlight the many quotes that caught my eye & then extract them into a largish text file. I’ll try to just share my very favorites below - grouped semi-thematically:
*Over the years, Mark Spitz reconciled himself to his condition. It took the pressure off. A force from above held him down, and a counterforce from below bore him aloft. He hovered on unexceptionality.(pg 56)
In his mind, the business of existence was about minimizing consequences. (pg 85)
It was important to maintain a reserve tank of feeling topped off in case of emergency. (pg 41)
He stopped hooking up with other people once he realized the first thing he did was calculate whether or not he could outrun them. (p 115)
A part of him thrived on the end of the world. How else to explain it: He had a knack for apocalypse. (p 197)
Before the rise of the camps, out in the land, you had to watch out for other people. The dead were predictable. People were not.
What must it have been like, to see the choppers after all that time, after they’d emptied the larder of hope and had only mealy, unleavened stubbornness to chew on? p 208
Suddenly this settlement had become a community … and the survivors had something to hold in their hands besides the make-shift weapons they had nicknamed and pathetically conversed with in the small hours. (p 88)
Now, the people were no longer mere survivors, half-mad refugees, a pathetic, shit-flecked, traumatized herd, but the “American Phoenix.” The more popular diminutive “pheenie” had taken off in the settlements. (pg 79)
*