Welcome EvilMinion! I finally got around to reading the Great Gatsby a few months ago and disliked it - soured me on books of that era but I should probably try again.
I just discovered that Stephen Hunter has a couple of new books out, so I bought Dead Zero today. His 1994 Dirty White Boysis one of the few books I’ve read more than once. Really can’t-put-it-down, mindlessly great story-telling escapist fun.
Darkness at Noon - I read that a few years ago. Dark, real, depressing and totally worth reading.
The Rules of Civility did not remind me at all of The Great Gatsby, the characters were less…careless, and the main character’s year was the story, she wasn’t narrating the carelessness from a distance.
Finished *The Chosen by John Hartness *a retelling of the Adam and Eve story. We go on a journey with Adam, Eve, Cain, Adam’s latest daughter and others to find The Chosen who must make the latest in a number of choices that impact man kind.
It wasn’t bad, had an interesting slant on the story, but IMO came to a rather abrupt and dissatisfying ending.
Welcome, EvilMinion. You picked a good thread to jump into since we’re all endlessly nosy about what everyone else is reading!
I’m reading Heresy, an historical mystery featuring Giordano Bruno in Elizabethan Oxford. I have heard Bruno’s name but know next to nothing about him, so I don’t know if this is making any attempt at all to conform to his actual biography or if it’s a complete flight of fancy. Entertaining so far, either way.
*Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War *by Nathaniel Philbrick. The New York Times called it one of their ten best books of 2006. I just started it so I couldn’t tell you what I think yet.
Thanks to TheMerchandise’s assurance that it contained NO CLOWNS, I read The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern. I enjoyed it - I thought she created a very haunting and intriguing magical world, but I thought the ending was a little flat. It seemed like the book ended just when I was getting really into the characters.
What else? I finished the second Dresden files book. It’s fun, I am told the best books in the series are still ahead.
Tore through the third Game of Thrones book, and jumped right into the fourth.
I read three kidlit titles, all of which have been talked about as potential Newberys (the awards will be announced tomorrow). The Mostly True Story of Jack, which I mostly didn’t like, and the Breadcrumbs, which I mostly liked. Both are dark, modern fairy tale type stories. Dead End in Norvelt was one of those books that simply wasn’t up my alley, but seems like a good book if you like quirky, absurd stories.
Man, I am SLOWLY reading Stephen King’s 11/22/63. Slowly mostly because it is large and in hardback, so I read a little bit before bed every night, and carry something more portable to read during my commute. Anyway, I have a raging nitpick that I need to discuss, but I don’t want to go into the big thread on this book for fear of spoilers. Maybe someone who has read it can respond:
Okay, I know this is really minor, but still. I’m pretty sure the main character is about my age. Early on, he uses a rotary phone and tries to remember if he has ever used one before … this stopped me in my tracks. We had a rotary phone until I was in high school, and that wasn’t too unusual. Sure, they’re old, but they’re not SO old that someone in his 40s has NEVER used one. Did I not understand what the character was referring to?
I enjoyed Heresy–I think Amazon recommended that to me because I have enjoyed C.J. Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake series, which is also excellent–about a lawyer during the reign of Henry VIII who is sent on various commissions by Cromwell and invariably (and reluctantly) gets involved in all sorts of political intrigue.
Beginning today on a YA book, The Maze Runner by James Dashner. It seems like I’ve heard of this book, but the titles of the second and third in the series don’t ring a bell. I hope that doesn’t mean it’s going to suck. Probably I’m thinking of The Kite Runner.
I finished New York and mostly liked it. Rutherfurd’s dialogue is occasionally terrible, mostly because he uses it as an exposition dump. The history of New York City is always a fun and fascinating journey, however, so no amount of bad dialogue can lessen that.
I also finished Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said and also liked it. Surprisingly linear for a Philip K. Dick novel.
I also read** The Killer Inside Me** by Jim Thompson, based on a SDMB recommendation. Not the pulpy crime fiction I was expecting; instead a pretty grim look at inside a killer’s disintegrating mind.
Now I’m reading The Hound of the Baskervilles, because I realized to my horror that I had never actually read an unabridged Sherlock Holmes mystery – only watched the movies and various other riffs on the character and gathered all my knowledge of him from those. Embarrassing!
I just finished a re-read of Sinclair Lewis’s “Main Street.” I’d forgotten how amazing it was! Now I’m reading something lighter: Chelsea Handler’s “My Horizontal Life.” I’m also doing a re-read of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility.”
You might be. I found The Maze Runner full of potential that it never exploited, personally.
I love the Shardlake books. I think I ran across Heresy using the recommendation feature on Goodreads. The one where you can isolate your bookshelf that you want recommendations on.
Sinclair Lewis was my favorite novelist in high school. A most underrated writer in my opinion. Unlike Faulkner or some of the other writers we read, I found Lewis quite accessible. He has a great way with plot. I particularly enjoyed Arrowsmith.
I’m re-reading Asimov’s original Foundation trilogy, which I first read more than 30 years ago when I was 14 or 15. Considering that Asimov subsequently became the biggest influence on my reading preferences (during my teen years I read almost every piece of fiction he ever published), I’ve been rather surprised to discover that I didn’t remember the plot of these books anywhere near as well as I thought I did. I’ve instantly recognized the character names, but otherwise it’s been like reading the stories for the first time. And, of course, there’s a whole different level of appreciation reading these stories at 45 than there was reading them at 14-15.
I had a big chuckle when I discovered that Asimov, in the 1950s, roughly predicted computer spellcheckers and the most common problem with them. The character Arkady Darell is a 14-year-old girl composing an essay for school, using a device called an “electro-transcriber” — basically a voice-recognition machine that transcribes what she speaks (though, amusingly, it prints her words to paper as she speaks them, rather than saving them to a file for later printing). She mispronounces the word “intricacies”, using a “soft” C both times that letter appears, and the machine transcribes that as “intrissacies”. She sees that, and thinks to herself that the spelling looks funny, but then decides, “the machine can’t very well be wrong, now can it?” I thought it was a good parallel to the way modern spellcheckers won’t catch a wrong, but correctly-spelled homonym.
He is my all-time favorite. I first picked him up because my sister lived across the street from his childhood home (Sauk Centre, Minnesota). So far I’ve read Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, It Can’t Happen Here, Elmer Gantry, Ann Vickers, and Dodsworth. I think Main Street and Elmer Gantry are my favorites. As you said, he’s very accessible. I find his work quite relevant and remarkably fresh.
just finished “gone at 3:17” i had preordered it from amazon. it was due in feb. but was released earlier.
it is about the middle/high school explosion in new london, tx. and the 300+ students, teachers, and visitors that died.
people die and their memories are eternalized in laws and regulations that we take for granted every day. exit doors that open out, sprinklers, smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms, fire drills, the list goes on.
one of the regulations that carries the memory of those that died in new london, is the smell added to natural gas. they are the reason we can smell gas leaking. 305 sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers.
within 48 hours a hearing was started on the cause of the explosion. when steven hawley heard of the practice of tapping into waste gas lines, he left the court room and ordered an immediate inspection of every oil-field schoolhouse in east texas. he testified (the next day) that one school was found with 720 cubic feet of natural gas in the basement. in just 3 days new london’s 305 saved another school from the fate that befell them.
I may need to start using Goodreads. I don’t like reading so-so books when there are great books out there, so I am always looking for good recommendations based on what I like.
Well, don’t get me wrong. I still read plenty of so-so to terrible books. But that’s because I tend to be an impulse reader and I grab whatever is available for immediate download at the library.