Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières. Started out as a sorta of lighthearted look at life on a Greek island at the start of the war, but got dark really quickly. I liked it a lot but was frustrated at how the author chose to end it.
11/22/63 – liked the concept but as others have said, Ken Grimwood did it much better in Replay.
The Tarnished Eye by Judith Guest. It’s based on a real unsolved multiple murder case in Michigan. Because of that, I thought the fictional murders wouldn’t be solved either, but they were. I liked it. Wouldn’t recommend buying it, but it’s worth a read. It’ll make you think of the randomness of death.
Currently reading Basket Case by Carl Hiaasen. It’s fun.
I agree with you about the ending. The ride up to it was worth it for me, though. I absolutely loved the character of ‘Bunny’, and the way his Greek conversation was updated from Anglo-Saxon to Chaucer to Shakespeare with each time he spoke, yet still peppered with odd Britishisms like ‘What, ho?’ and ‘Pip, pip’.
T’m reading ** A Storm of Swords**, the third of George R. R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice. My wife has been getting the books for me as gifts (and, I suspect, because she wants to read them all). Despite being incredibly thick – at over 1000 pages, you can use this as a doorstop. Or a brick. Or an actual coffeetable – they’re very quick reads.
I just finished Phil Foglio’s What’s Up? and the tength volume of Girl Genius that I picked up (and got autographed) at Arisia.
I’m also reading She Nailed a Stake Through his Head, an anthology of “Biblical Terror” edited by Tim Lieder, that I also picked up at Arisia.
And for bedtime reading, I’m still going through the stack of 19th century books and schoolbooks my wife’s family found in a garage. They are absolutely fascinating.
After all that, I’ll fnally get around to Jeffrey Deaver’s Jame Bond novel, Carte Blanche.
I recently finished Snuff by Terry Pratchett, which was quite a fun read as usual-- I happen to love the Night Watch/Vimes novels, so this was a treat.
I also have just read Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman: it’s a historic (1935) thriller with supernatural elements. Buehlman is quite the wordsmith, and I enjoyed the occasional well-worded quip throughout it-- overall, though, the novel was pretty good. It had appropriate foreshadowing throughout, and I was satisfied with the progress through the novel. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes a little suspense, a historic backdrop, and some “realistic”* supernatural phenomena.
*It won’t kill your suspension of disbelief every 20 pages
Whoops. I have the wrong book. While Garry Wills has translated Augustine’s ‘Confessions’ and has written a biography of Augustine, the book I have in my hand is a ‘biography’ of the book ‘Confessions’ by Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. (Can you really write a biography of an inanimate object?) Putting this on hold until I have a copy of the real thing - I’m 30 pages in, and while it’s interesting and well written, it’s rather like reading the commentary on a book with no prior knowledge of the actual book.
Bookless except for the Italian stories. I have a ~ 900 page biography of Gustav Mahler that covers the years 1897 - 1904, but that certainly appears to be a lot more detail than I’m after at present…
Just started reading John Dies @ the End. I had asked about it here a couple of months ago, but got no response. I’m about 40 pages in and really enjoying it so far.
I am always reluctant to give bad reviews - especially because others here did like it. I didn’t finish it - decided half way in that I just didn’t care what happened.
I finished Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie over the weekend. I have not read his First Law trilogy, but this book is a stand alone set in the same universe. It was decent, but clocking in at nearly 900 pages was about 200 too many. The story is pretty straight forward, the plot mostly kept moving but the end was not quite what I expected (in a dissatisfying way). And those who said there is not a likeable character in the book were right, but that doesn’t bother me.
Now I’m about 1/3 through The Dying Earth by Jack Vance. It’s the first in a series of four and the series is widely loved. I’ll just say I hope it gets better.
I finished “My Horizontal Life.” It was okay, I guess. Funny in places and a quick read. I’m now going to finish “The Hunger Games.” I had started reading it late last summer but put it down about halfway through. I decided to go back and finish it and it’s better than I remembered. I just got bogged down in one spot and became a little bored.
I’ve been away for a few days. I went looking for these at the library and also found this: Elsie and Mairi Go to War: Two Extraordinary Women on the Western Front by Diane Atkinson, about “the only female participants to serve on the western front during World War I.” Book says they were “the most photographed women of WWI.” Writing’s not the best, but the subject is very compelling.
I finished The Maze Runner, a YA sci-fi story. Flawed, but it held my interest. I think I’ll get the next in the series.
Next, I tried to read Lunatics, by Dave Barry and Alan Zwiebel, but it didn’t grab me. I’m sure I’d have liked it fine if I’d been in the right mood for wacky hijinx.
This morning I read The Hole, by Guy Burt. It had a good premise (six teenagers allow themselves to be locked in a cellar for a few days as part of a joke, no one comes to let them out), but the characters were cardboard and the writing was stilted and annoying. At the end you find that things didn’t happen as you were told, but you don’t find out what did happen either. If I had had access to anything else to read, I wouldn’t have finished it, and I don’t recommend it.
And it turns out that I’m not going to finish this one. I put it down about halfway through, and have never picked it up again. And I don’t think I’m going to - it just didn’t capture my attention.
I’m nearly finished with The Traitor’s Wife by Susan Higgenbotham. It’s historical fiction about Eleanor, wife of Hugh le Despenser the Younger and the Tyranny during Edward II’s reign. It’s…not bad. Higginbotham’s Eleanor is a bit of a vapid twit, but she did have an interesting life. That said, I think Alison Weir and even Philippa Gregory succeed more with their treatments of England’s royals.
IMHO, it dragged on a bit - apparently it was written in serial form to start with, and I’m not sure how well it got stitched together into the novel. That said, the episodic style kind of worked in its favor - it felt to me like an example of a horror equivalent of the science fiction New Wave movement.
Some clever turns of phrase - the opening sentence in particular caught my interest: “This is a small city, large enough to have four McDonalds but not so big that you see more than the occasional homeless person on the way.”
Worth a library or other freebie read, if you’re into the gruesome horror genre.
Finished up The Book of Joby over the weekend. I’m afraid it kind of fell apart at the end, for me. It felt rushed, somehow. I’m also not sure I agree with the logic behind the wager’s conclusion. That said, for a first novel it was enjoyable, with memorable characters and settings; tho the plot was a bit herky-jerky. I’d be interested in reading more from Ferrari & may revisit this novel somewhere down the line. Recommended as a library read for fans of Arthurian legends, who like a story mostly rooted in reality with touches of fantasy. (Tho I have no idea why the book has a dragon on the front of it!)
Now I want to re-read Heinlein’s Job: A Comedy of Justice.
I’m a stats geek - so thought I’d share my January totals here:
15 books (2 hangovers from Dec 2011) - 12 fiction & 3 non-fiction.
3 Re-Reads; 11 came from the library and 3 were audiobooks (all from library).
Top 3:
