Lansdale is usually entertainingly bizzare and creepy. Just finished The Bottoms myself, and it was well worth reading.
I’m still hoping for more Hap and Leonard, though.
I just finished Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff, and I am more than a little bit puzzled. I liked it, but I’m not sure I understood it. I just may re-read it right away. It moved along at a measured, sensible pace until about four-fifths of the way through when the author lit off the afterburners.
Is this Monday soon enough for ya? 
ETA: Oops! June 30 is Tuesday.
A Rather Lovely Inheritance by C.A. Belmond. and it’s sequel A Rather Curious Engagement.
Enjoyable. Engaging.
Sweet! I love it when I have a movie to watch when I’m done reading. I’m going to make my husband take me to see it for our anniversary.
I have also added The Periodic Table to my list. Thanks, Malthus. I’ve been especially interested in the Holocaust ever since I visited Dachau as a teenager. It made quite an impression on me.
I finished Tooth Fairy, and am starting Gone-Away World which Nancy Pearl highly recommends.
Finished Norse Code. This was a mediocre urban fantasy about Ragnarok. Valkyries prepare for Ragnarok by using DNA testing to select descendants of Odin to fight the good fight at the end of the world.
A light read, but really nothing exceptional about it to recommend it.
My two bookclubs are reading Self by Yann Martel and The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, so I’ve read those this month. I’m also reading Meeting Jimmie Rodgers, a very interesting music history book by Barry Mazor.
Oh. My. :eek:
… and it is off to preorder I go.
Well, I owe ya one. Thanks!
Malthus, you’re welcome. I preordered too. It’s been a long time since we had a new Hap and Leonard – 2001. I still can’t figure out why these books haven’t been filmed. They’d be awesome.
Finished The Strain and found it quite good, though disappointing in that it’s clearly the first book in a series. That is, the story comes to a conclusion of sorts, and it definitely sets up the characters and their histories well, but it just feels incomplete. Which of course it is, being the first part of a planned trilogy. Which I knew going in. Anyway. (This is why I usually avoid series, or at least only start when they’re all available.)
Have since moved on to A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore, who I think is one of the funniest writers I’ve ever read (I once referred to him as the “American Douglas Adams.”)
I got sidetracked once more. His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik was very, very good. I had expected it to be more silly, but it was rather well though-out, although I generally do not like my books centered on the “best and the brightest” (which is why David Weber is slowly getting on my nerves with Honor Harrington), this was fair enough. I have the next two on order from Amazon, for summer reading.
But the other stuff hasn’t really gotten anywhere. I read Theodore Judson’s Fitzpatrick’s War over the past three or so days, and that was also an excellent read. Now I have started reading Reza Aslan’s No god but God, which promises to be fairly interesting as an addition to Christopher Hutchins’s God is not Great, which I got cheaply and read through quickly earlier this week. I have to say Hutchins’s book was better than Dawkins’s; but reading through Aslan makes one aware of the occasional interpretatoral quirk in Hutchins that seemed unnecessary.
I’m still reading Henry Nash Smith’s Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth, and will probably start Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast next. Apropos: Israel Potter by Melville was deeply disappointing as literature, though interesting as far as the reason why I read it was concerned. Don’t start with it, if you start with Melville.
Last night I started A Voice for Princess by John Morressey (sp?) – it’s fantasy and it’s very engaging and funny. It reads like a fairy tale for adults, and I’ve laughed out loud several times. I’m hoping it’s a series because I’ll want more about Kedrigern.
Thanks to whoever recommended it. Not sure if it was here or somewhere else.
My book club just discussed (although most of us hadn’t finished) Mark Steyn’s America Alone, about the threat posed to Western Civilization by the booming Moslem birth rate and plummeting European, Japanese and Russian birth rates. The book was picked by one of our more conservative members and really, IMHO, overstated the extent of the crisis.
Our next book (more of a novella) is Henry James’s 1903 The Beast in the Jungle. I’ve only read one other James work before, The Turn of the Screw, which I read for a college English Lit course. At the time I liked but didn’t love it.
Dear Og, I need a support-group to get through this book! I began it with patience, enthusiasm, and delight, but as a slowish reader, I fear I won’t gain enough momentum to get to the Big Twist that the reviews promise. Help, anyone?
I couldn’t read The Sun Also Rises this time around. Switched over to Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris.
I can’t help you. I really disliked the book. It tried too hard to be clever and didn’t have enough story to be good. In the end I was very disappointed.
I finished *The Strain *and *The Terror *this weekend.
I liked both books quite a bit, although I’m annoyed that The Strain was left with so many open plot lines. The entire book seemed like just the background information we’ll need for the rest of the series.
*The Terror *kept me reading chapter after chapter just to see how bad things could get for the characters. Very, very, very bad, apparently. This an exceptionally well-written, well-researched book, but incredibly bleak. Not a real complaint, but the ending struck me as strange.
Now I’m planning on picking up something light and non-scary.
I found Purity of Blood and it looks well researched and written. The cover art is what sucked me in and the Swashbuckling/Intrigue looks very, very yummy.
Anyone else read this or the previous books by this author?
Yes, and he’s excellent.