I liked Stardust (the movie) and Stardust (the book), but I do agree that the movie was a little better. More whimsical.
I just finished The Victoria Vanishes by Christopher Fowler. It’s a british mystery series about the “Peculiar Crimes Unit” featuring elderly detectives Bryant and May and an assorted crew of misfits. I’m now reading the next book in the series, Bryant and May on the Loose. I absolutely love the whole series and can’t wait for the lastest book to come out.
Finished:
Return to the Hundred Acre Wood (Winnie-The-Pooh Collection) by David Benedictus ~ I saw this in a store & wasn’t aware that someone had continued the series. Other than a couple of chapters, the book stayed true and the artist did a spiffy job staying in E.H. Shepard’s style with the character illustrations.
Hammer of God (Godspeaker Trilogy, Book 3) by Karen Miller ~ Not nearly as good as the first two.
Gunnerkrigg Court: Orientation by Tom Siddell ~ Loved this. Can’t wait to get the next one.
The Great Brain by John D. Fitzgerald ~ Yearned for a blast from the past.
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin ~ This was a fun little book.
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collings ~ getting my classics on. Liked this one.
A Model Crime by Curtis Gathje ~ True-crime novel about a murdered model in 1930’s New York. The chaos whipped up by the tabloids is fascinating.
Reading:
The Last Templar by Michael Jecks
Finished perusing relevant sections of the Lonely Planet Vietnam guide.
Have started Robert Harris’ Fatherland and am about 50 pages into it. Reads evry well so far. This will take me into Hanoi next weekend.
As a side note, speaking of Hanoi, you know the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison that many American servcemen were held in, including John McCain and Pete Peterson, the latter the first US ambassador to a unified Vietnam? (It’s real name was the Hoa Lo Prison.) Well, it’s now the Hanoi Towers skyscraper, an office, serviced-apartment and luxury five-star-hotel complex. The times, they do really change, don’t they? 
But it seems one corner of the prison has been preserved as a museum, and we’ll probably take a look.
I just finished **The Ruins **by Scott Smith.
A blurb from TIME magazine described it as the most disturbing novel of the year, and I agree. Set in the jungles near Cancun, six young people go on an expedition to an archaeological site, and…stuff…happens. Very creepy, very good.
Siam Sam, I hope you enjoy Fatherland. One of my favorite alt histories, and a pretty good crime novel to boot.
movingfinger, there was a movie based on The Ruins, too: The Ruins (film) - Wikipedia. Haven’t seen it myself.
I just finished John Grisham’s new short-story collection, Ford County, which has a few good stories (“Blood Drive” and “Casino,” in particular). Most are just meh, though.
Still working on Stephen Breyer’s Active Liberty. It’s getting a little better but is still pretty dry.
Gave up, after 50 pages, on Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog, a translated French novel that did nothing for me. Pompous and a little too self-consciously intellectual. It was my book club’s next pick.
I revisited a story I enjoyed as a kid: Terry Nation’s Rebecca’s World. The environmental themes and incisive allegories went completely over my head when I was young. I remember liking it for its overall inventiveness, mix of interesting characters, and magical scenes.
Cool! If you can find Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan, I liked that one even better. You may have seen the movie.
I finished The Art of Eating In, by Cathy Erway. It was somewhat interesting at first (dumpster diving!) but quickly grew tedious. I couldn’t find much in common with this single NY twenty-something and her mad cooking skilz. Pretty soon, it just felt like a blow-by-blow account of what she ate at every meal and who else was there.
I’m now enjoying The Best of Joe R. Lansdale.
Finished Child X this morning. It fit my purposes perfectly as an audiobook because it put a little spring in my step every morning as I headed to work, thinking, “Oh boy, I get to find out what happens next!” I work in a lab that does parentage testing, and usually we get to hear all the history, then we find out the test result…then we never hear the rest of the story. Good cathartic YA novel for teens who are annoyed with their parents.
While waiting for #11 in the Aubrey-Maturin series to arrive, I’ve started A Distant Flame by Philip Lee Williams. It’s a Civil War novel. I really like the structure. We move back and forth from pre-War to the War to 50 years after the War is over.
Ordinarily that would annoy me, but in this case, I’m really getting a sense of character growth. The main character is Charlie Merrill, who joins the Confederate Army as a teenager and becomes a sharpshooter. I’m seeing Charlie as a young boy, camping in the woods with a friend, then Charlie as an old man getting ready to give a speech on the 50th anniversary of the battle of Atlanta, and Charlie the soldier, with all the carnage. Charlie is literate, educated, and a bit of a romantic – a very interesting character. I’m not very far in, but so far, I’d recommend it.
April’sThread.