I’m barely up to 1947, but so far he’s coming across as well-intentioned, but often overwhelmed. Judith Prietht, it’s grim but not so grim that it’s hard to read, I think you will find it worthwhile.
I keep meaning to add to the chorus of people who loved The Crimson Petal and the White, but I’d be a failure at contributing to a discussion about it now … it was so driven by the details and I’ve forgotten a lot since I’ve read it.
DoctorWho, I’ve loved all of Pinkwater’s books that I’ve read, and my all-time favorite is Lizard Music. I’m always a little surprised he isn’t more popular, both in general and with Dopers.
And going back to Austerity Britain, it’s so large (it came in hard cover from the library) I can’t drag it around on my commute. So I started The Knife of Never Letting Go, YA futuristic/ dystopian fiction. I usually keep notes about where I heard about a book, but this one I lost track of. It might have even been recommended by someone in one of these threads. Whoever you are, thanks – this book is fantastic so far.
I’m about half way through and struggling not to thoroughly dislike Will You Take Me As I Am: Joni Mitchell’s Blue Period, by Michelle Mercer. There are some wonderful moments, but so far they are almost entirely Joni, verbatim. The author puts herself into the narrative far too much (we find out, for instance, that she has a Joni litmus test for prospective boyfriends, where she sits the candidate down, makes him listen to Blue and then quizzes him :rolleyes:). I’m probably being a tad too harsh, she’s not a bad writer, really, but I’m increasingly impatient with her and as she explicates, theorizes and explains my attention wanders off until the next Joni quote snaps it back.
I just started Sweat by the late Jay B. Laws. Heard about it on another board, in a thread about one-hit (book) wonders. I think it’s about a haunted bath house in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, but there’s a spooky figure who might be a vampire. It’s pretty good, so far.
I finished Death Masks, by Jim Butcher, which is my favorite of the Dresden Files books so far. Due to the comments in this thread, I’m reading Duma Key. I quit reading King a long time ago, but this sounds good to me now.
Just when you thought you were out, we pull you back in.
His next opus is Under the Dome, projected at 1500 pages. The synopsis on King’s website sounds a lot like Robert McCammon’s Stinger.
“On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when—or if—it will go away.”
Hit the Fine Balance with the Robert Goddard Name to a Face at the Y today and just finished it on the couch. It’s really nice to see him deliberately breaking his own formula in the last few novels - he still loves to have an outsider/loser who comes into his own when faced with a conspiracy beyond his understanding, but his twists and turns (not to mention his writing style) more than make up for the similarities between his works.
Next up - I think I’ll take up 100 Years of Solitude.
I just did the same thing and just now finished reading the ninth Sookie book (Dead and Gone).
It was good. More cohesive than the eighth book (Dead To The World) which, although I quite enjoyed it, read more like a series of interconnected short stories than a novel.
Also, Dead and Gone was dark – much, MUCH darker than the rest of the series.
This is the thing about Harris – she is deceptively ‘fluffy,’ but then she’ll write something that will chill you to the bone. She is not gory, really – she is most emphatically not Laurell K. Hamilton – but she can be really dark without being at all explicit. I’ve seen examples of this in her other writings, particularly the Aurora Teagarden series. That series is frequently marketed as a ‘cozy mystery’ series, yet one of the earlier books had a sentence (really – just a sentence; and not a gory one either) that was among the most heartwrenching and terrifying I’ve ever read.
I’m going out of town next weekend and I’m taking My War: Killing Time in Iraq (a recommndation from my son) with me, along with Cemetary Dance by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child.
A book with a similar scenario, but on an entirely science fictional scale, is Hugo Award Winner Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson. Earth is sealed off from the rest of the universe, and even time progresses at a slowed rate. I highly recommend it for others who might be interested.
I finished Willis’ To Say Nothing of the Dog, which I thought was very good. Sort of a time travel written by Wodehouse, although the end did drag on a bit.
I’m in the middle of *To Kingdom Come *by Will Thomas, the second of his Sherlock Holmes-type detective stories. The first dealt with anti-Semitism, the second, set in 1884, deals with ‘the Irish question’. Good characterization, and you’re never sure where Barker is headed next.
Lamentation, Ken Scholes. This is one of the best fantasy books I’ve read in quite a while, on a par with Game of Thrones or Name of the Wind. The world, concept, and characters are very fresh. Recommend highly. I’m already itching for the rest of the series.
The Mole People, by Jennifer Toth. Deals with homeless living in the tunnels of NYC. I read this for my book club and then came to find Cecil wrote two columns on the phenomenon of mole people. Apparently, a lot of Toth’s work is probably make-believe and hearsay. I was pretty disappointed in the whole thing.
Duma Key. I found this book really engaging; read it in just two days. Definitely one of the better books King has done in the last few years. I enjoyed his change of scenery and I enjoyed the first person narration. AuntiePam, the new book description sounds interesting.
I just started The Protector’s War, by S. M. Stirling, part of The Change series. I liked the first well enough, but I notice this book has a lot of lukewarm reviews online.
Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden. It’s told from two points of view. One is an old Cree woman and the other is her nephew, just back (minus a leg) from WWI. It’s quite bleak, but the bleakness is balanced somewhat by the author’s descriptions of landscape and wildlife.
As a coddled 21st century American, I continue to be amazed (and a bit envious) of people who lived so close to nature. Sleeping outdoors by choice? And you’re not camping?
Ada is one of my favourite books of all time. I haven’t heard of Boyd’s book, but I was always curious if there existed something like Stuart Gilbert’s Ulysses for Nabokov-- thank you for introducing me.
I’ve read so far
Going Postal, Feet of Clay, Equal rites by Terry Pratchett (reread)
Jeckyl and Hyde, The Beach of Falesa (SP?) and The Ebb Tide by Rober Louis Stephenson.
Haven’t finished The Ebb Tide, and have started The Butcher Boy.
