The Love of Stones is one of my favorite books of all time, it’s a parallel story of obsession involving precious gems and their lastingness – since you have it, I would definitely recommend reading it. I also have read his short story collection Skin and The Cryptographer, which all together (with The Hidden as well, it would seem) reveal several of my own personal interests.
Also: I’ve never read his poetry collections, but just reading his novels it is not hard to see that in his writing. I highly recommend trying him out at least.
I like Charlie Huston’s Already Dead series and his Caught Stealing trilogy. I have a copy of The Shotgun Rule, but I haven’t read it yet. I need to get his new book, just because I like the title: The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death.
I’m still slogging through The Lost City of Z. It’s good, but I don’t get through it quickly. Doesn’t matter, it’s November and I’m fixing to clear the decks when Stephen King’s new one arrives.
My car audiobook is Gone With the Wind, which I nearly have memorized anyway, but I’m in something of an audiobook drought since I decided to go back to cassettes.
I went back and got **In the Woods **so I can read it before **The Likeness **(Tara French). It’s good so far but leaves me a little creeped out as I read in bed and then try to go to sleep. :eek:
I’m glad to hear it’s good, my reserve request for it just came in at the library.
What I’ve finished up lately: Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture by Daniel Radosh, this was pretty good light reading, fairly humorous and mostly respectful look at the commercial culture of American Christianity, which frankly seems a little odd if you’re not from within that subculture, I think.
When the Whistle Blows by Fran Slayton. Kidlit … sweet if a little dull, especially for kids. It’s more of a reflective book, writing down family stories about life in a small railroad town in the 1940s. Each chapter is about a Halloween night from a different year.
The Forgotten Garden, by Kate Morton. I think this is the kind of book that people who like this sort of thing will love it, and everyone else will think it’s unbearable. A multi-generational family mystery, it unfolds with chapters going back and forth in time, and it’s chock full of domestic details and family trees and orphans and the English shore and the villains are all a little Snidely Whiplash-esque.
The Likeness, the next Tana French book, sort of a sequel to the awesome In The Woods, this was nearly as good as the first one. I tore through it.
Currently reading: The Ask and the Answer, the second book in a really good (so far) science fiction YA series by Patrick Ness.
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea, which people on the SDMB speak highly of all the time, so I thought I’d pick it up.
I’ve shied away from the “Already Dead” series. Is it any good? I’m a little leery of vampire series right now, but if it’s as good as “Mystic Arts” I may pick it up. what is the “Caught Stealing” trilogy? I haven’t heard anything about it.
In Already Dead the vampirism is caused by a disease and there’s nothing magical or sexy about it. The book is more of a crime novel than urban fantasy, with hardly any supernatural elements. I liked the focus on how difficult it would be to acquire human blood without anybody noticing.
Caught Stealing isn’t fantasy at all, it’s the story of crazy things happening to an innocent guy who got caught up in someone else’s troubles and can’t find a way to extricate himself.
I haven’t read Mystic Arts yet, but I would assume it’s similar to the rest of his work - dark and extremely violent, but with some humor. If I didn’t like Huston’s writing style so much then I wouldn’t be able to stomach the violence. He writes in first person, present tense, and his dialog is fantastic. It’s written without identifiers, but it’s so well done that you will never be confused as to who is speaking. I don’t normally “hear” the voices when I read novels, but I can almost hear Huston’s characters.
Just started on Escaping the Endless Adolescence : how we can help our teenagers grow up before they grow old, by Joseph P. Allen. So far, I’m absolutely fascinated…possibly because I already spend about 30% of my waking hours thinking about this very subject.
So far, adolescence lasts too long, and kids don’t have anything really meaningful to do. Mostly they’re just expected to do well in school and that will pay off years down the road, whereas back in the good old days, an adolescent might be bringing in part of the household’s income.
I’ve got to say, my daughter in high school just brought home one of the best report cards I’ve ever seen, so I won’t be dissing her much this week.
Nothing that a good old round of work as a Victorian industrial chimney sweep can’t cure.
I’m sort of two minds on whether an extended adolescence is a bad thing or not. My main concern is that for some people I know, it doesn’t seem end at all, which can’t be right …
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows. I’ve read it once, but I really wanted to do it again. It’s such an enchanting little book, set in postwar England.
I’ve put They Called Him Stonewall on hold for now, because I’m getting enough “serious, factual” reading for school. I was looking for something a little lighter.
Coincidentally enough, the Cleveland Public Library has a temporary exhibit on “Dickens in America” that I just saw yesterday! He visited Cleveland for just a single day in 1842, I think it was, stiffing the mayor and a welcoming committee which came down to the lakefront wharf where his steamer was moored. Dickens didn’t want anyone to make a fuss over him and just sat in his stateroom until they left. He wrote later that he liked the town but was appalled by the anti-British propaganda published by the Plain Dealer (which remains the largest newspaper in town).
I’m still reading Stanley Weintraub’s Iron Tears, about the American Revolution as seen through British eyes. Good stuff. I’ve also just started Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson’s new ultrashort bio, Abraham Lincoln. At just 63 pages, it’s concise to a fault… there’s all sorts of stuff I wish he’d included, but then it wouldn’t be quite so short, would it?
I’m currently reading this fantastic epic about dogs who go. There are many dogs, big dogs, little dogs, black and white dogs. The list goes on and on.
Yes, I have a two year old.
I just finished reading How I Survived Being a Girl to my seven year old. This was a really good one. It has a bit of randomness in what’s happening, but to me that sounds like a young girl. I related to the main character even though I am not a girl and didn’t need to survive being one.
I started to hate Dr. Seuss somewhere around the 5000th reading of Green Eggs and Ham. I’m just now back to the point where I can think of his books without shuddering.
I’m reading Grimm’s Fairy tales to my kids now, the ones with all of the gruesome punishments and bizarre antisocial behavior.
