Just started Motherless Brooklyn and I really like the narrator’s voice. Being inside the mind of a Tourette’s sufferer is interesting, and not as different as I would have thought.
This is one of my favorite books ever. I tend to reread it at least once every two years.
This sounds neat, I will look for it.
I read Columbine, by Dave Cullen, which I think Dung Beetle read last month. I thought it was very high quality reporting, but somehow I didn’t expect it to be so sad after all this time. I’m sure you are thinking “HOW did you not expect that?” but it was the kind of thing where I was thinking it would be somewhat sad, but I was not prepared for it to feel so immediate and depressing.
Lake Overturn, a novel, was quirky … interconnected stories about people in a small town in Idaho. It was maybe a little too Lifetime Movie of the Week in terms of subject matter, but it was a quick read.
Oh, and I had mentioned I started the second book in a YA science fiction series, The Ask and the Answer, by Patrick Ness. I would highly recommend these books (read in order) to people who like YA fiction, even those who are not nuts about SF in general. They are good, and harrowing. They are somewhat mature in theme, so I would use discretion with younger readers, but teens should be fine.
I read this a few months ago and liked it quite a bit – enjoyed the 19th-century-novel vibe to it. (I love a good 19th-century novel, so that is meant as praise.)
Although I liked much of his stuff, I’m not sure I would recommend it. I enjoyed his early *Vlad Taltos *series, but it kind of took a turn and I stopped reading it.
I did like The Gypsy but to be honest cannot remember much about it. He is an author that I remember liking, but don’t remember much about.
I tried to read his Phoenix Guard series and found it a tough read. The speech patterns were annoying.
I was interested in its being set in the 1980s… I don’t know if it’s just me noticing it, or if there are actually a number of books set in the 80s being published now, or maybe I’m freaked out by a time that I remember living through now being considered nearly an historical setting.
Recently, I finished:
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. I’m a big Atwood fan and I enjoyed this very much. The world she created was quite creepy and the narrator/main character even more so. It might just be me, but I never really trusted what he was telling the reader.
Under the Dome, by Stephen King. I was happy with most of the book… I felt for the characters and their situation and every chapter made me more anxious for them. The ending though
Degenerated from horror to nearly the level of torture porn, something I was not expecting from King. Many, many characters died in extremely drawn-out and horrific ways.
The Plague Tales, by Ann Benson. This book is comprised of two distinct narratives; one set in the 1300s, about a Jewish doctor charged with keeping the English royal family safe from the Bubonic Plague and the other set in the future (2005!), as an forensic archeologist unwittingly releases the ancient bacteria.
The historical story is engaging, but the “futuristic” one falls terribly flat. A “meh” all around.
I’m reading a lot of distopian/post-apocalyptic fiction right now. I feel like I need to switch up my reading habits a bit, especially with the holidays looming. I can just see myself bring down the festive Thanksgiving mood with talk of pestilence and death.
Then I’ll recommend William Brinkley’s The Last Ship, about a U.S. Navy destroyer that survives WW3 and goes looking for a safe place to reestablish human society. Told from the captain’s POV, it’s a quiet, thoughtful book with a horrific backdrop.
I liked the Benson book okay. There are sequels, but the second one was not even as good as the first, and I stopped after that.
Have you read Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book?
So many reviews of *The Plague Tales *mentioned Willis’s book that I put it on my To-be-read list. It sounds good!
OH NO! You posted a week ago, so it may be too late!
Do not read Of Human Bondage; it is pure “arse gravy” (to borrow Stephen Fry’s description of The Da Vinci Code). Actually slogging through all of Of Human Bondage became a point of pride for me, just like how I sat through all of Bicentennial Man. It’s just unsympathetic characters behaving unsympathetically. Go with The Razor’s Edge instead; it’s the same general idea, just better executed and much shorter.
I was so happy with A Population of One that I went back to the closet where I found it to see if there were any more treasures. Year of the Cloud by Kate Wilhelm looked good (Earth passes through a cloud that makes all water gelid and undrinkable) but the dialogue was so stilted, I gave up early.
Searched some more and found The Moon Lamp by Mark Smith. Smith wrote Death of the Detective which was nominated for the National Book Award back in the 70’s. (I’ll be getting that one.) Anyway, The Moon Lamp is definitely not a disappointment. I’m not very far in, but so far, it’s about a couple who renovate a Colonial house in New Hampshire and entertain their neighbors with stories of the ghosts they’re finding. Something’s gonna happen to them but I don’t know what. Something bad, I suppose. It’s very well-written, especially in comparison to the Cloud one.
Thanks, but I am enjoying Of Human Bondage immensely. Have already read The Razor’s Edge.
Just put down The Outlaw Demon Wails. I put it down for a couple of reasons: I bought it from the bargain bin and although I wasn’t hating it, I really think it would be a better read if I had read the others in the series first.
The main reason though is: I left it at Mom’s house over Thanksgiving.
So I get to pick up Jim Butcher’s First Lord’s Fury - hooray!
Heh. I love Doomsday Book and then read Plague Tales because of it…Doomsday is about a million times better.
Currently attempting to plow my way through Going Bovine by Libba Bray.
Completely different in subject, etc. from her Gemma Doyle trilogy and I am sorely disappointed in the writing quality.
sorry to interrupt, but there’s a current thread - SDMB Reader’s Group: First Selections Poll, in case you’re interested.
All-things reading related are welcome in our reader threads.
oh man, I read this recently, and it was tough going. I thought there were some neat ideas in there, but wow, I felt like Bray was trying to prove how cool and ironic she is on every page. If she could have managed to dial down the hip pop culture sneers, I think there might have been a good story in that book.
A couple of good ones:
Um, by Michael Erard, on verbal hesitations and blunders (which inspired an IMHO poll).
Replay, by Ken Grimwood. Novel often recommended here that I finally got around to. It starts with the protagonist suffering a fatal heart attack – after which he wakes up as his 25-years-younger self and relives his life, retaining full memory of everything that will happen. Yes, you can make a lot of money with that knowledge. There’s more to the story than that, of course, but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t read it – and it’s worth reading. The prose is amateurish in spots, and the characterization is not always subtle, but the story-telling is first-class. A real page-turner.
Just started Talking Hands, a book about sign language and what we can learn about linguistics and human cognition from it. (Sorry, it’s upstairs, don’t recall the author offhand.)
having more people will be fun. looks like Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) is the top choice so far.