I managed to get thru Reamde via a couple of marathon reading sessions over the weekend. Stephenson still can’t quite stick the ending of his novels, but overall, it was a hell of a ride! Lots of characters (again, typical Neal) & I was on the verge of sketching out a diagram to clarify who knew about whom.
Just started Ready Player One this morning & am already fascinated by its dystopian world - I didn’t intend to read two gamer/MMPORG novels in a row, but here I am.
:smack: I need to get back to those! Dragon would be next for me as well.
Oh! Amazon has shipped King’s new one, 11/22/63. Ordinarily, I would take a personal day off work and burn right through it, but that won’t do right now.
Perhaps I could forgo sleep?
I gave up on “Life Before Man” by Margaret Atwood. The four main characters were all horrible people and one of them was dead. Is this typical of her, or can anyone recommend some Atwood where I won’t hate the characters?
I went back to Discworld instead. I am almost finished with “Wyrd Sisters.” The way I’m flying through them, I might get caught up with all 39 by this time next year. I’ve got “Thief of Time” checked out from the library too.
I’ve got “Gentlemen of the Road” by Michael Chabon waiting for me as well.
Just finished The Various Haunts of Men, which was good creepy fun that really deserved a better resolution. Susan Hill is a fine writer, but she hasn’t written a decent ending since The Woman in Black.
My favorite Atwood novel (and one of my favorite books, period) is The Robber Bride. It’s based loosely on the fairy tale “The Robber Bridegroom” but with the genders reversed, and is a character study of three women and their run-ins with a villainness over three decades. I loved those three women, especially Toni, who reminded me of myself. :o
Finished the Helliconia trilogy and have now started An evening of long goodbyes by Paul Murray. After that I have The Sister brothers by Patrick deWitt lined up
Oh, that *is *too bad - I read Singularityand Interstellar Pig over and over and over as a young Snicks. *Singularity *in particular stuck with me - I find myself thinking about it now and then still. And I’m 35!
I finished Monsters of Men, the last of the Chaos Walking trilogy. And then quickly finished the short prequel The New World too. Really, really excellent YA fiction, and now I’m sad to not be in Todd and Viola’s world anymore. It’s got much the same feel as The Hunger Games, and I found the characters to be as compelling and more likable. Highly recommended.
I hadn’t heard of The New World. I’ll have to keep an eye out!
I finished Blackbriar…honestly, it wasn’t very good. And now I’m on to The Phantom Limb, which I just started and I can already tell, it’s not going to be very good. Oh well, I loved you anyway, Mr. Sleator.
Last night I “read” a book called Crap at My Parent’s House, by Joel Dovev. It’s a collection of pictures of tacky crap people decorate their homes with, and funny captions. Most of the book was only of mild interest, but maybe three or four of the pictures made me laugh my butt off.
Yesterday UPS delivered the new Stephen King book, as usual, a big thick one. I don’t dare crack it open until I can devote a little time to it…I can’t see how that’s going to happen until at least Monday. 
Huh, I didn’t realize until now that I just finished three memoirs in a row.
Fiction Ruined my Family is about a dysfunctional family where the dad is a failed writer and the daughter grows up to be a writer too. It’s very funny in some parts, kind of boring in others.
The Water is Wide is about this guy who goes to teach at this school on a very small, poor island off the coast of South Carolina in about 1969. It was good. I’m going to try one of the author’s novels soon because I liked his writing style.
Sum of my Parts is about a woman who developed dissociative identity disorder due to a severely abusive childhood. Sad, but interesting. But I have to say I was kind of disappointed that her form of DID didn’t have entirely different personalities with different names and stuff.
Then, this is not a memoir, but a horrible, ridiculous novel by T.I.: Power & Beauty. I knew it was going to be annoying and I read it anyway, so I guess it serves me right.
Right now I’m 59% through Spooner, a novel which is kind of hard to explain the plot, but it’s good, once I got into it (the beginning was boring to me).
Oh yeah, someone mentioned they were about to read The Postmortal. I read that recently and enjoyed it. The cure for aging is found, so obviously the world gets overpopulated, etc. It’s supposed to be the main character’s blog, which is an interesting format.
Ooh, that sounds fantastic, and right up my alley. I’m fascinated by the Black Death. Good fiction books about the plague are Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks and Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Both really good, though depressing. But good!
I enjoyed The Great Mortality as well. There was a surprising amount of humor, or sly wit, or sarcasm. Whatever, it made me smile and then feel guilty about smiling.
I’m reading The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart. Picked it up at the library sale because the author is Canadian, and I’ve had great luck with Canadian writers. So far, it’s a totally charming history of a small town, told over a period of about 100 years, beginning the mid 1850’s. The main character Klara Becker reminds me a lot of Gertie Nevels from The Dollmaker. They’re both very involved with life, energetic and enthusiastic. I’m hoping Klara doesn’t have Gertie’s troubles though.
Conroy! My favorite of his is Lords of Discipline.
I read Shogun many years ago, and was astonished to discover that the unlikely-sounding plot was, in fact, based on a true story.
An interesting historical account of the real-like William Adams, on whom the character of “John Blackthorne” was based, can be found in Samurai William:
Oh, yeah - it’s terrific. A Southern military academy desegregates in the Sixties, and a good-hearted cadet and his buddies have to weather the storm. Intrigue, humor, romance, tragedy, friendship, betrayal - the whole ball o’ wax.
Conroy’s My Losing Season (nonfiction about his years playing basketball for The Citadel, and I’m not even a basketball fan) and The Great Santini (quasi-autobiographical fiction about a hardass Marine aviator and his quirky family) are both also great.
Next on my list:
Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius
Sold. The Kindle version is only $7.99 at the moment, too.
Finished Ken Jenning’s Maphead. Map nerds and geography wonks should love it (I’m neither but I love reading microhistory books like this one).
For some strange reason I have been visited by a sudden urge to read Stephen King’s entire ouvre. Prior to this I’ve only read Salem’s Lot, Pet Sematary, Christine, Night Shift and Skeleton Crew. I just picked one up at random today: CELL.
Other than 'Salem’s Lot (vampires overcome a small Maine town), my favorite SK books are The Stand (elemental struggle between good and evil after a plague kills most of the world), Misery (a novelist is held captive by his “number one fan”) and The Dead Zone (a man who can intermittently predict the future finds it far more a curse than a blessing).
Ooh, DataZak, bummer. Cell’s pretty bad. And I say that as someone who loves SK. My favorite SK book is The Eyes of the Dragon - it’s a fairytale he wrote for his (then younger) daughter. Love that book.
I picked up Mary Roach’s Bonk and have been reading it at gym sessions. It’s fantastic: a really witty look at human sexuality, how we study it, and how much (or little) we know about it. She’s the same author that brought us the humorous and often poignant look at death in Stiff. The part where she describes the kegel video are comedy gold!
I am rreading Mary Boleyn by Alison Weir. The book is a biography of Anne Boleyn’s sister. She aims to be a factual companion to Phillipa Gregory’s fanciful novel about Queen Elizabeth’s aunt and one of Henry VIII’s known lovers. Very interesting so far.