The 39 Steps was very fast reading, and I completed it yesterday. It was a perfectly fun entertainment. But I just started Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, and it’s the funniest thing I’ve read in years.
I remember Roger Ebert writing years ago that he almost never laughs when he’s alone, and I know what he means. If I’m watching a funny movie on TV by myself, or reading a funny book by myself, I very rarely laugh. But already, ***Three Men in a Boat ***has cracked me up repeatedly.
Finished The Black Echo, which was excellent, and have moved on to The Black Ice in the Michael Connelly anthology. I’ve mentioned before that it’s not necessary to read the Harry Bosch novels in order, but it is interesting to see some characters who you know will later meet gruesome deaths in later novels you’ve already read.
It’s mentioned in passing in Heinlein’s Have Space Suit - Will Travel, which I finished recently, as a favorite of the protagonist’s dad.
This weekend I read Philip Ridley’s Plays: 1, a collection of bizarre and basically unpleasant plays about life among Britain’s criminals and/or downtrodden underclass. The collection includes a long, apparently semi-autobiographical, stream-of-consciousness “Introduction.” (Annoyingly, and a pet peeve of mine, that part of the book has Roman page numbers even though it’s more a hundred pages long - I think you should just use regular Arabic numbers if you’re going over ten pages). Anyway, a very odd book; I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
I’m reading Stewart O’Nan’s Night Country, which is all about small town angst, teenage ghosts and regret. So far, it’s a perfect Halloween book.
There’s a scene where they are trying to pack and the dog is “helping” that had me cracking up. It’s a funny book, though I chose not to finish it.
I really enjoyed Un Lun Dun…
Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titantic’s First Class Passengers and Their World by Hugh Brewster. A well told story with lots of rarely seen photographs of the ship before it sank. It’s sort of depressing to realize how much some of the more unlikeable people have in common with today’s crop of plutocrats.
I love Three Men in a Boat - I first heard of it when I read Connie Willis’s novel To Say Nothing of the Dog. Three Men on the Bummel isn’t quite as good, but well worth reading as a sequel.
Has anyone read Three in Norway (by two of them), published in 1882? Wikipedia says it was the inspiration for Three Men in a Boat. I’ve downloaded a copy, but I haven’t read it yet.
I just finished World War Z, by Max Brooks, and I really liked it, even though zombies are not my usual thing. It was a nice creepy read for October. Not everything in the book seemed quite plausible to me, but once you’ve accepted re-animated corpses, perhaps you ought not quibble about other details.
Now I’m reading Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel North and South. I recently watched the mini-series which stars Richard Armitage, who I like, and not only because he sounds like Sean Bean. (Looking forward to seeing him play Thorin Oakenshield.)
I’ve finished reading The Eustace Diamonds and Phineas Redux and now I’m on The Prime Minister (all by Anthony Trollope). That just leaves The Duke’s Children and then I think that’ll be enough Trollope for a while; 12 of his novels in a row is enough, I think!
I read Three Men in a Boat last month. I thought it was fairly witty in parts, but it didn’t knock my socks off.
Some Like It Hawk, by Donna Andrews. (It’s from a series of mysteries in which all the titles have something to do with birds.)
Unintentionally doubled-up on near-future “end of the world as we know it” novels recently: John Varley’s latest - Slow Apocalypse and The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters.
I picked up Slow Apocalypse thanks to Little Nemo’s recco as well as being a fan of the author - however, this felt like a bit of a departure for Varley - the only SF element was a bioengineered bacterium that converts crude oil into an unusable sludge. The protagonist, a TV writer living in LA with a semi-estranged wife and daughter, fortuituously learns of the impending disaster and prepares accordingly. I’m not sure the title is quite applicable, as natural disasters force the family into making life-altering (and hopefully -saving) decisions rather quickly. The characters are well-drawn and the plot is exciting, if a bit full of coincidental moments. The world building - describing the consequences of the loss of all petroleum products seemed pretty solid, in terms of economics & sociology. (I could have done without the turn-by-turn navigation of the greater SoCal area, tho…) If you have an interest in the genre, it’s worth reading at least once. I’d also recommend James Howard Kunstler’s World Made By Hand as perhaps a better example of “slow apocalypse”.
If Slow Apocalypse is the world ending with a whimper - The Last Policeman provides the bang - specifically an asteroid impact. Mind you - this is the first book in a trilogy (which I did not know when I picked it up); so the collision is still several months out. And to be honest, the novel is more a police procedural than a SF end-of-the-world saga. Detective Hank Palace, relatively new to the Concord NH police force, is called out to confirm that a death in a fast-food restroom is a suicide. There’s lots of suicides, lots of people quitting their jobs to complete their bucket lists, lots of despair and hopelessness. But there’s something off about this case for Palace, and he follows a trail that leads not only to a probable murder, but possibly a huge coverup. Winters explores the idea of impending worldwide doom quite well, and Palace is portrayed as a man just trying to do his job, regardless. The ending felt a bit rushed, as if this novel hadn’t originally been meant to be a series; and that turned me off a bit. But I did enjoy the world building, and the overall plot (tho I’m not generally a mystery/procedural fan). I may track down the next in the series if Palace is still the main character.
I just read Neil Gaiman’s short story “A Study in Emerald,” a Sherlock Holmes pastiche in which all is not at all as it seems. It’s excellent, but otherwise, the less said, the better, until you read it.
Warning: .pdf file, nine pages long: http://www.neilgaiman.com/mediafiles/exclusive/shortstories/emerald.pdf
Finished *Burning Water *by Mercedes Lackey. I bought it because of this description: A sexy witch who writes romances and a police detective who sees more than mortal man team up to battle an ancient Aztec god! <snip> Using modern science and ancient magics, Diana and Mark discover that they are tailing no ordinary serial killer but the awakened avatar of an Aztec god. Tezcatlipoca and his four beautiful handmaidens are preparing for a great sacrifice that will transform North America into a new Aztec realm.
At first I thought the writing was kind of poor and the tech laughable. Then I realized that she wrote it in 1989 and the tech was - well still not good, but not nearly as bad as it seemed.
There were still times I thought the writing could have been better - but in the end I enjoyed it. When did Mercedes Lackey start writing? Could this have been one of her first books? I will probably read the other two in the series.
I don’t remember for certain but it is definitely one of her early ones.
I finished Ascending Peculiarity a collection of interviews and articles on the artist/writer Edward Gorey. It was surprisingly readable and painted a wonderful picture of a semi reclusive man just living his life the way he wanted to live it.
That was good.
I’m reading “House of Leaves” by Mark Z. Danielewski.
That book creeped me out and bored me at the same time. Neat trick. 
Give Robopocalypse a try. Simillar idea but with robots. 
I’m about 1/2 way through Bad Glass
Pretty good so far. If you’ve read any of China Mieville’s Bas-Lag books where he mentions The Torque, it’s a bit like that.
Five Past Midnight in Bhopal The Epic Story of the World’s Deadliest Industrial Disaster
Pretty horrific, as you’d expect.
Finished a re-reading of Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown Trilogy, three short novels that focus on the Rabbitte family of Dublin–The Commitments, The Snapper, and The Van. Doyle has a great ear for dialogue and does an outstanding job of portraying the life of the Dublin working class with loads of humor.
Now reading In the Woods by Tana French, which is coincidentally also set in and around Dublin. It’s the story of a murder investigation told through the eyes of one of the lead investigators who was himself involved in a possibly related crime in the same area years earlier that resulted in the disappearance of his two best friends. He has no memory of that prior event and is trying to reconstruct it as he tries to solve the current murder. I’m only halfway through, but it’s a real pageturner so far.
Tom Hanks on the upcoming Cloud Atlas movie: http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/19/showbiz/movies/tom-hanks-cloud-atlas/?iref=obnetwork