The Compound comes down quite a bit in terms of literary quality and sophistication of ideas from Hunger Games and The Knife of Never Letting Go for SURE, but I got a huge kick out of reading it anyway, it reminded me a little of a Scholastic book club book, the kind that Shocking! (but only if you’re 11), in a good way.
Stil working through The Fall of Hyperion. This one might be just slightly easier to put down than Hyperion. It’s taking much longer to get through.
Oh, and may I recommend the short fiction of the SDMB for your monthly reading?
Finished The End of the Wasp Season by Denise Mina; now getting ready to start The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian.
That’s in my TBR pile. We must be getting the same recommendations from somewhere. 
I just started The Enchanted April, by Elizabeth Von Arnim. So far it’s… enchanting. I watched the movie a while back, but I didn’t realize how funny this would be.
I’m heading to the beach next week, but instead I wish I was headed for a small medieval Italian Castle on the shores of the Mediterranean.
I’m wondering if anyone has read John Dies at the End by Jason Pargin? I did a search but came up blank, then again my search skills aren’t great.
There is a movie of it coming out, with Paul Giamatti, and I thought the story seemed like something Philip K. Dick would have written.
Library sale yesterday. Came away with 39 books and spent $9.75. With that many books, it’s hard to decide what to read. I’m leaving the books in the bags and will just grab and read.
The first one is a murder in suburbia – The Last Good Day by Peter Blauner. It’s well written and I’m enjoying it.
But wow, I just finished The Luminist by David Rocklin. Amazing story set in Ceylon in the 1830’s.
From Amazon: “IN COLONIAL INDIA, at a time of growing friction between the ruling British and the restless Indian populace, a Victorian woman and her young Tamil Indian servant defy convention, class, and heartbreak to investigate what is gained - and lost - by holding life still. Suggested by the life and work of photographic pioneer Julia Margaret Cameron, The Luminist filters 19th century Ceylon through the lens of an English woman, Catherine Colebrook and a 15 year old Tamil boy, Eligius Shourie. Left fatherless by soldiers, Eligius is brought as a servant to the Colebrooks’ neglected estate. In the shadow of Catherine’s obsession to arrest beauty - to select a moment from the thousands comprising her life in Ceylon and hold it apart from mere memory - Eligius transforms into her apprentice in the creation of the first haunting photographs in history.”
I read Booklist and the Mystery Lovers Bookshop’s newsletter, and I get the Book of the Day emails from BookPage.
The Night Strangers: The plot is terrific (haunted house) but the POV goes back and forth from second to third person. I don’t like second person and it irks me. “There isn’t a doorbell, so you remove your glove before you rap on the wood.” :dubious:
Finished Ghosts by Gaslight and it was really good (although they did tack on a stinker at the end, IMO).
Today I started The Dress Lodger by Sheri Holman. The author does something I would describe as breaking the fourth wall, which is fine so far but I could see it getting annoying. A moot point, as the book is due back at the library ASAP. I do have another one in the TBR pile by the same author, so if that’s good maybe I’ll come back to this.
Next up will be The Bridge to Neverland, a continuation of Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson’s Starcatchers series.
WTF? William Sleator died. Shit.
I really liked that book. She doesn’t stay with that odd second-person present POV very long. I was charmed by the unusual narration from the beginning, but I can see where it would be annoying if it didn’t strike you just right.
Freaky. Even though I haven’t finished The Knife of Never Letting Go yet, I started reading House of Stairs at home just a couple of days ago, and I plan to finish it tonight. I barely got to know him!
House of Stairs is my personal favorite. It disturbed me deeply in seventh grade. 
Which one? I loved A Stolen Tongue; The Mammoth Cheese was good and Witches on the Road Tonight was good but surprisingly short, almost a novella. She writes some strange, strange stuff. A Stolen Tongue is my favorite.
Witches on the Road. Short is good, I might manage to get through it before the Library Policeman comes.
I’ve read all of Holman’s except Dress Lodger (which is on my tbr shelf). I think *Mammoth Cheese *was my favorite. I appreciated how many metaphorical versions of the *Frankenstein *story she was able to weave into Witches.
Thank you! I can’t wait to read this.
Forgive the double-post. I meant to add that I’m reading Sleepless, by Charlie Huston and am really enjoying it. I was surprised to find a very tender love story at its heart.
Finished Dead Eye: Pennies for the Ferryman, the first in the Dead Eye series, a newish urban fantasy.
Mike Ross is a *ferryman *- he helps ghosts cross over (not always willingly.)
I liked it well enough to buy the second and to buy one of the author’s other books.
Speaking of Shermer, I’m reading The Fountainhead. It is an extremely naive book, IMO, and filled with unintentional humor, though it moves along okay. I have a hard time understanding how anyone can take Ayn Rand seriously. Yet Shermer does. He also thinks that science will fix everything; how’s that working out for you, Mike?
I read the Foundation Trilogy last month, and liked it enough to read the prequels and sequels. I just finished Prelude to Foundation. It’s a decent enough story, but not up to the level of the trilogy (okay, maybe it’s as good as the parts about The Mole, but not the rest). I was surprised to see that, in spite of appearances, Gavroche survived Les Miserables and ended up on Trantor. And how about that Dors, huh? Mary Sue or what? I’ll now continue to Forward the Foundation.