I finished The Snowman (same author) last week and enjoyed it quite a bit.
Finished Child of God, by Cormac McCarthy. Short but intense. Enjoyed it. If this book is ever given a film treatment, then I’d say Lester Ballard will pretty much out-evil Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. McCarthy sure does come up with some nasty characters.
Now it’s back to travel-guide mode in preparation for our trip in seven months. Will read through the Pennsylvania section in Lonely Planet’s New York, New Jersey & Pennsylvania guidebook.
Recently, I finished Slammer by Allan Guthrie. It’s a fairly uneven psychological thriller that takes place in a Scottish prison. The author is a friend of a friend, so I really wanted to like it, but unfortunately found it pretty bad.
Right now, I’m reading The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde, one of the Thursday Next series. I’m liking these books more and more as the series progresses.
I also started American Gods on audiobook, I’ve read it before, but I heard the narrator was especially good and wanted to revisit it.
Finished **Patti Smith’s *Just Kids ***- her award-winning memoir about coming into her own in New York in the early 70’s, her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, etc.
Ultimately, kinda meh. If you are totally committed to the vision Smith has in her art and the now-legendary status of her relationship with Mapplethorpe, then this is a loving chronicle that increases your intimate connection to the artist and material like really well-written liner notes back in the day. Since I really have never taken Patti Smith seriously – I can’t hear her intone Horses or Gloria without giggling a little, and People Have the Power is simply awful to my ear – I am not invested. (I love Mapplethorpe’s eye, and enjoyed reading about his coming to photography as his medium). Definitely not on a par with Dylan’s Chronicles V1 or Andy Summers’ One Train Later. The equivalent of Keef’s autobio, but since I am totally invested in the Rolling Stones’ music and his approach to guitar – both of which are discussed with insightful detail – I felt his was much better.
Dipping into Oxford’s A Very Short History of Ancient Philosophy, and about to start Number9Dream by David Mitchell…
In the Garden of the Beasts by Erik Larsen – nonfiction, about the US Ambassador to Germany in the early 30’s and his adventurous daughter. I’m getting a little bit of a sense of why Hitler didn’t scare most people in 1932 – I think that’s what Larsen was going for, but it’s difficult. Mandatory sterilization? That didn’t raise any alarm bells? But it’s interesting, seeing the rise of Hitler from the POV of diplomats, journalists, and a naive young woman.
Next up are some ARCs from Amazon Vine:
The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman
Irma Voth by Miriam Toews
The Luminist by David Rocklin, 19th century Ceylon, based on the life of a famous female photographer
The Redeemer was my summer beach book. I enjoyed it.
I’m currently reading Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong. I just started last night and already I’ve been fantasizing about buying copies for everyone I know and leaving random copies in public places.
My book club is finishing up Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby. It’s a good book, but our discussion on the first six chapters kept veering off into current events, rather than what was covered in the book.
AuntiePam, I have Larsen’s book on my kindle and I’m looking forward to reading that soon. There’s a woman in my book club who lived through the Nazi era in Germany (she was a pre-teen in the 30s). Her viewpoint is really interesting.
I’ll bet. Has she read the book?
It’s weird, how we live through historical events without realizing their significance. We don’t recognize that they were world-changing until years later. I’d like to be alive 20-30 years from now, to see how things shake out in the Middle East and Africa.
Not that I know of - I’ll have to ask her if she plans to. When our group read The Family by Jeff Sharlet, she had a lot to say about being a “frog in a pot”. She said they had a group of local men who were appointed by the national guys to sort of watch over everyone and make sure people were following the rules. Everyone was scared of those guys, but they just went along and tried to get along. It would be nice to know how everything’s going to work out, huh?
In my ongoing quest to read all the free (out of copyright) works on my Kindle, I am now reading House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. I’m only about a third of the way through but I think I can see where it is going. The last time I read anything by her was Ethan Frome in high school (around 45 years ago).
The stuff she writes is just a teeny bit depressing.
Roddy
I needed a palette cleanser after Cold Vengeance, so I’m rereading Mrs. Dalloway. I loved it the first time, 30+ years ago. I love it even more, now. Just brilliant.
Next up, The Unquiet Mind, by Kay Redfield Jamison.
This weekend I zipped through George Washington’s Secret Navy by James L. Nelson, nonfiction about GW quietly arranging for a handful of small, fast warships to go after British shipping before Congress got around to authorizing a formal Continental Navy. Not bad.
And I’ve just started Robert Olmstead’s Coal Black Horse, which I hope to finish before the author attends this month’s meeting of the Civil War roundtable of which I’m a member. It’s a Cold Mountain-style novel about a teenage Southern boy going to find his maybe-wounded, maybe-killed father at Gettysburg.
Finished They Call Me Death, an uninspired urban fantasy involving shape shifters and humans.
When shape shifters finally “out” themselves a war between them and humans begins, eventually ending in a divided US - with humans in the south.
Alexia sees her family killed before her eyes and joins the arm services to fight the shifters. She is such a fierce fighter she is simply known as Death by the shifters.
The story was trite and predictable and we are never really shown why she is known as Death, we are only told. In the end I didn’t really care what happened and if this is the start of a series, I won’t read the rest.
Adventurous is hardly the word. 
Obviously, I’ve begun reading it, too.
My first paid for ebook!
Thanks, Auntie Pam.
Please say you didn’t buy it because of anything I said. I dumped it, about two-thirds finished. Redundant and boring, with descriptions of state dinners, snippets of mundane conversation, weather reports, Martha sleeping with this guy and that guy. The Wiki article was more interesting. Seriously, this book reads like Larsen simply compiled his research notes.
I find it fascinating, but then I’m a history guy. 
Thanks again!
Ambassador Dodd, although believing that Jews “Have more positions in Germany than they should” is desperately trying to warn the American government that Germany is a threat to world peace, but all that the US government is worried about is that the Germans repay an immense loan to Citibank.
Still working through my Borders stash.
Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations by Evan Fraser and Andrew Rimas. Not overwhelmed. The authors aren’t really writing a history of the subject. They’re just listing historical parallels which they feel buttress their position about current world problems. Of course if their opinions are wrong then the historical parallels don’t apply and the overall message is pointless.
The Lexicographer’s Dilemma: The Evolution of ‘Proper’ English, from Shakespeare to South Park by Jack Lynch. A better book in my opinion. Lynch also has opinions about his subject but at least he’s writing about the purported topic of his book.
Except that he doesn’t desperately try to warn the US. He alternates between “the Nazis are crazy bastards getting ready for war - OMG!” to “things are quiet in Berlin today, I think things will be okay, never mind.”
Highly recommended.
Still working through *Carter Beats the Devil *by Glen David Gold. It’s quite good. I’m really curious how much of it, if any, is non-fiction.