I’m awaiting that one, too.
And I couldn’t keep reading Martin and am completely in love with the Keyes series, so I think they’re pretty different. (Martin nearly had me slitting my wrists in despair.)
I finished The Mountain’s Call and that was good enough that I will read the sequel.
I finished Passion Play which was given to me as a Christmas present. It was thoroughly mediocre. " This tale of a futuristic sleuth who pursues criminals and her own inner demons…" (from the Amazon review.) This was set in a future distopia where the Religious Right has prevailed. For me future distopias are no longer novel and so when done, should be done with a subtle - not heavy - hand. I have no objection to targeting the Religious Right, but this author couldn’t make it interesting.
I am in the middle of Broken by Kelly Armstrong. It is OK, but her charms have worn off for me - the books are rather formulaic. I don’t always mind that, but this one isn’t doing it for me.
I’m also in the middle of the one I mentioned earlier An Unpardonable Crime or some such, and it is OK, but moving rather slowly.
I’ve read all three of those. Sedaris’ book was good, but I think his work is much stronger when heard than when read. His delivery is perfect. I didn’t like Confederacy. Based on the board response I must be the only person who didn’t. Dirk Gently was great; better than the sequel, I felt.
After I finish The Mask of Nostradamus I’ll move on to The Men Who Stare at Goats, about the government’s experiments in remote viewing and (I think, it’s been awhile since I looked at the bookcover) psychokinetic powers.
I’ve been reading Chuck Palahniuk a lot lately. I read Diary on my Palm and loved it; I then read Lullaby in meatspace-form and thought it had an awful ending that made me wish I hadn’t read it at all. Palahniuk has always relied on magical thinking a little bit, but to very good effect, I thought, in Fight Club and Diary; but in Lullaby it’s just too much. He wrote himself into a corner and then got out of it in cheap fashion, IMO.
I just bought Choke and am going to read it once I have the time…
Finished Aquariums of Pyongyang. Not bad. Don’t have anything new to start yet.
For your bonus question, fuck no. The used book trade is abysmal where I am. I have to buy off ebay or abebooks.
Nevill Coghill’s translation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. First time. Fun stuff.
I’ve also read most of his novels in the last year or so. I keep thinking he’s going to pull it off, then he always disappoints me. I have to say that I think he doesn’t trust the work to hold its own and has to go in and do something “literary” that deflates it. Lullaby was a good example of this–if he’s ended two pages earlier, I’d have loved it. If I were in a writing workshop with him, I’d have the suggestion every time: Trust the work to stand on its own.
Now I’m on to Under the Tuscan Sun, a very non-Palahniuk memoir.
I’m reading A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen, A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin, and I just started Old Glory: An American Voyage by Jonathan Raban. Plus about nine hundred books that I’m in a state of perpetual suspension with.
Lullaby was a little overblown too, but I still loved it. I really thought he pulled it off well, though you’re probably right that it would’ve been as good or better with a page or two fewer. I expect more out of Choke; the girl who works at the bookstore I bought it at agrees with me about Pahlaniuk but really likes that book.
I thought Choke was one of his better ones, too. Skip Haunted (though the glow-in-the-dark cover’s nice). Invisible Monsters is my favorite so far.
Thanks! Invisible Monsters was going to be my next one, although I’m probably going to read “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs” before that.
I just finished up book 3 of Nietzsche’s The Gay Science. I’m also rereading Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett with my SO.