# Whatcha reading Feb. (09) edition **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 31, 2009, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898 "2009-01-31T19:49:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/101 "2009-02-17T14:23:33Z")
> [@welby](#): > > _Lords of the North_ and _Sword Song_ by Bernard Cornwell, the last two books of the Saxon Series. This man consistently amazes me with both his storytelling ability and attention to historical detail. I am now “done” with all of this available books. I eagerly await the next. Couldn’t agree more. I think his Saxon series is his best yet. ---
**Author:** ![TheMerchandise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b487fb/32.png) [@TheMerchandise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheMerchandise)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/102 "2009-02-17T14:39:14Z")
> [@I'm Not Dennis Bergkamp](#): > > You’re not alone - I thought so as well and have read it twice. What did you guys like about it? (I ask with all sincerity and not a trace of snark.) ---
**Author:** ![Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/103 "2009-02-17T15:05:54Z")
I’ve had \*The Historian \*on my shelf for a while now (it’s a pretty hardback, by the way; I like those covers that look like parchment) but \*\*AuntiePam \*\*shudders all the way across the internet whenever it’s mentioned so I haven’t tried it yet. I’m a little afraid that I will like it and then she will look down on me. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/104 "2009-02-17T15:07:27Z")
I will not be reading it again. I would consider it a book about a woman who travels around in Europe, and at some point a vampire shows up. It is not a vampire book. If you are looking for a vampire book, you will be disappointed. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/105 "2009-02-17T15:19:52Z")
> [@Sigmagirl](#): > > I will not be reading it again. I would consider it a book about a woman who travels around in Europe, and at some point a vampire shows up. It is not a vampire book. If you are looking for a vampire book, you will be disappointed. That’s not really how I viewed it at all. I liked it because the vampire is everywhere and nowhere. The insinuation of the vampire’s presence and how he has colored the protagonists lives felt very real to me, as the story was written in that quasi-factual/fictional style. It was believable to me, and I enjoyed the worldwide scope of the book, and how the different places added meaning to the legend of the vampire. I agree that it’s not as overt as say, Anne Rice’s books, which I also enjoyed most of, but I thought it a rather unique approach on the vampire genre. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/106 "2009-02-17T15:24:20Z")
> [@Sigmagirl](#): > > I will not be reading it again. I would consider it a book about a woman who travels around in Europe, and at some point a vampire shows up. It is not a vampire book. If you are looking for a vampire book, you will be disappointed. I wasn’t looking for a vampire book so much as I was intrigued with this from Amazon’s review: > [@](#): > > If your pulse flutters at the thought of castle ruins and descents into crypts by moonlight, you will savor every creepy page of Elizabeth Kostova’s long but beautifully structured thriller The Historian. _beautifully structured thriller_ - but it just wasn’t. I was bored. Now, one problem with my review is that I was listening and I have found that books on tape just aren’t the same experience. I am willing to concede that had I read the book, I may have enjoyed it. (Let me add that this, as much as anything, is why I have started these threads. I am glad for the exchange of the differing opinions.) ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/107 "2009-02-17T17:10:21Z")
> [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](#): > > I’ve had \*The Historian \*on my shelf for a while now (it’s a pretty hardback, by the way; I like those covers that look like parchment) but \*\*AuntiePam \*\*shudders all the way across the internet whenever it’s mentioned so I haven’t tried it yet. I’m a little afraid that I will like it and then she will look down on me. 🙂 That won’t happen. Heck, it’s not a _Left Behind_ book. 😉 I watched a Kostova interview shortly after the book came out. Primetime interview, something that rarely happens with authors, unless they’ve achieved Rowling popularity. The woman was dull. She had not one interesting thing to say, about writing, publishing, libraries, history, vampires, or Europe. She allowed as how she might actually travel to Europe someday. Which explains why even the travel sections were boring – she’d never been to those places. **FoieGrasIsEvil** , you’re a better reader than she is a writer. If you got something of quality from the book, it’s because you were able to put it there. The compliment goes to you, not her. ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/108 "2009-02-17T17:24:41Z")
Huh? [This article](http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/jul/18/fiction.news)says she lived in Bulgaria for a year: Kostova, who grew up all over the US, read British studies at Yale before going to Bulgaria to record local folk music for a year. Seven days before she arrived, mass demonstrations and a politburo coup toppled dictator Todor Zhivkov, as the velvet revolution came to one of the Soviet Union’s most loyal satellites. “It was an incredible time to be there,” she says. She met her future husband, Georgi, a Bulgarian computer scientist who now works at the University of Michigan. And [this 2005 interview](http://www.powells.com/authors/kostova.html)says: A lot of my travel was in Eastern Europe, before I started writing the book. I’ve been back a few times since then, but the wider travel, in Western Europe and some parts of Eastern Europe, I did before I began composing it. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/109 "2009-02-17T17:31:23Z")
I swear that in the interview she said she hadn’t been to Europe, but that she was planning to go with the money she made from the book. Okay, I don’t swear – the woman wouldn’t lie about something like that – but I remember thinking that this explained why the travel sections were so lifeless. I stand corrected! ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/110 "2009-02-17T17:36:46Z")
Guess she’s just a bad writer! ---
**Author:** ![Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/intergalactic_gladiator/32/112_2.png) [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intergalactic_Gladiator)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2009, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/111 "2009-02-17T17:38:19Z")
I’m in the middle of reading The Lat Battle to my 7-year old. We’ve read our way through all the Chronicles of Narnia books except A Boy and His Horse (she lost interest in it quickly. It’s not quite as exciting as The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe), so we’re planning on going back to that one. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/112 "2009-02-18T00:28:48Z")
> [@AuntiePam](#): > > That won’t happen. Heck, it’s not a _Left Behind_ book. 😉 > > I watched a Kostova interview shortly after the book came out. Primetime interview, something that rarely happens with authors, unless they’ve achieved Rowling popularity. The woman was dull. She had not one interesting thing to say, about writing, publishing, libraries, history, vampires, or Europe. > > She allowed as how she might actually travel to Europe someday. Which explains why even the travel sections were boring – she’d never been to those places. > > **FoieGrasIsEvil** , you’re a better reader than she is a writer. If you got something of quality from the book, it’s because you were able to put it there. The compliment goes to you, not her. Gee, well, uh…thanks! :blushes: ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/113 "2009-02-18T02:34:43Z")
Finished _The People Look Like Flowers At Last: New Poems_, by Charles Bukowski and edited by John Martin. I could have finished it in a single day, but I always like to linger over Bukowski and not rush through his work. This was supposedly the fifth collection of previously unpublished poems by Bukowski, but I know I recognized a few of them. Today I begin _Flashman and the Angel of the Lord_, by George MacDonald Fraser. This is one of only three Flashman books I’ve not yet read. (The other two are _Flashman and the Dragon_ and _Flashman and the Tiger_.) This one has Flashman dealing with John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in 1858-59. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/114 "2009-02-18T20:42:16Z")
I just finished Dreams From the Monster Factory : a tale of prison, redemption and one woman’s fight to restore justice to all, by Sunny Schwartz. Interesting non-fiction book about a prison reform program. I couldn’t really relate to the author though, I thought she was a bitch and a hot-head. Just started The Duggars : 20 and counting! : raising one of America’s largest families–how they do it, by Michelle Duggar. I’ve never seen their TV shows, so all I really know going in is that they’re religious folks who have a whole bunch of kids, all with the initial J. From this I prejudged them as nutjobs, and now that I have read a few pages, it is confirmed (albeit very _nice_ nutjobs, I’m sure). Every couple of paragraphs I find some little tidbit that makes me want to lay the book down and holler, “Oh my Gawd!” (I’m not a religious person myself, but sometimes there’s just no other way I know to express the OMGness of it all). ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/115 "2009-02-18T22:35:41Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#): > > Just started The Duggars : 20 and counting! : raising one of America’s largest families–how they do it, by Michelle Duggar. I’ve never seen their TV shows, so all I really know going in is that they’re religious folks who have a whole bunch of kids, all with the initial J. From this I prejudged them as nutjobs, and now that I have read a few pages, it is confirmed (albeit very _nice_ nutjobs, I’m sure). Every couple of paragraphs I find some little tidbit that makes me want to lay the book down and holler, “Oh my Gawd!” (I’m not a religious person myself, but sometimes there’s just no other way I know to express the OMGness of it all). I admire your courage and restraint. I would have punched the book over in the store/library without opening it. (I did that to both an Eragon display and Jenny McCarthy’s “Look at me I have a kid now!” book.) I’m reading _Caribbean New Wave: Contemporary Short Stories_ which is, obviously, a book of short stories by Caribbean authors (mostly Jamaican and Trinidadian). So far so good, except for one story: Faustin Charles’ “The Signpost of the Phoenix.” After the first paragraph it became one long stream of consciousness rambling in dialect with no punctuation. My feeling is if you can’t take the time to throw a few periods in there, I can’t take the time to read it. I need to crack down and finish up _A Man Betrayed_. It should not be taking me this long to finish it. ---
**Author:** ![schnuckiputzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecb155/32.png) [@schnuckiputzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/schnuckiputzi)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/116 "2009-02-19T14:41:58Z")
I got through the Historian by pretending that it was a long and dull book of history that I had to read for a class. Since John Updike passed away last month, and I heard a great interview with him that had been recorded in 2002 (maybe), I decided to read Rabbit Run. Well. It’s \*all \*in present tense. It’s very distracting, to say the least. The book I ordered from Amazon has Rabbit Redux in it also, and I peeked at it. Present tense, too. Is there any other author who write only in present tense? Does it bother you? ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/117 "2009-02-19T15:37:21Z")
> [@schnuckiputzi](#): > > I got through the Historian by pretending that it was a long and dull book of history that I had to read for a class. > Since John Updike passed away last month, and I heard a great interview with him that had been recorded in 2002 (maybe), I decided to read Rabbit Run. Well. It’s \*all \*in present tense. It’s very distracting, to say the least. The book I ordered from Amazon has Rabbit Redux in it also, and I peeked at it. Present tense, too. Is there any other author who write only in present tense? Does it bother you? I don’t like the convention that when you write _about_ literature you have to do it in the present tense, so reading a book written that way would probably jar me a bit, too. ---
**Author:** ![Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/118 "2009-02-19T15:54:46Z")
> [@schnuckiputzi](#): > > …Present tense, too. Is there any other author who write only in present tense? Does it bother you? Charlie Huston writes in present tense, and I like it. His subject matter is not for everybody (dark and violent) but his writing is great, particularly his dialog. I’ve started _The Yiddish Policeman’s Union_. Chabon’s prose is very dense. I like it, but sometimes I think his writing style distracts from the story. And if I hadn’t been reading some stuff about Judaism recently then I think I would be confused on a few points. I’m also reading David Sedaris’s _Naked_, which so far is not as good as _Me Talk Pretty One Day_. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ad7895/32.png) [@Just\_Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/119 "2009-02-19T22:34:53Z")
> [@schnuckiputzi](#): > > Is there any other author who write only in present tense? Does it bother you? Using present tense bothers me a lot. It makes the book’s voice feel like a radio reporter recounting something remote rather than an intimate retelling. In the vast majority of cases it just feels clumsy to me. ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898/120 "2009-02-19T23:10:13Z")
> [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](#): > > I’m also reading David Sedaris’s _Naked_, which so far is not as good as _Me Talk Pretty One Day_. Every other book Sedaris writes suffers from not having the story about the bell from Rome that delivers chocolate in it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-reading-feb-09-edition/483898.md?page=7)