Happy New Years all! May your year be filled with good food, good fortune and good reads!
I have not picked out my next book yet, so I have nothing to report, but I’m sure I’ll get one going soon.
Link to last year’s last thread.
I’ve gone back to The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008/21st annual collection, edited by Ellen Datlow, which I was forced to lay aside for a while to catch up with library deadlines on other stuff. As always, when it is good, it is very very good, and when it is bad it is horrid. I am skipping over some stories without a smidge of guilt (ha ha, Joyce Carol Oates!), but the one I read last night was wonderful: The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate, by Ted Chiang.
**Traitor to His Class **by HW Brands, a biography of FDR that is especially interesting considering the current times in which we live.
Just finished John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, a military scifi novel that I highly recommend. I started a thread about it (open spoilers): John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" (open spoilers) - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
Flashman and the Tiger, inspired to read the George McDonald Fraser series again from a post on the 'Dope.
Does post-Christmas count? My MIL gave me the first seven books of Sookie Stackhouse novels, and I devoured them greedily. Then I just finished The Sunne in Splendour. Ack. Please tell me, are all her novels so depressing? I spent the first few chapters trying to peel my brain out of George R. R. Martin’s Sword of Fire and Ice books and get it in the real world. Does anyone else think Ned in both books is the same character???
I am currently reading The Proffessor and The Madman by Simon Winchester. Great book, but it seems like the author really had to reach to explain/justify Dr Minor’s mania.
I have Notes on Blood Meridian, Knockemstiff, and To Say Nothing Of The Dog on deck. Can’t wait…
Started Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstader, like I’d hoped to do when I posted last month.
(*Infinite Jest * is setting on the nightstand, waiting to be cracked) and working my way through Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware.
Just finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami and Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert (the latter was for my book club).
Is This a Great Game, or What? by Tim Kurkjian. It was a gift since people know I’m a big baseball nut. I would rate the book above average, but not as good as I had expected. I guess there aren’t too many George Wills out there who know baseball and can also write.
If you think *Sunne *was depressing, you should try her Welsh trilogy. It all seems so futile when you know that the English are going to win in the end. Although on her website Penn says that Here Be Dragons, the first in that series, is her favorite of her own books because there are actually some characters left alive at the end.
And A Game of Thrones clearly borrows from the story of Edward IV and Richard III.
I am slowly working my way through Little, Big mainly hindered by the dense prose and the fact that I’ve had to run around any take care of everyone else for the past week. So far it’s cute but it hasn’t hooked me.
Next books in my pile are Nifft the Lean and The Dragon Waiting both of which sounded fairly interesting to me so I’ve got high hopes.
I’m trying to work my way through my massive collection of unread books. Right now I’m reading a compilation of Frankenstein/Dracula/Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. On Frankenstein right now, and am enjoying it.
Today I finished Dissolution by CJ Sansom, a mystery set during the Reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries in England. Very good.
I also just finished Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak. That was a hard book to pin down, but it eventually turned into something well worth reading. I picked it up as part of the around the world reading challenge.
I just started Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco. I asked on Goodreads for a book that might be scary without being gross. Other suggestions always welcome.
And am still reading Help the Poor Struggler in my quest to reread all of the Martha Grimes I have before setting off to finish the Jury series.
On deck is The Eight and The Far Pavilions.
I’m rereading Children of Dune and The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. I’ve got The Baker’s Boy by J.V. Jones out in my car, but it’s dark out there and bears have been seen in the area so there it shall sit. I’m forcing myself to finish How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents as well. Yeah, that one’s not returning to the bookshelf.
Started The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell today. She makes history fun and interesting to me. I’ve either read, or listened to her read, her previous books.
I’m planning to reread the short stories & novelette in Connie Willis’ The Winds of Marble Arch this weekend.
I just put that on hold. I’ve been meaning to read it.
I’ve also put all these books on hold at my library:
All the President’s Men
Dark Fire, by CJ Sansom
The devil you know, by Mike Carey
The mill on the Floss, by George Eliot
The pillars of the earth, by Ken Follett
The years of rice and salt, Kim Stanley Robinson
I recently started re-reading The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo (it’s been over 30 years since the last time). I swear the man must have been paid by the word.
But I still love it, once it gets going. The title character is a man who has been surgically altered when a child to become someone’s jester or something, by a heartless band of “comprachicos”, so that he always has a wide grin on his face (think Jack Nicholson as the Joker, but the face always looks genuinely amused). Unlike the Joker, this boy becomes a man of character and heart. I remember the climactic scene as heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. I hope I’m right.
Roddy
I’m reading 2666 by Roberto Bolano. Once that’s done, I want to read:
The Ten Cent Plague by David Hajdu
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Netherland by Joseph O’Neil.
And I’m stoked because I just read that the transation of Les Bienveillantes by Jonathan Littel is coming out in March.
I’m also re-reading Stephen King’s The Shining for a book discussion at Goodreads. The Shining is my all-time favorite of his and I wanted to read it again anyway because I may get to visit the Stanley Hotel next month.