I’m not given to hyperbole when it comes to my opinion on entertainment (if anything I’m often told that I’m far too critical), but Bridge of Birds is the rare book that makes me gush. To go into detail on why I found it to be such a delight would spoil the sheer joy of uncovering it bit by bit for yourself.
(For those who do need a rough plot outline, in 600AD China there is a village of dying children and a strong but good hearted villager hires an ancient sage to help them. Between the two of them they engage in comic misadventures and mystery solving while dealing with the problem. And really anything else I say would ruin the fun.)
I finished Revolutionary Road, and really liked it. But I’ll probably wait for the movie to come out on DVD.
I also just read Madness: A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher. Very well-written, funny in parts but also depressing. Not one I’d need to read again.
I’m currently reading Be Happy or I’ll Scream: My Deranged Quest for the Perfect Husband, Family and Life by Sheri Lynch. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but amusing and a good break from the more somber reading material I’ve chosen lately.
I read a big chunk of Three Bags Full: a sheep detective story by Leonie Swann, but I couldn’t really seem to lock on to the story. I liked the sheep, though. (Also, my daughter is reading Watership Down on my recommendation and if she comes along and catches me reading a book about sheep, well, that’s just going to look weird.)
So I set that aside and started on Storm Front by Jim Butcher. It’s my first Dresden Files book (if not the first, my library catalog is always sketchy about what order the books of a series go in). Pretty good. I expect I’ll be getting some more of these.
I just reread The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. I read this book originally when I was in my teens and I was very, very impressed with it. Revisiting it now, I found myself totally bored. Maybe I’m more cynical or maybe my teenage self had more tolerance for “on the nose” moralistic writing, but I thought Coehlo could have spent more time focused on the story and less time preaching and still had a good, popular book. The phrase “personal legend” is currently triggering my gag reflex.
I’m reading Meg Cabot’s Shadowland, the first in her Mediator series. Really fun. I like YA so much sometimes!
The Newbery and Caldecott winners for this past year will be announced next Monday, so lately I have been trying to read as many of the eligible books as I can to see how I do predicting the winners.
So these are all kids/YA books:
I thought these were great: Masterpiece by Elise Broach – A beetle becomes an artist, it’s really cute and a little reminiscent of Cricket in Times Square. The Porcupine Year by Louise Erdrich – Story of a Native American family in the mid-19th century, a little like the *Little House * books only from the native perspective. We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson – AWESOME illustrations, decent-but-not-outstanding text.
*Waiting for Normal *by Leslie Connor – Fairly grim story about child neglect but the main character is so enjoyable and resourceful that it’s a satisfying rather than depressing book.
I thought these were so-so: Alvin Ho Allergic to Girls, School and Other Scary Things by Lenore Look – A second grader has a lot of fears about every day situations. My One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath – Nice writing but the adventures were a bit of a snooze. The Magic Half by Annie Barrows – a little girl goes back in time and meets another girl.
Rereading *The Maltese Falcon *as part of this year’sThe Big Read. Hiram Collegeis the center for the events in my area. Next up is The Age of Innocence, which is based at the Massillon Museum.
I’ve finished The Marriage of Sticks. It was very weird but quite enjoyable. I couldn’t put it down, even though I didn’t much like the main character.
Tonight I’m starting Already Dead, Charlie Huston’s first Joe Pitt book. I’ve only read one Huston, Shotgun Rule, and I think his dialogue is easily as good as Elmore Leonard’s.
I really liked Already Dead. Huston is altogether too dark for me, except that I absolutely love his dialogue so I clench my teeth and try to enjoy the ride. (I’ll have to look up this Elmore Leonard you speak of.)
I ended up liking Lonesome Dove. I didn’t fall in love with it, as many people have, and I don’t think I’ll become an aficionado of westerns, but I’m glad I read this one. The ending was strange: completely satisfying until the last few paragraphs.
I’m almost finished reading John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, and with apologies to those who are fans, I am not enjoying it at all. There are some absurd plot points, but they wouldn’t be a big deal if I liked the writing better. I enjoy this genre, but this book is doing nothing for me. If it weren’t such a quick read I wouldn’t finish it.
I have thrown the first book of 2009. This is the first book I’ve thrown in a couple of years, hence the announcement.
What book earned this dubious honor? A book I read because of a thread I ran across here last year. The Ladies of Missalonghi.
What pissed me off so much was not the fact that McCullough ripped off L.M. Montgomery. That is an unforgivable sin, true, especially since Montgomery is an actual writer who has style and doesn’t need to resort to clumsy sexual allusions. No, what pissed me off must be revealed in a spoiler as it didn’t show up until the end of the book.
Ghosts can’t be Justices of the Peace!
I’ve been to pig pickin’s that weren’t so ham-handed as this book. I think I might burn it rather than return it to the used book store. Crap this bad should not be inflicted on the unsuspecting.
Finished this one; now I’m reading I Hope They Have Beer in Hell by Tucker Max. Some of his stories are hilarious; others very cringe-worthy/gross. Very different than women who write funny anecdotes about their lives!
Almost finished with Anathem and based on recommendations in this thread, recently started *Gone Away World *and Bridge of Birds. LOVING them both so far.
Finished Already Dead by Charlie Huston last night. I was expecting something like Bloodsucking Fiends, a lighthearted but semi-realistic look at the lives of modern vampires. Boy, was I wrong. I probably shouldn’t have read the book after watching Miller’s Crossing, because that and the book gave me some pretty good nightmares. Actually, Tom from the movie and Joe from the book are a bit alike – they want to be independent but they don’t have enough power.
I’m quite taken with Joe Pitt so I’ll be getting the rest of these books.
If you like that book, you might want to check out the Kai Lung stories by Ernest Bramah.
I just finished reading A Deepness in the Sky. As with the other Vinge novels I’ve read, I thought it had a few nifty ideas smothered by an overly-long, overly-pedestrian storyline. I got bored about two-thirds of the way through it and only finished the book out of cussedness. At this rate, I’m pretty dubious about whether I’d be willing to tackle any more of his novels.
I’m through with this – it was very interesting indeed! I’ll have to get a well-bound hardcover, I’m afraid, and an atlas. The constant going to the appendices for the names and relationsships hurt this cheap paperback edition.
I read The Book of Lost Tales I right after this, which was incredibly fascinating as a glimpse into the process of Tolkien’s creation. Other things to read will prevent me from getting on with the History of Middle-Earth, but I’m looking forward to that continuation!
And it was interesting, too, but I’m still left a bit disappointed. I suppose I’d call it a Lincoln biography for absolute beginners, for while the chapters on Lincoln’s pre-Presidential life were new and intriguing, the Civil War bits (about which I knew a good deal already) offered very little new insight.
I’m almost through with this, and it is getting better and better – I quite like this book.
A couple of new ones cracked open right now:
[ul]
[li]Tad Williams, Otherland: River of Blue Fire. I got the whole four volumes for Christmas, and have been going through them at night, ever so slowly. This is getting better as well. It took me a hundred pages of the first volume to get interested, but now it’s going along, and things are starting to get revealed that make the whole story much less confusing. I suppose that won’t last, with some 2000 pages in two and a half volumes still to go.[/li][li]Douglas Wolk, Reading Comics. Interesting thing as well. I have Eisner’s volumes and Scott McCloud’s as well, and this is the first that tries to explain comics in prose, rather than in, well, comics. He’s already contradicting Eisner and getting onto a different track than McCloud, so I’m looking forward to his thesis.[/li][li]Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast. This may end up getting dropped until I can find the time to situate it more properly within its context. As a read, it’s slow, it may be more interesting as a cultural phenomenon.[/li][/ul]