Currently reading The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride. I was just fiddling with it and it drew me in, so it’s an interesting, well-written book. However, I don’t know that I’d say I’m enjoying it!
It’s on my daughter’s summer reading list for school along with The Glass Castle, and they are similar books in that they’re both memoirs of terrible childhoods with anecdote after anecdote just piling up until you go numb. Color of Water also has chapters describing the mother’s childhood (terrible, natch).
Finished Claudius the God, by Robert Graves. Excellent, especially if you’re interested in history in general and the Roman Empire in particular.
Today, I’ll begin Reefer Men: The Rise and Fall of a Billionaire Drugs Ring, by Tony Thompson. The true story of a motley group of drug smugglers whose “one last haul,” the one that would allow them all to retire wealthy, went radically wrong, and they went on the lam for 15 years. Naturally, there’s a strong Bangkok connection. A friend recommended it after he reviewed it last year here in a local publication. (In fact, he slipped me the copy he reviewed, which he got for free from the publishers.)
In my friend’s review, he includes this: “Having gone through millions in mansions, yachts and racing cars, the Shaffer brothers copped a plea and were released in 1998. They launched their own entertainment company in Santa Monica. In 1999 they allegedly sold the film rights to their story for US$1 million. Brad Pitt was lined up to play Bill Shaffer and the project, provisionally titled Smugglers Moon, was due to begin filming after Ocean’s Eleven. The film has, however, stalled at the development stage and no progress has been made since the original announcement.”
Just finished Rain Fall by Barry Eisler. It wasn’t bad, although the tech in it is rather dubious. I usually try to let that stuff slide (although this was glaring.)
John Rain is an ex special forces soldier turned jazz-loving hit man. Part Japanese, part American, he now kills people in Tokyo. His rules are: No women, no children and every hit has to be “principle.”
Eisler peppers his work with Japanese phrases and descriptions of Tokyo and Japan (which I enjoyed, having been to Japan a few times.)
It was slow at times and I would go so far as to say it just wasn’t fast-paced enough to be a good spy novel.
Finished My Ántonia. I have realized that I have a weakness for 1800’s farming/homesteading coming-of-age type books. They always find a way to the top of the “to-read” pile.
In a rare moment of enabling, my husband was in a bookstore, called me and asked for some title suggestions that he could surprise me with. I mentioned that I had never read Tarzan. He came home with The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. Oh well, he tried. Great collection and fun enough to want to continue with the next volume.
The Book of Lost Things blew me away. Loved the grimness of the story and it ended just right.
The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti was also a wonderful read. An orphan is adopted by his ‘brother’ and he enters a life of thieves and con-artists. (There’s also a little resurrectionist action.)
Just finished my first Joe Pike novel (Elvis Cole’s sometime partner), The Watchman. I enjoyed it a lot, although I don’t know how Pike is going to develop as a main character. There was some effort to humanize him, but he is basically just a very efficient operator. With this character, if the plot’s good (this one was a tiny bit predictable) then the book will be good.
Now I am into some historical fiction by Alexandre Dumas. I was going to read The Man in the Iron Mask when I discovered at the bookstore that it is the third book of a trilogy. So I am starting at the beginning with The Vicomte de Bragelonne. All of these are sequels to The Three Musketeers, so the foursome is apparently getting back together for some more derring-do. 170 pages in and we have only actually seen Athos and D’Artagnan so far. Anyway, it’s a surprisingly good read, and I don’t even mind jumping to the back all the time to read the notes.
This book appears to be about the restoration of Charles II in England around 1660, but it’s also all a big setup for the climactic events in Iron Mask. The Vicomte title character, by the way, is the son of Athos, but he hasn’t done much yet. I mostly only have time to read on the commuter train and at lunch, but this is good enough that I’m wanting to spend more of my leisure time reading it.
Roddy
I like these too. Little House on the Prairie for adults. You might like The Homesman by Glendon Swarthout. A “homesman” was the guy who escorted women back east to civilization after homesteading life drove them crazy.
I’d like to hear about other titles in this genre.
Just finished my samurai book and am now moving on to London: A History. It’s less than 200 pages, so it will surely not be too in-depth. And that’s OK by me.
I’ve recently gotten into C.J. Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake series. I’ve just finished Sovereign and am anxiously awaiting the arrival of the next installment, Revelation, from amazon.co.uk.
Two days ago, I finished The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and (really) two minutes later started Unweaving the Rainbow, also by Dawkins. I’ve been reading a lot of Dawkins lately – his conversational style of writing about Heavy Stuff is breathtaking.
I’m also about halfway through Plum Pie by P.G. Wodehouse. Not one of his better efforts, I’d have to say – I’m enjoying the observations on American life interspersed between the short stories more than the stories themselves – but fair-to-middling Wodehouse is better than many writers’ best stuff.
I’ve read the entire Musketeers saga, and that last trilogy I read out of order: The Man in the Iron Mask (part 3), then The Vicomte de Bragelonne (1), then Louise de la Valliere (2), and years apart, due to the difficulty in finding them over here, although that’s improved dramatically in recent years. Still enjoyed it, though. That trilogy was published as all one book in French, I believe, called The Man in the Iron Mask, but the English publishers broke it up into three.
I’m about halfway into The Sparrow. I adore all the characters. Since I know that all of them (save one) will die, I’ve been torturing myself imagining how it will happen. If they’re dissected or eaten by the beings on Rakhut, I don’t think I’ll be able to bear it. But I’m staying away from Amazon and Wiki – I don’t want to know. Part of me wants to put the book down right now.
Eleanor of Aquitaine, what did you think was ridiculous about the plot? I’m okay with it so far, even with space travel via asteroid. But then I don’t nitpick science – I’ll accept anything.
Finished Spiritwalk last night. I like it better than Moonheart, but I don’t know why. I think it’s because I like Blue as the main character better than Sara and Kieran. He actually gets things done while the other two hem and haw and argue about which ancient Celtic bard they should follow.
Currently reading:
The Black Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon–I’ve had the other two books in the trilogy for years, but I only recently gave up on the used bookstore quest for this volume. I got it from Messrs. Barnes et Nobél instead. So far it’s great, better than I remembered.
Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruíz Zafon–I’m only about ten chapters into this, but it’s great as well. It’s hard to put this down.
Different Seasons by Stephen King–so far this is the only King book I’ve wanted for my very own. It’s the Apt Pupil cover, but that doesn’t change the stories inside any.
I’m okay with using the asteroid as a spaceship. The first place I was really pulled out of the story was the chapter where Jimmy realizes that the signal is coming from Alpha Centauri, he calls a handful of his friends over in the middle of the night to hear it, and within the space of a few hours the characters have seriously decided to immediately put together a mission to visit the aliens, which will be funded by the Jesuits and staffed by - themselves! It was just a shockingly unrealistic chapter, and it was a prelude to a highly unlikely mission.
But I loved the characters, too, and I really did like the book despite of several flaws I perceived in the plot. The writing is wonderful.
I’m reading Children of God now. It picks up immediately after the end of The Sparrow.
A thoroughly mediocre urban fantasy, Ms. Pratt tries way too hard to make most of her characters morally ambiguous. I’m not sure I caught her goal, but perhaps she just was trying to buck clichés. Regardless of her goal, it didn’t work for me. By making her main characters morally ambiguous, she made me not care one wit about the outcome.
I didn’t hate it, but can’t be bothered to read the sequels.
That part made me wish we had more background about what kind of shape the world was in at that time. It’s not that far in the future, but putting wood in a fireplace is verboten, some people (the vultures) are indentured servants, and other people (like Jimmy Quinn) are extremely well-educated but are grateful for crap jobs in their field.
The fact that this group of people saw nothing pie-in-the-sky about a mission and their place in it made me wonder if (1) space travel was commonplace, and (2) competent, educated people were rare. And it made me wonder how powerful the church was, that they could accomplish all that.
Good og, that would have been about 2000 pages. Surely it wasn’t one volume. Perhaps a distinction between a good old Victorian three-volume novel vs. what we call a trilogy.
I’m finding the book very enjoyable, although the pro-royalist divine-right-of-kings point of view of the main characters is a bit hard to swallow. I have to really suspend my political self while I’m reading.
Roddy
Yesterday I bought and read The Ridiculous Race. It is a really entertaining summer read. The tag of the book is “26,000 miles, 2 guys, 1 globe, no planes”. The ridiculous race is a race around the world between two men, one circumnavigating by heading west, the other heading east. The rules: no taking planes, first one back wins. The writers are professional writers in the television industry, one writing with My Name is Earl, the other with shows like American Dad. This is what they did on their summer vacation in 2007.
Amid the stack of other books I’m currently reading is An Imperial Possession by David Mattingly. It’s about Britain’s conquest and occupation by Rome. I’m about 100 pages in so far, and am quite impressed by the quality of the writing.
I adore all the characters. Since I know that all of them (save one) will die, I’ve been torturing myself imagining how it will happen. If they’re dissected or eaten by the beings on Rakhut, I don’t think I’ll be able to bear it. But I’m staying away from Amazon and Wiki – I don’t want to know. Part of me wants to put the book down right now.