Just finished World Made by Handby James Howard Kunstler, who has apparently written nonfiction books on our dependence on oil.
The novel is set a couple of decades into the future, after the oil-based economy is gone – and most of our infrastructure with it. It’s like life on the frontier, only with memories.
I didn’t find it completely bleak, so don’t want to call it dystopian – it’s an interesting look at what such a world would be like. The story itself is a recounting of various events over a month or two from the point of view of a guy living in a village in New York State.
Just finished a Dead Over Heals by Charlaine Harris.
I didn’t love it and will probably dodge her other stuff.
Am 2/3 through The Book Of Lies. Passable writing with an interesting premise. I mystery that links The Mark of Cain to the father of the creator of Superman.
Have just started Un Lun Don. I bought it in London and didn’t realize it is a children’s book. (not that that would have stopped me.) I don’t yet have an opinion.
By the end, this was better than I thought it would be. Some of his anecdotes are quite funny and many of his personal discoveries are very uplifting.
Started The Great Stink by Clare Clark this morning, a historical murder mystery. It’s set in 1855 in London. Specifically, London’s sewer system. It was recommended to me by someone who knew I liked a lot of David Liss’s stuff. The first 30 pages are promising.
I’ve read Sharpe and Aubrey/Maturin too, and it never ocurred to me to root for Napoleon.
Right now I’m reading Charlie Huston’s newest book, Every Last Drop. I’m hooked on his prose, even while cringing at some of his subject matter.
I finished another of Steven Saylor’s books, A Mist of Prophecies. It was interesting to see the famous Roman women take the spotlight, but this book isn’t one of the better entries in the Roma Sub Rosa series.
I ended up liking Mary Renault’s Fire from Heaven, so I’ve ordered the next in her trilogy about Alexander: The Persian Boy.
I read that! It is truly disgusting! Really, really gross! But engrossingly gross! You won’t want to put it down . . . but wash your hands after. It’s good!
Finished The Given Day. I like a book with lots of Bolsheviks, but this was just a mite too long. Two male lead characters, a black guy and a white guy, and the black guy’s story was more interesting. Would have liked more time with him and less with the white guy going around trying to infiltrate anarchist meetings. I’ve read better in that realm.
Going to start Trigger City, a detective thriller by Chicago author (and former PI) Sean Chercover.
Finished Bangkok Haunts, by John Burdett. Yet another farang male complimented me on the Skytrain for my choice of reading material. That one was definitely not the author, but I still think it may have been Burdett himself the first time. This never happens when I’m reading, say, Proust or Dumas.
The book was very good, Burdett is definitely the best of the local writers, but I felt a lot of the philosophizing toward the end fell rather flat. Still, I enjoyed it a lot, and it’s a great read for anyone familiar with Bangkok – and Phnom Penh in this case – or who wants to be. Once again, Burdett does a mix of real and made up. Rawhide Bar in Soi Cowboy is mentioned, and that’s a real place. A good bar, too, and usually open after hours. And the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Phnom Penh is a great place to hang out for a beer while staring at the street life and river below. But the Parthenon Club in the book is obviously modeled on Bangkok’s Pegasus Club. The Grand Britannia Hotel could be either the Sheraton Grande or the Westin Grande, which are pretty much across the street from each other. I was curious about one obvious mistake he made: Turning right onto Sukhumvit Road from Soi Asoke wil take you away from Soi 26, not toward it.
And the short-time hotel in the Nana area that featured a gynecological chair in each room. There’s no doubt about which place that is: The Playboy Hotel, called the PB for short. In a side lane branching off of Sukhumvit Soi 3, the first side lane north of the Grace Hotel. Rooms for three hours and each one does indeed feature a gynecological chair in addition to a bed. Or, er, so I’ve been told. Actually, the PB has been around for years and years, and I used to go there a lot back in my salad days. Those chairs can be a lot of fun, so much so that I’ve always wondered why none of the other hundreds of other love hotels ever duplicated it, but none seem to have. I don’t go there anymore these days, but I am reliably informed by those who do that the chairs are still there.
Finished *The Book Of Lies. *
As mentioned above passable writing with an interesting premise. I mystery that links The Mark of Cain to the father of the creator of Superman.
I didn’t really see the ending coming, but was disappointed none-the-less. It was ok, but not a book I’ll keep or recommend.
Just finished The Once and Future King, by T.H. White, and really really liked it. If you’re the person who mentioned it here recently, thank you!
I also read Earthquake Weather by Tim Powers. Although I read it in almost one sitting in a quiet hotel room, it was murder trying to grasp what the hell was going on. What I did understand was interesting, but mostly it was just a joyless struggle. I’m torn about this author and had just decided to give him up for a while, when I got to the library and found that I have one more book by him in my TBR pile. If I have other stuff to read, I think I’ll skip this one when its turn comes.
Finished The Great Stink and that was a good description of it, Sigmagirl. There were parts in the middle that I thought were really slow, but the ending more than made up for it.
Started The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul. Already loving it.
That sounds really interesting. I’ve put it on my wish list.
I’m almost finished with a re-read of Sharon Kay Penman’s Time and Chance, the second novel in her series about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. It’s great, but I’ve been reading a lot of historical fiction lately so I’ll probably switch over to some other genre before starting her new book, Devil’s Brood, which I’m greatly looking forward to. I’ve heard that Penman has contracted to write a fourth novel in this series called Lionheart, about Eleanor and John and Richard.
(Does anybody else like to swap genres frequently? I like to make radical jumps, like from space opera to Regency romance to something with vampires.)
I gotta mix it up – otherwise I get the books confused. In September I read literary fiction, SF, epic fantasy, and a historical mystery.
I’m still reading The Bonehunters (Steven Erikson) – after that it’s Dracula for a group read.
The latest issue of Bookmarks had some recommendations for historical fiction – my wish list is growing. I’m most looking forward to Drood by Dan Simmons – something about Dickens and a train accident he was in.
Just finished The Crook Factory by Dan Simmons. It takes place in Havana, Cuba, during the first year of World War Two, J. Edgar Hoover has sent the protagonist down to find out what Ernest Hemingway is doing.
Seems the writer has established his own intelligence operation to spy on the Germans, and if possible, sink one or more of their U-boats.
Currently reading Guyland : the perilous world where boys become men, by Michael S. Kimmel. So far, it’s making me even gladder than usual to be female. I hope by the end it will give me some tips on how to make sure my sweet twelve year old boy doesn’t become any more of a jerk than he has to be.
Zotti’s The Barn House has just showed up near the bottom of my TBR pile. I haven’t decided yet whether I will read out of order to get to it faster. Probably not; my reading time is short and I’m always racing against my library due dates.
I was about to begin Stephen King and Peter Straub’s Black House as my car audiobook, but had to ditch it. It takes me about ten minutes to drive home from work, and although I started listening at the beginning of my drive, when I got home I was still hearing the description of the town. Besides, I’ve already read the book. The fact that I don’t really remember it is a bad sign.
At least I’ll take a recommendation from Mr. King, and get Robert Goddard’s Into the Blue instead.
Well i didnt, at first, but it got to the point where reading the battles wasnt much fun, the british do not lose one single battle in all the Sharpe series!, it got boring.
Besides, the American point of view towards the Napoleonic wars probably favors the British, not being of Anglo Saxon descent, i am a bit more impartial (i think), I still think it was better for the British to win those wars, but i’ll love to read something told from the opposite POV.
Finished Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis, and enjoyed it thoroughly. I’ve always been particularly interested in the decade of the 1920s but never gotten around to reading any Lewis. I liked it so much that I went out and bought up a bunch of his other books. (Our private library here has none.)
Next up is Lewis’ Main Street, his big breakthrough novel and listed as #68 on the Random House Modern Library list of the top 100 books of the 20th century. I’ve read it’s not as broadly comic as Babbitt.
Now reading Dana Cameron’s mystery Site Unseen (I got it from her at the Salem Literary Fest, and she autographed it).
And Walter H. Hunt’s military SF novel The Dark Path. He’s going to be at this year’s Arisia, and a friend of mine says he knows him, so I want to brush up.
To finish up the month, I read Erasure by Percival Everett, which was pretty decent – about an author who is having a hard time getting a publisher to accept his most recent book because it isn’t “black enough,” so out of spite he writes an over-the-top fake memoir of life in the ghetto. Even more, I enjoyed the parts about his family, he has a widowed mother suffering from Alzheimer’s and it’s so sad and so good.
Also, Fox, Swallow, Scarecrow by Eilis Ni Dhuibhne, it’s a modern version of the Anna Karenina love stories set in Ireland. I didn’t think it was great, but it was sufficiently good.
Usually every year for Halloween I reread Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin, but I couldn’t find my copy (in the aftermath of a recent move) so I picked up her Secret Country instead, which so far is AWESOME. Young adult fantasy fiction. That must be a theme, I’m also reading the second Percy Jackson & the Young Olympians book.
I started Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer but I’m having a hard time getting into it. Which is weird because I like beer.
It’s good!
Actually, the PB has been around for years and years, and I used to go there a lot back in my salad days. Those chairs can be a lot of fun, so much so that I’ve always wondered why none of the other hundreds of other love hotels ever duplicated it, but none seem to have. I don’t go there anymore these days, but I am reliably informed by those who do that the chairs are still there.