It was a bad year for reading and for blogging. First of all, I simply didn't find enough good new books this year. Partly this is financial. I did not buy as much this year. Also, some of the titles I did buy simply were not very good.
For the first time in many years, it looks like I will not make the goal of reading 52 new books this year.
I have been reading, and I do have eleven days off before the end of the year, so I will have a couple more titles to add to my total, but right now I have only gotten to 36, so it seems unlikely.
What was good? Well, this year I was very much impressed with Gillian Flynn. I did write about her first book, Sharp Objects, and her third one, Gone Girl, was simply stellar. In talking with a colleague about it, I admitted it was a hard book to recommend because it's hard to know what to say without giving anything away. It is so full of surprises that I needed to take extreme care.
I did pick up a couple of books by favorite authors -- new John Sandfords, new one by Kathy Reichs, whose books about forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan is the basis for the TV series Bones. I think, however, that I prefer the books to the show, as the novels seem a bit more realistic to me.
I've sampled a lot of YA stuff this year - missing Harry Potter and Hunger Games books, I am looking for alternatives but not much has worked. I did see a good review of the new Cathrynne Valente book about Fairyland, so I read the first one. It was okay - if you liked the Oz books (again, very different from the movie), you might like her books. While they were okay, for me there wasn't anything much to get excited about.
I did finish the Matched trilogy by Ally Condie. The first book, Matched, was terrific. The second one, Crossed, suffered the fate of many middle chapters - just a long bridge that went not much of anywhere. The final volume is Reached. It was better but still did not live up to the promise of the first book. I actually re-read the Hunger Games series this year and I feel the same way about it. I still feel that the first book is the best.
Another series, Acacia, by David Anthony Durham, got better. The final book was as good as the first and second ones. Nicely done. It was thick going for a while because of the large cast of characters, but it turned out much better than I had thought.
Finally, I picked up volumes 4-6 of Naomi Novik's dragon series. Interesting premise - that the English and French have dragons as part of their armies during Napoleon's war of conquest. Our hero is an English dragonrider whose dragon was actually captured in the egg from a French ship. Together, Will and Temeriare have grand adventures and travel as far as China in the various books. Again, some are excellent, some not so much, but worthwhile overall.
I am certainly looking forward to a better year up ahead. Perhaps I will find an author that I love with extensive backlist and will read myself silly next year.
Happy days...
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Sharp Objects
Gillian Flynn is the next new great writer, apparently - at least, her newest book, Gone Girl, has gotten saturation coverage in Entertainment Weekly and either Time or Newsweek. I also read the Atlantic and the New Yorker, so it might be in one of those as well. All I know is that any book getting the big publisher's push will have multiple reviews in the same week and I know it is meant to be the next big thing.
But in her case, it might be worth it. I was pleased to see she had backlist - her breakout book is actually her third novel, so I picked up the earlier two (which are in paperback) to see if it would be worth my while to invest in the hardcover. Writers generally get better, book by book, but if her first novel was horrible, I would guess that I would not like the third one either.
Good news - Sharp Objects is brilliant. It contains a murder mystery, but it surpasses that genre by also being a relationship novel and a psychological exploration of the main character.
Camille is the eldest in the family, the bastard child of a small town's princess. Her mother, Adora, was the only child of the owner of the town's main employer - the owner of the pork processing plant. Camille's grandparents died before she was two and her mother found a bland and inoffensive -- and also rich -- husband to rule with her. In due time, they produced a half-sister, Marian. After Marian's death, much later, they produced yet another daughter, Amma.
By that time, though, Camille had escaped the town in southern Missouri for Chicago, where she tries to build a career as a crime reporter. But the murders of two pre-adolescent girls in her home town results in her editor sending her back into the unhealthy stew of memory.
This weekend, I plan to begin the next book, Dark Places, hoping it reads as well.
---
Other books since the last entry include: Vitals by Greg Bear (terrible); The Bourne Deception by Eric Van Lustbader (mediocre); and Treasure Island, Storm Surge, A Room Full of Bones, and The Beautiful Mystery.
But in her case, it might be worth it. I was pleased to see she had backlist - her breakout book is actually her third novel, so I picked up the earlier two (which are in paperback) to see if it would be worth my while to invest in the hardcover. Writers generally get better, book by book, but if her first novel was horrible, I would guess that I would not like the third one either.
Good news - Sharp Objects is brilliant. It contains a murder mystery, but it surpasses that genre by also being a relationship novel and a psychological exploration of the main character.
Camille is the eldest in the family, the bastard child of a small town's princess. Her mother, Adora, was the only child of the owner of the town's main employer - the owner of the pork processing plant. Camille's grandparents died before she was two and her mother found a bland and inoffensive -- and also rich -- husband to rule with her. In due time, they produced a half-sister, Marian. After Marian's death, much later, they produced yet another daughter, Amma.
By that time, though, Camille had escaped the town in southern Missouri for Chicago, where she tries to build a career as a crime reporter. But the murders of two pre-adolescent girls in her home town results in her editor sending her back into the unhealthy stew of memory.
This weekend, I plan to begin the next book, Dark Places, hoping it reads as well.
---
Other books since the last entry include: Vitals by Greg Bear (terrible); The Bourne Deception by Eric Van Lustbader (mediocre); and Treasure Island, Storm Surge, A Room Full of Bones, and The Beautiful Mystery.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice
I should know better. Anne Rice wrote some interesting books earlyin her career, but even in the best of her books, she had a tendency to concentrate on description and sacrificing story and character.
I very much liked this in a couple of books, such as Belinda, where the lush descriptions of the protagonist's surroundings made sense as he was an artist. But in The Wolf Gift, she obviously has decided to save a lot of the story for the sequel(s), so she spends a lot of time describing a house. A big house. It has a lot of rooms in it. A lot of different furniture. Heavy silverware and lots of beautiful china. At first, it has no TVs but after the caretaker follows instructions, there are flat screen TVs.
Ok, yes, there is a dreamy young man named Reuben, younger son of a rich family in San Francisco, who is a poet by nature but is dabbling as a reporter, and he is visiting this historic home to write a story about it. He and his hostess are attacked in the night. She is killed. He is badly bitten by some kind of monster. Over the next few days, he heals remarkably quickly, finds out he turns into a Man Wolf every night, and is compelled to attack and kill evildoers and rescue victims.
Everything else is this naive young man reveling in his change. I allow a couple of "gimmes" in a book like this - I will buy the first premise to allow the author to tell her story - but if she then fails to justify the rest of her story, if she makes people react to her premise with false emotion, then I am done. In this case, when Reuben, as the Man Wolf, comes upon a house in the forest where a woman lives alone, and she sees him and has absolutely no surprise or fear, and welcomes him into her house and into her bed, the only response I can make to that is, "Oh, come on!" If I hadn't been reading it on my Nook, I would have slammed the book shut.
Waste of time.
I very much liked this in a couple of books, such as Belinda, where the lush descriptions of the protagonist's surroundings made sense as he was an artist. But in The Wolf Gift, she obviously has decided to save a lot of the story for the sequel(s), so she spends a lot of time describing a house. A big house. It has a lot of rooms in it. A lot of different furniture. Heavy silverware and lots of beautiful china. At first, it has no TVs but after the caretaker follows instructions, there are flat screen TVs.
Ok, yes, there is a dreamy young man named Reuben, younger son of a rich family in San Francisco, who is a poet by nature but is dabbling as a reporter, and he is visiting this historic home to write a story about it. He and his hostess are attacked in the night. She is killed. He is badly bitten by some kind of monster. Over the next few days, he heals remarkably quickly, finds out he turns into a Man Wolf every night, and is compelled to attack and kill evildoers and rescue victims.
Everything else is this naive young man reveling in his change. I allow a couple of "gimmes" in a book like this - I will buy the first premise to allow the author to tell her story - but if she then fails to justify the rest of her story, if she makes people react to her premise with false emotion, then I am done. In this case, when Reuben, as the Man Wolf, comes upon a house in the forest where a woman lives alone, and she sees him and has absolutely no surprise or fear, and welcomes him into her house and into her bed, the only response I can make to that is, "Oh, come on!" If I hadn't been reading it on my Nook, I would have slammed the book shut.
Waste of time.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
11/22/63
I indulged in this latest Stephen King "what if" historical fiction novel for my Nook. There is a distinct line between King's horror novels and his speculative fiction, in my mind, and the latter to me are much more interesting reads. I don't find the gore all that interesting - although I have read some of them in the past.
In this book, King poses the question that many in our generation have undoubtedly wondered about - "what if JFk's assassination didn't happen?". As information has emerged in the last fiftysome years about Kennedy's personal life, I think many people have realized that a part of the charm and reverence with which we regarded President Kennedy had a lot to do with the fact that he left us too soon. I remember thinking just recently that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 might not have made it with Kennedy as President - as a Northeastern elitist, I am not sure he could have sold it in the south the way that Johnson, the Texan, did.
But of course the fun of King's writing is not about the high level overview, but in the life and experience of one ordinary guy who is faced with the opportunity and the challenge of living in the past, tracking Lee Harvey Oswald, spying with technology that is far more primitive than what he would have available in 2011. And Jake, a high school English teacher, is not prepared for much of what he has to do to survive while waiting for his moment.
One common return-to-the-past trope is the idea of funding your life by betting on things you know will happen - sports events, election results, and so forth. But even if the past is unchanged by your entry into it, King also pinpoints another problem - bookies don't like people who win these kind of bets. There isn't a safe yet anonymous way to do something like that in the 1960s.
Altogether, I think King posed some good questions and stayed true to the consequences of his premise. An enjoyable read.
Reading now, reviewing later: The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice; The Memoirs of John F. Kennedy by Donald James Lawn; Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.
In this book, King poses the question that many in our generation have undoubtedly wondered about - "what if JFk's assassination didn't happen?". As information has emerged in the last fiftysome years about Kennedy's personal life, I think many people have realized that a part of the charm and reverence with which we regarded President Kennedy had a lot to do with the fact that he left us too soon. I remember thinking just recently that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 might not have made it with Kennedy as President - as a Northeastern elitist, I am not sure he could have sold it in the south the way that Johnson, the Texan, did.
But of course the fun of King's writing is not about the high level overview, but in the life and experience of one ordinary guy who is faced with the opportunity and the challenge of living in the past, tracking Lee Harvey Oswald, spying with technology that is far more primitive than what he would have available in 2011. And Jake, a high school English teacher, is not prepared for much of what he has to do to survive while waiting for his moment.
One common return-to-the-past trope is the idea of funding your life by betting on things you know will happen - sports events, election results, and so forth. But even if the past is unchanged by your entry into it, King also pinpoints another problem - bookies don't like people who win these kind of bets. There isn't a safe yet anonymous way to do something like that in the 1960s.
Altogether, I think King posed some good questions and stayed true to the consequences of his premise. An enjoyable read.
Reading now, reviewing later: The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice; The Memoirs of John F. Kennedy by Donald James Lawn; Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Year End Summary
Well, for the first time in many years, I did not reach my goal of reading 52 books in a year - I only finished 51. Why? Partly that I spent time re-reading books I had already read, such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which I re-read after seeing the movie. And I read the Game of Thrones series again after the HBO miniseries and before the fifth book came out this summer. But I also confess that I have simply less time to read now. With a new exercise program that gets me up at 5:30 am each day, I am fading into sleepiness earlier in the evenings and it just means I don't have as much time to read.
I did not write many reviews this year for the same reason.
That being said, what did I read this year that I liked? I did read Anne of Green Gables, a classic I had somehow missed and a book recommended to me by one of my pen pals. I also read the follow-up, Anne of Avonlea. They were fine, and I can see that if I had read these in my younger years, they probably would have been some of my favorites. Not so much now that I am 50+.
Late in the year I discovered another fantasy series that I liked, by NK Jemisin, The Hundred Kingdoms series. One selling point is that the series includes people of color as major characters. It is unfortunate that this is unusual.
I also read an interesting literary novel, Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones, which is about an African-American man with two wives and two daughters. The first half of the book is from the point of view of one daughter, the second half from the other one. An interesting novel.
I also read the second book in the YA series, Matched, called Crossed. Not as good as the first one, which set up the restrictive society. The second novel concerned the heroine's escape from that society into the wilderness and was not nearly as unique or believable.
Not a bad year, all in all, but certainly there was very little that I read that I will remember, or want to read again.
I did not write many reviews this year for the same reason.
That being said, what did I read this year that I liked? I did read Anne of Green Gables, a classic I had somehow missed and a book recommended to me by one of my pen pals. I also read the follow-up, Anne of Avonlea. They were fine, and I can see that if I had read these in my younger years, they probably would have been some of my favorites. Not so much now that I am 50+.
Late in the year I discovered another fantasy series that I liked, by NK Jemisin, The Hundred Kingdoms series. One selling point is that the series includes people of color as major characters. It is unfortunate that this is unusual.
I also read an interesting literary novel, Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones, which is about an African-American man with two wives and two daughters. The first half of the book is from the point of view of one daughter, the second half from the other one. An interesting novel.
I also read the second book in the YA series, Matched, called Crossed. Not as good as the first one, which set up the restrictive society. The second novel concerned the heroine's escape from that society into the wilderness and was not nearly as unique or believable.
Not a bad year, all in all, but certainly there was very little that I read that I will remember, or want to read again.
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