I’m looking for a new read but haven’t decided on anything yet. I started reading The a bear and the nightingale for a book circle but didn’t like it. I’m thinking of giving up.
Finished Dostoevsky’s Crime And Punishment yesterday, having alternated a bit between audiobook and Kindle versions in the last few days. The book is mostly characters chatting, often for several pages each at a stretch. It sometimes feels like it should have been a play and therefore a small fraction of the length. But I gave it four out of five anyway. Currently reading Troll Nation by Amanda Marcotte, which I’ll probably alternate with The Flame by Leonard Cohen and the remainder of Salvation by Peter F Hamilton.
I think there are at least 2 more books planned. Joss Whedon will be a consulting editor on the new Firefly novels, and they will all be official stories within the canon of the franchise.
First Man, the Neil Armstrong biography that the movie was based on. I'm still very early into it, but even in the prologue it gives much more detail than we ever see on screen. It's very good!
Just started "Leviathan Wakes" by James S.A. Corey. I'm only two chapters in but the writing pulled me in right away.
Just picked up books 6 & 7 of Elizabeth Moon's VATTA WAR series, so I'm re-reading the first five from the beginning. I stayed up all night with my NOOK reading TRADING IN DANGER. I tried reading the hard-cover, but my eyes aren't any good up-close anymore. I hate getting old......
I am currently reading ‘The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington’ by Joanna Moorhead. It is a biography about an artist/writer who should be better known than she is. I have read Leonora’s novel ‘The Hearing Trumpet’ and also a book of her complete short stories and reading her biography helps me make more sense of those short stories. Joanna Moorhead is her great niece and Joanna knew very little about her at first behind the fact that Leonora had run away from her wealthy British family when she was 20 and ended in Mexico. My current audiobook is ‘Ordeal by Innocence’ by Agatha Christie.
Orbs III by Nicholas Sansbury Smith. I’m kinda committed to finishing the series because it’s an engaging read. But the plot is definitely not very plausible.
I just finished reading the Kindle version ‘The Whisperer’ by Karin Fossum which was released earlier this month. Fossum is so good as portraying the mental illnesses that many of her characters suffer from. Now I am listening to ‘Black Snake’ by Leo Kennedy, narrated by Gareth Rickard. It is a book about Australian bushranger/outlaw Ned Kelly. This book is a bit different from other books as it was written by the great grandson of one of the policemen Ned Kelly murdered back in 1888, Sergeant Michael Kennedy. The book is written from the Kennedy family’s point of view and it looks at the impact Kennedy’s murder had on the family. I have always maintained that one might be able to argue that the first two policemen Kelly killed could be regarded as form of self defence (though even this is iffy) but IMO Kennedy’s death was certainly murder.
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton. I’m only in the beginning of the book but it’s a pretty dull read thus far.
Bill Bryson’s short biography of Shakespeare, part of the Eminent Lives series. It’s short because there’s a dearth of I nformation about the Bard (though not compared to other well-known figures of the time), so Bryson widens the net and provides background relating to the City of London, living conditions, the theatrical scene and even diet in order to provide educated speculation regarding how Shakespeare lived, what he knew, the people with whom he was familiar and the extent and nature of that familiarity. Good stuff.
I love me some Bill Bryson! I think he's brilliant. I was first introduced to him via his book about the English language and then A Walk in the Woods. I started reading Stephen King's latest, Elevation, but I soon found out the book had binding errors making it unreadable. At page 56, it stops and goes all the way back to page 26. Then it repeats up to page 56 again, then jumps to page 89, effectively getting parts of chapter 1 and 2 twice. I'm effectively missing a huge chunk of the story. Bought at Costco and will be returning it.
Bill Bryson is getting cranky as he gets older. Some of his latest books have a more critical view than his earlier books, I feel. I just finished Robots vs. Slime Monsters by A. Lee Martinez
I am halfway through ‘Verses for the Dead’ which is the newest book in the Pendergast series by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. I am really enjoying it so far.