Audiobook - The Kingdom: A Fargo Adventure, by Clive Cussler & Grant Blackwood. Typical Cussler storylines; something to while away the time on my walks if I don't want to listen to music. The 70th Week: The Wrath of the Lamb, by Ivan Latham. I was loaned this e-book, what I believe is the first in a series about the end-times. Not my typical fare, but at least it was short.
Donna Leon, Death in a Strange Country. I was hoping for a Nesbo novel, but that's out of the library. If I get to the bookstore, I'll grab Red Breast. Leon is pretty solid though. She keeps it moving and does a good job with the characters and with the plot. Pretty much what you need in a police procedural. And a bit old, but not all that dated (pretty surprsing, given that it's all magazine journalism) Gay Talese, Fame and Obscurity. I came across three references in a day to his essay "Mr. Sinatra Has a Cold," so I decided to check this out. Really good. Haven't read the Sinatra piece, but the one about Joe Dimaggio would be worth the price of the book.
Just cracked open Roth's Nemesis. Not a huge fan of his but something always brings me back to reading him and this short novel has started well.....
Talese graduated from the University of Alabama and is apparently a pretty big football fan. He was in a documentary about the Alabama/Auburn rivalry a few years ago and he made some pretty amazing jabs at Auburn. Funny guy.
Finished it last night. It's actually 3 different collections. One part is a collection of his celebrity profiles (Sinatra, Dimaggio, Joe Louis, etc), another part covers profiles of people associated with building the Varrazano Narrows bridge, and the 3rd part is a series of reflections about New York. The funniest passage from that section, in retrospect, is his pointing out that there are actually six tattoo artists working on Manhatten. As if you were supposed to be surprised that there were any. Now, there are at least 10 times that many working at 3:45 a.m. It's amazing how many New Yorker writers come from the provinces. There are a ton of them from The Right Prep School plus Harvard, but for every one of them, you have someone like Talese, or Thurber from Ohio State, EB White from, horror of horrors, Cornell. Not sure if the latter two ever produced comparable smackdowns of Michigan or of Dartmouth, though.
Working my way through Titus Andronicus now... It's extremely graphic and violent for Shakespeare, but supposedly very popular in its day. I like it!
The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach. Excellent first novel about a fictional small college in the Upper Midwest (not unlike the one I went to), a shortstop, the college president, and some other characters. Highly recommended.
I read that last year. I liked it quite a bit. It surprised me when I started to come across some negative reviews (esp. customer reviews or comments beneath reviews). Boy, this book inspired some serious envy. I mean, it's not perfect, but like you said, it's an excellent first novel.
Yeah. I think it gets maybe a little too verbose in some parts toward the end, but otherwise great. HBO is turning into a miniseries, I've read. I couldn't help but cast all the characters with Friday Night Lights veterans, heh.
Finished two e-books in last two days: Plague of the green man, by Ellen Foster Chimpanzees in dungarees, by Chris Whitfield The first was part of the Lady Appolonia medieval mystery series, the first of which I read last week. In both books by Foster the plot outlines were good but I was disappointed by how simplistic the characters were, in many respects. The good ones were almost always 100% totally forthright, humble, eager-to-please, golly-gee-whiz types. The villians were the exact opposite, except for one, but it was not hard to figure out he was not what he appeared to be. I will not be reading any more she writes. Even with free downloads I have my limits. The Whitfield book is a look at many things British that have gone by the wayside during the author's lifetime (50s - present). It is an entertaining read, quite hilarious in spots, and many of the things he references you are either directly familiar with or can relate to because of the things he describes. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a quick, lighthearted read. Very enjoyable.
As irksome as terms like "gonzo journalism" can be, totally applies here: Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, by Nick Tosches Pretty compelling--if HIGHLY indulgent--bio of Dean Martin. Nice bit of alternate US history packed in between the delirious descriptions of Martin's self-absorbed perp-walk to stardom. I've been dipping in and out of it for weeks, which seems like a fine way to get through it. And. The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö Having powered through the majority of Elmore Leonard's stuff this past year, I found this as a recommended similar fix. Halfway through it; pretty good so far. No goddam spoilers, please. PS: New Michael Chabon coming out soon. a) I'm a big fan. b) He lives in my neighborhood and his next book is set on Telegraph Avenue, which is basically my daily thoroughfare. Whee!
Two going. Another Donna Leon novel about Inspector Brunneti of the Venice police. Like I've said, I'm not a huge fan of police procedurals, but she does a really good job with character and plot, and a lot of the novel is devoted to life outside the police station without the by-now cliched story of the hard drinking cop struggling with his addictions and failing personal life. Anyway, Acqua Alta Also, on the verge of finishing an in interesting meditation on time and culture in the modern world, A Sideways Look at Time by Jay Griffiths Damn good, IMO.
I read and enjoyed The New Space Opera, V. 2 a couple years ago and finally tracked down the original volume. The stories were slightly stronger overall. Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d'Art by Christopher Moore Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 by Gordon Wood Feels more like a summary that I really like. I hope it gets better as move out of the 1790s into material I don't know as well.
According to the dust jacket, it's a portion of Liberty as the Goddess of Youth giving support to the bald eagle by Edward Savage. Apparently, it was a pretty common motif at the time.
I finished up all of the Longmire books, and enjoyed them all with the possible exception of the latest. Always interesting to have an author write in the introduction that this is the most ambitious book yet, and have it be less than the others. I don't know, perhaps the critics disagree, but it's the interaction of the cast of characters that really make it work for me, and the quirks of the town; the last one's based loosely around/inspired by Dante's Inferno and is mostly the title character on his own pursuing a criminal through the snowy, stormy mountains. Actually a new one came out in May - As the Crow Flies - but my library doesn't have it and I am not interested in buying the hard cover. The books ruined the tv series for me though, which is odd since I checked out the books because of the tv series. The complexity doesn't work so well when summed up in a tidy 44 minutes on A&E. I watched 7 of the 10 with my wife and we have the other 3 on the DVR, but I may decide to pass and let the books "be" the show for me.
Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds is set in the same universe as his Revelation Space, which I posted hear a year or two ago, only more complicated and formally ambitious.
Satish Kumar, Path Without Destination. It's an interesting autobiography of a man who starts out as a Jainist, then influenced by Gandhi, joins an ashram that actively works on behalf of the untouchable class in India. He winds up in England working with the "Small is Beautiful" movement. Pretty compelling so far.
Rough Country by John Sandford Reading this as practice for the novel I'm working on, I'm enjoying it much more than Sandford's Davenport Prey series. Lots of suspects, seemingly simple murder delivered with Sandford's usual insights into the attitudinally-challenged criminal mind. Several passages where I find myself thinking: I wish I'd written than....