What are you reading?

I've put aside The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber. I didn't find enough sympathy for any of the characters. It's a long one, and might develop some needed warmth later on, but it is now on my "when in a drought" list.

Instead I am re-reading Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler, from the same bookstore's freebie shelf, because I knew I'd enjoy it.

I also just began The Rainbow Singer, by Simon Kerr which looks like fun.

I'm about 2/3 of the way through White Horse, by AW's own Alex Adams.

'Nothing to be frightened of', Julian Barnes.

It's about death. It is something to be frightened of.

Reading Dead ever After at the moment, though I read the spoilers, apparently its a bit of a let down by Charlaine Harris, however I have been reading them for ten years, I'm not giving up until the end

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe - Carson McCullers

Island 731 by Jeremy Robinson and Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Just finished reading The Mystery Woman by Amanda Quick. Have several others going at the moment, but I'd have to get up to double check the titles.

Hard Revolution - George Pelecanos

The Black Echo by Michael Connelly. I haven't read many non-SFF mystery/ crime books, but I'm really enjoying it.

Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt

This guy's good!

The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. Second time reading it. First time was over 20 years ago.

I just started Dalek Generation by Nicholas Briggs. yes, I'm a doctor Who nut.

Enduring Love - Ian McEwan

Reading One Shot now, Lee Child. Lighter fare. The big guy's gonna kick butt; after The Road, I need that.

Wool by Hugh Howey. I like the premise, I like the characters, I like the world-building - I'm not fond of the writing style. Repetitive and stage-directiony. Was it re-edited after it was picked up by a publisher, or is it the self-pub ms, I wonder. Seems it could use another edit or two.

But it keeps me reading.

WOOL is supposed to be really good. Maybe I'll put that on my virtual "To Read" list. . .

I've been reading lots of books lately and just wanted to make some quick comments on them.

Read the first two books in the Kate Daniels series and enjoyed them both a great deal, although there was a pretty big plot flub at the climax of the first one (that or else I just didn't get it). Curran (leading male / Beast Lord) is a blondie so that's kind of refreshing amid so many dark-haired leading men in many books (though I do love dark hair myself, I admit) plus he just cracks me up. I love him. And his name. Very cool. And Kate's such a smart-mouth, but I'm lovin' it, too.

After reading Dan Simmons' The Fall of Hyperion some time back, I'm now reading plain ole' Hyperion and am liking it, though not quite as much as Fall. I drooled over Fall, cursed Dan Simmons' writing ability and beautiful prose and then wept. Okay, not really, but I fell in lurv with that thing. Still, I've flown through this one and am very nearly done so I do obviously really enjoy it. I love the farcasters. And their name as well - curse you, Dan Simmons with your cool names for everything!!!

Okay, done with my adoration/envy thing for Dan and onto the next...

I read Angel's Ink by Jocelynn (sp?) Drake and have mixed feelings about it. The concept was cool - magic tats? say it ain't so! As were the various creatures who inhabit Drake's world (OCD vamps and trolls, oh my!). But the plot? It was disjointed, to say the least. There was a lot of stuff happening, but it didn't seem to coalesce into what I could call a unifying plot. Just felt like jumping from one crisis to another with no connection in between them. But for His Noodliness' sake, it was the sentence constructions that drove me crazy!

On-the-fly example of the kind of thing I'm talking about:

Turning the page, I saw that there was yet another awkward sentence construction not two paragraphs from the one I was reading. Breathing a sigh of disappointment, I plodded on. Knowing it was useless, I gave up and flopped onto the bed, landing on my cat. Flipping the tabby the bird, I scooped him up and dropped him to the floor where he of course landed on all fours. Muttering to myself, I inspected the fresh scratches on my behind. Frowning, I realized the marks weren't from the cat at all, but rather from the whip Julian had used on me so skillfully a fortnight ago. Grinning from ear to ear - which is quite doable, just ask Joker! - I drifted into the memory of it: of Julian's lean, dark body, of the braided leather whip whistling through the air on its way to beat sharp, staccato notes against my creamy, porcelain skin, of his primal grunts and my more feminine yelps, of velvet tongues and sudden snakes, of cotton boxers and hippy shakes, of thrust and parry and of tease and tarry, of worlds colliding and zippers sliding, of headboards groaning and lovers moaning, and...

And I'm getting carried away.

This type of sentence construction, which I've so aptly demonstrated above, started to irritate me so much that I had to do many stops and starts over the course of reading the thing. Which is a damn shame because it was quite action-packed and like I said, the concept was cool.

So anyway, it was alright but the prose could definitely have been much better. And now onto a book whose prose is wonderful, but whose plot is, well - I don't think it's there at all.

The name of the book is A Galaxy Unknown and it started out so, so well with vivid description and impending danger and then kersplat! It took a nose-dive. Still haven't finished it. And that's because the story never started.

Oh, and I have a Nook now and I love it! Much to my surprise. Her name is Snooki.

Also, I am hung over today.

That is all.

Inferno - Dan Brown. Should finish it today actually.

I'm reading 'Wool' also, though I'm at the very, very beginning. I just finished 'Looking for Alaska' by John Green and I'm going to begin 'Love, Aubrey'.

The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, Amy-Jill Levine, Kindle edition.

Illuminating. Complex history written with grace and clarity.

--Ken

I'm currently reading Secret Weapons of WWII by William Yenne, and I have some very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I really want to like this book. It's about a topic that I find fascinating, and it has a lot of potential. On the other hand, there are some serious scientific errors in the first three pages that make me worry about the reliability of the rest of the book. The author appears to have done some very cursory research on the subject of nuclear reactors, found out that moderators are used to slow neutrons, and decided that meant that they are used to slow the reaction. Without going too into it, that's the opposite of the truth. Had he chosen to do much research at all, I feel like he would have noticed that. It kind of baffles me how that slipped past editing.

Savages - Don Winslow

Okay, I picked up The Crimson Petal and the White again, got further into it, I see why it's good, one of the characters at least holds some interest for me at this point, so, onward.

Just starting book five of A Song of Ice and Fire.

Snow by Orhan Pamuk.

I was looking for books that do omni POV really well, and this one is a great example. The key? Keep the omni portions where the narrator explains stuff brief--probably only a hundred or two words at a time before returning to what could be any 3rd POV.