In what format are you reading it? Is it the first time you've read it. How did you hear about it? Do you think you will finish it? Did you pay full price for it if you bought it?
I am listening to STATE OF WONDER by Ann Patchett on audio from my library.
I am reading HE DIED WITH HIS EYES OPEN, by Derek Raymond, which I bought at a used bookstore about three years ago.
So far, neither has grabbed me, but I soldier on. What about you?
40 comments:
I'm reading CLOUD ATLAS in my preferred format, an old-fashioned trade paperback. I'm almost exactly 1/2 way through.
Now that is one I have been meaning to read for years.
I want to read that one too...
I'm reading Harlan Coben's new YA SECONDS AWAY. I was lucky enough to be sent the galley to review, since it's not out until next month. Just started it, so far, it's good.
Just finishing Walt Kelly's IMPOLLUTABLE POGO in paperback. Bedtime reading is a paperback of Stephen King's DREAMWALKER. Next up is Brian Aldiss' AN ISLAND CALLED MOREAU, a hardback. Online I've been reading short stories by Achmed Abdullah. Last book finished was Richard Matheson's THE GUNFIGHT in hardback. I can't get into audiobooks -- too many distractions around me.
FIRE SEASON, by Jon Loomis. Hardcover. First time I've read it (it just came out), but I've read the first two books in the series. I'll definitely finish it; i like it a lot so far, as I have the first two. Paid full price for it.
Oh boy. I am reading the following:
1. Bernard Malamud, The Complete Stories (library) - you recommended his first collection (THE MAGIC BARREL) so now I'm reading the rest of them
2. Ben Rehder, HOLY MOLY (library) sixth in his Game Warden John Marlin series; I've read the others
3. Alison Bechdel, ARE YOU MY MOTHER?: A Comic Drama (library) - I read and loved her first memoir, FUN HOME.
4. Irvin Faust, ROAT LION ROAR & Other Stories (library) - read about this after his recent death and a couple of people said they liked this
5. Damon Knight, ed., WORLDS TO COME (paperback; my collection) - I was looking for science fiction shorts on PaperBackSwap.com and found a couple edited by Knight. This is the second, with stories by Clarke, BRadbury, Asimov, Heinlein, Blish, Kornbluth, John D. MacDonald among others.
I guess that's enough, though I have seven more library books on the shelf waiting to be read.
Jeff M.
ROAR, not ROAT. Bill Crider was one who recommended the Faust.
Jeff M.
Jeff-you amaze me. I have piles of books on my table but I can't read them all at once. How do you keep it all straight.
I have never read Aldiss but have meant to
Coben is terrific at adult suspense so I am betting his YA stuff is great too.
I have heard of Loomis. Need to look him up.
Just finished Lake Country by Sean Doolittle. An exciting skilled storyline that kept the pages flying by while creating several memorable characters plus a villain who is as fascinating as he is repellent.
Well, short stories are easy to keep straight. I'm only reading one novel at a time and one non fiction book. I know, I'm nuts.
Aldiss I read a long time ago - Billion Year Spree and The Shape of Further Things in 1975 and The Hand-Reared Boy in 1980.
Jeff M.
Patti, SECONDS AWAY is Coben's second about Mickey Bolitar, Myron's nephew. The first was SHELTER.
Jeff M.
Loved Doolittle's THE CLEANUP. Amazing how so many writers seem to write two books a year. WOW!
Rereading:
SHADOWS, edited by Charles Grant (Doubleday hc)
BOOK OF THE DEAD, edited by Skipp and Spector (Bantam mm pb) (wanted to do story by story breakdowns in my incomplete piece on these two books)
Reading: MIRRORSHADES edited by Bruce Sterling (Ace mm pb) and INTERSECTIONS, edited by John Kessel and Mark Van Name (Tor hardcover) and Dick Cavett's collection of blogpost essays (trade pb). Also, new issues of various magazines, including JAZZ TIMES, DOWNBEAT, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN and several fiction magazines, and magazines about fiction (LOCUS, MYSTERY SCENE).
I'm reading "a land more kind than home" (no capitals) by Wiley Cash on an e-reader. If you haven't read it, even though I am not yet finished, I recommend it.
I am reading TUF VOYAGING by George R.R. Martin. It is a book of short stories and novellas about a trader / voyager who plys the space ways looking for adventure and, of course, profit. It's a trade paperback, I bought it used from a used book store in town about 2 years ago for about half cover price. First time I've read it, haven't read any of the contents elsewhere either. Yes, I'll finish it, very enjoyable SF. Nice change after two mysteries, and Roots (the review of which is up now on my blog).
If writing is your job, two books a year isn't that trying. Working journalists easily outdo that in wordcount, for example.
I'm reading Trip of the Tongue by Elizabeth Little. She traveled across the U. S. visiting areas where languages other than English are spoken (Gullah in South Carolina, Crow in Montana, etc.). Fun fact: According to the 2000 census, in one zip code in Queens, over 30 different languages were reported as the first/primary language. It's a hard-back book I checked out of the library. I read about the book on the Shelf Love book blog.
I had the Cash book but had to return it to the library without reading it. Will get it again-I started it but it seemed so sad didn't know if I was up to it. TRIP sounds terrific. I wonder if there are less and less of dialects. I love the HBO series GAME OF THRONES.
Other than Dick Cavett-I am in the dark, Todd. Are they SF short stories?
I'm reading THE KINGS OF COOL by Don Winslow in hardcover. Bought it on AMAZON. It's a prequel to SAVAGES.
SHADOWS is horror and suspense, BOOK OF THE DEAD horror with some sf elements (they are the first books in series which epitomized the "Quiet Horror v. Splatterpunk" "divide" in horror fiction in the latter '80s/'90s); MIRRORSHADES was the first major anthology of "cyberpunk" or "Movement" sf, a group which defined itself in part by contrasting themselves with the other literarily ambitious new sf writers of the 1980s they tagged the Humanists, and it just so happens that the Sycamore Hill writers retreat and workshop which provided the contents, mostly but not entirely sf, of INTERSECTIONS was populated almost entirely by "Humanists"...though cyberpunk Bruce Sterling and humanist James Patrick Kelly are in both volumes. (There were similar "crossovers" in SHADOWS and the George Romero-influenced BOTD series.) So, these are about false dichotomies, for the fun and p/r value of having false dichotomies...I touched on the Minimalists v. Fabulists among the contemporary mimetic fiction writers, too, in what I posted already...
...and, of course, "cozy v. hardboiled"...where if epitomized by "Christie v. Spillane" sounds (on the surface) reasonable, sort of, but as soon as it extends to "JD MacDonald v. Ngaio Marsh" or "Ross Macdonald v. Ellery Queen" it starts coming apart, real fast...
I posted this once already but it seems to have disappeared.
Reading The Woman Who Married a Cloud:The Collected Stories of Jonathan Carroll in Hardcover.
On my Kindle i'm rerading a British crime novel by Cathi Unsworth called Bad Penny.
Next upm The Twenty Year Death by Ariel Winter(altho I find the typeset which looks like a large print book unattractive) and Monster by Dave Zeltserman.
Steve Oerkfitz
Reading THE ILL WIND CONTRACT by Philip Atlee so I can write about it for Friday's post. Original Gold Medal paperback bought for two bucks at Half Price Books.
Just finished Wanderer, the memoir of Sterling Hayden- very interesting, compared to most Hollywood memoirs.
Now I'm reading Spook Country, by William Gibson. It's a sort of sequel to Pattern Recognition, which I enjoyed a lot.
Reading a planet stories double feature, large format paperback, Paid Amazon's price for it.
Joyce Porter's collected Dover short stories. I'm hoping this qualifies as a Friday forgotten book!
Also Eric Ambler's Passage of Arms and Sax Rohmer's Mystery of Fu Manchu. Iv'e got this idea for a far eastern piece going on....
Patti, I'm currently reading MOLL FLANDERS by Daniel Defoe and GUN MAN by Loren D. Estleman. The first was banned for its remarkable boldness. Defoe was probably driven out of town for writing it in his time. The second is a terrific western in the backdrop of a just-concluded civil war. There's both story and history in this one.
I'm also read a couple of ebooks on my desktop, THE BLACK TULIP by Dumas and FATHER GORIOT by Balzac.
And a few under 9,000-word short stories every week.
A short story collection.
Well, I've had it for a while but since I'd read a lot of the stories before I bought it, I left it a bit before reading it. I started it yesteday and it's a great collection.
Yes, Monkey Justice by Patti Abbott. A bit on the magnificent side, I must say.
So kind, Paul.
How well I remember reading Pere Goriot when it was a series on Masterpiece Theater.
Oh. Joyce Porter. Good choice.
My husband loved Necromancer.
We cover a lot of books here but no romance.
Keep us posted on Derek Raymond. Looks cool!
On Harlan Coben's YA: I highly recommend his books for crime fiction readers new to teen books. His books are great.
I am in a bit of a rut on a couple. I was reading THE COMPLETE SLAYERS (compilation of Paul Cain's work) but left it at home during vacation and have not opened it up again.
I am about halfway through DARE ME but I know bad things are going to happen and dread reading about it. I need to bite the bullet and finish the novel because our shared library system has several holds on it.
I think you meant NEUROMANCER, by cyberpunk "founder" of sorts William Gibson, latterly more a suspense-fiction writer with the likes of SPOOK COUNTRY. Gibson qualifies as the most famous contributor to MIRRORSHADES, much moreso now than when it was published; in INTERSECTIONS, it's a tossup between Karen Joy Fowler and Jonathan Lethem as to which humanist is better known now, though both vastly more than at time of publication...
Technically, nothing. I finished the first DEAD MAN book on Kindle last night and I'll start a Gordon D. Shirreffs cavalry Western paperback tonight.
I know a fellow that reads six or seven books at a time. He reads about 5-10 minutes of one, picks up another, and so on. He also watches movies one hour at a time, which means stopping before one is over and going back to it the next day. It drives me insane just thinking about it.
The Last Policeman by Ben Winters. Only 10 pages in. I think I heard about it through an email from the publisher (yes, it worked). Paid full price. I seem be one of the few people left who don't mind paying more than 99c for a book these days!
Just reluctantly wrapped up Luis Buñuel’s My Last Sigh (2003 paperback edition) and have started Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies (1996, pb) and Mike Davis’ Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the U.S. City (2001, pb). 1. Special ordered online. Wonderful book. 2. An aquaintance recommended it. Not riveting but interesting. Found one at Half Price Books. 3. Caught my eye while browsing at a Half Price Books.
That is a shame, Rob, isn't it?
Love books about making movies, Erik. These sound great.
I can only watch a movie from the title to the credits. Even if I have seen it before. Anything else is a travesty.
Sounds like the scene in ANNIE HALL....
Once I've seen a movie I can watch a segment of it, but not the first time.
Jeff M.
1. Almost done with THE LAUGHTERHOUSE by Paul Cleave. Received as a review copy from Atria Books. Spree killer novel with a few original twists. Grisly and more blood obsessed than a Dexter book.
2. ZOOBIQUITY - library copy. This is my late night non-fiction reading. I'm savoring a chapter a night until done. Fascinating stuff.
3. halfway through PSYCHOGEIST - L.P. Davies. Very odd genre blender amnesia mystery story with elements of lost race, occult thriller and adventure/fantasy stuff like Burroughs used to write. Used paperback bought at a very cool store here in Chicago called Shake, Rattle & Read. Used books and records.
I read the first part of TWENTY YEAR DEATH quickly and was unimpressed. Didn't read like the Simenon I know at all. In fact lots of anachronistic Americanisms for 1930s France (cars parked in driveways, for instance). We'll see what he does with the fairly routine story in the second and third parts. I agree with Patti: What's with the 14 point font and tiny margins? No wonder the book is 700 plus pages.
Post a Comment