Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

[Steve Anderson]

I'm nearing the end of Once Were Cops by Ken Bruen. My first from him. This is sharp, true neo noir crime fiction that doesn't hold back. No flash, just raw crimes warping minds and a lean storyline. Whoa. It's a nice though grim diversion from my usual diet of historical (1930s/40s mostly) espionage/mystery novels. I'll have to do more.

Steve

[GraceKrispy]

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

Finished the first in the Women's Murder Club series, 1st to Die, by James Patterson. As I mentioned earlier the extremely short chapters are a bit annoying, as is the frequent switching of POV.

When my husband got me my reader, he wanted to put some books on it for me. So he got the Women's Murder Club series (the first 6) bundle. It was my introduction to James Patterson, and I couldn't stand the short chapters either, at first. I got used to them. Not great literature, in my view, but still entertaining nonetheless.

I just finished "Trevor's Song," by Susan Helene Gottfried.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Steve Anderson

I'm nearing the end of Once Were Cops by Ken Bruen. My first from him. This is sharp, true neo noir crime fiction that doesn't hold back. No flash, just raw crimes warping minds and a lean storyline. Whoa. It's a nice though grim diversion from my usual diet of historical (1930s/40s mostly) espionage/mystery novels. I'll have to do more.

Steve

I think "Grim" is a good description of most Bruen. He does noir like no one else I've read.

[The_Casualty]

Originally Posted by Care

I am reading it too! What did you think of Nyphron Rising?

i'm reading emerald storm as well. i'm in love with this series.

any suggestions on similar books?

[Katti's Cat]

Started Ken Follet's "Fall of Giants". Slowly going for me but I made it to page 85 so far. Getting slower now as I have to make some notes on who is what & where and with whom. Only another 900 odd pages to go I think. I should manage that this year :-)

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Katti's Cat

Started Ken Follet's "Fall of Giants". Slowly going for me but I made it to page 85 so far. Getting slower now as I have to make some notes on who is what & where and with whom. Only another 900 odd pages to go I think. I should manage that this year :-)

No matter who we are, or what we read, it's *always* one word at a time, one sentence at a time!!!

[birdbrainbb]

I'm in the second chapter of Brain Jack by Brian Falkner, and I'm really liking it! It's got one of the best prologues I've ever read-- really makes you want to read the rest of the book.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by phenomshel

I read Wicked Weaves. I haven't gotten to the rest of them yet. I will admit the main character seemed rather directionless, but I liked the overall book enough to continue the series.

Thanks for sharing. I liked it too, even though some of it was really very ridiculously contrived. Derailing a manhunt by dragging one of the assistant sleuths into an obligatory jousting match. On horseback. While blindfolded.

More library stuff: 1 kind of cozy, 1 kind of mystery.

Baking as Biography: A Life Story in Recipes, is folklorist Diane Tye's autoethnographical study/musing on her mother's life, as seen from the perspective of her recipe box, and the cultural and familial implications that can be drawn from their association.

This is published by McGill-Queen's University Press, and is something I'd class as academic-lite. Tye paints a picture of her mother's acquiescence and subversion to her role as a 50s minister's wife in rural Nova Scotia who had to do a lot of baking in order to fill expected cultural, familial, and societal/community roles, but once confessed to her daughter that she didn't actually like to bake.

There's a lot of stuff about food as a means of communication and mnemonic association, and control over food as a denominator of power in interpersonal relationships, and the interpersonal dynamics of church social functions and so forth. And in certain ways it was really very depressing to read all these accounts about women who just didn't particularly enjoy all this cooking and baking they were supposed to do, and yet had nothing else they could do with their lives and were furthermore expected to yield any preferences they might have had regarding the sort of foods they themselves would have liked to make and serve entirely to the other people in their lives.

Which is not a bad thing if you choose to do it for a living like a professional caterer, but it must produce incompletely repressed teeth-grinding anger to be expected to do it as a matter of course for anyone who comes along.

But aside from that, the book is actually rather interesting. Apparently, the yearly constituent components of Christmas cakes are subject to socioeconomic factors and that the rise of the use of white sugar replacing brown and molasses in Nova Scotia women's recipes are due to a devaluation of tradition (and also the processing methods made it cheaper) etc.

I was only mildly intrigued when I picked it up off the library New Books shelf, but now I wouldn't mind reading more of this sort of thing.

Ian Tregillis' Bitter Seeds, which is apparently the 1st part of a trilogy, which I'm pleased about, because I really liked this one a lot.

The book jacket describes it as "Alan Furst meets Alan Moore" and this is an AU sf/fantasy set during WWII in which supermen produced by Nazi scientific experiments are pitted against British sorcery. But not really directly in the action-adventure sense. More of a spy-thriller prevention and containment sort of thing.

The situation is complicated by one-or-more agents on either side seeming to go rogue, and the ensuing fallout of a lot of desperately bad decisions made by various individuals adding up to a nasty mess. Oh, and they're all thoroughly dysfunctional, too.

It's Tregillis' first novel, and I found it quite compelling, and the writing fairly polished, and the execution of certain ideas very creepy. I look forward to more.

Highly recommended if you're into WWII powers using planned occult atrocities as a means of achieving the endpoint of victory (I think I've discovered a hidden reading kink for this theme, between Stross' Laundry series, Hambly's Sun-Cross, and now this).

Also just went and read the free Tor.com short story which goes with this, What Doctor Gottlieb Saw, which kind of fills in a little background fleshing out the motivations of one of the main characters in the book.

I'm not sure whether it's a good thing to read first as an introduction to the setup for the potentially interested, or whether what happens there is too spoileriffic for one of the revelations in the novels, which might play out better if it comes as a surprise, but either way it was a good read and whetted my appetite for more.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

The D'Artagnan Romances, Vol. 3 by Alexandre Dumas, formatted and uploaded here by HarryT.

Ten years on from the last book. The first half was good. Adventure with the Musketeers and the restoration of King Charles II. The second half was a bit too much taken up with petty intrigues and love matches at the French Court, and dragged a bit (for me).

Next up: Carousel Tides by Sharon Lee. This is a present-day fantasy, set in Maine. Looking good so far.

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by The_Casualty

i'm reading emerald storm as well. i'm in love with this series.

any suggestions on similar books?

This book came to mind while I was reading another thread: A Face in the Frost, by John Bellairs. It's a bit old, and I don't know if it can be found as an e-book, but if you get a chance, please give it a read. It has lots of elements that strongly remind me of the Riyria series (which I'm in love with, too!).

[Care]

Originally Posted by The_Casualty

i'm reading emerald storm as well. i'm in love with this series.

any suggestions on similar books?

I swear I was just thinking it reminds me of another series, and now that you ask I totally can't remember what that series was. How frustrating. Sometimes it does remind me of The Wheel of Time, but it is only sometimes and WoT is much more epic. Uggggg, I wish I could remember what series I was thinking of before.

[Care]

Originally Posted by Latinandgreek

It took me about half the book to get into the story, too, but now I'm enjoying the series very much (I'm almost through the fourth book). I think that the rest of the series might be more to your liking (I don't want to say anything about the plot in case you decide to read it), perhaps you could try seeing if your local library has a copy of the second book if you are hesitant to buy it. The second book is much more interesting than the first, in my opinion.

The Order of the Phoenix - my favourite Harry Potter book! I do hope that you enjoy it as much as I did. Happy reading! I really should give that series another re-read... I feel like I should wait a bit, though, because the books are still too fresh in my mind.

Iridal, I agree with L&G. I really loved Avempartha (book 2) more than The Crown Conspiracy. If your library doesn't have them, the ebooks are cheaper on Michael's site for goodreads members. They are only $3.99 and if there isn't a format you want listed all you have to do is send him an email.

[gmw]

I just finished "The Fry Chronicles" an autobiography by Stephen Fry.

I'm not much of a biography reader but thought Stephen Fry a worthy exception. I was disappointed to see just how small a section of his life this book covered (I had not bothered check). It picks up from "Moab is my Washpot" (which I have not read, but he filled in enough for it not to matter) and runs for just eight years - from just before his arrival at Cambridge, though his gradual increase in fame and prosperity, to just before making the series "A bit of Fry and Laurie".

The book is cited as being hilarious, but I can't say that I found it that. Fry writes well and I found the book flowed easily, although he sometimes gets carried away with showing how clever he can be with words, particularly in the earlier parts. Possibly I would have found it more entertaining if I had a bigger interest in the entertainment industry (especially in the UK), but as it was there were sections that had me feeling left-out. Probably the biggest complaint I have is that it opens with "I really must stop saying sorry" but he continues to apologise to his readers throughout, even apologising for apologising. Was that meant to be funny? I didn't find it so.

All up? It was okay, but not much more than that. The book hasn't really changed my view of Stephen Fry much either way, which is perhaps a good thing, but I don't really feel much the wiser either.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Care

I swear I was just thinking it reminds me of another series, and now that you ask I totally can't remember what that series was. How frustrating. Sometimes it does remind me of The Wheel of Time, but it is only sometimes and WoT is much more epic. Uggggg, I wish I could remember what series I was thinking of before.

Just saw your avatar in New Artist International magazine. An article about doing book cover art.

[bevdeforges]

Just finished Troubles by J.G. Farrell - this is the "lost Booker" winner. Really good book, though I guess not at all what I was expecting. About the British presence in Ireland just after the first World War - a period I know absolutely nothing about - but with current day overtones, what with all the terrorism going on.

Going for a lighter touch next with Bill Bryson's At Home and I'll probably start The Finkler Question just to have a novel going, too.