Neil Gaiman ( @neilhimself when he's posting here - which isn't often) is one of my favorite authors, and I'm usually in awe of just about everything he does. It was a cinch, then, that I picked up Unnatural Creatures, an arrangement of short stories that he picked out. So far, all of the stories are good. Surprisingly, I would say that Gaiman's own contribution is the weakest of the bunch, but still entertaining. #FridayReads#AmReading#Books#ShortStories#Bookstodon@bookstodon
Oh, look... another book with "girl" in the title. 🙄
This was added to my TBR in May of 2015, probably on the strength of Entertainment Weekly's recommendation (I used to subscribe to that magazine. We'll see if it's actually "unputodownable" as stated on the cover. I hope so, because the last book I finished was definitely not.
Working my way through The Bank by Bentley Little. I remember adding it to my TBR in 2020 because I read somewhere that Stephen King recommended it. I'm not sure if I find that surprising or fitting: The Bank is basically Needful Things, 30 years later. If I were King, I might frown at the obvious overlap, but it didn't seem to bother him. He even added a blurb.
Needful Things is MUCH better and it's not even close.
Back in the day my love for movies and my trivia knowledge combined to make me a walking IMDb. My movie watching has declined drastically since March 2013 (when Kid 1 entered the world) and it's hard for me to stay current. That won't stop me from enjoying Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears by Michael Schulman. I'm only on Chapter 2, but already loving the old-school Tinseltown intrigue. #Books#Movies#Oscars#Hollywood#FridayReads#AmReading#Bookstodon@bookstodon
The blurb on the Barnes & Noble website states "Taut, propulsive, and impossible to look away from, Emma Cline’s The Guest is a spellbinding literary achievement." I'm not sure I'd go that far. It's good, but I'm almost 2/3 of the way through and still waiting to see how the protagonist got in the situation she's in. I'm sure (I hope) there's a big reveal coming, but I don't get why Cline felt the need to be coy. Seems unnecessary. #Books#FridayReads#Bookstodon#Fiction@bookstodon
Pitchers and catchers report next week, and it's around this time of year that, if I can, I try to read something baseball-related. Yesterday I picked up a book that I read when I was a teen and remember enjoying it very much: If I Never Get Back by Darryl Brock. It's sort of like if Field of Dreams and Back To The Future had a baby, and it's great. #Books#Baseball#Bookstodon#AmReading#Fiction#Sports#MLB#FridayReads@bookstodon
From the introduction to The Slave Ship: A Human History by Marcus Rediker: "The slaver is a ghost ship sailing on the edges of modern consciousness. To conclude on a personal note: this has been a painful book to write, and if I have done any justice to the subject, it will be a painful book to read. There is no way around this, nor should there be."
Interestingly, 2024 is seeing a very British #book trend for me. It's not a bad thing or a good thing. It just sort of happened that way. "Huh! How about that?" Of the 6 books I've touched in 2024, 4 of them have ties to the UK.
RN I'm almost done with The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan (I'm picturing it as a Richard Curtis movie; Four Weddings and a Funeral even gets a reference) and just started Pulse by Julian Barnes. #Bookstodon#AmReading#FridayReads#Fiction@bookstodon
The Wager by David Grann landed on my TBR as soon as I heard about it (long before it was released) and is on Barnes & Noble's "Best Books of 2023" list. Therefore, I can't explain how excited and surprised I was to see the ebook just sitting there available at my library, ready to download. I thought I'd be in line for weeks. Nope... just, "Here you go, enjoy!" I started it in the wee hours on January 1. What a way to kick of 2024! #FridayReads#Bookstodon#Books#NonFiction@bookstodon
I tend to gravitate to #books set in bookstores or libraries. Once Upon A Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller by Oliver Darkshire is a bit off that mark, but still very good. The author has a dry and self-deprecating sense of humor, and I find myself chuckling at his deadpan delivery. Reminds me a bit of Hugh Grant, if Grant was forced to work with the public. It comes off as "very British" to this American (not a bad thing). #FridayReads#Audiobooks#Bookstodon#AmReading@bookstodon
For the third time this year, I had to mark a book DNF. I hate doing that, but I had completely lost interest in the characters and the pace was so. damn. slow.
Missoula: Rape and The Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer had been on my TBR since 2015, a couple years before the Me Too movement kicked off. I'm so glad this book surfaced in my reading rotation. I'm only about a fifth of the way through and am transfixed by so much: the horror and trauma these young women experienced, juxtaposed with such stoic narration and brilliant writing. I hate it and I can't stop listening. #Bookstodon#FridayReads#AmReading#Books@bookstodon
#FridayReads
There are three books I'm reading at the moment and all have drawn me in in their different ways:
Botticelli's Secret by Joseph Luzzi - an account of the commission the artist Sandro Botticelli was given by a member of Florence's powerful Medici family to illustrate all hundred cantos of Dante's Divine Comedy
The Housekeepers by Alex Hay - a terrific revenge heist story pitting downstairs vs upstairs masterminded by a former housekeeper of a grand London Mayfair house who has a hidden agenda
Into the Forest - an anthology of retellings of Baba Yaga stories by a wide range of horror and fantasy writers
I'm a sucker for time travel books, but not convinced they work well as audiobooks. It's not as easy for me to follow the time jumps - or in the case of Man in the Empty Suit by Sean Ferrell - the various temporal versions of the main character without the pages in front of me.
I do like the concept of this book, which is a murder mystery where all the suspects are the same person.
I admit when it comes to knowledge of Peter Straub's work, I am lacking. I know of him thanks to his collaborations with Stephen King (The Talisman, Black House). When Straub passed away last Sept, I felt I had missed something by not enjoying his writing while he was still on this earth.
Many said at the time that Shadowland is his best work. I'm reading it now. Slow going, but good so far.
"We lived on this earth. Don’t entrust it into the hands of the destroyers, the barbarians and the ignoramuses." - from a note that was found in Konstantin Paustovsky's writing desk after his death in 1968
I've just started reading Paustovsky's The Story of a Life, which is a collection of the first three of six books of the Ukrainian/Russian writer's memoirs published by NYRB earlier this year. It's kind of a doorstopper, but I already don't want it to end.
With more than 7 hours on a plane for a business trip this week, I couldn't take any chances with my reading material. I wanted to make sure I had a REALLY GOOD book, so I went with a re-read of one of my recent favorites: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. It has so much to love: romance, adventure, fantasy, a nasty villain, a feisty heroine with circumstances definitely not in her favor. It's wonderful. #Bookstodon#Books#AmReading#Fantasy#FridayReads#LasVegas@bookstodon