Recently read Celine's Journey to the End of Night. It's a pretty long book and, after the first few chapters, I hated it, but I made myself get to the end. While there are some fine parts to it overall I find it just a miserable slog.
I finished The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri yesterday. Great book and - at least for me - very touching. Right now I‘m in the middle of Pretty Little Things by Jilliane Hoffman.
I finished "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love." It's a tale of a giant dick that is attached to a Cuban mambo singer. This thing (as it is most commonly referred to by everyone in the story) actually seems to be the protagonist. It leads its host, Cesar Castillo, from Havana to New York City, where he proceeds to sex his way in lurid detail through a host of hawt women all the while chowing down on Cuban cuisine, drinking alcohol, reminiscing on the old days, hating his father, pining over his dead brother, regretting mistakes, name dropping musicians and mamboing straight into the reader's heart. Sex scenes fall on every other page. The Mambo King tells how he and the thing knock it out of the park. No shying away from the act! He tells what it's like to round third and race for home. And it's not just a slide in to score, but more of a "flagrant collision" where the runner smashes through the catcher, tramples the umpire underfoot and then hurdles into the bleachers to choke slam drunken fans. It's basically porn. I swear, out of the 400 pages in this story, there must be 300 references to the thing. Possibly more. And they are gross. I mean, I'm all for inappropriate boldness, and I appreciate it in perfect doses, but this story was like having the O-face Guy from Office Space shout in your face for an entire movie. Still, I'd see one of those scenes coming up, and I was always like "Awww, this is going to be in bad taste!" and it always was, and I'd find myself laughing before it even started and then Dios Mio! as the Mambo King would say, I groaned at yet another absurd metaphor. There were a few times I gagged. The author has got to be deranged. I seriously question the Pulitzer Committee's fidelity. Their wives should each hire a private investigator because I have seen into the Committee's soul. "Rabbit, at Rest" did a much better job with a hedonist facing his own mortality. It had a plot that was much more immediate too. This one was flashbacked in its entirety. The setting details were exceptional, and that's what reviewers will always mention, but once again, "Rabbit, at Rest" was stronger there too. Updike is king. Even so, I didn't hate this. (There's something wrong with me.) I give the Mambo King 3 1/2 plantains out of 5.
Speaking of Pulitzer winners, I just finished Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres, a modern reimagining of King Lear on a 1970s family farm. I previously read Smiley's Last Hundred Years trilogy and enjoyed it, but this one . . . meh. It was well-written and an interesting concept. But it was depressing, and that's coming from someone who doesn't mind depressing, even the soul-crushing variety (for example, I recently read and thoroughly enjoyed Nick Flynn's This is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire - ouch). Maybe what was lacking was redemption; it felt like a lot of characters doing really awful things to each other without any moral justification and without any success (however one might define that). On a brighter note, I also recently read Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex --- another Pulitzer winner -- and it's one of the best novels I've ever read. Maybe the best.
I haven't read either of those . . . I'll have to bump Middlesex higher in the list. I'm trying to read all the Pulitzers. (21 down) If you want to read a REALLY good one, read "The Nickel Boys," the latest winner. I didn't have any hopes for it because Colson Whitehead's other Pulitzer, "The Underground Railroad," was not good. I'd rank that one near the bottom of what I've read (it did not deserve to win), but "The Nickel Boys" was outstanding. It's one of my favorites. I considered just starting at the beginning and reading it again. Phenomenal on every level. I give it 5 MLK Jr. record albums out of 5.
literally, right now in my lap: Spoiler: i never wanted to give a t-rex a hug so bad! (ps. i dont have kids, haha! it just looked cute!)
I just started Weaveworld by Clive Barker. I've never read any Barker. I figure this one had at least a chance of not being bloody. I don't like blood. That's me passing out when I tried to read Anne Rice.
It's funny how different people react to stories. I really admired The Little Friend—could not put it down—but could NOT get through The Goldfinch! The Beekeeper of Aleppo is literally sitting on my bedside table, getting ready to be read. I normally read books via Kindle these days, but this was a gift from a friend. I think I need to be in the mood, though. Right now, my mood is for totally fluffy reading. (An antidote to the real world.) At the moment I'm skipping lightheartedly through P G Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories. A glimpse into a mindset and lifestyle that's foreign to me, even now. Out-of-date plots, characters and lifestyle, to some extent ...but probably not as out-of-date as they should be.
I've finished The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps with mixed feelings, but I'm now stuck into Kim Stanley Robinson's latest, The Ministry for the Future. We shall see.
I think Red Mars was his, which was a pretty novel take on the journey and colonization of Mars. If I remember right, it's a whole series that has been rated pretty high as well.
Taken as one, his Mars Trilogy ( Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars) are some of the finest "hard" SF I've ever read. I recommend them unconditionally. His other works I'm not so enthusiastic about, pending of course completion of the newest.
Tacking a pause from "Tactics", its a pretty heavy read, if I say so. Very interesting but certainly heavy.
Im currently reading the third book in the Erika Foster series by Robert Brynzda. Got into this series after watching Sherlock Holmes.
I really loved the Mars series from KSR. But my very favourite of his books is one few of his newer fans are aware of: Escape from Katmandu. It is a truly hilarious book that had me laughing out loud a lot. The blurb hardly does it justice: One of the USA's currently living ex-Presidents makes an appearance in it. It's that kind of book.
Interesting. The oldest thing I've read by him is Icehenge. Spoiler: General opinion spoiler about KSR One thing I've found I enjoy less about KSR is his habit of coming back to the same ideas and themes over and over and over. I realize that he thinks he's got some Important Stuff to Say, and I don't disagree with him, but after a while it can get a little like looking at Monet's paintings of water lilies: individually beautiful but do something different every so often for God's sake.
