What Are You Reading Now.

As a follow-up, A Head Full of Ghosts was a pretty incredible novel for a lot of technical reasons, Though it will leave you quite irritated and a little off-put at the end until you start formulating what really happened.

The unreliable narrator is spot-on. Multi-layered in depth yet seated in an uncomfortable answer of perception of a child to a abnormal reality. The narrator tells a reporting author about her story fifteen years prior when she was a child, but there are persistent exaggerations and inconsistencies that don't follow a liar, but instead someone who doesn't fully understand or accept what they perceived at the time. Oh, and by the way, the narrator isn't the only person not the trust. The whole book is like a reality show and if you want to get what's going on you need to treat it as such.

I've also never seen a novel so self-aware. It frames itself on multiple levels with contemporary horror literature and film, but that framing is built into the inconsistencies and exaggerations of the narrator. It's rather brilliant.

Also, at the end of the day, it's quite intense as well. Pages 70 through 120 are fantastic and pretty damn scary. The latter half lays out the devolving situation and truth to an ultimate end that makes you not entirely satisfied. But if you think about that end, that lack of satisfaction masks the purpose well.

Overall, I loved it. On to Final Girls by Riley Sager next week.

 

The Girl Who Lived Twice: David Lagercrantz and I am the Weapon: Allen Zadoff.
I'll let you know!

 

So, David Lagercrantz has written as many books as Steig Larson now. There are more and more writers taking on other writers series.

 

I will be reading Halo Master Chief Story: Shadows of Reach. I want to catch up on the lore after I beat Halo 5.

 

I am reading Elfriede Jelinek's The Piano Teacher. I definitely recommend reading it because there are no "she said/he said/they said", it capitalizes "SHE" when talking about the MC, it switches POVs effortlessly. I find it quite "experimental" compared to the standard formatting of novels. It may be, at first, a little difficult to read but after a few pages you are caught into its rhythm and want to read more. It is anguishing because the topic is anguishing, and I find it amazing how the author has found a way of writing that matches the content--it is not the description alone that makes it anguishing, but how it is expressed. However, after I thoroughly enjoyed the first third of the book, I suddenly find myself so anguished whenever I pick it up again that I will need at least a few days to recover. I know it is the way the author's describes the MC's pain and resolution to life than the content itself which is to a certain degree detached. But I do want to go on, it is an amazing book I think, the kind that as a writer you can learn so much from.

 

Just finished Final Girls by Riley Sager tonight. In short, well-constructed and thematically rounded, with ample tension to keep it moving. But it has some plot-holes and the characterization wanes here and there in the confusion. Worth the read.

It's a sort of 'whodunnit,' and that aspect is played quite well. The concept rests on the narrator being one of the 'final girls' from a massacre, playing the tropes of slasher horror films. Sager comes right out with the intention to use these film tropes of the male fantasy in torture and sexually explicit cinematography that fulfills the male gaze concept in film. He applies them to his novel and uses the stigmas of tropes to turn and cover his own intentions with the plot. Most of the time, especially through the main climax, this works fairly well. But it does become rather convoluted at times.

Where it does shine is in its use of theme. The survivor concept is deceptively intertwined with the thematic core of the novel, coming to a head in directions the reader should have been looking all along. The narrator is unreliable as a diversion, but tells the truth consistently. The lies we tell ourselves are the ones we believe so adamantly that we can't give them up for anything.

It's an interesting one and worth the time, though it looks like a typical slice and dice slasher film. It has a bit more depth behind it than that.

 

Finished Scythe, and trying to plod my way through the Invention of Murder. I only have about a hundred pages of it left, but it's like trying to pull an elephant out of a watermelon, and all I have is twine.

 

while waiting to recover from The Piano Teacher to continue its reading, I started reading Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. I love Murakami's writing style, it is so easy to become completely absorbed in it, especially in his descriptions. There are no frills, all the descriptions just hit the right spots: they speak of the one thing in the scene that makes you see/imagine all the rest in it (this is a rare quality). He just seems to use the right words, there is so much to learn from him. I feel the desire of the MC to be on his own and his loneliness, to the point that I can recognized it as if they were my own. He is an amazing writer and his writings are rather entertaining too. I understand why he is such a popular and praised author. The only thing that perplexes me are his characters, though. They seem a bit stereotypical, but this is the only book of his I read (well, I am reading), and the characters are mostly young people, so in a sense they are still discovering the world and in between play parts of who they think they should be. In that way, the conception of his characters is rather original, and his characters are authentic. But there is a core that seem to be taken out of a TV drama with a few added twists along the way making easy to sympathize with them. That makes the reading easier, but also a bit superficial. His characters seem cool and some seem like it would be fun to meet to have stories about them to tell others. There is something that is so fictional in them that they don't seem real. I feel a lot closer to the characters described by Alice Munro, whom I mention because she snatched the Nobel Prize from him back in 2004 I think. The fact that I feel her characters at an emotional level make them seem more human to me.

This is of course just my impression, I can see what a great writer Murakami is, so I think I must be missing something there, about his characters.

 

So, I finished my next week's book a little early. It was Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon. It's good. I hate it.

The pacing is a bit slow, but I didn't mind that. The atmospheric settings and perfect movement between scene and summary is incredible. Even the characterization is excellent.

But the plot will just leave an awful taste in your mouth. It's well constructed, if not a little cliché nowadays, but my God, it is hard to get through just because of how morally depraved it gets. Tryon's novel is all about a family trying to get away from the city life of New York who happen to find a quiet and isolated farming community. But, naturally, the little corn-farming community is not what it seems. Idyllic becomes corrupted, as with all of the characters including the fairly awful narrator. You'll probably hate him. Basically no one in this novel has redeeming qualities by the end.

But there are some tension points and scenes that are just fantastic. It's very very Gothic in structure and formulation, with its isolation and characters and tone, but once it finally starts moving toward some real evil it just gets kind of icky. Nothing any horror fan hasn't seen before, I'm sure, but it seems like where some of the ideas came from. Not my happiest time reading. I'm quite ready to move on to something not this.

My next in line is Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix, which I've been excited to read for quite some time.

 

I heard good things about 1Q84 but never got around to it.

 

Devouring a YA werewolf novel which I like far more than I should (The Wolves Of Forest Grove by Elena Lawson). Why do some books just suck you in while others you really wanted to read just leave you with a small “Yeah, thanks but no thanks” (if you finish them, though I’m usually quite good at reading on, even if I don’t really like a book)?

 

I'm still riding that Trollope train. Seven down, forty to go I'm reading Barchester Towers. I loved the Palliser novels so much, and The Warden was pretty good, but I think this is my favorite so far. It's very funny and the characters are so well-drawn. His later novels (that I've read) are far less comical in nature and have a gentler style of humor, so I was a little surprised to find this one so overtly hilarious.

 

I've been debating reading something by Paul Tremblay. Have you read any of his other works? Is this a good place to start?

 

I havent and this was a pretty wild start. Its almost outlandish in its daring for layered plot, but i think he pulls it off really well. The narrative arc is all over the place though, so if you come in expecting a normal horror ending or general growing climactic tension, then you are reading it wrong. Better to think whats going on behind as much as whatthe narrator tells you.

It may not be the greatest place to start as it looks like an experiment on his part, but if youre a gothic and horror fan the self-referential nature of the novel may be a treat though.

 

Sounds like something I would enjoy. Thanks for the information--I'm going to check it out.

 

Finished The Killings at Kingfisher Hall by Sophie Hannah. A continuation of the Poirot mysteries by another writer. I thought that Hannah's work was a little longwinded and overly detailed, by comparison to the original Christie, but having read a Christie lately it seems not. Perhaps it was the style of writing then but all it really does it suck the tension out of the story, or, I have now been conditioned by the modern style of writing that I miss the tension entirely. Regardless, it seems Hannah's writing is more on the mark than I gave her credit for.

 

And also finally finished the First Law trilogy, after I took break before reading the last book The Last Argument of Kings. It has to be said it was really well written, and a more bloodthirsty set of characters I haven't read in a series ever. Even so, after all the shenanigans, and the constant backstabbing, and blood letting, it would have been nice to have seen at least one character finish having become a decent sort. A wonderful story though, and evocatively written.

 

Just finished Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix.

It's short, comical, and extremely intense. A perfect little evening read at around 60k word count with an ending that's satisfying. It is also knows exactly what it's trying to do. I liked it quite a bit.

The story is first a commentary on the nature of big box stores, their methods of confusing the consumer in the labyrinth, and the command structure of these companies that perpetuates their popularity. This sets the perfect scene for a horror story as the very nature of the gothic castle that's inescapable as a labyrinth. It's as confusing for the employees trying to escape as it is for the reader, literally overflowing with deceptive scenery that grows out over time into a Silent Hill-esque sort of torture nightmare. The gore isn't gratuitous though, but it does hit hard when it appears. What's more interesting as how far the ghost story allows itself to go.

And the implementation of comedy hits perfect almost every time. It contrasts the horror to keep the pace running rampant. You'll fly through it. I'd also like to mention that the entire novel is in the shape and format of an IKEA manual, so the book itself adds its own layer of comedy to the commentary. Even the chapter titles are various furniture in the building that you see per chapter, and those corrupt along the ride as well.

All in all, a well designed action horror that will keep you moving and smoothly shock you while your mid-laugh. Big old recommend from me.

 

"Desperado", second draft script by Robert Rodriguez.

 

I've read a few scripts in my time and they are surprisingly interesting.

Reading Black 13 by Adam Hamdy. Needed something light inbetween. One of those I bought for a £1 as a 'deal' from Amazon. I mean, you can't got wrong with a pound, can you? Actually, it isn't bad, so far, a bit airport novel but a page turner at the very least.