Current Reads

I can't find either of his Rivers of London books at the libraries I frequent. I find thatstrange considering how huge the LA public library network is. I don't wanna have to buy the first novel just to find that I don't like it so I just keeping hoping it'll be in circulation soon enough.

I'm reading The Shining Girls. Serial murder plus time travel!

I read The Astronaut Wives Club over the weekend. I enjoyed reading about the wives and the reality of the lives they led (not the sanitized version NASA's PR people were pushing in Life magazine). The rules for astronaut wives were like those for military wives of that era - don't do anything that might hurt your husband's career, put up with their carrying on (and, woo-boy, did those guys carry on!), and maintain the "proud, thrilled, happy" pose for the press. There's a picture in the book of three of the wives during one of the Apollo missions who were holding up signs that said, "Proud," "Thrilled," and "Happy," which cracks me up. Some of the stories are very sad, though, and it's interesting that a large percentage of the marriages have broken up.

That said, there are problems with the execution of the book. It's sloppily edited - needless repetition, choppy flow, and one factual error in the first few pages that made me wonder how many other factual errors there might be. Also, I hate the term "Astrowives," which appears to be an invention of the author.

I finished up Sarah Dessen's What Happened To Goodbye, which is the third book of hers I've read. She's really excellent at creating realistic characters, but I found that usually results in me reaching a point in the book where I want to shake them and give up reading it. I haven't, but man, I came close this time.

I also read The World Without You, which I liked a lot. It was very wordy, though, and it dragged just a bit in the middle. But I thought it was really lovely overall.

Now I have three library books sitting on my Kindle - The Middlesteins, (which I started this morning), The Last Letter from Your Lover, and The Shining Girls. Good thing I'm on vacation next week.

whatthedeuce wrote:I can't find either of his Rivers of London books at the libraries I frequent. I find thatstrange considering how huge the LA public library network is. I don't wanna have to buy the first novel just to find that I don't like it so I just keeping hoping it'll be in circulation soon enough.

There are actually four books. Amazon has extracts. If you like the style, it keeps up. I can't really say too much about the mysteries themselves, I'm not really a connoisseur. However, I bought all four books the moment I could, and read them as fast as I could. So he has to be doing something right IMO.

Tabby, I felt the same way about the Astronauts' Wives Club. I really wanted to love it and I think it's a great story, but it was sloppily written.

Oh, thanks for the heads-up, Red Wolf! I'll read extracts from the first novel and see how I like it.

whatthedeuce, can you request that your library purchase the first book? My library buys books I request all the time (although they are ebooks). It does seem really strange that a big library like that doesn't have them!

I have The Shining Girls out for a second time but I think I have to give up. I am just not in the mood at the moment for so much murder. One Crazy Summer was excellent. That is definitely a book that I wish had a film adaptation.

Now I have out Night Film, the second book by the author who did Special Topics in Calamity Physics. I grabbed it automatically when I saw it had come in at the library and am now seeing it's very well-reviewed! So that's exciting. I know there was a lot of hype and subsequent backlash on  Special Topics but I read it a pretty long time after it came out so I didn't have many expectations and I enjoyed it.

Maybe I can, choubetcha. I had never heard of anyone asking a library to purchase specific books, so I may very well have that option without having been aware of it!

just finished the Tenant of Wildfell Hall and that was definitely my favorite Bronte. The middle part dragged a little (that is, the beginning of the telling of her past) just because I was super into the characters in the beginning part of the book, but whatever, I'm

Spoiler:

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, which is quite good so far. I read Nancy Mitford's biography of her back when I was a teenager and ever since she's been an object of fascination for me. What I didn't fully comprehend back in the day (no doubt because of my own age then), which this book makes very clear, was how awfully young she was during their salad days.

I'll be curious to see what you think of it when you finish it, naughty zoot. I read it a while back and liked it, but I thought it was a bit rushed in the last third or so.

Started reading Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler yesterday, and in retrospect, I should've realised that reading such a convoluted postmodern book whilst doing an intensive training course was not one of my smarter ideas. I'll postpone it until the weekend when I should hopefully have the necessary brain power to continue.

epudom, I loooove that book. I hope you enjoy it!

Finished The 5th Wave at lunch today. Really enjoyed it. When I first started it I stayed up half the night reading it until I got to a point where I could stand to put it down. The descriptions of the destruction of earth (not a spoiler -- it's about the aftermath of an alien invasion) really got to me.

I'm planning on reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane next, I think.

Has anyone else read Beautiful Ruins? I picked it up on the recommendation of a friend; I had overlooked it as a more light summer chick-lit, which it is not. In fact, I devoured it all week, stayed up past 3am on Saturday to finish it, and Harry-Potter-sobbed through the last chapter. Not because it was depressing, I was just moved. It's been a long time since I felt this way about a book.

I just got through The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., and while I wanted to slap Nate every other second, I thought the character and his internal ramblings and insights were often astute and entirely plausible. I felt like I was actually bouncing around a guy's brain snd seeing things from a perspective so different from my own.

I am about halfway through Gone Girl, and while I think Nick is a dick, it's a pretty engrossing, fast read. Looking forward to figuring out the "twist" I've read about. I have my suspicions already, but am resisting reading spoilers online to see if I'm correct.

I hated Nick SO SO SO SO MUCH. Like, seriously. So much. I didn't care what he did or didn't do, I just wanted him to suffer. He doesn't even remind me of any of my exes, so I don't really know what that was about. My feelings are my feelings.

Loved that book, though. It read like a really twisted soap opera, which is right up my alley.

So, I mostly really liked Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, and I agree, mokey, that the end seemed kind of rushed. I also found it odd that a novel, which is basically about viewing Zelda through a "Feminine Mystique" lens, literally begins and ends with her relationship with Scott.

The latest in the Temeraire series, Blood of Tyrants, was just published earlier this month, and I started it yesterday. I'm not wild about a major part of the plotline of the opening section, but I hope the problem gets resolved soon.

I think there's only one more book after this one in the series? I thought I read somewhere that Naomi Novik was planning on nine books.

I read The Shining Girls last week and liked it a lot. I thought the time-travel twist in a serial-killer novel was well done.

I read a spoiler for Blood of Tyrants that said (re the beginning of the book)

Spoiler:

I like The Shining Girls so far, but it just seems so random that this one house allows the killer to travel through time. I think if there were other sci-fi or supernatural elements in the story, it would be easier for me to accept the time travel thing, but the house has that capability for no reason, which bugs me.

Whatthedeuce, I'll be interested to hear your thoughts when you get to the end.

Gilraen, the spoiler you read was correct. Read on for more info, if you like:

Spoiler:

Tabby, I loved the jumping back and forth between different time periods, and I thought the "shining girls" were sketched out quite vividly even though most appeared so briefly before being murdered. However, I just ultimately was really bothered by the idea of the House being the only supernatural/sci-fi element in the novel. I wanted to accept it without explanation, but I couldn't because the rest of the story was so normal and grounded that to have that one hugely weird  factor just felt all the more implausible. Also,

Spoiler:

I didn't care for that bit you have spoilered, either, whatthedeuce, and the story could have been just fine without it.

Spoiler: