Current Reads

I just discovered that I can get check out e-books from my library right on my Kindle so I read two new books this weekend!
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? was cute but not as hilarious as I expected (probably because I read too many rave reviews). But it was a perfect plane-ride read.

Ashfall, a YA about the aftermath of the Yellowstone caldera blowing, was really meh. I mean, I am really into post-disaster YA books, but the writing was just so bland, it didn't match up with the action at all. The author really needs to learn about "show, not tell."

I started Ashfall, got about three chapters into it and gave up. I thought it was kind of awful.

I finished Maggie Stiefvater's new book The Raven Boys last week. I liked it, but didn't love it. It took maybe half the book until it seemed to get going, and I'm not really in love with the characters so far. But I'll still read the next one in the series (I think there are to be four books altogether) whenever it comes out, because ultimately I do like her writing style.

I'm in the process of reading the Stephanie Plum novels and I've been mostly enjoying them but I'm about to start number ten and, good grief, this love triangle is starting to get really tedious. Someone please tell me she doesn't keep dragging this out.

big chicken wrote:I finished The Mark of Athena on my commute this morning and I'm OMG, WHY DID YOU LEAVE US HANGING OVER THE BIGGEST CLIFF OF ALL YOU TROLL RICK RIORDAN!!! right now. Annabeth is awesome-this book was her moment to shine and the end has left me CEASING TO BE BECAUSE I JUST CAN'T. I NO LONGER AM.

Now I think I'm going back to Dance with Dragons for a few chapters while I will myself back into existence.

This is my favorite review ever.

I'm reading - and loving - This Is How You Lose Her, by Junot Diaz. It's really lovely and sad and also hilarious in places. Just great.

Putli Bai wrote:

big chicken wrote:I finished The Mark of Athena on my commute this morning and I'm OMG, WHY DID YOU LEAVE US HANGING OVER THE BIGGEST CLIFF OF ALL YOU TROLL RICK RIORDAN!!! right now. Annabeth is awesome-this book was her moment to shine and the end has left me CEASING TO BE BECAUSE I JUST CAN'T. I NO LONGER AM.

Now I think I'm going back to Dance with Dragons for a few chapters while I will myself back into existence.

This is my favorite review ever.

Heh, yeah it's one of my favorite reviews, too! And it's making me think I need to get off my ass and get caught up on those books....

Jude, I have The Raven Boys in my library queue, and I was totally hoping someone here would give it a glowing review. At least now I have my expectations tempered, so if it's not great, I won't be too surprised or disappointed.

Swarley wrote:I'm in the process of reading the Stephanie Plum novels and I've been mostly enjoying them but I'm about to start number ten and, good grief, this love triangle is starting to get really tedious. Someone please tell me she doesn't keep dragging this out.

Pretty sure she drags that shit out for all its worth. I read them aaaaaaaages ago, so my memory is hazy, but I think it continues for a while.

Completely sucked into Game of Thrones. Just started A Clash of Kings. SO much of it was making me incoherent rage, but the books are like CRACK. Also reading Dance, Dance, Dance by Murakami. I love so much of his stuff, despite finding certain topics problematic.

A bunch of books I ordered off Book Depository for my friend's baby shower arrived and I am SO excited to gift them. So much nostalgia. I got:

Oh, The Places You'll Go
Madeline
Whoever You Are
Anne of Green Gables
I Capture the Castle
Matilda

Swarley wrote:I'm in the process of reading the Stephanie Plum novels and I've been mostly enjoying them but I'm about to start number ten and, good grief, this love triangle is starting to get really tedious. Someone please tell me she doesn't keep dragging this out.

Pretty sure she drags that shit out for all its worth. I read them aaaaaaaages ago, so my memory is hazy, but I think it continues for a while.

Yeah, she does. I actually had to stop reading them because I got so frustrated at the lack of developments - plot and character-wise.

I fear I'm going to have to stop reading them too. My slapping hand is starting to twitch. Stephanie really needs to grow the hell up. It's actually not that hard to pick between Morelli and Ranger. I've done it every damn book.

I read the first dozen or so and got increasingly annoyed with the way she dragged out the Ranger v Morrelli thing for so long. It was getting to the point that I only kept on reading to see what trouble Stephanie, Lula and Grandma Mazur would cause, and how she'd destroy yet another car.

I've started on Broken Harbor and am speeding through it, like I do every single Tana French novel. Of course, I'm also bracing myself to hate the ending, like I have with her previous three books.

whatthedeuce, I read Broken Harbor last month, and I'm sorry to say, but you probably will be disappointed by the ending. Out of all Tana French's novels, this was my least favorite. I did not really warm up to the narrator like I did with the other books or care about his family and background story. I thought the mystery started off good, but then the conclusion was unsatisfactory. I'm curious to see what your thoughts are once you've finished!

Me Talk Pretty wrote:whatthedeuce, I read Broken Harbor last month, and I'm sorry to say, but you probably will be disappointed by the ending. Out of all Tana French's novels, this was my least favorite. I did not really warm up to the narrator like I did with the other books or care about his family and background story. I thought the mystery started off good, but then the conclusion was unsatisfactory. I'm curious to see what your thoughts are once you've finished!

I'm about 3/4 the way through, and I have not warmed up to Scorcher the way I did with the other protagonists. I've torn through the other three, and I find her style of writing so fascinating and engaging. I want the next one to be either Curran or Sam! I'm betting on Curran, though. There seems to be a pattern, Rob's book featured Cassie, Cassie's book featured Frankie, Frankie's book introduced Kennedy...

ETA: I kind of LIKE being disappointed by the outcomes. It's almost refreshing not to have a happy ending all the time.

Me Talk Pretty wrote:whatthedeuce, I read Broken Harbor last month, and I'm sorry to say, but you probably will be disappointed by the ending. Out of all Tana French's novels, this was my least favorite. I did not really warm up to the narrator like I did with the other books or care about his family and background story. I thought the mystery started off good, but then the conclusion was unsatisfactory. I'm curious to see what your thoughts are once you've finished!

This is exactly how I felt about it. I think she is a wonderful writer, and I certainly enjoyed the book, but I didn't engage with it the way I did with In The Woods or Faithful Place (I really enjoyed The Likeness, implausible plot aside, but possibly because Donna Tartt's The Secret History is one of my favourite books, and that was clearly what she was channeling). As others have said, this is probably because I didn't care about Scorcher from the outset, and even though she did a great job fleshing him out, I still didn't really care for him by the end.

Since I read Life After Death by Damien Echols, I wanted to know more about the West Memphis Three case. I followed it up with Mara Leveritt's Devil's Knot, which follows the investigation through the trial to about 9 years of appeals (when she published the book).

It provides a very detailed account of the investigation and trial. A lot of the same information as the Paradise Lost documentaries (I've now seen the last two), but with a level of specificity that would have made for very long and tedious documentaries. Reading it is like watching an extended Law & Order episode where some villain of the week is constantly violating constitutional rights and practicing judicial misconduct. You keep waiting/wanting for Jack McCoy or Mariska Hargitay to show up and save the day, but of course they don't.

The appeal process is much less clearly covered, probably because the trial took about 3 weeks and the numerous appeals took 18 years. I think it's too legally complicated and prolonged to explain in an interesting way to a lay reader, though Leveritt tries.

Leveritt herself is convinced of the WM3's innocence, but the book is extensively researched and tries to allow the reader to reach their own conclusions (my conclusion was that the trial, and the judge, were bullshit). As a result, it's really long and has a hundred footnotes. Some of the footnotes probably should have been incorporated into the text, and some of them aren't particularly necessary at all. But since the case is so contested, I can see why she documented every single thing she could. That said, it makes for a bit of annoying read on a kindle due to the footnotes.

As Kiran mentioned, this is the book Atom Egoyan is making into a movie with Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth. This movie caused Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin to have a brief falling out, and Echols said the screenplay was comparable to "Leprechaun 3". Echols has cited Leveritt's book as what to read about the case to learn about it, so he probably doesn't have a problem with the book (which, on the advice of his lawyers at the time, he was not interviewed for; the other two were). Very curious. I will say that the true story seems so incredibly contrived and unbelievable, I can see how a movie-version could warp it all the more.

I am curious to see the movie. The comments almost make me more interested just because Atom Egoyen is not at all an exploitative film maker, in my opinion.

Either way it is tragic and a disgrace what happened to those three teenagers.

I read Live By Night, the new Dennis Lehane book, on the plane to Phoenix the other day. I liked it a lot, though not as much as The Given Day, which is my favorite of his. Some of it was utterly implausible, but it's so engrossing that I kind of didn't care. Though I did see the ending coming a mile away. And I was super disappointed by

Spoiler:

Now, I'm about 3/4 of the way through the new historical fiction by Alison Weir about Katherine Plantagenet and Katherine Grey, A Dangerous Inheritance. It's a bit cumbersome, what with all the Katherines/Richards/Henrys/etc., and it flips back-and-forth between the two, but it's a solid plane read.

And I think I'm giving up on The Marriage Plot. I really liked Jeffery Eugenides' other books, but this one is just tedious and not doing it for me and I'm half-way through.

About halfway through The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova. I liked The Historian until the very end, so I figured I'd give her another shot.

I did not like The Swan Thieves as much as I did The Historian, but that's because I am not nearly as interested in Impressionist art (?) as I am in vampires.

Oooh, while I actually like Impressionist art more than vampires, hee. I kind of avoided The Historian for that reason, but maybe I'll try The Swan Thieves!

I just read The Perks of Being a Wallflower for the first time. Oh, my heart.

So far, I really like Broken Harbor's Scorcher and Curran! Scorcher's hard-nosed and tough, but I like how his and Curran's personalities and approaches to investigation contrast. I like how he walks Curran through the logic behind his methods. I'm learning stuff about police investigation as I go along! I'm still within the first hundred pages, so who knows if I'll end up disliking one or the pair of them, but I'm loving this book as much as I did the previous three at this point. The Tana French novel I've liked least is The Likeness if only because I just couldn't get past the implausibility of the premise. It just bugged the crap out of me the entire time I was reading.

I'm currently reading A Wanted Man - the latest Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child (it's a guilty pleasure). Reacher is yet again described as being a massive giant of a person, which really baffles me as to how Tom Cruise is going to be able to portray him in the upcoming movie. I know Lee Child has publicly said Reacher's size in the books (6"5') is a metaphor, but huh?

Just finished Diana Rowland's My Life as a White Trash Zombie. It was really good. Nice to have a main character who isn't a "bad-ass take shit from no one stunningly gorgeous perfect in every way but for emotional issues" type.