Current Reads

American Psycho was hilariously ridiculous. Granted, I skipped over most of the sex-and-violence parts and just laughed at his loving descriptions of his devotion to skincare. (I borrowed the book from my brother-in-law when I was in high school. And then I blatantly read it in religion class, all YEAH, WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT because I was a kind of obnoxious teenager.)

I've tried to read American Psycho like 5 times, but I always have to put it in the freezer when he

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. Oddly enough, I told a friend of mine that story when I saw her copy on her bookshelf, and she said she always stops at the same part, heh.

Speaking of books you have to put in the freezer, I forgot to report that I finished We Need to Talk About Kevin over the weekend. I don't really even know what to say. I liked it, but I certainly didn't enjoy it. I thought it was compelling and well-written, but I am pretty sure she wrote it with a thesaurus open which was annoying. I thought Eva and Franklin were both assholes, honestly, and neither of those kids had a shot at turning out normal even if one hadn't been a sociopath. As for the nature vs. nurture debate:

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The ending surprised me because I thought

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I think the movie adaptation makes the ending a little more obvious.

I agree that they were both assholes, but I think that's oddly one of the reasons I loved the book so much. I really cared about Eva even though I never actually liked her. The last bit where she says that

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absolutely wrecked me.

After reading So Much for That, I think one of Lionel Shriver's strengths is creating compelling characters who aren't actually likable. (I'm thinking of Glynis in that book because Shep is wonderful.) The wordiness of We Need to Talk About Kevin worked for me since Eva is a pretentious intellectual and it made sense to me that she would write like that.

I finished rereading The Westing Game. 16 years after I read the book for the first time, I still really want to be Turtle Wexler.

I want to know what's going on with the sequel Raskin supposedly wrote before she died. I was so excited for it a few years ago and I've heard nothing about it since then.

WHAT SEQUEL WHAT?!

*calms down*

Um. Okay. Trying not to get overly excited. But also wondering what could possibly be in the sequel. The book wrapped up everything so well.

The link to Publisher's Weekly is no longer good but here's some information on two new Raskin books and reissues of some other novels. They were supposed to come out in 2010 but it's two years later and I'VE SEEN NO SIGN!!!

gannetguts wrote: I just finished Mindy Kaling's book. I liked it, but ultimately, it made me want Amy Poehler to write a book. She comes across so WELL in Mindy's book and in Tina's that I would read anything by her.

I just finished that yesterday myself and had the exact same reaction. Although maybe a book by her would just ruin the illusion?

I don't know, she seemed pretty awesome in her interview on the WTF podcast.

Yeah, and every interview I've read with her/seen her do has been great. I mostly want to hear about how much fun it would have been to make Wet, Hot, American Summer because that must have been AWESOME.

So I finished Anne Frank Remembered, and though I knew how it was going to end, obviously, I still found myself getting really, really upset. And since it was from Miep Gies' perspective, we get a lot of the aftermath, like how Otto Frank came back to Amsterdam hoping Anne and Margot had survived and it was months before he found out they both died, Anne just days before liberation.

It is a great memoir, but I was very surprised at the emotional impact it had on me. Phew. I need something light now for sure.

Joining in on the 11/22/63 love. Such a great read. One of my favorite books of 2011 for sure.

My copy of 11/22/63 just came in at the library today. I'm looking forward to it!

The Night Circus is finally available for me at the library! I haven't picked up a book in 3 weeks, so hopefully, that novel will kickstart my reading addiction again!

Already Gone by John Rector, because it was free on amazon prime but I accidentally bought it for $5 anyway.

It is a bad book. It starts out mediocre, but get aggressively worse with plot twists that amount to every single character turning into some kind of amoral caricature, most dying at the hands of others, and also totally unnecessary and inconsequential violence. The author is especially fond of hideous hand trauma, although lovingly described, that has no affect on the people who function fine afterwards.

I deleted it with a fury from my kindle, but it would have been a lot more fun to toss in the trash or use to line my cat's litter box. BAD BOOK.

I purchased Already Gone when it was $0.99 as the Daily Amazon special and even paying that little I wanted my money back. You are so right. That book is so, so bad. Beyond bad. It's the baddest book I've ever had the displeasure of reading.

Swarley wrote:. It's the baddest book I've ever had the displeasure of reading.

Thank you for validating my feelings. I actually demanded my money back from Amazon, because it was free to Prime members. I can't remember the last time I was that mad at a book. They are tricking people into to reading that terrible book.

It's the baddest book I've ever had the displeasure of reading.

I personally loved Already Gone. It might not have been totally original, and I agree that it was violent (that doesn't bother me), but it all fit with the story and the writing was beautiful at times.

You must not be a fan of thrillers.

Vmars123 wrote:

It's the baddest book I've ever had the displeasure of reading.

I personally loved Already Gone. It might not have been totally original, and I agree that it was violent (that doesn't bother me), but it all fit with the story and the writing was beautiful at times.

You must not be a fan of thrillers.

I like thrillers. That's why I read it in the first place. I also like a plot, which was the weakest part of Already Gone, and characterization, which was non-existent. Every single character in that book was essentially a shitty imitation of Anton Chigur from No County for Old Men. Seven (or whatever) Anton Chigurs in one book stretches the beyond the limits of disbelief. Every character cannot be a criminal mastermind with immeasurable capacity for violence and a total lack of human emotion beyond inclination to kill (for incredibly convoluted plot reasons). Violence doesn't bother me, either. Masturbatory pointless unrealistic violence, lacking actual physiological, character, and/or plot consequences, bothers me. If I wanted that, I'd read bad fan fic.

I could write an essay on everything that was terrible in the book, because I hated it that much.

On the plus side, this makes me think that just about anyone can get a book published and I have a lot of writer friends.

ETA: I realized I read Moonlight Mile, the final (based on events in the book)in the Kenzie/Gennaro series by Dennis Lehane. I found it a little disappointing and less interesting than the others, largely due to the winding down finality the author injected to close out the series. But it was way better in retrospect because I read that awful book after it!

I didn't get that at all. To me it was a fun airplane read that was a throwback to the old pulp thrillers from the 50's, and not something that would fit in with the bloated brick-sized thrillers that pop up today. Maybe this is why you didn't like it. You might've been expecting something comparable to the genre today. I also thought the writing was beautiful in places, which is something you never see in thrillers these days. It wasn't my favorite book by any means, but it was good enough to get me to by his other books.

re: Dennis Lehane.

I stopped reading him after Shutter Island. Now talk about a terrible book. Not only was it totally predictable from the start, it's a complete rip-off of William Peter Blatty's THE NINTH CONFIGURATION. I kept reading it thinking, "surely he's not going to rip off the entire book. he has to have some kind of twist coming up." But he didn't.

I also had a hard time with the Kenzie/Gennaro series. Standard PI cliche.

Mystic River, I enjoyed.

Or people just like different things? I think you can like the same genre and still have different tastes.

One of my favorite books ever is Prep and a lot of people here hate it.

Mystic River is actually one of my favorite Lehane books. I also loved Any Given Day.

Or people just like different things?

Of course.

One of my favorite books ever is Prep and a lot of people here hate it.

I've never read it, but I've heard terrible things about it. My daughter has a copy lying around somewhere. Maybe I'll pull it out and see where I land. A lot of people seemed to enjoy it when it was out.

I'm reading "The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death" by John Kelly. As the title suggests, it covers how the medieval plague travelled from Asia to Europe, and the effects on populations and societies. I'm enjoying it, the author lets the sources speak for themselves, and his writing style is very descriptive. Reading about how it's transmitted from fleas to humans is also really fecking gross.

Oh man, you guys are entirely right on The Night Circus. It is marvellous. I've only jsut started it and I don't want it to ever end.

gannetguts wrote:Oh man, you guys are entirely right on The Night Circus. It is marvellous. I've only jsut started it and I don't want it to ever end.

Ha! I was the exact opposite, until about the last third of the book. I'm glad I stuck with it, because I mostly liked it in the end, but man. I just found the first two-thirds totally tedious and scattered.

I'm pretty sure I got this based on someone(s) here, but I'm reading The Rules of Civility and really enjoying it so far.

I just finished The Night Circus. Really enjoyed it like everyone else. My one issue is that it felt like she kept the characters a bit at arms length sometimes (though not all of them - I loved Herr Thiessen, for instance). Also, I really wanted to see

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I've just finished Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, which was simultaneously engaging, poignant, disturbing, and flat out weird. Now I've started Daughter of Smoke and Bone which I confess to picking up as it was recommended on Amazon as 'You liked The Night Circus, hence you'll like this!'. Credit to Amazon, although I'm only a few chapters in, I'm enjoying it.