rfisher
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That's what that credit is for!
Outside of a Dog, a Book is Man's Best Friend (The Book Thread)
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For some reason, I find it so much harder to decide how to spend those credits than I do to spend cash.
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rfisher
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I like the Prey novels by Sandford, but I love his Virgil Flowers books. This one had me LOL several times. Even though I don't know the area, I'm from a small rural town and Sanford nailed the dynamics. Plus, the end for Virgie is very interesting. Virgil is a lot less intense than Lucas Davenport in the Prey books and gives Sanford some room to play around. The whole sexed up Barbie story line was hysterical and sad at the same time because I could totally see small towns that have experienced severe economic downturns rallying around someone creating local economy like they did with the orgasmic Barbie and Ken dolls.
The Connelly novel is a Harry Bosch book. Harry has left the LAPD (again) and is working as a consultant for a small town police department. This too gives Connelly freedom to let Harry be something different.
As for Reacher, I always say I'm through with the books because Child annoys me, but like a moth to a flame.....
puglover
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I love the Virgil Flowers books as well and think Sandford has been brilliant in his character development of Lucas Davenport and his introduction of "that F'ing Flowers" as the younger, down-home boy crime fighter. I also enjoy the humor he injects into this series.
Susan1
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He has a new female detective series starting with the book, the Late Show. I'm only up to 2011 with my Harry Bosch/Mickey Haller books, so it will take me awhile to get to 2017, but if she's not related to any of their continuing stories (I'll have to look it up; I just added the title to my list), I might check it out first.
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Apologies @VALuvsMKwan. It's not a well known name at all here.
I think my dislike comes from association. Think there was a really mean girl in Sweet Valley High which I was reading 30 or so years ago.
You're right about old fashioned names coming back in as a thing. Lots of Elsies here about now.
VALuvsMKwan
Codger level achieved
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Apologies @VALuvsMKwan. It's not a well known name at all here.
I think my dislike comes from association. Think there was a really mean girl in Sweet Valley High which I was reading 30 or so years ago.
You're right about old fashioned names coming back in as a thing. Lots of Elsies here about now.
No apologies necessary. Should have put a
in my message.
nlloyd
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Talking of genre-based reading, has anyone used the AbeBooks curated collections to attempt to find new authors in a particular genre? If so, how useful has that been to you? The cross-genre collection 100 (Fiction) Books to Read in a Lifetime has generated some discussion, but not as much as I would have expected.
Susan1
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The only thing I've done is search for "authors like..........." and found exactly that. And in the library magazine, it will say "if you like books by.........." and they show the latest book. Then I start with that person's first book, because so many have continuing characters and ongoing cases. This is all mystery/legal/detective stuff.
clairecloutier
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A while ago, I started reading The Idiot by Dostoevsky. Finally finished it last night (it took quite a while).
I found the book to be ... spotty. The structure/pacing is weird. There's some very interesting & good sections and characters, some sections that are really compelling and draw you in (mainly parts 1 and 4). But there are also some very long sections that don't do anything to move the plot forward and that I found pretty boring, TBH.
I read Crime and Punishment a couple years ago, and the two books are so different, even though Dostoevsky wrote them back-to-back. Crime and Punishment has an almost cinematic feel, there's quite a bit of action, and great images of St. Petersburg. The Idiot is more stagey, like a play; almost the entire book consists of a series of conversations in people's living rooms/drawing rooms.
I'd be curious to hear how other people liked the book. Found this review of it by A.S. Byatt: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jun/26/highereducation.classics.
I found the book to be ... spotty. The structure/pacing is weird. There's some very interesting & good sections and characters, some sections that are really compelling and draw you in (mainly parts 1 and 4). But there are also some very long sections that don't do anything to move the plot forward and that I found pretty boring, TBH.
I read Crime and Punishment a couple years ago, and the two books are so different, even though Dostoevsky wrote them back-to-back. Crime and Punishment has an almost cinematic feel, there's quite a bit of action, and great images of St. Petersburg. The Idiot is more stagey, like a play; almost the entire book consists of a series of conversations in people's living rooms/drawing rooms.
I'd be curious to hear how other people liked the book. Found this review of it by A.S. Byatt: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jun/26/highereducation.classics.
Erin
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I managed to get a lot of reading done on the way to and from Regina for Skate Canada.
First was Into the Water by Paula Hawkins, author of Girl on the Train. I know Girl on the Train had been panned by a lot of people here, but I didn't mind it (perhaps because I went into it with low expectations). Unfortunately, her second effort isn't even up to that standard. Into the Water is the story of a small town in England with a Drowning Pool, where persecuted women are a little too frequently found dead. The latest is Nel Abbott, who was in the middle of writing a book on the Drowning Pool. The book goes into the mystery of her death, as well of a few others who died in the Drowning Pool through the eyes of way too many narrators - Nel's sister, Nel's daughter, two different police officers, a teacher at the school, the brother and mother of another girl that was killed, local fortune teller, the wife and father of one of the police officers, etc. I'm probably missing one or two narrators, but you get the picture. I also didn't like that some were in third person and some were in first person, which was a bit distracting, although forgivable if the book had been stronger (see below). Nel's sister was even kind of in second person, talking to Nel, which was even more irritating. Anyway, the sign that I wasn't that into it was I put it away for 4 days while I was watching skating, so I'd give this one a pass.
The next two I read were, by complete coincidence, both somewhat on the theme of how divorced parents impacts children. One was The Third Wife by Lisa Jewell - I'd never read any of her books before, but decided to give it a shot after @SHARPIE recommended her so highly. I really liked this one and would read more by her. At the beginning of the book, Adrian's third wife Maya drunkenly steps in front of a bus and is killed. The rest of the book is about Adrian and the rest of his family (including ex-wives and the 5 children he had with them) trying to move on from the death and also a bit of a mystery trying to piece together what happened that night, i.e. why was Maya out getting wasted at a bar (out of character for her) and was the death suicide/accident/murder? It's better than I'm describing it and I like that the author does a good job of creating believable characters and relationships. I particularly liked that she managed to make the younger children smart and likeable without being too precocious, which is tough to do, especially when the kids are British. For fun, there are also some skating references (the second to youngest child is a skater and working on her double axel) and Olympic references (a good chunk of the action takes place in London in July/August 2012, so the London Olympics are high on everyone's mind).
The last one was Noah Hawley's The Good Father, which was good although for anyone that also read his later book Before the Fall, it's not quite as good as the latter. This one opens with an assassination of the likely Democratic nominee for president. The suspect, caught on tape, is Daniel Allen, and most of the book is told from the perspective of Daniel's father Paul as he tries to (a) prove his son is innocent and/or (b) grapple with how his son could have done this and (c) struggle with his own role in Daniel's crime. The reader is given a little more insight, as some of the book has Daniel as the narrator along the way, although I found myself still a bit confused by the end, which would probably be my one complaint about the book. (I'm sure that makes it a technically better book and suited a purpose for the author...just works less for me). A lot of time is spent wondering how/if Paul splitting up with Daniel's mother had an impact on Daniel, which made it kind of an interesting companion piece to The Third Wife. It also had a mix of first person (Paul) and third person (Daniel) narration, but not nearly as bothersome as Into The Water. Perhaps because the book was better or perhaps because there were only two narrators.
First was Into the Water by Paula Hawkins, author of Girl on the Train. I know Girl on the Train had been panned by a lot of people here, but I didn't mind it (perhaps because I went into it with low expectations). Unfortunately, her second effort isn't even up to that standard. Into the Water is the story of a small town in England with a Drowning Pool, where persecuted women are a little too frequently found dead. The latest is Nel Abbott, who was in the middle of writing a book on the Drowning Pool. The book goes into the mystery of her death, as well of a few others who died in the Drowning Pool through the eyes of way too many narrators - Nel's sister, Nel's daughter, two different police officers, a teacher at the school, the brother and mother of another girl that was killed, local fortune teller, the wife and father of one of the police officers, etc. I'm probably missing one or two narrators, but you get the picture. I also didn't like that some were in third person and some were in first person, which was a bit distracting, although forgivable if the book had been stronger (see below). Nel's sister was even kind of in second person, talking to Nel, which was even more irritating. Anyway, the sign that I wasn't that into it was I put it away for 4 days while I was watching skating, so I'd give this one a pass.
The next two I read were, by complete coincidence, both somewhat on the theme of how divorced parents impacts children. One was The Third Wife by Lisa Jewell - I'd never read any of her books before, but decided to give it a shot after @SHARPIE recommended her so highly. I really liked this one and would read more by her. At the beginning of the book, Adrian's third wife Maya drunkenly steps in front of a bus and is killed. The rest of the book is about Adrian and the rest of his family (including ex-wives and the 5 children he had with them) trying to move on from the death and also a bit of a mystery trying to piece together what happened that night, i.e. why was Maya out getting wasted at a bar (out of character for her) and was the death suicide/accident/murder? It's better than I'm describing it and I like that the author does a good job of creating believable characters and relationships. I particularly liked that she managed to make the younger children smart and likeable without being too precocious, which is tough to do, especially when the kids are British. For fun, there are also some skating references (the second to youngest child is a skater and working on her double axel) and Olympic references (a good chunk of the action takes place in London in July/August 2012, so the London Olympics are high on everyone's mind).
The last one was Noah Hawley's The Good Father, which was good although for anyone that also read his later book Before the Fall, it's not quite as good as the latter. This one opens with an assassination of the likely Democratic nominee for president. The suspect, caught on tape, is Daniel Allen, and most of the book is told from the perspective of Daniel's father Paul as he tries to (a) prove his son is innocent and/or (b) grapple with how his son could have done this and (c) struggle with his own role in Daniel's crime. The reader is given a little more insight, as some of the book has Daniel as the narrator along the way, although I found myself still a bit confused by the end, which would probably be my one complaint about the book. (I'm sure that makes it a technically better book and suited a purpose for the author...just works less for me). A lot of time is spent wondering how/if Paul splitting up with Daniel's mother had an impact on Daniel, which made it kind of an interesting companion piece to The Third Wife. It also had a mix of first person (Paul) and third person (Daniel) narration, but not nearly as bothersome as Into The Water. Perhaps because the book was better or perhaps because there were only two narrators.
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In spite of being one of the people who panned The Girl on the Train, I decided to give Hawkins another shot, but no. I quit about a quarter of the way through.
I have started filtering out books about British mothers, as they always seem to have such dreadful children and are always so incredibly tormented by them. It seems to a real trend in British suspense at the moment.
clairecloutier
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I read The Saturday Evening Girls Club for an author's talk that I'm going to. It was a good, quick, pretty entertaining read. It's not literary fiction--it's more like light historical romance or something. It's about 4 young women coming of age in immigrant families in Boston's North End in the early 1900s. The main conflict is, do they follow their career/personal ambitions or do they settle down & get married like their traditional families want them to?? I liked the early-20th-century immigrant aspect of the story.
Japanfan
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I did not read the book, but really enjoyed the film - Emily Watson gave a particularly outstanding albeit painful performance, and the actresses who played the other two (?) major women in the story were good as well.
Jenny
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Finished the new Reacher last night. No spoilers, but if you're a fan I think you will like this one 
It's as though Lee Child has been listening to fans - book fans, not movie fans - and written a book just for us. Vintage Reacher.
I'm wondering if although he's made good money on the options and was likely very happy to have a major star play the character he created, he's now trying to distance himself from it a bit, perhaps due to book fan backlash. In the first part of the book, there are a ton of references to Reacher's size, some of them explicit as in height and weight, and others quite comical
It's as though Lee Child has been listening to fans - book fans, not movie fans - and written a book just for us. Vintage Reacher.I'm wondering if although he's made good money on the options and was likely very happy to have a major star play the character he created, he's now trying to distance himself from it a bit, perhaps due to book fan backlash. In the first part of the book, there are a ton of references to Reacher's size, some of them explicit as in height and weight, and others quite comical
Susan1
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Finished the new Reacher last night. No spoilers, but if you're a fan I think you will like this one
I'm wondering if although he's made good money on the options and was likely very happy to have a major star play the character he created, he's now trying to distance himself from it a bit, perhaps due to book fan backlash. In the first part of the book, there are a ton of references to Reacher's size, some of them explicit as in height and weight, and others quite comical
I remember mentioning up thread that the one I was reading mentioned his height and weight. The one I just got from the library is Nothing To Lose (2008). It will take me awhile to get to the current one. By then there will probably be a newer one.
puglover
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Finished the new Reacher last night. No spoilers, but if you're a fan I think you will like this one
I'm wondering if although he's made good money on the options and was likely very happy to have a major star play the character he created, he's now trying to distance himself from it a bit, perhaps due to book fan backlash. In the first part of the book, there are a ton of references to Reacher's size, some of them explicit as in height and weight, and others quite comical
I finished it as well and really enjoyed it. I rather liked the plot - not so far fetched as some of his adventures. Funny - I felt the same way about all the size references. I kept wondering how he could ever use Tom Cruise if this particular book was ever to optioned for a movie. I agree - classic Reacher!!
rfisher
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Huh. I thought there was a whole lot of not much going on in the book. Like Lee's publishing contract specified so much word count and he just repeated himself a lot. With a lot of driving around doing nothing. Pages and pages worth. It would have made a pretty good short story.
What is interesting is David Baldacci's newest book just came out as well and there are a lot of similarities: same general location, same sub plot, same pages and pages of nothing happening. Even to the driving around a lot.
What is interesting is David Baldacci's newest book just came out as well and there are a lot of similarities: same general location, same sub plot, same pages and pages of nothing happening. Even to the driving around a lot.
clairecloutier
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Susan1
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Just read the third (latest) Mary Kubica book, Every Last Lie. I couldn't stop. And then I had questions about how certain things turned out for certain people. And why certain things were not addressed. No spoilers here!
MacMadame
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Has anyone read The Power? It sounds like fun.
puglover
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Somehow every book I choose lately involves girls/women being captured and then kept in a box or dungeon for a long time. Every one comes highly recommended - maybe because I chose one and now they are customizing my selections to reflect what they think I like. Wrong - I don't like that!
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My husband liked that one a lot.
My daughter likes fantasy books and generally prefers books with female protagonists. She does not, however, like romance novels at all and complains that most fantasy books with female protagonists are basically love stories with magic (with a huge
).I've been looking around and she is right--pickings are really slim if you want a fantasy novel with a female lead and no romance. Any suggestions? She's 21, so adult books would be good; YA would be okay if it's the more mature YA.
rfisher
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your daughter cannot be 21. When I first came to FSU she still played with dolls. Are you trying to be China? Pushing her age by 10 years.My husband liked that one a lot.
My daughter likes fantasy books and generally prefers books with female protagonists. She does not, however, like romance novels at all and complains that most fantasy books with female protagonists are basically love stories with magic (with a huge
I've been looking around and she is right--pickings are really slim if you want a fantasy novel with a female lead and no romance. Any suggestions? She's 21, so adult books would be good; YA would be okay if it's the more mature YA.
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your daughter cannot be 21. When I first came to FSU she still played with dolls. Are you trying to be China? Pushing her age by 10 years.
LOL! I almost didn't post her age, then remembered that most people here seem to have this rather vague impression of her as being maybe in high school now?
Nope, she's 21. She reminds me of this often.
PrincessLeppard
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Has she read any of Terry Pratchett's book with the witches? Those ladies take no crap. And they're funny.
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Hmm, I don't think so.
Thanks! That's one Christmas book off my list.
Thanks! That's one Christmas book off my list.
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