the beginning
==============================
2004
==============================
18 Dec -
Elmore Leonard: Split Images
pb
==============================
15 Dec - 18 Dec
Elmore Leonard: The Switch
pb - 279 pages
crime fiction
A couple of ex-cons kidnap the wife of a disinterested developer, hoping to get a piece of his offshore tax shelter. In chapter three there's some pointless dialogue between the cons which almost turned me off the book, but then it gets interesting and stays there. The ending took me by surprise, though I should have seen it coming ...what I *did* see, that I was running out of pages, was disappointing. I wanted this story to go on for at least another hundred, & that's not a position I normally take with this genre.
==============================
13 Dec - 14 Dec
James Patterson: The Big Bad Wolf
pb - 398 pages
crime fiction
13 Dec: I hesitate to read another Patterson. I'm crazy about Alex Cross, but Patterson's villains are just too villainous.
later: Either I'm getting a stronger stomach or Patterson has toned it down. You never know what is going to happen in one of his books - - except you can be sure that something _will_ happen. And it does. And then something else happens. And another thing. And before you know it, you've run out of book and are looking around for another of his Alex Cross novels.
==============================
9 Dec - 13 Dec
Jim Harrison: Warlock
hardcover - 262 pages
novel
Though there's quite a bit of goofy, funny, loveable humor in this look at one man's mid-life crisis, this view of the world is really depressing. If deep down most of us are like the people in this book, someone ought to just go ahead and put us out of our misery. "Warlock" has internal dialogue which indicates if he ever caught his wife cheating his world would crumble around him ...yet he is unfaithful every chance he gets - always with good reason ("it's my birthday" "I'm bored" or "a blowjob isn't really cheating"). Somehow, though two dozen pages in I was thoroughly disgusted with the characters, I kept reading to the end ...that must be Harrison's skill with words.
==============================
7 Dec - 9 Dec ...submitted to Amazon.com 12/12
John Sandford: The Hanged Man's Song
paperback - 340 pages
crime fiction
When a hacker is killed and his laptop stolen all hell breaks loose. Kidd and LuEllen need to find the laptop, break the code, and avenge their friend. If the fast pace and wonderfully drawn characters hadn't kept me turning pages, the computer technology and hacker inside information would have. I read the last 300 pages in one sitting.
==============================
4 Dec- 7 Dec ...submitted to Amazon.com 12/12
Sheila Kay Adams: Come Go Home With Me
trade paper - 120 pages
memoir
"Sealie" gives a lesson on writing in dialect. Her colorful turns of phrase and sometime odd grammatical use make funny spelling unneccessary while conveying in detail the voices of her home town. I bought this book after hearing Sheila read at Hindman, hoping it was not only her way of reading that made me want more. I wasn't disappointed. The stories -literally dozens of them- are anecdotal; vignettes, really, many from early childhood. All are about growing up in a place where Family and Home mean more than random accidental attachments; so much more. There aren't plots, no intrigue and resolution, but I laughed aloud in places and cried in others, and next time I see Sheila I need to ask about that little "life's secrets revealed" she got from Granny.
==============================
23 Nov - 3 Dec ...submitted to Amazon.com 12/12
Lee Smith: The Last Girls
trade paper - 382 pages
fictionalized memoir
At age 18-22, a dozen girls, college classmates, float down the Mississippi River on a raft. Twenty or twenty-five years later four of this group take a river cruise which retraces their earlier route. During this trip we get to know these four as they are now and listen to their memories and their thoughts about one who was unable to make the reunion trip.
Lee Smith reveals one truth that has bothered me for years: We never really grow up; it's all a lie; there's not some "magic" age where all secrets are revealed. It's a relief to learn I'm not the only one who looked forward to the enlightenment of adulthood only to come to the conclusion it never happens.
Character-driven. An interesting read -I finished the book in days- but something about open-ended stories bothers me... they're so ...unresolved. The characters are strong and will stay with me forever.
==========================================================================
earlier stuff - thanks to Kathryn van Rooyen for the idea of keeping track
==========================================================================
16 Nov - 20 Nov ...submitted to Amazon.com 12/12
Clyde Edgerton: Lunch at the Picadilly
trade paper - 252 pages
fiction
Well... it was okay. It was a real *nice* story, and made me want to do what the protagonist did, which is go hang out in a nursing home, and only partly because of the good karma :)
The characters were interesting and I would have liked to learn more
about *most* of them... but I often got confused about who was who.
There could have been more detail.
There were some minor conflicts, which IMO didn't get resolved, and if this book is character- rather than plot-driven, the characters should really have been explored in more depth.
It made me laugh, but really didn't make me think.
just my $.02 midway through the first coffee of a Tuesday morning
==============================
13 Nov - 16 Nov ...submitted to Amazon.com 12/12
Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveller's Wife
trade paper - 536 pages
fiction
A realistic look at what a relationship would be like, in which one is a time-traveller and the other one isn't... It's comedy & drama, but I wouldn't call it sci-fi or fantasy.
This book is flat out wonderful.
The temptation is to flip back and forth through the pages to see what happened in which "when," but I quickly stopped doing that (1) because it just wasn't necessary, and (2) because the story didn't want to let me stop long enough to do that.
==============================
Nov 3 - Nov 7
Dennis LaHane: Mystic River
paperback
crime fiction-mystery/drama
fast paced, but a weak ending
==============================
30 Oct - 1 Nov
Grace Metalious: The Tight White Collar
paperback
fiction/drama
reason for reading it: worrying about the election had me in hives; a friend suggested I find something lurid, bodice-ripping to read to take my mind off it. Grace Metalious is the author of Peyton Place.
It was supposed to take my mind off politics and it did the trick. In 1962 this book was quite racy :) The storyline runs at a fast pace. A few more like this I might not have bothered voting at all. (Is that why 1/2 the voters stay home - - they're reading lurid romances?)
==============================
11 Oct - 24 Oct
Al Franken: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them ...submitted to Amazon.com 12/12
hardcover
political commentary
reason for reading it: to learn more about the key players in our demockery, and this slim comedy is less intimidating than a thicker and more serious volume would be.
==============================
2004
==============================
18 Dec -
Elmore Leonard: Split Images
pb
==============================
15 Dec - 18 Dec
Elmore Leonard: The Switch
pb - 279 pages
crime fiction
A couple of ex-cons kidnap the wife of a disinterested developer, hoping to get a piece of his offshore tax shelter. In chapter three there's some pointless dialogue between the cons which almost turned me off the book, but then it gets interesting and stays there. The ending took me by surprise, though I should have seen it coming ...what I *did* see, that I was running out of pages, was disappointing. I wanted this story to go on for at least another hundred, & that's not a position I normally take with this genre.
==============================
13 Dec - 14 Dec
James Patterson: The Big Bad Wolf
pb - 398 pages
crime fiction
13 Dec: I hesitate to read another Patterson. I'm crazy about Alex Cross, but Patterson's villains are just too villainous.
later: Either I'm getting a stronger stomach or Patterson has toned it down. You never know what is going to happen in one of his books - - except you can be sure that something _will_ happen. And it does. And then something else happens. And another thing. And before you know it, you've run out of book and are looking around for another of his Alex Cross novels.
==============================
9 Dec - 13 Dec
Jim Harrison: Warlock
hardcover - 262 pages
novel
Though there's quite a bit of goofy, funny, loveable humor in this look at one man's mid-life crisis, this view of the world is really depressing. If deep down most of us are like the people in this book, someone ought to just go ahead and put us out of our misery. "Warlock" has internal dialogue which indicates if he ever caught his wife cheating his world would crumble around him ...yet he is unfaithful every chance he gets - always with good reason ("it's my birthday" "I'm bored" or "a blowjob isn't really cheating"). Somehow, though two dozen pages in I was thoroughly disgusted with the characters, I kept reading to the end ...that must be Harrison's skill with words.
==============================
7 Dec - 9 Dec ...submitted to Amazon.com 12/12
John Sandford: The Hanged Man's Song
paperback - 340 pages
crime fiction
When a hacker is killed and his laptop stolen all hell breaks loose. Kidd and LuEllen need to find the laptop, break the code, and avenge their friend. If the fast pace and wonderfully drawn characters hadn't kept me turning pages, the computer technology and hacker inside information would have. I read the last 300 pages in one sitting.
==============================
4 Dec- 7 Dec ...submitted to Amazon.com 12/12
Sheila Kay Adams: Come Go Home With Me
trade paper - 120 pages
memoir
"Sealie" gives a lesson on writing in dialect. Her colorful turns of phrase and sometime odd grammatical use make funny spelling unneccessary while conveying in detail the voices of her home town. I bought this book after hearing Sheila read at Hindman, hoping it was not only her way of reading that made me want more. I wasn't disappointed. The stories -literally dozens of them- are anecdotal; vignettes, really, many from early childhood. All are about growing up in a place where Family and Home mean more than random accidental attachments; so much more. There aren't plots, no intrigue and resolution, but I laughed aloud in places and cried in others, and next time I see Sheila I need to ask about that little "life's secrets revealed" she got from Granny.
==============================
23 Nov - 3 Dec ...submitted to Amazon.com 12/12
Lee Smith: The Last Girls
trade paper - 382 pages
fictionalized memoir
At age 18-22, a dozen girls, college classmates, float down the Mississippi River on a raft. Twenty or twenty-five years later four of this group take a river cruise which retraces their earlier route. During this trip we get to know these four as they are now and listen to their memories and their thoughts about one who was unable to make the reunion trip.
Lee Smith reveals one truth that has bothered me for years: We never really grow up; it's all a lie; there's not some "magic" age where all secrets are revealed. It's a relief to learn I'm not the only one who looked forward to the enlightenment of adulthood only to come to the conclusion it never happens.
Character-driven. An interesting read -I finished the book in days- but something about open-ended stories bothers me... they're so ...unresolved. The characters are strong and will stay with me forever.
==========================================================================
earlier stuff - thanks to Kathryn van Rooyen for the idea of keeping track
==========================================================================
16 Nov - 20 Nov ...submitted to Amazon.com 12/12
Clyde Edgerton: Lunch at the Picadilly
trade paper - 252 pages
fiction
Well... it was okay. It was a real *nice* story, and made me want to do what the protagonist did, which is go hang out in a nursing home, and only partly because of the good karma :)
The characters were interesting and I would have liked to learn more
about *most* of them... but I often got confused about who was who.
There could have been more detail.
There were some minor conflicts, which IMO didn't get resolved, and if this book is character- rather than plot-driven, the characters should really have been explored in more depth.
It made me laugh, but really didn't make me think.
just my $.02 midway through the first coffee of a Tuesday morning
==============================
13 Nov - 16 Nov ...submitted to Amazon.com 12/12
Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveller's Wife
trade paper - 536 pages
fiction
A realistic look at what a relationship would be like, in which one is a time-traveller and the other one isn't... It's comedy & drama, but I wouldn't call it sci-fi or fantasy.
This book is flat out wonderful.
The temptation is to flip back and forth through the pages to see what happened in which "when," but I quickly stopped doing that (1) because it just wasn't necessary, and (2) because the story didn't want to let me stop long enough to do that.
==============================
Nov 3 - Nov 7
Dennis LaHane: Mystic River
paperback
crime fiction-mystery/drama
fast paced, but a weak ending
==============================
30 Oct - 1 Nov
Grace Metalious: The Tight White Collar
paperback
fiction/drama
reason for reading it: worrying about the election had me in hives; a friend suggested I find something lurid, bodice-ripping to read to take my mind off it. Grace Metalious is the author of Peyton Place.
It was supposed to take my mind off politics and it did the trick. In 1962 this book was quite racy :) The storyline runs at a fast pace. A few more like this I might not have bothered voting at all. (Is that why 1/2 the voters stay home - - they're reading lurid romances?)
==============================
11 Oct - 24 Oct
Al Franken: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them ...submitted to Amazon.com 12/12
hardcover
political commentary
reason for reading it: to learn more about the key players in our demockery, and this slim comedy is less intimidating than a thicker and more serious volume would be.
==============================
posted by NIT TO PEARL TOO @ 12:07 PM
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