Dune

I've been wanting to re-read Dune for a long time. I finally grabbed it and started reading it when I returned from N.O. for Thanksgiving. It really is a grand story and a wonderful read. Because I tire of the stories that warn us of a desolate future after we rape the planet, I now read these as the assurance that the destruction of humanity will in fact come and the planet will have an opportunity to repair itself without our presence--even if it is giant worms. Yay Frank Herbert.

China Mieville The City & The City

My love for China only grows with each book. This is a great classic noir detective story wrapped around a parable for our culture of insulated lives. He really did a great job with character development, creating a fantastical world struggling with physical limitations that is completely understandable and believable. I enjoyed the story front start to finish. Yay.

The Business

I'm continuing my Iain Banks reading with The Business. I disliked this more than the previous. I'm interested in reading The Wasp and will hit MLK when I return from holidays to check that out. His Sci-Fi interests me much more than his dystopian fiction or whatever one calls these books. This novel contained way too much non-essential descriptive prose ("I listened to Alanis Morisette's Jagged Pill while on the plane.") Lots and lots of it. I also found the story somewhat irrelevant and the conclusion uninspired and unsatisfying. Sorry.

David Plante's loss

David Plante's The Pure Lover: A memoir of Grief was an elegant small volume of remembrances of love past. I liked how strongly he recalled his love for his partner and how vividly he wrote about intimacies and small moments. I think the sum of a life together is really the small moments; that is when a couple creates a thing, a oneness. Over time these shared moments become a thing to cherish or a pain in the ass. It's nice to read about this couple who really did love each other, or at least that is how Plante remembers it. Either way, it's a nice read.

Transitions

Iain M Banks' newest sci-fi is a "fable for the future"--hardly. It is actually a tale of modern mans' hatred and fear of intelligence. I stumbled on the incidental homophobia in the first 50 pages ("I'm not gay or anything; I'm totally normal.") but stayed with him to the thrilling conclusion. I really enjoyed the book. I am a huge fan of structure and enjoyed how he put the story together through various first person narrations. While I figure out fairly quickly who was who in the story it didn't diminish the pacing or the ultimate battle. While Iain Banks may consider homosexuality to be abnormal, I still enjoyed the book.

Stitches

Loved it. Great art. Great narrative. Great art. This is one of those stories that lends itself to graphic novel. The drawing style was really classy. It had a great flowing quality that was anti-comic strip, helping to make the story unique. I love the idea of the family having a unique ability to communicate--mom uses slamming cupboard doors and throwing dishes; dad is the sound of his car leaving as fast as possible; brother percussion; and author his artwork.

Ode to Kirihito

After an embarrassment and confusion trying to decipher the Dewey Decimal System I used to know and love, I finally found Ode to Kirihito in the Graphic Novel section (not the non-fiction aisle). Quite an awesome read. I love the story--always enjoy the conspiracy and the medical story--and the graphics were cool as well. I loved some of the drawings of the characters, especially Dr. Urabe (aka Mr. Hot). Plus the hilarious big-breasted women who always took their tops off. Greed, humanity, pride, age discrimination, we had it all.

Donna Tartt The Little Friend

My first foray into Tartt's crazy world was quite enjoyable. She is the literary daughter of Carl Hiasson and Shirley Hazzard. At 625 pages it is a bit long but the writing is so interesting and the plot twists engaging enough to keep my interest.

The Chocolate War

Robert Cormier's YA novel about finding individuality is considered a classic by many. I find myself reading a lot of YA lately and enjoying most. They have a simple intensity that many adult books lack; attributable I think to some degree to grown-ups' dismissal of the complexities of youth. At any rate, this book was not my favorite. I like the idea of faithfully portraying young and mature people with good and bad qualities and letting kids know that adults are just as unreliable as anyone else. I actually liked the ending as well. Maybe I really did like the book. Hmmm.

The Savage Garden

While Los Angeles Times calls Mark Mills' The Savage Garden "A remarkable voice", I found it unreadable. Lines such as "His fingers charted a lazy yet determined course along the inside of her dove-white thi8gh, the flesh warm and yielding, like new dough" made me laugh out loud. His coincidental homophobia truly annoyed me however on page 59 when he learned his professor was heterosexual and he apologized for "casting aspersions on his sexuality." Poor homosexuals...

The Mermaids Singing

After seeing an episode of Wire In The Blood I was intrigued about the series on which it was based. I love the Tony Hill character and his social awkwardness and wanted to see what the character was like in the text. The novel was graphic and a bit gory and I'm not sure the takeaway was better or worse. There were aspects I liked such as his neuroses were more pronounced in the book and his sexual relation with the mysterious phone caller made more sense. While I enjoyed the read I probably wouldn't continue with the series.

Shirley for Halloween

Re-reading Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House was fun. I remember her from university and wanted to revisit something so I picked up HH. It has a smooth simple flow. She writes quite lovingly about allowing intuition to find one's destiny. The book has a strong lesbian element which I don't recall from my first reading. I like how the protagonist evolves through the story from a timid mouse to someone comfortable with life and death. Good read. It may inspire me to pick up We Have Always Lived in the Castle next.

Brodeck

After a short dry spell of reading periodicals and doing some crossword puzzles I came back to fiction with a wallop. Brodeck, Philippe Claudel's new novel is really good. I love the simple prose, the restraint in the narrative and the parallels between war and peace. One may get used to anything yet wrong remains wrong.

Dreams of a Dancing Robot Bee

I have been reading the short stories of James Tate, Dreams of a Dancing Robot Bee, for the past couple months between various other books. This is a tough one. I didn't like any of the stories for several reasons yet I couldn't stop reading the collection. Each story left me feeling somewhat uneasy or vaguely threatened or some odd and ugly way. The characters all seem so average and generic yet have some odd and dark quality. Part of it is how unhappy everyone is under the surface maybe. At any rate, I give the book a thumbs up for the ability to really affect me in some strange way.

The Tourist

Olen Steinhauer's The Tourist was quite the page-turner. I do love spy novels so come into with expectations of a strong story and a new take on an old genre. The story is complex, engaging and believable. I loved the relationships and trust issues between the characters. I also really appreciated the complicated and dangerous office politics true to any job. I found myself staying up late into the night with this one. Good job!

Fatherland by Robert Harris

After a rough couple weeks still feeling unfulfilled from my empty caloric romance read, I picked up Robert Harris' Fatherland. Three months on the New York Times Bestseller List! It was the perfect summer read. A great detective story with a hard-boiled protagonist--outsider, smart, honorable--and an engaging background story, what-might-have-been if Germany had won WWII and controlled the majority of Europe and Joseph Kennedy was US president. Good job.

True North: a M/M Romance

After a particularly difficult emotional week I decided to read a m/m romance. Being fairly new to the genre I picked one at random. True North is the story of an accident prone (hairy daddy type) who reports to the ER for stitches by the new doctor in town (younger cutie). The book was almost funny but not quite. It was pornographic in an awkward way mostly because it was two young women writing detailed porn about men having sex. Some of it was laughable and some hot but ultimately not.

At the Mountains of Madness

H P Lovecraft's classic novella is called the quintessential work of supernatural horror. I found it terribly over-written and not at all horror-ful. The florid language really distracted from the story. I think Poe did a much better job describing terror.

The Sandman: Volumes 3 - 10

Neil Gaiman is really one my favorite living authors. To re-read this series was such a joy. I thought I'd work through this over the next year or two yet found myself reading through the night volume after volume until suddenly, the Dream King was gone. It's hard to say what my favorite story line is but I do have the sense that the stories improve as one moves toward the conclusion. The artwork is so gorgeous and the characters are so well-developed. Spectacular spectacular.

The [bad] Movies of My Life

I tried unsuccessfully to read The Movies of My Life by Alberto Fuguet. It was a great concept and I enjoyed the beginning but ultimately I couldn't get fully engaged. I think maybe there was too little information in each vignette or maybe the lack of homosex left me feeling empty. Either way, my reading list is long and my time is short so Alberto went on the "done" pile.

Colm Toibin's The Story of the Night

Colm Toibin is such an amazing writer. While I haven't read all his works, what I have read is impressive. With a nice writerly style, he is able to describe the complexity of life in such a small space. A nice book about how love and honesty define who we are.

The Sandman: The Doll's House

The Doll's House arc is not the best in the series but Gaiman's average is better than most other's best. I like the Rose Walker character and her connection through the books.

The Arctic Incident

Book Two of the Artemis Fowl series actually held my interest. I'm still unsure how I feel about the lack of integrity in young Fowl and that Butler hasn't taught him the ways of the world yet, but I guess that will keep me coming back for more...

Artemis Fowl

Very nice. With fairies, hot bulters, evil children and cyclonic flatulence, it was difficult to put down. Looking forward to the next installment.

Beautiful People

The first half of Simon Doonan's Beautiful People gave me sufficient insight into his life; I felt no desire to continue. The story may be about the pursuit of beautiful folks, but it wasn't much about engaging people. With lines like "by the age of sixteen--i.e., old enough to become prostitutes--" the book should have been more fun than it was. It read like a series of disjointed columns for a blog, which may be its origin. Oh well...

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance -- Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!

This is one of the funniest books I've read. Very clever and well thought out. The inclusion of illustrations and the reading group discussion guide provide a consistency and focus on the story. There were so many times I wanted to read a passage aloud to someone. Yay Jane!

The Lightning Thief

After finishing the first volume of the Sandman, I easily transitioned into Rick Riordan's Book One of The Olympians series. It was a fast read and fun. There are numerous comparisons to HP of course, yet it holds its own. I read it in two sittings and didn't feel compelled to run out for Book Two, but would read more in the future.

The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes

After a long hiatus from reading I've been feeling anti-social and decided to start again. To test the waters I picked up The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman. As a huge fan of Gaiman (and gay men) I always enjoy his stuff. The first installments of The Sandman series held up on this reading. I love the dark quality of Vertigo comics, especially their non-traditional heroes.