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.