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[BillF]

How is this? It seems most of the reviews are positive, but always nice to have another opinion.

Very readable. Got through its almost six hundred pages in just five days, which is unusual for me. Fictionalised, slightly larger than life, slightly satirised, but essentially accurate and telling picture of present-day London and its inhabitants.

[sidewinder]

essentially accurate and telling picture of present-day London and its inhabitants.

'Bonfire of the Vanities' without the morals? Sounds just up my street..

Edited January 29, 2013 by sidewinder

[BillF]

essentially accurate and telling picture of present-day London and its inhabitants.

'Bonfire of the Vanities' without the morals? Sounds just up my street..

You're on the ball, Sidewinder! I told my wife it was the English equivalent of Tom Wolfe, Wolfe being like bourbon and Lanchester like tea.

[erwbol]

[jlhoots]

Patrick deWitt: The Sisters Brothers

[BillF]

Another excellent one by John Lanchester - sharply observed, outrageousy funny, good on male sexual fantasies, too.

[niels]

Orhan Pamuk - The Silent House. One of the last books I didn't read from him yet.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I’ve loved swords and sorcery fantasies since I first read Tolkien in the early 60s. Since the beginning of December, I’ve been reading Robert Jordan’s ‘Wheel of time’ series; a huge swords and sorcery series of 14 books – big books, with about 30 main characters, about a hundred (or maybe more) significant characters and a cast of probably thousands of bit parts. I’ve easily read the early books half a dozen times; the later ones not so often. I stopped buying them in about 2004, thinking that Jordan had made the thing too complex for its own good, that it would be impossible for him to pull the whole thing together coherently. But then I heard he’d died, leaving the final books outlined with lots of parts drafted, and that his wife had organised completion by one Brandon Sanderson. So I decided I’d save the last four up until the final volume was published (it came out on 8 January over here) and read the whole thing.

Well, Jordan and Sanderson did manage to pull the whole thing together – a terrific feat of concentration and focus, which made the last three books the most unputdownable I can ever remember reading. All of what seemed to be artificial complexity, created because Jordan had to produce another book for the publishers, turned out to be not just relevant but necessary. All but about two of the threads were tied up in the end.

I suspect this was mostly Sanderson’s work; for Jordan to have even outlined how he proposed to tie all this up, it would probably have been necessary for him to have written virtually the whole thing, which he definitely didn’t. Sanderson’s an interesting writer – I haven’t ready anything else he’s done, but whereas Jordan seemed to lose his sense of humour as he wrote (his Conan books are full of humour), Sanderson’s sense of humour is very nice. Many of the later exchanges between Mat and Talmanes are drily hilarious.

If you read this, make sure you haven’t anything better to do for a couple of months.

Now going on to a bit of SF; Peter F Hamilton’s Confederation and Void series.

MG

[ElginThompson]

[paul secor]

George Orwell: A Collection of Essays

[ejp626]

Finally wrapped up Midnight's Children. Just didn't do that much for me this time around -- too many digressions and simply too long. I doubt I'll read it a third time. I am somewhat curious how the movie turned out (that was at least part of the reason for tackling this again).

I have been struggling through Amado's The War of the Saints. Finally made it to the halfway mark and he is introducing even more plot complications. But I find that I am completely uninterested in any of the characters and their problems. Time to bail on this. I really don't understand as I liked most of his other novels, but this was a very late novel and perhaps he was trying to hard to do something "literary."

But I did enjoy Greene's Travels with my Aunt. The narrator, Henry, is the straightest of straight men observing the madcap adventures of his 75-year old aunt. Ripped through this in 3-4 days (just so glad to be back to something fun).

About to tackle Atwood's Lady Oracle. Certainly not expecting it to be as fun as the Greene but hopefully not as dire as some of the other books I have read recently. It too appears to be a bit too long for its own good.

[jazzbo]

[paul secor]

Ross Macdonald: The Chill

[BruceH]

David Simon - Homicide

I read this back in '97 or '98, and liked it. Interesting to compare it to the series.

[paul secor]

Simenon: The Friend of Madame Maigret

[ejp626]

Finished Atwood's Lady Oracle. Definitely more entertaining than I was expecting, though goodness knows the main character made a bunch of strange and sometimes outright foolish decisions. There are some interesting parallels to Cat's Eye.

Another Canadian novel for the time being Powning's The Sea Captain's Wife (and then Malone's Handling Sin after that):

[Serioza]

The Best Short Stories of O. Henry

[T.D.]

Once a year, I splurge on some chess books, with a preference to annotated game collections. Bought four really nice ones this late winter, have been dipping into them, all are excellent. The latter two are older, I finally broke down and purchased them...

Aron Nimzowitsch: On the Road to Chess Mastery, 1886-1924, by Per Skjoldager and Jørn Erik Nielsen

The Stress of Chess..., by Walter Browne

Victor Bologan: Selected Games 1985-2004; Victor Bologan

My One Hundred Best Games; Alexey Dreev

[Simon8]

Lydia Davis' Collected Stories : I read two dozens of them, mostly from her first and last collection, and I'm... perplex: she comes highly recommended to say the least; I found her stories to be OK at best, almost always missing something (style, perspective, humor, emotion...). I realize I'm in the minority !

Before: Denis Johnson's "Angels". Johnson sometimes wallows in his characters' miseries and the book can be a little depressing...but still, an exceptional writer and some the most vivid prose out there !

Edited February 19, 2013 by Simon8

[Larry Kart]

Dickens' "Our Mutual Friend"

Never got into Dickens before, but this one is doing it for me.

[niels]

Almost finished with Haruki Murakami - 1Q84

For some reason I just have a soft spot for Murakami. Always a pleasure to read his books, and great reading material for commuting.

[Jazzmoose]

Dickens' "Our Mutual Friend"

Never got into Dickens before, but this one is doing it for me.

Until about ten years ago, I could never get more than a few pages into any Dickens book. Apparently, as I got older, someone changed the content of the books as I enjoy them now...

[paul secor]

Penelope Lively: Judgement Day

[A Lark Ascending]

Third of Bruce's Cambridge (the proper one) based crime novels.

Not brilliantly written - basically a fan's account relying mainly on interviews with musicians, journalists and fans. But it tells the tale without attempting to relate Colosseum to the dialectics of post-capitalist disfunctionalism.

Saw this referred to above and it was on sale for sixpence next to the eggs in Sainsbury's.

[BillF]

Third of Bruce's Cambridge (the proper one) based crime novels.

Not brilliantly written - basically a fan's account relying mainly on interviews with musicians, journalists and fans. But it tells the tale without attempting to relate Colosseum to the dialectics of post-capitalist disfunctionalism.

Saw this referred to above and it was on sale for sixpence next to the eggs in Sainsbury's.

I think you'll find it's all it's cracked up to be.