Story of Paperclippe:

Having mentioned this book in my last post, I thought it might be a good idea to actually, you know, talk about it a little more.  What a wild thought.

Image credit to http://elentari.vox.com/

Joe Haldeman’s observantly funny style, as I mentioned in the previous post, remains true in The Accidental Time Machine, despite having been written in 2007, nearly 40 years after The Forever War.  It’s the tale of a graduate student at MIT whose calibration machine, meant only to release a proton at particular intervals, seems to be able to travel through time.  First, it disappears for less than a second, then a slightly longer flash, then a few minutes, a few days, and then, he decides to go with it.  Hijinks ensue.

My favorite parts of the novel were not, however, the hijinks, at least, not on the whole.  It was the views at so many different distopian futures.  In one, our hero Matt Fuller travels to MIT nearly a thousand years in the future, and finds it having reverted to a beat-down, wild-westian religions waste land where MIT is now the Massachusetts Institute of Theosophy, and technology on the whole is considered evil, except when considered in context of God and his greater plan.  Here Matt meets a young woman, a nun of sorts who is herself a graduate assistant (which now means something more akin to servant and is a position that only women are lowly enough to hold).  He takes her farther into the future to escape the religious hell and eventually winds up in New Mexico with a woman called La, a sort of projection who is the spirit, or more, the collective consciousness and sometimes god, of  Los Angeles: LA.  But La’s intentions are not pure (are they ever?) and Matt soon discovers through a series of questionably Christian visions of Jesus (despite that Matt is a non-practicing Jew) that La wants the time machine for herself.

Don’t worry.  It all makes sense.

This is much more a quick read than The Forever War; its simplicity, however, is not in the details but in the viewpoint.  The novel starts (pretty much) in the here and now, so Matt’s thoughts are all very understood by someone else coming from the same mindset: you and I.  There’s very much less back-story and more descriptions.  It’s a lighter read in that the story is shockingly linear and for most of the tale there is one character.  There are no losses stylistically, though: given the less-involved plot, Joe Haldeman uses the space to add little tie-ins to everything.  Off-the-cuff comments and characters come full circle and sometimes even become the point of the thing.  The last few pages are a karmic reprieve like no other, a glorious bow on top of the package you wouldn’t even known was missing if it wasn’t there because the stuff inside the box was so good anyway.

Image credit to http://www.nassaulibrary.org/

I’ve also just finished My Heartbeat by Garret Freymann-Weyr which I first discovered on The Book Project.  I won’t go into it
too much since the book itself is so short, but its the story of a young girl, Ellen, trying to understand the relationship between her brother, Link, and his best friend, James.  Are they gay?  Does it matter?  And what is gay, anyway?  It’s a very sweet, understanding story about family, friends, and the relationships we share with them.  It’s also a pretty accurate, unbiased view of the teenage mind.  Give it a read if you like young adult lit or LGBT literature at all.  It’s short and sweet.

As you may also have noticed, I’ve change the theme.  The skinny column was getting on my nerves.

So? Have you read any good books yet this summer?  Let me know about it in the comments!

Thanks to a certain @fetfet50, I picked up two Joe Haldeman books (The Forever War and The Accidental Time Machine) at the library.  Having a disproportionate love for anything sci or fi, I was pretty certain I would enjoy them.

Boy was I wrong.

I consumed them.  I wanted to marry them.  I’m not sure how I went my entire sci-fi lovin’ life without hearing of Joe Haldeman.  But I am disgustingly glad I finally have.

Image credit to http://www.ioncinema.com/

I read The Forever War first, it being the oldest between the two books by nearly 40 years.  At its loosest, it’s an allegory for  Vietnam, Haldeman having served there, and the connections are pretty obvious, most distinctly in the horrible preparation of the troops through no fault of their own, the use of mind-altering drugs by the troops (though in Haldeman’s version, this is officially sanctioned, at least for most drugs), and the backwards un-reason for the war in the first place.  But from there, the book takes an entirely original twist on… well… everything.

Fighting an enemy called the Taurans about which little to nothing is actually known (indeed, no one even knows what Taurans look like until their first mano – a – mano combat, many years after the start of the war), the soldiers are flung through space and time by way of collapsars (now an actual, scientific term for super-massive black holes with incredible rates of rotational speed; in the book, something closer to a black hole – which, lest we forget, were not even actually considered legitimate theory in the 1970s, oh how time flies: super-massive black holes are now that which hold every galaxy together and dark matter keeps us spinning  – and which the author simply describes as a collapsed star with a high enough gravity and density to warp time).  This poses no problem for the soldiers until they return to earth, first dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of years in the future while they themselves have aged only months or years, and every time they return, they find their home planet to be in worse, or at least weirder, shape.  In an ironic twist, after about a thousand years, heterosexuality is considered abnormal and unnatural, natural breeding is considered flawed and gross, and straight people have to be ‘cured.’  But, failing that, the heterosexual are looked on as mere abnormalities, curiosities, and no one is worse for wear – not anymore, anyway.  Not only did that make me giggle, Haldeman actually gave a compelling argument for it, and accurately (or as accurately as can be presumed) gave an account of the feelings of those soldiers, straight soldiers, returning from a mostly-heterosexual time period into this gay new world with as little hate as possible.  Indeed, this was a huge change for them, since sex between male and female soldiers was encouraged in the past as a means of stress relief and considered wholly normal if not necessary for the morale of the troops.  In short, the concept of sexual orientation as well as emotions and perceptions of people jumping thousands of years in a few month’s time felt incredibly genuine while still being sensitive toward tough issues, which was even more impressive to me given that the book was written in 1974.  (In the words of the Ninth Doctor, “Relax. He’s a 51st century guy. He’s just a bit more flexible when it comes to dancing.”  Oh Captain Jack.)

That being said, for as forward-thinking as the book is when it comes to people, it’s incredibly backwards when it comes to technology, which clearly is no fault of its own.  It was 1974; personal computers were nearly unheard of, and here these soldiers are, between the years 2000 and 3500, roughly, and one is complaining that you could only fit something like 15,000 pages worth of information on a memory stick the size of your thumb and that’s why battle plans are inaccurate, et al.  Now, of course, it’s only 2010, but we can fit the entire Library of Congress and then some on a flash drive the size of a toenail.  As I said, it’s no flaw of the book’s, but it does make you squint for a moment and think to yourself, “Wait, no.”

I won’t go into the battle technology too much but I have to mention my favorite piece of equipment, the statis field, a sort of forcefield where everything – light, lasers, everything – is canceled out, and the soldiers on both sides are reduced to fighting with weaponry with no internal moving parts: bo staves, swords, bows and arrows.  I can’t say why, but a bunch of people in space suits taking out long-limbed aliens in life support bubbles with arrows totally made this book for me.

Technology, war, emotions aside, this book, and Joe Haldeman’s writing style on the whole, is incredibly funny.  There are parts where you snicker, parts where you giggle, and parts where you laugh so hard you start to cry.  This is true of both The Forever War and The Accidental Time Machine.  It’s not even so much that jokes are made; it’s a truth in advertising sort of humor, a pointing out of obvious inconsistencies, and weird, universal quirks in people, regardless of time or place or species.  The style is also completely comprehensible and enjoyable whether you have trouble with basic math or a degree in physics or, like me, are somewhere in between.

Check back soon for my review of The Accidental Time Machine, A History of Violence, and possibly The Eyre Affair, which despite the fact that all I remember about Charlotte Bronte from my 6th grade report was that her coffin was only 12 inches wide, I am enjoying immensely.  Hopefully it will not take me a month to post like this one did.  Blogger fail.

If I’m reading a book, which are at about a standard of 300 pages, give or take, and I find myself about one-third of the way through with no real emotion or curiosity for the rest, I put it down.  I let it go.  It may sound fickle, but there are So Many Books and So Little Time.  Obviously, I’ll give consideration if a book is 700 pages long, and if it’s less than 200 I’ll probably finish it at any rate, having only lost between 1-3 hours on it.

I am (was) reading two books, and feel nothing for them.

The first one is, as I mentioned in a previous blog post, The Black Death by John Hatcher.  As I mentioned before, it’s very dry, and distant, with very little character development.  Now, it’s a history, mostly, and I really like reading flat-out history texts, so I didn’t think that would bother me terribly.

But here’s the thing. The full title of the novel is The Black Death: A Personal History. There’s a five(ish) page preface which is pretty much just Hatcher ranting about how this isn’t just a flat-out history text, and that he wanted to get a story involved.  That there had been enough histories written.

Mr. John Hatcher, you have failed.  I’m sorry.  I’m over 100 pages in, and the facts are great, and the details of how this one tiny English village related to the rest of the world is just splendid, but everyone knows all of that already.  I am over 100 pages in and I. do. not. care. who. lives. or. dies.  And when there are actual, real characters involved, you sort of have to care.

In sum, it’s not a novel.  It’s a strong history, a weak story, and I couldn’t tell you the first thing about any of the characters involved.  So I quit.

The second book on my I Don’t Give a Damn list is An Arsonist’s Guide to Writer’s Homes in New England by Brock Clarke.

I wanted to like this.  I wanted to like this soooo bad.  The title is clever, and it is not a metaphor.  The author’s name is Brock Clarke.  Brock fucking Clarke.  That’s up there with Chuck Norris.  The narrative is clever, it’s witty, it’s a really great picture of a washed-up guy who made some mistakes and is turning his life around, it’s a really fresh look at the idiosyncrasies of suburbian life.

But I’ve read this book before.  It was called A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore, except Arsonist’s Guide lacks all of the fantasy, and… well, okay, the death thing.  But mostly the fantasy.  And the readability.

It tries way too hard.  It feels like it’s going for the joke.  There is so much crammed into one long, whining paragraph that it’s more funny if you skip half of it.  It wants to feel incidental and hap-hazard and it kind of does but not in the good way.  It just feels sad, and you’re constantly embarrassed for this guy, not in a “NO DON’T GO IN THERE” way or a “YOU DIDN’T JUST SAY THAT” way, but a “OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE YES I’VE HEARD THIS BEFORE NO I PROMISE I GET IT PLEASE STOP” way.

It’s on the nose, and the whole point was to be tongue-in-cheek, which is a completely different part of the human face.

So I quit.

Next time! Brisingr by Christopher Paolini!  Would have done it this  time!  But it really didn’t fit the theme of the post!  Because I like it!

As promised, I did finally finish Geraldine Brooks’ People of the Book, and let me tell you, it’s just as amazing as my previous post, written at about the 2/3 read mark, would lead you to believe.  In an effort not to repeat myself, I’m actually going to skip reiterating the plot points and make mention of a few other things that really stood out to me.

First of all, this book is absolutely brimming with strong female characters.  For all of the pain and torment most of them have suffered, the female protagonists seem to be the strongest, most noble characters one could hope to come across in such a text.  They are not perfect by any means, and often they allow themselves to be weak, but that’s what makes them strong, in the end.

Second of all, the book is inspiring.  The sheer coming together of religions for a common cause, even though (or perhaps more because) it was completely a non-issue to those involved in the rescue of the book, the displays honesty, of respect, and of understanding are really an inspiration.  Even if all of the characters are fictional, the journey the book took, the number of times it had to be saved, is fact.  It really happened.  So whether or not the events went down exactly as Ms. Brooks speculated or not is only half of the story.

Third, it’s simply amazingly well-written. It switches easily, un-jarringly between main character Hanna Heath’s first-person slang-laden Australian internal dialogue to other POVs, sometimes third person, sometimes first.  It doesn’t interrupt the story at all, and actually serves to enhance it.  Point of view is something I’m really sensitive toward in books, so the fact that this didn’t throw me off or even bother me at all is a tribute to its fluidity.  In addition, Hanna’s internal narrative, when situations allow it to be, is absolutely hilarious, drawing away (but not discounting) some of the darkness from more heavy sections before and after her internal monologue.

I have to be honest: I picked up this book because the cover had glitter on it (oh don’t even pretend you’ve never done the same thing) and it ended up being one of my favorite books of 2010 so far.

The book I’m working on right now is John Hatcher’s The Black Death (you know, for lighter, summer reading material).

I’m about a 1/3 of the way in and I want to avoid saying anything which might change in the remaining two-hundred pages (but come on, it’s the goddamn plague; we know how it’s gonna end) but what I have to say is this: this book is so. incredibly. dry.  It’s an historical narrative, but it is very historical and very little narrative.  There is a non-fiction, italicized insert at the beginning of every chapter, and to be honest, with the way the actually prose is written, it feels kind of redundant.  It’s good for explanation, but I feel like if the narrative is this flat, the disclaimers could have some how been worked into the body of the story itself.

That being said, it’s not a bad writing style, it just feels like its doing itself a disservice by having blatantly un-story segments followed by the story, which is written in almost the same voice.  The content is heady and dark enough, pressing enough, to carry the story by itself, but I almost feel like it shouldn’t have to.

Finally, a note on the blog: I failed to mention this in the previous post, but I’ve instituted the use of categories; they can now be found in the sidebar.  So if you’re looking for something specific, you won’t have to fumble through all of my posts about food to get to a particular book review.

Stay tuned: next time I’ll be talking about An Arsonists’ Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England and, if I can just man-up and finish it, the third and final installment in Christopher Paolini’s Inheretance Trilogy, Brisingr.

Hope my Canadian friends had a great Canada Day, and I hope my American friends find an excuse to blow something up later today (they always do…).

And, after paying off $16 in fines that I didn’t actually have but didn’t feel bad about because a) it was my fault that I didn’t know when my card expired and b) the library really needs that money right now anyway, I went and checked out some new books. I got most of the things which were recommended to me, but some where out (Ubik by Phillip K Dick for one) and some didn’t seem to exist (Carmichael’s Dog by R.M. Koster, which could be find neither in the Carnegie Library nor the inter-library loan system, so I did suggest they purchase it), but in the end I ended up with far too more books than I will have time to read and that is never a bad thing. This may have been due to the newly-proffered baskets a la very small shopping carts the library now supplies so that you don’t have to balance your books under your chin, which truly was the only think that kept me from taking out twenty books in the past, as I have a very small chin-to-crook-of-my-arm ratio, which only allows for about 6 hardbacks or 10 paperbacks.

Already I’ve delved into Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, one of the very few novels by him which I have not read (due to the fact that I previously thought it was permanently checked out, then found out that no, it just lived in the teen fiction section), and I am finding it very silly. I completely empathise with Fat Charlie, though perhaps not in such a severe way: my dad is that dad who is and will always be cooler than you and when you you throw a party all of your friends from high school show up begrudgingly so when they find out, no, he has a real job now and can’t come drinking on Thursday nights. So there’s that.

I also have started the graphic novel A History of Violence, written by John Wagner and illustrated by Vince Locke and though I’m only about 70 pages in, I expected to me much more grabbed by it than I am being (no I have not seen the movie but I do want to, mostly because I would let Viggo Mortenson do horrible things to me). Nothing really against it so far, I’m just the type who has to get into things early on or else I shove them in a corner and let them starve (this is why I can’t have children). For something that’s reputedly a psychological thriller and also, um, a graphic novel, I thought I would be a lot more into it by now. But we’ll see.

And finally, I’m still reading People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks who won the Pulitzer for her work, March.  It is truly amazing.  It’s a fictional story about the Sarajevo Haggadah, an early Jewish seder book, rare and priceless in that it was very finely made and included illustrations (haggadahs are usually boring and utilitarian, my Gentile friends, and nearly no Jewish books were illustrated because for a very long time that was taboo, much as most Muslims consider images of  the prophet Mohammad, PBUH, to be false idolatry).  It tells how the book was created, where various stains and markings on the book come from, and how the book came to be bound in it’s current form, not to mention how it survived the Bosnian War, rescued many times over by people of all faiths, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not so much (one story line involves a very alcoholic Vatican priest and a Rabbi with a severe gambling problem).  The main plot, if you will, is about the woman restoring the book in the present day, who reminds me very much of Temperance Brennan, played by Emily Deschanel of Bones fame.  But, for as into this book as I may be, it does get very heavy and dark at times, and I had to put it away for a while because I was absolutely overcome by one of the stories of persecution of the Jews during the Inquisition.  There’s a particularly graphic depiction of a form of torture which involves making a person swallow a very long piece of linen inch by inch and then pulling it back out of them, and I had to take a breather.  That surprised me.  I’m usually very okay with violence and horror and just god-awful gore and nonsense, but that was a bit much.  When I am through, however, this book will probably have a whole blog dedicated to it (as it’s shaping up to already) because it is just so wonderfully crafted.

That’s it for me for now; I’ve gotten about six hours of sleep in the past two days so I’m going to try to catch some shut-eye.  See you all on the morrow.

Have you ever wondered why vampires can’t get a tan?

Why don’t they like Italian cooking?

And what would a Muslim vampire do when faced with a cross?

These are just a few poignant questions asked (and, shock and awe, answered) in Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, which is, at least in my experience, the first modern vampire novel, focusing more on the science of the creature than the supernatural nature of it.

The book, written in 1954, is still amazingly undated to this day.  There is very little within the story that would suggest lead character Robert Neville lives in any era other than this one, disregarding the fact that the setting (the late 1970s) is declared at the header of every part of the novel.  Coming to the story from a perspective which has been drenched in just about ever vampire novel from 1850 forward, with a huge emphasis on the late 1980s, I found the narrative to be smooth and easy to understand.  The only point which I faltered over at first was the difference between the ‘living’ vampires and the ‘dead’ vampires (which ends up being a huge difference, but for the purposes of avoiding a spoiler, I will not mention why).  Then it dawned on me.  I had read Anne Rice’s Campire Chronicles, and the designation between a ‘living’ and ‘dead’ vampire was very much the same in Interview with the Vampire as it was in I Am Legend: ‘dead’ vampires are dead.  They died.  They have thus been buried, and then rose from their graves.  ‘Living’ vampires are simply transitioning from life into undeath without all of that messy potting soil, and as a result, are much more sound of mind and purpose.  I thought it was a cool distinction in Rice’s works and feel no differently now.

The narrative is darkly funny, with a lot of good points you’ve probably wondered about vampires yourself, but simply allowed yourself to dismiss for the sake of suspension of disbelief.  Matheson goes out of his way to explain those little quirks, not limited to but including those first three questions up there.  The answer, wholeheartedly, is SCIENCE (take that, sparkly vampires).  And yet, despite that, the story is emotional, sometimes painful, and rings of truth.  It also sites other popular vampire texts and myths (namely Dracula) which really made it feel possible.

I had not seen (and do not plan to see, despite my inexplicable love for Will Smith) the movie adaptation, as I had heard around the time of the release that they changed the ending.  Now that I know that the ending properly is, I feel like junk-punching whoever made that decision.  I can’t say too much, but I will note how frantic and absolutely apathetic the ending was, and given the events taking place, I mean that in a good way.

In summary, if you like sci-fi, disillusionment, or vampires, and you’ve been living under a rock since 1954 (like I clearly had), read this book.  It only took me about two hours and I would gladly give up another two to read it again.

Speaking of rushed but necessary endings, I saw Splice the other day.  Very weird, kind of cute, and very sad.  Regarding some of the character exploitation in the film, particularly that of the women-type-folk, I’m not sure whether or not I can really say I liked it, but I didn’t dislike it, and it’s certainly a film which will make you think weird thoughts even days after you’ve seen it.  I would probably watch it again.

Uh, that, and Adrien Brody is smokin’. (Technical term.)

Speaking of tings I did the other day, I went to an Ingrid Michaelson show.  This has nothing to do with anything, I just wanted to gloat.

That’s all for now; sorry this one took so long to post.  My library books are just about due, so I’m going to skip doing a list of the ones I took out this last trip (I never got around to many of them anyway; life’s been kinda raaaaaahhhhh lately) and start clean next time.  I also may do a review of Theresia, a very bizarre little Nintendo DS which has more gore, dark corners, and puzzles than a Saw movie (also, it doesn’t suck.  Sorry Saw fans, but I can only get behind a formulaic plot, and a very thin one at that, for so long).

As you may or may not have assumed by the title, I myself am a huge fan of reading. Thanks to the wonderfully magnificent Kristen at http://carnivaloftherandom.blogspot.com (be more awesome, curb the suckage), who I am constantly pleased to have as a friend, I’ve decided, since I can rarely otherwise decide on a blog-worthy topic lest I go on and on about what I had for lunch, I shall blog about the myriad books I rescue from the library.

The thing being.

I rarely have much to say about most books, unless they’re particularly good (or particularly bad). As such, I’ve devised a system. Each time a receive a book, be it from the library, as a gift, or actually having spent my hard-earned money, I’ll update a list. Books that are particularly good (or bad) will be blogged about on the whole; otherwise, I will simply update the list with the title, author, a brief summary, general thoughts, and whether or not you should give it a look-see.

I’ll split the list up into four categories: Currently Reading (self-explanatory), Finished (also pretty clear), Back to the Bin (books I wasn’t interested in enough to continue reading after 50 or so pages), or Waitlisted (books I’ve got with me but haven’t yet started). I’m including the Waitlisted category in case I pick up something good that you, yes you, reader, recognize and can leave a comment like “Make sure you get to (whatever book),” since a lot of the time Waitlisted books end up going back to the library if I can’t get to them quickly enough.  I typically take out way more books than I’ll ever have time to read; that way, if a disproportionate number of them are Back to the Bin or shorter than normal, I don’t have to sit around twiddling my thumbs should I actually run out of them.

I believe I’m also going to start doing the same thing with albums, but that’s another blog post for another day.

So, without further adieu, here is this installment’s list:

Currently Reading

• *Omega Minor by Paul Verhaeghen: I’ll be honest, I’m eighty pages in and I’m not really sure what this book is about.  So far, we’ve covered Nazis, quantum physics, sex, behavioural psych, and lush descriptions of the German country side.  That being said, this book is almost 700 pages long with some of the tiniest print I’ve ever seen.  It’s huge, it’s elaborate, and it has a tendency to digress.  Of course, I love it.  If you’re into that sort of thing, give it a good, strong chance, but if you can’t abide by translations, pointless banter, or a hearty helping of the f-word, pass it up.

• *Dagon and Other Macabre Tales by H.P. Lovecraft:  Look, it’s Lovecraft, do I really have to get into this?  Of course, this is a collection of his less-popular works, so I’m actually probably going to give it a good, solid review when I’m through with it.  Until that point, it’s Lovecraft.

• *Halting State by Charless Stross:  I’m really enjoying this.  The plot involves the theft of the contents of a bank in a World of Warcraft-esque world called Avalon Four, and how, since these games are so invasive to such a wide and important market, this could drastically upset a real-world economy.  It’s set a bit in the future, has lots of UK slang, and is in the second person.  If nothing else, it’s a really strange read, with a lot of good, nerdy humour.

Finished

• *Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker:  If the words “Clive Barker” didn’t get you, then the opening sentence should: “BURN THIS BOOK.”  A story told by the world’s most incompetent demon, who is the book.  That’s right.  Is the book.  If I say too much more, I’ll give something away, for sure, so all I can say is, if you have a free few hours (that’s all it took me, both because it’s not terribly long and also because I didn’t put it down for hour-long stretches), read it.  It’s worth it.  It’s funny as hell.  This may get a full review at a later date, if I can find a way to do it without spoiling the whole thing.

• *The Neverending Story by Michael Ende: I had a deprived childhood.  I’d never seen the movie.  I’d never read the book.  This was sitting on the shelf, I nabbed it, and finished it quickly.  It’s a story (for those of you who were as deprived as me) about a world known as Fantastica and how humans influence this world, and vice-versa.  I will say this: the first half of the book, the story of Atreyu, was one of the most compelling pieces of YA fiction I have ever read.  The second half, the story of Bastian, I could have taken or left.  The kid is simply too trite and whiny, and in such a fashion that he makes you want to strangle him.  Avoiding as much of a spoiler as I can (once again, for the six people who’ve never seen the movie), I almost wanted him to fail.  I wanted someone or something to kill him just so I could say, “HAH! SEE? YOU’RE A FUCKING FAILURE OF A HUMAN BEING.”  Maybe the movie is different, I still haven’t seen it.  I say read it, but if you find yourself in the second part and completely unmoved to finish it, don’t bother.  You’re not missing much.

Back to the Bin

• *Sorceress by Lisa Jackson: This was a smutty romance, so I wasn’t expecting much.  It’s not even that the story was particularly bad; on the contrary, it could have been a legitimate novel if the author’s style wasn’t so amateurish, the characters so flat and obvious (and for those of you who think all romance is that way, you’re sorely mistaken, I promise).  Actually made it a hundred pages in, then put it down one night before bed, and never cared to pick it up again.

• *The One Marvelous Thing by Rikki Ducornet:  A collection of short-stories.  Not much bad to say, her style just didn’t tickle my fancy.  Too abridged.

Waitlisted

• *The Word of God by Thomas M. Disch: This man wrote The Brave Little Toaster.  I didn’t know there was a book.

• *A Visible Darkness by Michael Gregorio

• *Unfinished Tales (Of Numenor and Middle Earth) by J.R.R. Tolkien: Yes. I’m one of those people.

• *The Endless Forest by Sara Donati

• *Angel Time by Anne Rice: Her latest work.  Got a few pages in, but wasn’t in the mood.  It feels very like The Witching Hour, at least stylistically.  Will try again later, but it goes back to the library today.

All for now! More books (and music and movies, very possibly) later!

[EDIT: On a style note: apparently bullet points don't work in this theme, so the asterisks are there as place keepers so I don't have to edit this post should I change the theme.]