Finished Losertown, the third novella of Catalina Eddy (Daniel Pyne) trilogy. Less overtly stylistic, it becomes better noir than the first novella of the series, The Big Empty. Pyne's tight prose, noticeably lacking in adverbs and abstract nouns (though not without them), does a very good job at creating memories in the reader.

Nevertheless, Pyne failed to employ all of the techniques available to accomplish that goal, a strategy I would expect from a writer of Pyne's skill and experience. On a positive note, this second novella avoided the stylistic manner of the first novella and pursued an apparent over-arching goal of manipulating the reader into voluntary self-immersion and participation in the story.

It (1985 novel) by Stephen King

In honor of the upcoming film remake.

I just started NOS4A2 by Joe Hill. Evidently Hill is King's son and NOS4A2 stands for Nosferatu, nothing gets past me! Google Image leads me to believe that he's hairier than his old man, but will he be scarier?

Just read this book, pretty mediocre all in all. I mean it was enjoyable but I'm shocked it won so many awards, especially compared to fellow Hugo Award-winner The Doomsday Book, which I recently completed and thought was excellent.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who didn't like American Gods. I didn't even finish it. That was my first and only try at reading Neil Gaiman. Are there other books that are worth giving a shot?

I didn't care much for Neverwhere but I was in college when I read it.

The Sandman comics are well-regarded, to say the least. They're pretty good, at times amazing, but I'd have other recommendations if somebody wanted to start reading comics. Alan Moore's Promethea for example touches upon similar themes as Sandman but is significantly more interesting and intelligent. Wouldn't recommend it as your first comic series though.

Gaiman has pretty serious fantasy nerd cred. Nerds gonna nerd.

His fairytale-type stuff is better (and shorter!) -- Ocean, Stardust, etc.


Finished The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy by Jacob Burckhardt. Hard to believe this book is 150 years old. It reads smoothly and Burckhardt doesn't impose much of his own narrative on events. Interesting to see how the very concepts of "art" and "beauty" and "individualism" evolved during this period, as it's easy to take our modern understanding and sort of blanket it over the past, obscuring much in the process. The book does assume some knowledge on the reader's part, and it definitely leans more academic than most modern histories, but I learned a ton from it and had my viewpoint adjusted on the subject, which is always a big plus.


kioshk,

Kate Mulgrew does an off-the-charts reading of NOS4ATU if you can wrangle yourself up a copy. Joe's definitely got the old man's knack!

Good to see Alan Moore mentioned itt.

I just finished From Hell - his dark, epic semi-fictionalised telling of the Jack The Ripper tale, aka the Whitechapel murders.

I thought this book was awesome in its richness and depth as well as the way it blends fact and fiction, history, lore and imagined events to tell not just the ripper story, but also examine Victorian London, the city's history and its theorised influence on 20th century Britain.

Moore is best known for the excellent Watchmen but From Hell gives that comic a good run for its money and may even be his best work.

Currently enjoying the appendix which sheds light on his process, the extensive research involved as well as which parts of the story are established fact, proposals from other sources and additions from the author's imagination.

On a serious Moore kick now and looking to get hold of more of his stuff.

Nice, actually never finished From Hell. I intend to of course, also want to read his novels at some point.

I'd highly recommend Swamp Thing (and keep reading through all 6 volumes; it changes significantly as it moves along and keeps surprising you) and would even recommend that as people's very first comic if they don't know where to start. Doesn't matter if you have no interest in the character; I did not.

Promethea (also highly recommended) and Watchmen are better if you have some familiarity with the medium already.

Tom Strong, again, amazing (the first 2-3 at least when Moore was writing all), and essentially answers the critics who say that Superman stories suck because Superman is a boring character. Nope! Superman stories suck because they aren't well-written, as Moore proves with the similar vanilla all-American character of Tom Strong. Many issues would not be out of place as straight-up Superman stories.

Tomorrow Stories volume 1 is also phenomenal; v2 not quite as strong.

^ thanks for the recs. the 2 titles I had been looking at were V for Vendetta and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, so it's interesting that you mention neither.

Swamp Thing sounds like something I would have little interest in on the surface but, reading Moore's Wikipedia page, I see how highly regarded it is, so maybe will start with this or Promethea.

League of... is one of my alltime faves, really really good, especially the two first parts.

I finished 13 Hours by Deon Meyer yesterday, pretty good South African crime novel. It's the third of him that I've read, the other two were nice too, my favorite is Blood Safari. I didn't finish two other by him that I didn't like (didn't get far tbh)... So maybe avoid his earlier stuff if you want to check him out?

V is good too, haven't read it in a long time.

League never fully did it for me; partly maybe due to the art style which to me makes characters look unpleasant. I actually like The Black Dossier (homages/parodies all kinds of different literary and art forms) and some of Century better than the first volumes, but I think I'm in the minority on all of this.

Moore has at least 3 moments I'm aware of where he reimagines existing characters in fantastic cameos, and they're some of my favorite moments in comics. One is towards the end of League: Century, one in Promethea, one in Swamp Thing (in that case the character completely changes what was in danger of becoming a boring narrative).

My wife, who's a Gaiman fan, warned me away from American Gods. She loves the Sandman books, which I've never liked that much, but I quite enjoyed The Ocean at the End of the Lane as a treat, a confection even. A fantasy that's marketed as an “adult” book, though, as some reviewers have pointed out, other than an obliquely described scene of the I-narrator’s father having sex with the nanny, it feels like YA. (I certainly would have enjoyed at 14.) John Clute has a very interesting (if heavy-handed) review in the Los Angeles Review of Books, suggesting some deeper meanings and personal subtexts for Gaiman.

I just finished this, and I wound up quite liking it though I had some reservations while reading it, in part because I felt it dragged in places.

It's a young man’s novel (Hill was born in 1985) that could be naïve at times (for example, the story of the blind men and the elephant shows up as if it were fresh). And the narrator is more homiletic than any I've seen in literary fiction—but the homilies are mostly engaging and entirely well-intentioned.

I was amused by the protagonist in his interaction with a young female student who has plagiarized her English essay; though it initially felt predictable, Hill elaborated it nicely. And although I was bothered by Samuel’s condescension toward his students in general, I was pleased to see that he later recognized that as a fault and realized he should have found a way to teach to their needs.

The subplot of a minor character as gaming addict (to a WoW-type game) was striking, as was the depiction of the protagonist's mother suffering from panic attacks. The climax of the narrative is set in chaos of the Chicago Democratic Convention, which I found mostly illuminating of an event that shaped my life.

I've been mostly lurking and not posting these days so I'm catching up a bit today. I recently finished Kate Atkinson's recent novels, Life after Life and A God in Ruins. The first is about London during the blitz and uses a very innovative narrative structure. The second, about a WWII flyer who we know from the first is (mostly) more conventional. I recommend both -- Atkinson is excellent on character), but (even she calls A God in Ruins a companion rather than a sequel, I'd strongly suggest reading them in order.

I also recently read David James Duncan's 1992 novel The Brothers K, which has developed a cult following. (See the responses on GoodReads, for example.) It's about the coming-of-age of four brothers in 60s-80s era (with minor league baseballer for a father and a religious zealot for a mother), deals with Viet Nam, and other social history. I enjoyed it (though I thought it was overlong at ca 650 pp.) but wasn't entirely satisfied with it. It splits oddly in two, with the first two-thirds being an excellent example of “Americana”—a warm-hearted depiction of a past America--a nostalgia-tinged, good-humoured record of a lost life focusing on a solid if less-than-perfect working class, salt-of-the-earth family, with some recognition of social inequities but little consciousness of the sexism or racism of the times. The last third, however, made me think of John Irving (especially Garp) in that it revelled in the bizarre, put its characters into extreme situations, emphasized their suffering, yet always held out the (eventually-fulfilled) possibility of redemption.
Throughout, baseball serves as a background, with some clever observations (for example, about the “socially constructed” nature of the umpire’s strike zone).

Also David Mitchell's Number9Dream. My least favourite Mitchell so far (having not read the two most recent), but I did enjoy it.

I really liked the conceit about Life After Life, and the beginnings were set in the town next to where I grew up, but I never really caught the bug, and found that I'd moved on to other things without ever making a conscious decision to can it.

With respect to Alan Moore:
My favorite is V for Vendetta. I also love Watchmen.

I didn't like A Small Killing. I thought Killing Joke was overrated. I enjoyed but didn't love Tom Strong. I really liked the second volume of Top Ten. I want to read Marvelman, Swamp Thing, his Superman stories, From Hell and Promethea. Not interested in Smax, Tomorrow's stories, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Lost Girls.

David Mitchell's Ghostwritten. Narrative-driven novel that follows a bunch of loosely-connected characters all over the world. Very enjoyable, even if I think the individual stories could've been woven together more tightly. Stylistically impressive, to say the least.

It's more impressive that it's his first novel.

I got the vibe that it was one of his earlier works (I did zero research on this book), but yeah, that is something. The more I read, the more I appreciate strange narrative structures, and this book absolutely delivers. One of those that almost makes you want to jump right back in after you've finished just to make sure all the tumblers click. I don't think it's quite that good or the plot is that intriguing, but it's damn close. Someday I'm going to get around to reading Thousand Autumns....

Tomorrow Stories volume 1 is outstanding (well, I thought so a few years ago). I liked Smax, but it has similarities with League in that there are tons of literary references (everything from obvious classics to the computer game MYST), in this case fantasy-focused. Perhaps that isn't your bag, especially as you're also uninterested in Lost Girls and League. Or is it a more lighthearted tone that you don't like the idea of?

Full disclosure: on my first read of the later volumes of Swamp Thing (there are 6) I was blown away, loved how original it was and how it continued to be incredibly surprising and fresh, and felt it was the type of work that makes you re-think life in general. On a re-read a few years later I was not quite as enamored.

Sorry for the late reply, Johnny. First time I've been back. Next to Jorge Luis Borges, Babel is my favorite short story writer. May I recommend "The Complete Works of Isaac Babel?"

thats a different type of story and book, but its great too

I just finished Disappearance at Devil's Rock by Paul Tremblay, thought it was really good. Handled suburban middle school kids issues adeptly while not skimping on the genuinely spooky/disturbing. I liked his A Head Full of Ghosts earlier, teen-aged girl demon possession/dysfunctional family.

American War was terribly uninteresting for the majority of the story, but kept me just intrigued enough to continue. The final act was great and actually caused me to better appreciate the preceding stuff in hindsight as well. Good book IMO.