haven't read anything other than the sunne in splendour, but it's awesome.
basically a real life game of thrones.

Finished A Place Apart by Ron Rozelle. It's well written, has a good plot and a certain academic sensibility to it, but is structurally flawed in several ways and those flaws causes the novel to fail to involve the reader. Rozelle is also the author of the Writer's Digest Description and Setting reference work.

Finished The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt. Sciopero generale grade school level. I lived through this in the 1970's in Italy. Cute book.

My son loved this about 6 months ago, so I started writing him letters from his pens, until it became a real problem having to come up with a new letter every day

I have not heard good things from the two people I know who have read it. Bit said the first half of the book really drags and basically has nothing to do with the overall story.

Kids things going on: Read Herman and Rosie by Gus Gordon and Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers. I liked the penguin in Lost and Found and the story.

Sea Harrier over the Falklands by 'Sharkey' Ward.

It was a very good read but the author over does it a bit when going on about how much of a maverick he is. I was really surprised to find out that at the time the sea harrier out performed every fighter it came across in combat, either real combat or in war games against F-15's etc.

Jeffers drew the pictures for The Day The Crayons Quit, Lost And Found is a DVD, too, and I liked his book The Way Back Home, too.

Started Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto.

Started reading Just Mercy Bryan Stevenson. So far it has mostly focused on the Walter McMillan case, but it has also covered a few other death penalty cases. Reading it, makes me enraged at the unfairness of the justice system. It is incredible that Thomas Tate, the Alabama sheriff that broke many laws to convict McMillan still kept his job after all the injustice was revealed. It seems that he should have been imprisoned, and he didn't even lose his job as the sheriff. Very enraging.

I'm 500-600 hours into 1Q84 and just want it to end. I don't give a crap what happens, just make it end. Who does this guy think he is writing a 1,000 page book?

cosign back to when i read it. i thought the dialogue was pretty slick and pace was decent, but i just didn't see the point. and i read a ton of purely pointless ****

Hah, exactly. If I'm going to read a book by somebody named Murakami I expect mystical Japanese wisdom or something.

Finished Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. Its themes are similar to those in Murakami's novels popular with young people in Japan. Lots of mono no aware, which leads to: Started Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata.

Still reading Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert.

And, finished It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken by Seth.

You've obviously not been paying attention. You'll get jazz, weird ****, and maybe sheep.

There's definitely a high hurdle for long novels: their opportunity cost is two or three or more normal length novels. In the other hand, there was a thing in the LRB, or maybe private eye, a while back on the trend in British fiction of take the piss novels of under 200 pages.

Personally I'm more forgiving of long novels (or maybe I've just run better) than I am movies. I can see no reason why any film needs to be more than 2 hours, ideally 100 minutes, and i get irrationally angry at things that cross that boundary. The key examples being Magnolia (needs to be burned) and Return Of The King.

Man, I loved 1Q84.

Junichiro Tanizaki is well worth checking out, as well. Personally I find his work way more rewarding than what I've read of Kawabata.

"A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara is very, very good.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, narrated by Satya. A couple of bums leave home to go find enlightenment. They listen to some other bum called the Buddha. One of them follows the Buddha bum, the other doesn't. Hilarity ensues (not really). The unenlightened bum spends some time by a river, which teaches him the secrets of life. He meets his old friend after many years, they puff a big spliff and then go dumpster diving together (not really).

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, read by Claire Danes. I remember reading this in college and thinking, "Meh, what kind of post-apocalypse doesn't have zombies!!!" But this is a pretty deep story about forced breeding programs after the world's collapse. The narration is first person present, so it's a little odd at first, but Claire Danes hits just the right notes of borderline madness mixed with ennui. You get a big dose of the female perspective with this one.

So to get my testosterone flowing again, I listened to Mario Puzo's The Godfather, which is read by a full cast. The story definitely meanders a bit (especially with Johnny Fontane out in Hollywood) but it's got such a cool, macho feel to the whole thing that the novel's hard not to like.

Pretty sure BEE raved about this book on his podcast, using his usual hyperbole as the best (or most affecting? disturbing? something) book of the year or whatever

http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...agihara-review

I read a preview and hooked.

My post of 5/4/2015

The last 200 pages is where I lost interest but was pretty engrossed up until then.

10:04 is amazing. This thread keeps delivering the hits.