Legends and Lattes is essentially the epilogue of a character's dnd campaign. An orc woman decides to retire and open a cafe because she tried coffee on an adventure and that seemed like a great way to retire. Super low stakes in a very high fantasy setting. It was really cute and well done.

this had to go in the queue.

Little Scratch by Rebecca Watson - this is unusual even for a stream of consciousness novel. The plot is dead simple - a woman wakes up, goes to work, meets up with her boyfriend, has sex, goes to sleep. The book takes place entirely within her head where everything is impacted by a recent traumatic event.

The really strange thing is the typography. Her thoughts and actions are set out all over the page, often in a column for each thought. Half a page is filled with the word 'filling' as she fills her water bottle. That repetition gimmick is a bit overused, but overall this unique approach is very effective technique for getting in her head, as you get a real sense of her turmoil.

10. The Club Dumas - Perez Reverte
9. Snowdrops - A.D. Miller
8. A Taste for Death - PD James
7. Devil in a Blue Dress - Walter Mosley
6. Gorky Park - Martin Cruz Smith

5. The Ice Harvest - Scott Philips
4. Last Seen Wearing - Colin Dexter
3. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John LeCarre
2. No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
1. The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco


Bonus GOAT Japanese mystery: The Tattoo Murder Case -- Takagi.

Anyone read Five Decembers? Got very highly reviewed so I just picked it up

Finsihed the original First Law trilogy. It's like the anti-Lord of the Rings fantasy. The lack of noble heroes, graceful ladies, soaring towers, charming villages etc was all quite refreshing. Instead the world is full of violent people living in ****. Torturer-in-chief Glokta is a well drawn character - a man who does terrible things, hates himself but has a faint, desperate desire to be slightly better.

I haven't read any of the GoT books, but judging from the TV series First Law is more action oriented, being less densely plotted and political. Not a bad thing though, the 600+ pages in each book move at a fast pace. The many battle scenes go on a bit; I found myself skim reading them eventually. Abercrombie isn't a strong enough descriptive writer for the violence to hit as hard as he might want.

Overall a really fun and addictive read.

The standalone novels in that world are all great too. The Heroes was my favorite.

I am just getting around to this now. Really top notch.

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy - Read another book set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The Milkman though is far superior. Everything about Trespasses, the writing, the story, the characters, is bland. The central romance between the young Irish teacher and the older English man is unconvincing. The book tells us they're in love but there seems to be nothing between them other than sex. There's nothing stylistically interesting about the writing and not a single memorable line.

It's strange that some of the critics acknowledge the problems, then bizarrely argues that they aren't serious flaws. The Guardian says, "this is not a book that is interested in performing radical aesthetic surgery on the realist novel," then claims the book is "distinguished by a quality rare in fiction at any time: a sense of utter conviction. It is a story told with such compulsive attention to the textures of its world that every page feels like a moral and intellectual event." WTF does that mean? It's the sort of statement that sounds like sophisticated criticism but is actually empty. The Washington Post admits that the romance plot is "threadbare" but the book is then rescued by the other narrative strands. No it isn't, because those strands and their characters aren't developed well enough.

Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum, by Richard Fortey.

Not a bad read but unless you have a scientific bend it can seem a bit pedantic and a slog not worth your time. Just a friendly warning. You may want to indulge your time in more useful pursuits, like sucking down a bottle of Jack Daniels.

Lent it to someone and never got it back ... bummed

the mamba mentality

I'm not sure why so many reviewers these days are cheerleaders. Though some reviewers still thoughtfully assess weaknesses and failures, I think too many feel they need to be "supportive." (Like participation awards.) Even in The Guardian, which is my go-to for book reviews.

Sometimes they are blurbed/reviewed by people they know if not outright friends, so...small world.

Frankly, I appreciate a well-written hatchet job.

I hate the cheerleading review and I hate the hatchet job just to be a hatchet job--I just want to know: Do I want to read this book?

What's it about? Is it well written? Are you telling your friends to read it? I know you have a Lit degree, you don't have to shoehorn the book into whatever political debates were taking place at your university. Let me figure out if I want to read it.

Coincidentally, I'm about halfway through Christopher Hitchens' Arguably. Mostly a collection of reviews of books. He doesn't seem to have any problem telling it like he thinks it is. Generally positive, but a couple he really didn't like.

I enjoy more his the writing he does on some topic outside of a review, of which there are a few sprinkled through this book, too.

Re-reading The Prestige.

So great. Film leaves a ton of stuff out.

Iron War
by Matt Fitzgerald

It’s the telling of the bitter rivalry between two of the best triathletes of all time:
Dave Scott & Mark Allen

If you like competition and/or any endurance sports it’s a fun read.

has anyone read the new cormac mccarthy book the passenger?

No. It looks good, and I have it and Stella Maris on reserve at the library, but haven't made it up the list yet.

I'm about half way through The Passenger. It's been a pleasure thus far. It has exceeded my expectations.

There is another book that was released with it that I haven't even looked at yet.

I'd say it doesn't compare to Blood Meridian or the Crossing but it's better than The Road.

Are you the same Riverboat king that used to play on LATB back in the 2000's? If so I had some good times

watching you battle. Crazy times. There was one night in particular you made a ridiculous call or re shove with Jack high. Villain's name

might have been Jason.

lol ya that's me and while I don't remember the specific hand I do remember playing a whole bunch of super ridiculous hands vs jason (went by KK and always had a fan in front of him).

jason was a really tough player and super nice guy I played like an absolute whack-a-do quite often back then lol, game was much different no one really thought about ranges and far too often if you just bombed 3 streets ppl would fold huge non nut hands by the river.

Finished The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis, it was better than I expected and better than most of his recent novels.

THE FAN. Yeah that's the guy. That game was quite entertaining back then. I spent many a friday night watching LATB. If you run into Limon, tell him he is missed.

Atlas Obscura by Foer, Thuras and Morton.

As I enjoy seeing the offbeat sort of things when I travel, I was excited to read this. Ended up kind of disappointed. Not due to the writing, the entries just mostly didn't click with me.

Didn't see anything that was, "Man, I need to go see that." Probably a couple dozen that were interesting enough for me to take out my phone and look up.

I've probably been to 10-12 things in the book already. I'd guess there's on the order of 1K entries, so probably anyone can find something that piques their interest.