Friday, April 22, 2011

Good Friday update...

I've finished reading Nine Dragons, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown and Company, 2009; 377 pages). Connelly is one of my favorite writers, and this book lived up to all my expectations. Made me homesick, due to a reference to a particular freeway offramp that I'm familiar with. Yeah, go ahead and laugh. I'll admit that it's really easy to make me homesick sometimes. One of the things that I like about Connelly's writing is that it is particular like that, and that he does his homework and doesn't always just make stuff up as he locates his stories in space and time.

If you like mysteries, this is one book...and one author...you need to put on your to-read list.

Now I've started The Paris Vendetta, by Steve Berry (Ballantine, 2009; 418 pages). I'm not sure yet how I'm going to like this one. I've liked some of Berry's books, and there have been one or two I've started and then just set down, never to return (at least yet). I'll see how it goes.

And, I've finally and officially given up on Desperados. It needs to go back to the library in a couple of days, and it continues to have that problem with reading like the begats in places. Maybe I'll try it again later, but for now, no.

Also, just a note that I've completed reading 14 books so far this year. Not as many as I'd hoped, but still nearly a book a week.

Edited to add that I also finished reading LEGO: A Love Story. Quite an enjoyable book, as much about the author's difficult journey toward fatherhood as it is about Adult Fans of LEGO, but also an interesting look at a particular fandom and fandoms in general.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Thursday update, or, over a week later...

No, my absence here has nothing to do with the computer issues mentioned in my previous post. I've just been busy, and when I haven't been busy, I've been more than a little lazy.

Oh, and I've been reading. I'm still sort of reading Desperados, but there are places where it's like reading the "begats" in the Bible, and so as much as I'm interested in the music it talks about, I'm not sure I'll actually finish reading it. We'll see.

I finished Mystery, by Jonathan Kellerman (Ballantine, 2011; 320 pages) on Sunday, and it was a quick and satisfying read. And now I'm reading LEGO: A Love Story, by Jonathan Bender (John Wiley & Sons, 2010; 270 pages). It's a book about Adult Fans of LEGO (AFOL; really, they have an acronym), and I picked it up because it sounded quite unlikely and also because, being involved in a couple flavors of fandom myself, and being educated as an anthropologist, I'm interested in fandoms.

LEGO is an interesting book so far, but I was a bit apalled, but not terribly surprised, to learn in the reading that there is LEGO porn. I mean, there is Rule 34 (I think it's 34) and everything. But, for a toy?

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Wednesday update...

Finally finished reading Dan Brown's Digital Fortress. I'm still not sure I liked it, and I can't quite pinpoint why it left me feeling unsatisfied as a reader. I'll have to think about that a bit.

Next on the menu: Desperados: The Roots of Country Rock, by John Einarson (Cooper Square Press, 2001; 287 pages). I'm just a couple of pages into this, so not sure how it will go. I found it on the shelf at the library the other day, which has been a reliable way for me to find good books.

I find it interesting how many books I've found in the past little while about the whole Southern California 60s/early 70s music scene. It seems like it has been a hot topic for writers. The best thing is that most of the books on the topic that I've read so far have been fairly decent books.

And just as a note, I'm having intermittent computer issues, so posts here could be a little thinner than usual until I've sorted the problem. I will at least attempt to post what I'm reading and which books I've finished.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Reading Update: Saturday

I just finished reading The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman. I'll defintely have more to say about it, but at this point I just want to say that it is an incredibly good book and that you should read it.

I'm still working my way through Digital Fortress, and I'm still not sure whether or not I like it. I'm also working on a review of The Devil's Triangle. I liked it a lot, but it's turning out to be difficult for me to write about it without giving too many spoilers.

I hate spoilers. Not for myself, necessarily, and not so much for reading as for films. But I don't like giving too much away in reviews, because I know they bug the crap out of some people. And there are some things that just need not to be spoiled...again, more often movies than books, but sometimes books, as well.

I'm especially adamant about not spoiling either books or movies for others after an experience I had with The Empire Strikes Back when it first came out, way back in the dark ages (which is why I will mention the spolier to follow; the movie has been out for how many years? Thirty? More than that? Anyway, long enough to be way past worrying about spoilers.), I went to see it, first day first showing. Only the first showing sold out when there were three people in line ahead of me to buy tickets, so I had to wait around for the second show. Which was fine. Except that when I was in the theatre and waiting for the movie to begin, someone who had been in the first showing had either bought another ticket to see it again or had sneaked back into the theatre. She sat down beside me and, without any preface, told me, "Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father." I looked at her and said, "Why did you tell me that." It was awful; I hated knowing that before the movie began. Which is why I try not to put spoilers in my reviews.