What are you reading the week of Feb 3, 2013?

[DUgosh]

Judgement Call by J. A. Jance - JoAnna Brady #15

2013 # 12

I'm posting early this week, I'll make up for it by posting late next week.

[getting old in mke]

1. _The Languages of Pao_ by Jack Vance

Vance has an old-fashioned-y direct voice that I always enjoy. Kind of like your favorite sly, slightly scandalous great-aunt telling a story--you know, the one whose siblings' mouths go into a little moue when she launches a tale, but all laugh anyway during the tale. Hmm...actually that was my maternal grandmother among her significant collection of brothers and sisters.

Audio: _Poseidon's Gold_ by Lindsey Davis. Fifth Falco.

[agracie]

2. Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman

FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY:

Waldman (Love and Other Impossible Pursuits) delivers a dense story of irreparable loss that tracks two families across four summers. After John Tetherly and Becca Copaken die in a freak car accident an hour after their wedding, their families are left to bridge stark class and cultural divides, and eventually forge deep-rooted bonds thanks to the twin deities of love and music. Becca's family is well off, from New York, and summers in Red Hook, Maine, a small coastal town where John's blue-collar single mother, Jane, cleans houses for a living. They interact, awkwardly, over how to bury the couple, the staging of an anniversary party, and over Jane's adopted niece, whose amazing musical talent makes a connection to Becca's ailing grandfather, a virtuoso violinist, who agrees to give her lessons. Becca's younger sister, Ruthie, a Fulbright scholar, meanwhile, falls in love with John's younger brother, Matt, the first Tetherly to go to college, before he drops out to work at a boatyard and finish restoring his brother's sailboat, which he plans on sailing to the Caribbean. Though Waldman is often guilty of overwriting here, the narrative is well crafted, and each of the characters comes fully to life. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

[pscot]

3. I'm on my 3rd Jack Reacher

in about 10 days and liking it less and less. Aversive conditioning, I believe it's called.

[fadedrose]

4. It was about my 10th

maybe before that, I started to dislike Reacher.

I love books with good dialog which these don't have. Got tired of the clever planning Reacher did to solve the crimes with hardly any discussion about it. Really got tired of him buying a new outfit and throwing out the old one in a trash can. I loved him at first and recall that I couldn't wait till the next book came out.

[DUgosh]

15. Reacher

I read The Killing Floor and didn't finish the second one.

[fadedrose]

5. BLACK DOG (2000) by Stephen Booth

First in a mystery series of 13, so far.

Ben Cooper, a detective constable trying to fill his police sergeant father’s shoes, and new partner, Diane Fry, recently transferred to Edendale’s force, in the Peak District in England.

http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/B_Authors/Booth_Stephen.html

Book 8 of 2013

[fadedrose]

13. There was a good story...

buried in all the descriptions of streets, buildings, towns, roads, etcs., and the book would have been better without them. I would have cut the book from 350 pp to about 280 or so. I'm going to get the next one in the series and hope that he cut down on the boring descriptions. Others must have felt that way and told him...

[russspeakeasy]

6. "Elsewhere", by Richard Russo.

As soon as I finish it, I'm going to read it again. It's that good. I'm a Russo fan so I may be biased.
There are some good reviews on google.

[pauldemmd195j]

7. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

This is my 5th reading of this excellent novel. Absolutely sublime.

[MISSDem]

8. I'm reading Jane Austen (still).

It has taken me months and I am up to Persuasion. It is sometimes hard going but I enjoy them after all is said and done.

[Bradical79]

9. 3 books

I read:
"Shadowfall: Book 1 of the Godslayer Chronicles" by James Clemens,
"The Lost Gate" by Orson Scott Card (had started last year but had left off with a few chapters to go)
"Sandstorm" by James Rollins

I thought Shadowfall was excellent and had a very unusual (though a little gross) system of magic going on where powers are granted from the "humours" of their Gods (like tears, spit, blood, piss...) and each had a different effect in alchemical mixtures.
Also, I found out James Rollins and James Clemens were pen names for the same guy.

It's kind of funny, because I'd gone to Barnes and Noble with my mom to use some giftcards we'd gotten, and I picked up Shadowfall. When I found her, she was picking up a newer James Rollins Sigma Force book. Found out they were the same guy when I asked her what the first Sigma Force novel was and went to wikipedia on my phone to check, lol.

The Lost Gate was pretty good too, with it's own unique magic system and cool almost sci-fi take on the Gods of the ancient world. Though there was a sort of sex scene involving the young male protaganist that was kind of... odd. Finding out just what a crazy Mormon homophobe he is though, and reading a couple interviews with him afterwards, helped that scene and a few others make a bit more sense. Dude has serious issues with sex.

[fadedrose]

10. Rollins aks Clemens

He uses "Clemens" for fantasies:

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/r/james-rollins/

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/c/james-clemens/


Apparently, Rollins uses this name for myseries:

http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/R_Authors/Rollins_James.html

(this site has onlyl mysteries)

[YankeyMCC]

11. "House of Earth: A Novel" by Woody Guthrie

Where Steinbeck wrote of the Joad family migration Guthrie's Hamlin's hang on.

"The feeling was, roughly, then that if all these separated memories, thoughts, ideas, happenings, were all just the one Tike Hamlin, well, then, all of the things around him-house, barn, the iron water tank, the windmill, little henhouse, the old Ryckzyck shakc, the whole farm, the whole ranch-they were a part of him, the same as an egg from the farm went into his mouth and down his throat and was part of him."
- From "House of Earth: A Novel" by Woody Guthrie

[Paladin]

12. "Brother Love," Joyce Carol Oates' New One.

Haven't started it yet, not sure if I'll finish it---it apparently has a lot of child abuse in it, and that's something for which---real or fictional--- I have a very low toleration point. We'll see.....

[Teamster Jeff]

14. The Intercept by Dick Wolf

This is the first novel by Dick Wolf who is the writer, producer and creator of TV show "Law and Order". It's about a NYPD counter terrorism expert.