books update

Category: 50 Books

My reading has become spotty and cringe-worthy. I’ve started several different books and couldn’t finish them. I started Where is the Mango Princess? which is a memoir about a guy with a brain injury told by his wife and how she has to deal with that whole thing. It’s very good, and the author (Cathy Crimmins) does a great job of not bogging you down with huge amounts of medical jargon or self-pity, plus, she writes honestly so she tells you about her screw-ups and thoughts and such, but as I was reading it and thinking abot how she was going to have a totally different husband at the end, because his personality changed from the accident, I became a bag of sadness and couldn’t deal with reading it anymore. I think I’ll finish reading it sometime, just not this month.

Another bio I couldn’t finish was The Devil in Pew Number Seven by Rebecca Nichols Alonzo. I love true crime, I do, but I gave this one 70 pages and called it quits. I think the story is interesting, a pastor’s family is attacked by a terrible person so they will leave the church. But the telling of the story is too folksy, and a bit too sentimental (sappy, goopy, whathaveyou). I think she ends up forgiving the devil, I skipped ahead, but I can’t recommend this one, if it was 80 pages shorter, maybe.

Labyrinth by Kat Richardson is book #4 in the Blaine Harper series, and I couldn’t finish this one because I have lost total interest in the vampire arc AND in her and Quinton’s relationship. I enjoyed the previous books when they were more about her learning about her powers and it was more ghosty and less vampy. Oh well, hopefully I’ll go back to it later on.

J. Edgar Hoover Goes to the Movies by John Sbardellati. I love reading about McCarthyism, HUAC, Hollywood blacklist, all of that part of American history but this book was poorly written. It was however, greatly researched. It’s just that it read exactly like someone’s college thesis. And if that’s what it was, fine, but if you’re going to publish it for the public to read then it needs to be cleaned up and edited. When chapters start with “In this chapter I’ll discuss…” and the like, it’s just lazy. Take that shit out.

I had the exact same problem with Lincoln, INC.: Selling the 16th President in Contemporary America by Jackie Hogan. Fantastic idea for a book. But it had the same scholarly feel to it, and also had the “In this chapter I’ll discuss…” openers, which again, fine if you’re a student, but it should have been edited for public consumption.

I feel off my game because I started 9 books so far this year and only finished four.  

1. Still Waters by Nigel McCrery. 
 The main detective is DIC Mark Lapslie, and he has a neuological condition called synasethsia, where his senses are messed up, so when he hears sounds he gets tastes in his mouth as well. Usually detectives are alcoholics or something  so this was an interesting twist. I liked the rapport between DIC Lapslie and his sergeant. I also liked the twist with the serial killer, I’ll not spoil it, but it was a totally new killer, for me anyway. I did not like the whole Secret Serial Killer Rehab Project arc. It seemed ridiculous. I mean, if prisons are so full of bad guys that they have to let some people out, there’s no way they’d let out a serial killer over say, a drug guy, amirite? That whole part seemed to be extra, unneeded drama that really didn’t seem to go anywhere, but perhaps it shows back up in the next novel.

2. Second Shot by Zoe Sharp.
This is the 6th Charlie Fox book. I liked this one much better than First Drop. I had no idea who the real bad guy was until the reveal, which was really nice. I’m not too keen on the Sean character and I don’t understand why Charlie and her bodyguard team/whatever get all these jobs in the United States. It feels like bullshit because they get over here to “protect” people, but because they’re not citizens they can’t carry guns. I mean, what the hell? That’s a plot device I could do without, especially two books in a row.

3. Headhunters by Jo Nesbo.
I love Jo Nesbo, I love his Harry Hole series, and I think I have a crush on his author photo. He looks like Jason Statham. Plus? He’s in a Norwegian rockband. I’m not made of stone, friends.
This is a stand alone novel not part of the Harry Hole series. The back cover said it was like reading a Coen brothers’ movie. It was right. There’s no way I can summarize it better than the jacket cover:

Headhunters introduces us to the charming villain Roger Brown, a man who seems to have it all: he is Norway’s most successful headhunter, married to the beautiful gallery owner Diana, owns a magnificent house – and is living larger than he should. Meanwhile, he is playing at the dangerous game of art theft. At a gallery opening, his wife introduces him to the Dutchman Clas Greve. Not only is Greve the perfect candidate for the CEO position of the GPS company Pathfinder that Roger Brown is recruiting for; he is also in possession of ”The Calydonian Boar Hunt” by Peter Paul Rubens, one of the most sought-after paintings in modern art history. Roger sees his chance to become financially independent, and starts planning his biggest hit ever. But soon, he runs into trouble – and it’s not financial problems that are threatening to knock him over this time…The winding, explosive plot takes us from society’s financial and industrial elite to an underworld of contract killers and swindlers, offering Nesbo’s variations on the most spectacular murders, car chases and escapes that the genre has to offer on the way.

It is a total credit to Nesbo’s writing that I really loved this book because there’s not a single good person in it. Everyone is despicable, and I couldn’t put it down! This book was also much shorter than the ones in the  Hole series. It was the perfect length. It has already been made into a movie and I wouldn’t be surprised if they make an American version as well. This is the best book I’ve read so far this year.

4. Albert Nobbs: A Novella by George Moore 
I read it because it is short and there’s a movie out now and I thought I should read it in case anyone asks about it at the library. It was a very good idea for a book, but that’s it. It was like reading a first draft. Look, I get it, he wrote it in that weird stream of conciousness story of a story written with gigantic sentences kind of way. Whatever, that doesn’t make it good. The idea of the gender-bending waiterperson was fine. Great, even. But it wasn’t fleshed out, at all. It felt rushed and very incomplete. And I don’t mind a sad story or a sad ending, but I do mind a story that goes absolutely nowhere. Nothing happens and then it ends. Was this published posthumously?

****

I’m going to have to get my act together and start finishing more books, or choose better books, or choose mindless reads so I can get back into the habit of reading. I don’t know. Something.

 

 

Tags: , , , , ,

No Comments