Currently reading
Ender's Game
The Stand
Cold Mountain
Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness: Zen Talks on the Sandokai
Wordcrime: Solving Crime Through Forensic Linguistics
The Essential Tao : An Initiation into the Heart of Taoism Through the Authentic Tao Te Ching and the Inner Teachings of Chuang-Tzu
Saiyuki, Volume 9
It was enjoyable for the most part, but it seemed like the author tried too hard to put one action scene after another. A little downtime to get to know the characters is more my cup of tea. I started the series because I'm a fan of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, and I'd seen forums in which other fans recommended the Hornblower series as well. Meh. Aubrey/Maturin, hands down!
This was very cute and sweet... and the author is my second cousin! The book had me laughing aloud in several places. Ah hell, the book used the word "curmudgeon" and one of the cats was named after Mad-Eye Moody. I'll give it the 5th and final star :D
I was forced to read this when I was 14 in school. Hated it. I've avoided it ever since.But I finally decided to give it another chance. While it lost my interest a few times, it certainly was more enjoyable than the first time I read it.I'm sure I'll read it again at a future date and see if it has grown on me any more.
This book is a nerd's wet-dream. It was fun read! :DMy only big issue with it is the number of times "then" is used. It started to drive me nuts after awhile.
This book was really beautifully written... gorgeous prose.However, I just couldn't connect with the characters or get into the story. It seems like these characters have several books with them, so I might one day find them in chronological order and see if I can develop more of an attachment to them. As I said, it was a beautifully written story. I just picked it up at random on the library shelf.
The Appeal
John Grisham sometimes falls into the trap of having bad characters be too bad, and good characters be too good. The characters in The Appeal were rather flat. Well, hell, they were flat. No character development whatsoever.However, Mr. Grisham also knows his shit when it comes to legal stuff. I dislike big business. I dislike politics. I hate big business putting its interests into politics. The money that controls the system is a disgrace to democracy.This book touches on so much that I hate about the system. If only poetic justice happened more often in real life!
I feel a non-fiction phase coming on, perhaps expidited by my need to make up some of the IQ points I lost while reading Fifty Shades of Crap. Bach: The Goldberg Variations wasn't very interesting for me, but it was educational. My interest would be more strongly held by either a biography on Bach or on a work about his Cello Suites. Or perhaps if I'd ever listened to The Goldberg Variations. I'll never give a non-fiction less than 4 stars (unless I feel it is deliberately misleading or otherwise malicious), so that is what this one gets. And it did what I hoped it would: It made me feel more smarter. ;)
Some of the stories I'd already read in other collections of short stories, but the ones I'd not read before (as well as most of the ones I had read before) were fantastic!
Not fabulous literature, no, but sometimes you just need a break and read something for the pure entertainment of it :)
Like Insomnia, this one started out amazing and then began to peter out. When it at first looked like everyone was being held captive by a psychotic cop, that was creepy because it is in the realm of possibility. (This is what makes Cujo a favorite of mine.) Not to say that I don't like the paranormal or supernatural--because I do. But it has to be done in a certain way for me to really like it. Stephen King can do it at times, but Desperation fell a little flat for me.The most annoying part to me is the strong current of prayer and God and whatnot. And even worse is that when a character prays for something, voila--it happens. *sigh*A friend told me that The Regulators is this story's twin, and I remember hearing Stephen King talking about it. He wrote Desperation as Stephen King, then wrote the same story as Richard Bachman. I'm rather looking forward to reading The Regulators. The story is good, it's just overwhelmed by the annoying religious bits. Perhaps writing as Bachman, King can bring the true grit out in this story.
The good:- I love that the protagonist is a man in his early 70s. There are far too few older protagonists out there- the first several chapters were creepy as hell... some of the creepiest I've ever readThe not-so-good:- for me, the story went downhill when Lois came into the picture as a fellow aura-seer- the creepiness was lost when more and more information was discovered, which of course made the "unknown" dwindle... and fear of the unknown is a big draw for me.- too much reliance on "he didn't know how he know. He just knew." and so forth- too much reliance on deus ex machinaAll in all, it was a decent book. If the atmosphere of the first few chapters had carried through the rest of the story, it would have been excellent, but alas it rather lost me. Not a waste of time, but not a re-read for me either.
I wish that Bobby and Ted's main story was the only one and that it were longer. It was fabulous. The other stories were good, too, but sad.Now when I re-read The Dark Tower series, I'll have a better understanding of Ted.
