Books you've read in 2009

Re: Books you've read in 2009

Which one is Arctic Drift? I'm a Cussler fan, but haven't read any of his co-authored books. Does he have sole-authored book?

Re: Books you've read in 2009

It's his latest book, came out in November 2008. He co-authored it with his son Dirk. Amazon.com: Arctic Drift (A Dirk Pitt Novel, #20) (Dirk Pitt Novels): Clive Cussler, Dirk Cussler: Books

Re: Books you've read in 2009

Saw this morning in Hollywood Reporter that Catherine Hardwicke may be developing the Maximum Ride books into films. Don't know what kind of director/producer she is, but the books read just like movies already.

Re: Books you've read in 2009

I just finished Homer Hickam's Coalwood trilogy: Rocket Boys; The Coalwood Way; and Sky of Stone. The first was the basis for the excellent film, October Sky (FUN FACT: "October Sky" is an anagram of "Rocket Boys"). These books are memoirs, but they are written as entertainingly as any novel. They are, in my opinion, national treasures. I am sorry to be leaving Coalwood behind, but I fully expect I will return to these books from time to time over the years. Truly prodigious!

I have since purchased one of Hickam's fictional works, but I'm not sure if I'll go to that next or to King's Lisey's Story.

Re: Books you've read in 2009

I recently finished Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, which is easily one of the best fantasy novels ever written. Heavily based in Norse mythology but with lots of original ideas that would go on to influence writers like Michael Moorcock and Neil Gaiman, among others. It came out in 1954, same year as Lord of the Rings, which I guess sums up Anderson's career - write a great book, get overshadowed by an even bigger book

Right now I'm reading Sunglasses After Dark by Nancy Collins, sort of a post-cyberpunk vampire novel (not set in the future, but it has lots of mirrored sunglasses and leather pants) about a female vampire that hunts other vampires. It beats the hell out of Anne Rice's stuff, that's for sure

Re: Books you've read in 2009

Yes I've read this too and think it's a great book. Vic Hanson graduated from UCSC the same year I did although we never met in college. He's a professor of classics at a Cal. State Univ. AND a farmer.

I read a lot and can only post highlights.

Reflections on a Ravaged Century by Robert Conquest. Conquest is the premier historian of the insanity that was the Soviet Union. This is his swan-song in many ways, a wrap up of his views of tyrany in the 20th Century. His views of the future of the Anglosphere closely mirror my own. A difficult read.

The Castle of Lies: Why Britain Must Get Out of Europe by Christopher Booker and Richard North. This is one of a series of Euroskeptic books by Booker et al. and details how the UK was swindled into an ill-advised membership in the EU. US readers may be put off by the wealth of detail of the folly of many individual government actions which are not generally reported by the US media.

Slavery and the Annexation of Texas by Frederick Merk. It took me a long time to uncover this 1972 book but it's just what I needed to unwind the odd threads of the process whereby Texas stopped being an independent republic and became a US state. A good source on the Constitutional issues at stake. By far the best book on the subject I found.

The Abdication of King Edward VIII by Lord Beaverbrook (Max Aitken). An eyewitness account. Has a good chapter IV on the constitutional issues at stake in the abdication.

Union Now with Britain by Clarence Streit. This 1941 book, along with companion volumes from 1940, was an early voice of the wisdom of unity in the Anglosphere.

Re: Books you've read in 2009

Last weekend I finished Spade & Archer: The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon by Joe Gores. While I'm not a big fan of prequels or sequels by writers that are not the original creator of the characters, I throughly enjoyed this novel. Gores knows Hammett’s life, work and P.I. novels well and wrote a good story that fits in with Hammett’s work. If your a fan of The Maltese Falcon, I’d recommend that you give it a try. There are some nice moments and surprises for fans.

Re: Books you've read in 2009

Lisey's Story by Stephen King. It started out pretty slow. It became a page turner as it went on, but it doesn't sit very well in my memory. It probably could have been cut in half or maybe even pared down into a short story.

The Keeper's Son by Homer Hickam. As soon as the prologue is over, you know this is going to be a book of coincidence. I was a little leery of that, but I gave into it after a while and just enjoyed it. I loved the writing style, how it cut between different parties from chapter to chapter. When the two parties intersected, it changed to cutting within chapters. A neat device, reminiscent of the old Tarzan books (or so I understand). It looks like I'm going to have to order the sequel, as it isn't in any local stores.

Re: Books you've read in 2009

My second round of books for 2009; I haven't been a very ambitious reader this year:

Legs by William Kennedy. Explicitly styled after The Great Gatsby, the first of Kennedy's Albany novels explores the legend of Jack "Legs" Diamond from the less-than-ideal vantage point of Marcus, an Albany lawyer on Jack's payroll. Large gaps separate Marcus's encounters with Jack, so his telling weaves deftly between his own experiences with the gangster and anecdotes he has collected from others over time. The further Marcus seeps into Jack's world, the less enigmatic and charismatic the gangster seems. By the midpoint, all pretense of mirroring Legs and Gatsby is abandoned as Jack's world slowly unravels. He could be sadistic, as his fateful altercation with upstate truck driver Grover Parks (and role in a few graphic and twisted murders) showcased. He could be loyal, as his extended commitments to both wife Alice and mistress Kiki demonstrated. His cult of personality was undeniable, as the headlines captured. Most of all, he was unkillable (until he wasn't). Like most Kennedy stories, the manner of the retelling is at least as important as the story being told. Kennedy is a master at capturing conversation, a skill set that makes [u]Legs[/i] simultaneously tedious and engrossing.

Star Wars: Coruscant Nights III - Patterns of Force by Michael Reaves. The Coruscant Nights cycle of books promised an intense literary noir set in one of the least explored time periods of the Star Wars universe. Instead, readers have been stuck with uninteresting plots crippled by a lackluster cast of characters. Reaves improves on his formula a wee bit with Street of Shadows, which refocuses the plot on Darth Vader's pursuit of Jedi-in-hiding Jax Pavan. Initially as dull and directionless as its predecessor, the story slowly picks up steam as it marches toward a genuinely engaging finale. A couple problematic characters are fleshed out with surprising depth and a few of the most irritating exit stage left, forever. As the showdown between Jax and Vader draws nearer, the novel finally begins to explore what it means to be a Jedi no longer tied to the strict orthodoxy of the Jedi institution. The overall result is a muted triumph over exceptionally low expectations that leaves the door open for a far more interesting fourth act down the road.

Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi - Outcast by Aaron Allston. It's been a long time since a Star Wars novel felt fresh, so Allston's opening salvo in DelRey's latest experiment with multi-author storytelling arrived as a genuine shocker. Both smarter and funnier than Star Wars has been in a long time, Outcast finally untethers Luke Skywaller from the demands and responsibilities of running the Jedi Order. We get to see him as a father, an adventurer, and a religious pilgrim. Han and Leia are off having an adventure with Lando and their little granddaughter. Meanwhile the turmoil faced by the rest of the Jedi back on Coruscant raises legitimate questions about the fairness of a supernatural, paramilitary order that seeks to enforce the law while holding itself above the law. The bar has been set very high for Christie Golden's upcoming Star Wars debut.

Re: Books you've read in 2009

I'm almost finished with "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies". Funny stuff.

Re: Books you've read in 2009

Stephen King's Duma Key. Not really remarkable. Another book that could have been pared down, and I'm tired of King's strict adherence to "write what you know." Most of his characters have been writers, and now they're all recovering from an illness or an accident. He's never been great with dialog, and that weakness caused me to not care about the fate of certain characters. It was pretty predictable besides.

Re: Books you've read in 2009

Peter F. Hamilton's The Temporal Void. Pretty good continuation of the Commonwealth series.
Charlaine Harris' Dead Before Dark (Sookie Stackhouse). Not very exciting, but I do hope to catch the True Blood TV series soon.

Re: Books you've read in 2009

I just read The Stand. Id read it 20 years ago and decided to reread it.
Boring and overlong is about all I can say about it. Randalls description of LOTR in Clerks2 pretty much describes this novel as well.

Right now I have a stack of books in the corner waiting to be read. Frankenstein,1984 and Lord Of The Flies I read back around high school, and have decided to reread those as well.

Lord Of The Flies
Omerta
Dune
The Shining
The Strange Case of Doc Jekyll & Mr Hyde
The Virtue Of Selfishness
Salems Lot
Crime & Punishment
Frankenstein
1984
Gates Of Eden
Blood Meridian
The Foundation

Re: Books you've read in 2009

It's all about WALKING! Great sequence in that movie. And I love LOTR, but that moment still kills.

I just finished "The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror" by Christopher Moore. This isn't as good as my favorite works of his (A Dirty Job is to me a classic, along with You Suck) but it's a good page turner.

Re: Books you've read in 2009

Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett. After reading it, I thought it would have been more topical and incisive when it was written in the late '80s. Then I checked the copyright and found it's from 2003.

So it's a fantasy story about women in the military in some strange, incoherent world. It feels like a modest attempt at wicked satire from the late 80s, only it's 15 years late to the party. Frankly, I would have quit reading by page 60, but I borrowed it from a friend and wanted to finish it so I could chat with him about it, afterwards.

Despite being a Fantasy reader in high school, I never read Pratchett. If this is typical Pratchett, I won't bother with him in the future.

Not bad stuff, just not good stuff.

Re: Books you've read in 2009

Just beginning "The Leader in Me", a book by Stephen Covey, getting ready for our school's student leadership push next year. All of our staff have been asked to read it.

Re: Books you've read in 2009

I'm stuck in the middle of the Kennedy anthology, but in the meantime I've breezed through:

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 by John Godey. Republished in anticipation of the 2009 film adaptation, this 1973 best seller wears its age extremely well. While the style of the narration, the speech patterns of the dialog, and the chosen character archetypes mark the time period, the language is both crisper and less pretentious than we would expect from a thriller today. All but one of the main characters are male, and they address each other with the vibrant, vulgar and politically incorrect vernacular that imbalance implies. Morton Freedgood (writing as John Godey)'s cast of characters is multi-racial and evenly handled in a New York City when the racial divide still played out on the surface and in the open. From the opening setup to the final punchline, Godey's thriller operates with clockwork precision. The ingenuity and research that went into the subway hijacking itself is sufficient enough to makes its initial success feel inevitable rather than contrived. As events play out, Godey shakes the proceedings up with both predictable speed bumps arising from evident character flaws and the sort of random, unpredictable incidents that naturally arise from such a complex, high-stress situation. The Rashômon-esque device of telling the story through rotating perspectives is tremendously effective at painting a vibrant tapestry of New York City life. The omniscient narrator's wry gallows humor pleasantly adds to the dated quality of the novel. But the IRT Pelham Line still runs from Pelham Bay Park to South Ferry via the No. 6 train, preserving the relevance and potency of the core scenario.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. That rare book that you can't tear through fast enough even as you dread it being finished, Suzanne Collins's distopian future is easily the best young adult storytelling to come along since Harry Potter finished. What the two worlds share is an unusual ability to celebrate the best of humanity without neglecting its worst. Set in a future North America transformed by global warming and ravaged by nuclear war, the descendents of the survivors are concentrated atop the Rockies in the West and the Appalachian range in the East. Collins introduces us to the world through the eyes of Katniss Everdeen, an undersized and undernourished sixteen-year-old protagonist and narrator that embodies Jean Craighead George's practical and self-sufficient ideal. The early chapters feel ripped from 'My Side of the Mountain', if the Catskills had been occupied by a brutal foreign power. Before her father died, he taught her the basics of hunting. Her mother, a skilled apothecary before she sank into a debilitating depression, educated Katniss on the plants all around them. These skills, combined with ample ingenuity, allow her to keep her mother and little sister fed.

The one thing she cannot control is the Hunger Games. After the disasters, the Western population restored its high standard of livng by dividing the far more ravaged Eastern range into thirteen districts which were forced to pay tribute. A littl over seven decades prior to the start of the novel, the Eastern districts mounted a failed rebellion that was brutally crushed by the Western Capitol. The thirteenth district was completely obliterated to make a statement and an annual gladiatorial fight to the death broadcast live as reality TV called the the Hunger Games was imposed on the surviving twelve districts as punishment. Every year, a boy and girl between the ages of 12 and 18 from each district are drafted through a lottery to compete. When Katniss's little sister is drafted, Katniss volunteers to take her place.

What transpires from there is full of human feeling and astute observation of the human condition. Collins restricts herself to a middle school vocabulary for her target audience, but the result feels authentic given Katniss's age and background. Her portrayal of death is matter-of-fact, unflinching, and heartbreakingly personal. Her portrayal of life in the face of death is achingly beautiful. In spite of severely limited options that have left them literally and figuratively boxed in, the children competitors demonstrate the full spectrum of human expression. The Hunger Games are designed to break the spirit of the oppressed by force the most vulnerable among them to carry out inhuman acts in order to survive. Katniss's most rebellious act, then, is to express love and fellowship and gratitude in spite of what she must do. Collins presents a vision of the future on the opposite pole from Huxley's A Brave New World in a book that grapples with the unanswerable questions of our uncompromising world in a manner accessible to all ages. I felt that little pang of grief upon finishing this book that only the best stories can stir. The good news for me is that the follow-up arrives this September.

Re: Books you've read in 2009

I just re-read Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer (2006) by James L. Swanson, a surprisingly suspenseful account of that assassination itself (along with the horrific attempted murder of Secretary of State William Seward and the aborted plan to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson) and the subsequent hunt of the conspirators. Hadn't read it since it first came out, and was surprised at how many details and interesting twists I had forgotten. You would think Lincoln generally, and the events surrounding the assassination in particular, would have been exhausted as topics a long time ago, but new source material keeps surfacing and new authors continue to bring fresh perspectives to the subject. Very good stuff.

I've just started re-reading another book I haven't picked up since it was first published, Seamus Heaney's wonderful translation of Beowulf (2001.) Highly recommended.

Regards,

Joe

Re: Books you've read in 2009

Added to my Amazon "gift list"

Re: Books you've read in 2009

You won't regret it!

Re: Books you've read in 2009

I'm reading HP Lovecraft's sole novel, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

The most recent books I finished were:

Sound of the Beast, by Ian Christe. It's a history of heavy metal music, certainly the best one I've read because it's written by a fan who understands that if you're dealing with an almost exclusively underground form of music, you don't recap its history by wasting a lot of pages on Motley Crue and Winger. There are plenty of mentions of big-name bands, especially Metallica, but lots of relatively obscure names are also tossed out (Hirax, Anvil, Cirith Ungol, etc.). As with any book like this there are some major oversights but nothing that can't be forgiven.

Hunt at the Well of Eternity, by James Reasoner. The actual author name on the cover is Gabriel Hunt but that's a slightly irritatingly unnecessary house name. This is the first in a series developed by Hard Case Crime publisher Charles Ardai to resurrect old-style adventure fiction, at least in mainstream publishing, and it's essentially Indiana Jones in a modern setting. Gabriel Hunt's an independently wealthy adventurer who tracks down valuable artifacts for his brother's charitable foundation; in this book he's after the Fountain of Youth and of course there are bad guys after it, too, so there's nonstop action. Lots of cliches but in the best possible way. If Hollywood was interested in doing a film series to compete with Indiana Jones they could do a lot worse than this (it beats the hell out of video game-based stories...). Reasoner's a perfect writer to launch a series like this because he's an old-fashioned writer that tells stories with high efficiency and he doesn't worry about showing off to readers with obnoxiously flashy prose; the way you know a guy like this is a good writer is that he starts telling the story and you eventually realize you can't stop reading it because it moves so smoothly.

I just finished up reading Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk. I really didn't expect to finish it. There were times at the beginning of the book that it was almost incomprehensible but as I stuck with it, the style began to flow a little better. Not a typical Palahniuk ending, which in this case I thought was acceptable. An experimental book and not his best effort, but it was still enjoyable.

Bruce

Adam - The Hunger Games sounds like one I will go pick up but I'm wondering something in advance.  Is it too much for say a 9 year old?  While it sounds like some messed up stuff happens I can't imagine it is graphic in its detail (given the target audience).

I think it depends on the nine year old. Scholastic markets the book as for ages 12 and older, and the narrator is pretty blunt about the harsh facts of life. She hunts in the early chapters of the book and obviously there are some killing scenes once the games themselves begin. It's also 350 pages long. That all being said, I know I would have loved the book when I was nine. Strong readers that aren't too sensitive shouldn't have any problems with it.

Thanks Adam.  I picked it up tonight and will give it a read first.  My daughter is in the puppies/Hello Kitty phase right now so it might be a bit much, but I do want to get her introduced to some fantasy soon.  I know this is completely unrelated, but my first fantasy was Piers Anthony's A Spell For Chameleon.  Maybe I am forgetting some stuff, but I would like her to give that a shot.  I'll have her work up to Martin and Erikson :).

James, Piers Anthony is more adolescent fiction. I remember his writing became more and more sexually tinged through the years. A Spell for Chameleon, I think, was quite mild but you should re-read it before giving it to a 9 year old.

Well, I am about to start the third part of The Hunger Games and I have to say, I am really enjoying this book.  I don't think I would have a problem with my daughter reading it, but I don't think she would have much interest in it at this point.  I will encourage all the adult readers I know to check this one out though.  It is not the most detailed writing I have ever read, but it is efficient and effective.  Unless something radically changes in the last 130 pages of the book, this is going to get a 5-star, heavily recommended review from me.  Thanks Adam - I probably would not have heard about this one except for you.

You're welcome, James! That's the best thing about these "Books You've Read" threads. I know I've gotten a couple really great suggestions from people here.

Artie Lange's book was hilarious and sad... lol.
Never did read Eric Clapton's but am almost done with Denis Leary's, err Dr. Denis Leary's book. Thumbs up!

In the past two months, I have finished Clive Cussler's Arctic Drift and Corsair, Lincoln Child's Terminal Freeze, and I have just begun Cussler's Medusa.