Wednesday...ish book meme
Better late than never, I figure, and it was edging towards never, so...
Finished:
The one in a million boy by Monica Wood. This was a birthday present from my Granny: not a book I ever would have picked up on my own, but I'm so glad she gave it to me. It's a wonderful, engrossing read. A Scout boy who had been helping a 104 year old woman dies very suddenly. The story follows pre and post death: the old woman, the boy's mother, the boy's enstranged father, and it's... I ached for these people, and their stories, and how human and understandable they were, and how hard they were all trying. In the end, don't get happy endings as such, but they got the endings they chose, and it's all deeply, surprisngly satisfying. Would rec.
Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King. Finished at last! The last few hundred pages were amazingly gripping all over again. By describing a previous carnage early on, King got us braced for an epic bloodbath ... which somehow made the restrained deaths, when they did come, emotionally brutal and so well done. I had more thinky thoughts than this, but now can't recall them. I cheered when Mia turned up and was willing to battle for them, and while I'm not convinced by the monstrous pregnancy plot line, I appreciated how comparatively little impact the 'shouldn't tell them [Important Detail] actually impacted the story.
Night school by Lee Child. I've read and adored many of Child's, but this one ... It's not bad, but by page 50 one of the [bad guy] characters has casually murdered a sex worker, and Reacher has beaten up four guys for no reason at all other than they got up in his face -- despite the fact that he's supposed to be being discreet. Both of which threw me for varying levels of loop. I kept reading, and finished it, but I spent most of it glad I'd bought it second hand. The baddie characters were in several instances described with vaguely racist tropes -- the Arab characters are constantly surrounded by flies in their home; the female messenger is from 'tribal areas' which is apparently shorthand for 'seen a lot of brutality'. :/ This is actually the third Reacher that I've sat back from and winced in some way, sadly. Maybe a break for a while.
Currently reading: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Still somewhat of an intellectual read, although I was gripped for a while there in the lead up to the splitting of the Justice of Toren. And there are touches of absolutely horrifying, fascinating things such as the creation of ancillaries that I'm hoping I'd see delved into mroe in later books. Still enjoying it well enough, not entirely convinced I'll pick up the next two, but there's time yet to change my mind.
Up next: I stumbled over a copy of Flashforward in a second hand bookshop, which I hadn't even realised was a book, but I remembered the potential of the TV series and figured it was a great chance to see about a (supposedly, perhaps) finished coherent narrative about the whole thing.
Finished:
The one in a million boy by Monica Wood. This was a birthday present from my Granny: not a book I ever would have picked up on my own, but I'm so glad she gave it to me. It's a wonderful, engrossing read. A Scout boy who had been helping a 104 year old woman dies very suddenly. The story follows pre and post death: the old woman, the boy's mother, the boy's enstranged father, and it's... I ached for these people, and their stories, and how human and understandable they were, and how hard they were all trying. In the end, don't get happy endings as such, but they got the endings they chose, and it's all deeply, surprisngly satisfying. Would rec.
Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King. Finished at last! The last few hundred pages were amazingly gripping all over again. By describing a previous carnage early on, King got us braced for an epic bloodbath ... which somehow made the restrained deaths, when they did come, emotionally brutal and so well done. I had more thinky thoughts than this, but now can't recall them. I cheered when Mia turned up and was willing to battle for them, and while I'm not convinced by the monstrous pregnancy plot line, I appreciated how comparatively little impact the 'shouldn't tell them [Important Detail] actually impacted the story.
Night school by Lee Child. I've read and adored many of Child's, but this one ... It's not bad, but by page 50 one of the [bad guy] characters has casually murdered a sex worker, and Reacher has beaten up four guys for no reason at all other than they got up in his face -- despite the fact that he's supposed to be being discreet. Both of which threw me for varying levels of loop. I kept reading, and finished it, but I spent most of it glad I'd bought it second hand. The baddie characters were in several instances described with vaguely racist tropes -- the Arab characters are constantly surrounded by flies in their home; the female messenger is from 'tribal areas' which is apparently shorthand for 'seen a lot of brutality'. :/ This is actually the third Reacher that I've sat back from and winced in some way, sadly. Maybe a break for a while.
Currently reading: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Still somewhat of an intellectual read, although I was gripped for a while there in the lead up to the splitting of the Justice of Toren. And there are touches of absolutely horrifying, fascinating things such as the creation of ancillaries that I'm hoping I'd see delved into mroe in later books. Still enjoying it well enough, not entirely convinced I'll pick up the next two, but there's time yet to change my mind.
Up next: I stumbled over a copy of Flashforward in a second hand bookshop, which I hadn't even realised was a book, but I remembered the potential of the TV series and figured it was a great chance to see about a (supposedly, perhaps) finished coherent narrative about the whole thing.