Bibliophile Thread

[dodint]

Can't have flowers without a little dirt.

[count2infinity]

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone... this book is fun. Do bother.

Family reunion (of a family full of killers) at a ski lodge in Australia and people start dying. Just an overall fun book and a great ending. Lots of 4th wall breaks, which I love.

I picked this up on your recommendation and am reading it now. I haven't read the spoiler yet. It is, indeed, fun. The 4th wall stuff gets a little bit eyeroll-tedious but it makes up for it overall. I'm going to buy a physical copy for my wife.

Not sure how I missed this one. Yeah. It's definitely eye-rolly at at times, but still fun. If you enjoyed it, the sequel is pretty good as well. I would recommend it as well.

[count2infinity]

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

I don't how I made it all the way to the end of this book. I kept waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for something of substance, exciting, or "woah" worthy to happen. There were maybe 3 or 4 of them through the 450 pages.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone and they over explain and repeat themselves and you want to scream "GET TO THE F*CKING POINT!!!"? That was this book. There was a really nice and interesting story buried in it. But boy was that a slog.

[count2infinity]

FInished up Somewhere Beyond the Sea, T.J. Klune's sequel to The House in the Cerulean Sea, a book that I adored.

As with the first one, the sequel's best part is the magical children. They are precious and I love them. As to the book itself, it just is not subtle at all with the message like the first one, which is fine by me, but I can imagine it putting a lot of people off. All you have to do is read the dedication and acknowledgements at the end to know what's going on. I get it. If you liked the first, you'll like this just to put a nice little bow on the story, just be ready to read "there are prejudices against people that are different" over and over and over again.

[shafnutz05]

I'm getting close to wrapping up the His Dark Materials trilogy. This has been a great read, love the world building.

[Gaucho]

[count2infinity]

I had always put Stephen King in the horror category of writing. This is a genre I have little to no interest in, so I just stayed away from his stuff. Chatting a bit with some colleagues of mine, they were talking about 11-22-63 and I thought "ohhh, that sounds fun." so I asked the author and to my shock they said Stephen King, so I figured I'd give it a go.

A couple of things so far:

1. Dude jumped right into the story and I love it. There are sooooo many books that it take 5-6 chapters before you ever get to the meat of the anything. Here, I'm 3 chapters in and I already feel like I'm in the thick of it. And then I look at the rest of the book and realize I'm only like 10% of the way through. Went back and mentioned this to my colleagues and they said "Oh yeah. All of his books are like that." Awesome. I'm going to read more after this one.

2. I love the simple language and dialog he uses. Too many books I've read use fluffy or overly complex language for seemingly no other reason than for me to have to grab a dictionary and figure out what the hell that word means. One of the people that suggested this book to me is a Chinese citizen who has lived in America for about 15 years now. You can imagine the difficulty with complex language for her, and she said she loves Stephen King for his writing style and simple vocabulary.

[DigitalGypsy66]

Yeah, that's one of my favorites of his. Running Man, too. I also liked Billy Summers, a non-horror novel from 2021.

[dodint]

Oh, neat. You'll get treated to one of the most consistent and staggering problems with King's otherwise fantastic writing:

He can't write an ending, and 11/23/63 is particularly egregious.

If you like his writing you should look into some of his short story collections. Most of them are not paranormal-horror in nature, just good stories. I'll circle back and recommend a few collections.

[nocera]

Funny, I just started listening to Pet Sematary. Really digging it so far and Michael C Hall is the narrator which adds and extra level of fun. It’s my first King novel, though I’ve read a bunch of his short stories. I agree those are fantastic.

Also, his "On Writing" book is great if you're into that sort of thing.

[robbiestoupe]

I had always put Stephen King in the horror category of writing. This is a genre I have little to no interest in, so I just stayed away from his stuff. Chatting a bit with some colleagues of mine, they were talking about 11-22-63 and I thought "ohhh, that sounds fun." so I asked the author and to my shock they said Stephen King, so I figured I'd give it a go.

A couple of things so far:

1. Dude jumped right into the story and I love it. There are sooooo many books that it take 5-6 chapters before you ever get to the meat of the anything. Here, I'm 3 chapters in and I already feel like I'm in the thick of it. And then I look at the rest of the book and realize I'm only like 10% of the way through. Went back and mentioned this to my colleagues and they said "Oh yeah. All of his books are like that." Awesome. I'm going to read more after this one.

2. I love the simple language and dialog he uses. Too many books I've read use fluffy or overly complex language for seemingly no other reason than for me to have to grab a dictionary and figure out what the hell that word means. One of the people that suggested this book to me is a Chinese citizen who has lived in America for about 15 years now. You can imagine the difficulty with complex language for her, and she said she loves Stephen King for his writing style and simple vocabulary.

Same here with horror. But there are many SK books that are non-horror and great reads

[eddy]

Reading The Book of Elsewhere by China mieville and Keanu Reeves. I liked his BRZRKR graphic novels and look forward to the movie. so far , the book is great. it's definitely a novel by China Mieville, so if you've read his other stuff, you know his writing.

[dodint]

@AuthorTony have you read Revelator by Daryl Gregory?

If you have, would you recommend it for some October reading?

[AuthorTony]

@AuthorTony have you read Revelator by Daryl Gregory?

If you have, would you recommend it for some October reading?

Sorry, I haven't read it. The synopsis makes it sound quite good though. I'll have to give it a try.

[dodint]

Ah, okay. I came across it and thought of you. I'll probably read it next.

[count2infinity]

Oh, neat. You'll get treated to one of the most consistent and staggering problems with King's otherwise fantastic writing:

He can't write an ending, and 11/23/63 is particularly egregious.

If you like his writing you should look into some of his short story collections. Most of them are not paranormal-horror in nature, just good stories. I'll circle back and recommend a few collections.

JFC... wtf was that for an ending? I read your post and had an expectation that:

It was going to be something wild, something weird, something that left me with my jaw on the floor....

Nope. It was just "I found out changing the past was bad, so I hit the reset button. Oh well... on with life."

I was kind of expecting that after he stopped the assassination, he went back to the future and everything was a freaking utopia, and he had to make the hard choice of staying in paradise or going back to save Sadie. Nah. He was presented with a complete and utter clusterf*ck and the choice was super easy. Go back, hit the reset, and then the only hard choice to make was to let Sadie go because trying to do anything more would just end up with negative consequences. So even that wasn't a difficult choice.

I think the story would have been fine, heck maybe even better, with out the whole him getting the sh*t beat out of him and amnesia and busted up leg. Same with Sadie's husband attacking her. The time spent on the two of them recovering was wasted time imo.

Probably seems like I didn't like the book. That's not the case at all. I thought it was really good. Well written. Really cool story.

One of my favorite lines was "Sane men will often take a hint... crazy men rarely do."

8/10 for me.

[shafnutz05]

I'm starting to get flashbacks of wrapping up the final book in the DT series

Literally waited twenty years for...another reset

[dodint]

haha, yeah. 11/23/63 and Under The Dome are both really entertaining, engaging stories with completely flaccid endings. Your Utopia/choice ending is a lot better.

[Gaucho]

[DigitalGypsy66]

Nice. I am shocked, shocked to see I am #1 in the queue in my local library system's holds system for this audiobook. Not a lot of Le Carre fans in Myrtle Beach evidently. (I am 16th in queue for the latest Bosch audiobook).

[nocera]

Do you use Libby?

[DigitalGypsy66]

This one is on cloudlibrary, but our public library system uses Hoopla and Libby too.

I'm looking to add Libby to my work library's holdings as well.

[count2infinity]

James by Percival Everett was a good read.

It's the retelling of Huckleberry Finn from Jim's perspective. I had trouble putting it down.

[Gaucho]

James' perspective.

[DigitalGypsy66]

Any Turtledove readers in here? I saw @shafnutz05 started one of Harry Turtledove's series back a few years ago. Turtledove is, uh, quite prolific. Where's a good starting point? He seems to write about all kinds of historical periods...!