Book log - playing catch-up

[blinker]

Read recently and slightly less recently:

Intoxicated by John Barlow - very fun and colorful

The Murder Room by P.D. James - growing up, James was squarely in the category of "writers my mother likes that I can't really get into", but this one was very good so I'll probably read a few more

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson - interesting stories about the Chicago Worlds Fair and a serial killer who was active in Chicago at the time. Unfortunately, the story of the serial killer was oversensationalized. If you don't know exactly what happened, you can either make something up or call it a history book but not both. To be fair, he did indicate exactly what he'd made up in the footnotes.

Trans-Sister Radio by Chris Bohjalian - quick, but regrettable read. Whatever he was trying to do, I really thought it didn't work. All the characters' voices blended together and the trans character wasn't very believable.

The Nimrod Flipout by Etgar Keret - short stories, translated from Hebrew. I read the whole thing on my flight to San Francisco. I don't usually like short stories that are this short, but these were excellent, quirky stories and some of them were really funny.

I'm currently most of the way through Life of Pi by Yann Martel. It's really good, I'm not sure why it took me five years to get around to reading it.

Comments

Oooh, P.D. James!

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

The Murder Room is good, but it isn't her best. You might want to go back and read the Dalgliesh series in order. My favorite is Devices and Desires.

Re: Oooh, P.D. James!

[slinkr.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recommendation. I think that may be the one I read when I was too young to appreciate it, but I should give it another try.

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

Life of Pi was one of my favorite book club selections. A wonderful book. I'll be curious to know what you think of the ending.

[slinkr.livejournal.com]

I just finished reading it. I liked the ambiguity in the ending.

[sagefemme11.livejournal.com]

Yeah, by the end of Trans-Sister Radio, I was very dissappointed. I enjoyed the presentation, though. The voice of NPR interviews to tell the story was cool, I thought.

[bitty.livejournal.com]

I'm halfway through The Historian and it's fan-frakkin'-tastic. As soon as I know that the second half is as good as the first, I am going to insist that everybody read it.

[slinkr.livejournal.com]

The second half is even better than the first half. It took me a while to get into it, but then I couldn't put it down.

[bitty.livejournal.com]

I can't figure out how it can get better.