Jar City, Indriðason. No. The cover bills this as “A Reykjavík Thriller”, but it’s really quite far from thrilling. It’s hard to tell how much to blame (or credit) the translation when the words I read are not the words the author wrote, but my failure to find much redeeming in Jar City extends beyond […]
Remember that movie (based on a story), The Sweater? Do you know how ingrained it is in Canadian culture? An excerpt from the story is now featured in both official languages of Canada on the reverse of the Canadian five-dollar bill. Can you even imagine a story that could be featured on US currency? You […]
The Art of Racing in the Rain, Stein. Yes. Not far into the book, Stein’s narrator says For me, a good story is all about setting up expectations and delivering on them in an exciting and surprising way. And that is just what Racing in the Rain does: you learn certain things very early, and […]
Rant: an Oral Biography of Buster Casey, Palahniuk. Yes. I was surprised how much I enjoyed this, having given up on Fight Club very early in. Palahniuk is extremely skilled, and Rant has a number of interesting ideas (despite one of the fancier ones being awfully similar to a classic Zelazny creation). While there were […]
All Clear, Willis. Yes. I remain convinced that Blackout and this could have been trimmed. I don’t know if perhaps Willis thought the seemingly endless agonizing at the end of Blackout and the beginning of All Clear were heightening the tension, but I found them nothing but irritating. I suggested to my book club buddy […]
Behemoth, Westerfeld. Yes. Follows Leviathan, with apparently one more to come in the series. Classified as YA by my library, it’s certainly not a dense read, though it does have a number of interesting ideas threaded through. I was appalled to see “led” spelled “lead” at least twice (spelled correctly at least once); it’s a […]
The Waters Rising, Tepper. NoYes. Tepper has for years been one of my old reliables: if she wrote it, I wanted to read it. Sure, it was preachy; sure, there was a bunch of justice ex machina required for her thesis not to fall completely apart; sure, her villains never really had any depth; but […]
In the Woods, French. Yes. I’m probably going to have to read The Likeness again, which on the one hand makes me wish I had read In the Woods first. On the other hand, I’m glad I didn’t read it first, because, while I would have liked it just fine, I might not have read […]
Vanilla Ride, Lansdale. Yes. While I enjoyed Vanilla Ride, I don’t expect to read any more of Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard books. My only mechanical complaint was the rendering of “y’all” as “ya’ll”—especially disappointing after the narrator reliably got lie and lay straight—but there was never quite enough there to make me think I needed […]