What Are You Reading??

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Reapers, Inc. - Brigit's Cross by BL Newport.

Lesbian dies. Doesn't go to hell. Is instead recruited by the last of the Grim Reapers. Hijinkx, largely unrelated to sexuality, ensue.

Interesting reading this because it's clearly a self-published e-book that hasn't been edited professionally, has a few really missed opportunities (like for instance, Brigit makes the transition from corporeal life to ghost life with next to no culture shock at all), and yet remains mostly readable and interesting. The story is of how Brigit really loves her wife and doesn't want to leave the mortal coil so she accepts to work as a reaper. It's fairly simple-mindedly romantic, but still sweet and interesting. There's a lot of her interacting with people (who are for the most part also dead), and perhaps that's why the other issues can be glossed over (no matter how clear it becomes that "as" is the author's favourite preposition).

The Girl With All The Gifts - M.R. Carey



Impressive reinvention and relocation of the "zombie" concept. As often as not it is a story of teachers, children, and soldiers.

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class.

When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite. But they don't laugh.

Melanie is a very special girl.

 

How to be a woman by Caitlin Moran, some hilarious bits, some bits I think only comprehensible to Brits (correct me if I am wrong) on the whole enjoyable.Also The Art of Hearing Heartbeats set in Burma started of well but went off the rails somewhere.

Seven Troop - Andy McNab

Opaque British military slang. Readable though.

Finished Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and now on to Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

I finished Don Quixote

I am so happy, I embarked one that journey much longer than a year ago, it actually gets quite exciting at the end, but it's a massive massive trek.

I still have les miserables and the bible sat there half finished lol.

It's a tricky one because reading these 1000 page books really suck it all out of you and I've read about20 other books in between getting through Quixote and I'm not even a big reader, but then when I finished it I was really moved how Id gone through this adventure with him and then it ended, I was a bit drunk by the end.....

I finished "The Secret Life of Houdini" which was quite excellent. Then I dived into Tom Robbins' "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates" which was weird and immensely entertaining. Now, I have begun Eleanor Catton's "The Luminaries" and Mark Booth's "The Secret History of the World" and Chuck Palahniuk's "Damned"...I have an odd preference for books dealing with the infernal regions. I would probably shoot myself in the face with a nail-gun before read the book "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" but if it was "The Five People Who Will Greet You At the Gates of Pandemonium" I would buy it lickety-split.

Hey Eric if you ever purchase a nail gun you'd like to use, I was given a copy of Five People You Meet in Heaven by a well meaning Christian lady who probably makes macrame pot plant hangers and has a lot of ultra heavy ceramic mugs for mint tea at home....in a period of book desperation I read it 
You're welcome to it any time.
Rx (Kostya didn't like it either)

Remainder - Tom McCarthy

Remainder tells the story of an unnamed hero traumatised by an accident which "involved something falling from the sky". Eight and a half million pounds richer due to a compensation settlement but hopelessly estranged from the world around him, Remainder's protagonist spends his time and money obsessively reconstructing and re-enacting vaguely remembered scenes and situations from his past. These re-enactments are driven by a need to inhabit the world "authentically" rather than in the "second-hand" manner that his traumatic situation has bequeathed him.

I have read as far as the initiation of the project to create the first reenactments, and thus have finished 25% of the novel. I can read no more. I shall possibly take up the book again at some later date for it is quite clearly art and might well be significant. As well, the prose is not poorly done. But the book contains no hope and I suspect it never will. It is something else again, and troubling.

I recently finished reading Choke by Chuck Palahniuk....which is about a sex addict who works at a colonial farm and pretends to choke on food at restaurants in order to get money for his his sick mother who is in a mental institution where he comforts senile old ladies by pretending to be the person responsible for the worst experience of their lives. Currently reading Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore. It's about an alcoholic, sex-addicted pilot drafted to work for a Micronesian cult after a career ending blunder. Reading some weird shit lately.

Decurso, Christopher Moore is definitely one of my favorites. You should try "The Gospel According to Biff" and, seeing as weirdness is your literary food of choice currently, Tom Robbins "Still Life With Woodpecker" and/or "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates" would fit the bill nicely.

Finished "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" and am now half done with Jeremy Paxman's "The English".

Fresh - Mark McNay

In the lowlands of Scotland, factory worker Sean O'Grady goes to work thinking he still has six months before his fantastically unforgiving brother gets out of prison. Written in tha accent o the speakers and no overburden wi punctuation, its a braw wee read and no mistake. The story works its way through this one work day, from first light til wherever that day will end, telling by turns events in the past and events of the day.

Next on the list is David Mitchell's new book, The Bone Clocks. His last one, Cloud Atlas, was very good, and this new one is being ballyhoo'd as better still. Looking forward to it.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.  I love medieval times, especially since I don't have to live in them.  Two thumbs up.

Co-ooooo-on!