Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Murder Room; My Fair Lazy; Holidays on Ice; Batman: the Killing Joke

"The Murder Room" by Michael Capuzzo was so slow to start I almost gave up on it after about 70 pages of slogging through it, but I'm glad I finished it because it got much better. Once a month in Philadelphia a group of men, the best in their fields of forensic sciences and crime fighting, meet to discuss cold cases, and end up solving quite a few of them. True crime gold.
"My Fair Lazy" by Jen Lancaster details her decision to stop being such a lazy ass who sits around watching crappy reality television and get some more culture in her life. In typical Jen Lancaster fashion she goes way overboard with it but at least she chronicles her adventure in a humorous way. I have to applaud her point that life is short and we waste so many opportunities to do more with our lives. I feel guilty now for my own laziness :)
David Sedaris' "Holidays on Ice" was very disappointing. It's a collection of short essays about Christmas that are supposed to be funny. None of them were very amusing and I found one to be borderline offensive, about child slavery, sex abuse, and murder. And you know it takes a lot to offend me, if I can read Tucker Max without blinking!
"Batman: the Killing Joke" by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland was a beautifully illustrated graphic novel accounting how the Joker became insane. It was short but it was good, I liked it a lot.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Captive Queen; Red Queen; Hollywood; Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake; I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell; Dead and Gone

Finally, a few new ones that didn't suck! "Captive Queen" by the amazing Alison Weir was a fictionalized account of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Weir does her usual brilliant job of making the story come to life and she really couldn't have picked a more fascinating woman than Eleanor.
"The Red Queen" by Philippa Gregory was the sequel to "The White Queen" and told the story of Elizabeth Woodville's counterpart, Margaret Beaufort, mother to King Henry VII and grandmother to Henry VIII. I always imagined Margaret was a bitch on wheels, and Gregory does nothing to disprove this notion. *Everyone* thought Margaret was a bitch. She really was the woman everyone loved to hate, so convinced in her righteousness of purpose of putting her son, with his incredibly weak ties, on the throne over people with better claims (like Henry's future wife and Elizabeth Woodville's daughter, Elizabeth).
"Hollywood" by Larry McMurtry was his third in the trilogy of memoirs, the other two being "Books" and "Literary Life". I didn't care for the first two, finding them too short and I had no idea who any of the people he was talking about where. "Hollywood" was better. It was still awfully short, but it was funny and at least I know who everyone was.
"Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake" by Aimee Bender was better than I expected, since it's been getting such great word of mouth buzz I figured it would disappoint, but I liked it. It had an intangible quality that I can't quite explain and a bit of a sci-fi sort of feel to it that I wasn't expecting. It reminded me of "The Time Traveler's Wife" in that sense. Rose discovers on her ninth birthday that she can taste people's emotions in the food they cook, and her brother Joseph disappears without warning. She ends up learning how to cope with her strangeness and function in normal society, Joseph does not.
"I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" by Tucker Max was a reread. I caught part of the movie on TV the other night (it was atrocious, don't bother) and wanted to revel in his debauchery again, since I lead such a tame and quiet life. Hilarious.
And finally, "Dead and Gone" by Charlaine Harris, the Sookie Stackhouse book before "Dead in the Family" that I somehow missed when I was getting caught up on Sookie. It was pretty good and I enjoyed the way Sookie was able to realize she might actually need some help fighting off all the bad stuff that comes into her life. Just quit your beer slinging job and move in with your gorgeous husband, Eric, girl! Yeah, I know, I know--if she did that there wouldn't be a story anymore. FINE :)

Friday, August 6, 2010

Jigsaw

Another reread from Ed McBain. I sort of remembered the ending to this one but not really, so it worked out well. I'm reading a couple of brand new books right now, so no more rereads for awhile.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Lady, Lady, I Did It!

A reread from the fabulous 87th Precinct series by the late, great, dearly missed Ed McBain. I was trying to read a couple of new books I checked out, including the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series that's so popular right now, but damned if I just couldn't get into it at all. It bored me straight to tears about 100 pages in and I gave up. Life's too short to try to read things that aren't appealing to me. So I turned to the old standbys and pulled this one off the shelf. I actually remembered the ending, which is so rare for me, with rereads like this one, but it was a great story and I enjoyed it again. I just hope my next round of checkouts is better than the previous ones, otherwise I may just have to keep rereading McBain. Not that I would mind that one bit!