lectrolove Posted August 28, 2017 Share Posted August 28, 2017 East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I'm quite enjoying this but it's a bit plodding at times and over long in my opinion. Goes on a bit. This is my first go at Steinbeck, I've avoided him up until now because I expected him to be a bit dull and worthy and I think I was half right about that. 6.5/10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metalman Posted August 30, 2017 Share Posted August 30, 2017 Just finished Finders Keepers by Belinda Bauer. Like her other ones I thought this was OK, but could probably have done with being a couple of hundred pages shorter - it's also one of those books that comes in at 500 pages because of a large print size, lots of small chapters with white space at the end of every one, and a fair bit of padding. Don't these people care about trees? Georges Simenon would have done the whole thing in about 150 pages. Now I've started Anna by David Reed, which is a man's (non-fictional) account of his wife's descent into madness and eventual suicide. Bleak will probably sum it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taxman Posted August 31, 2017 Share Posted August 31, 2017 The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by G.W. Dalquist. A rip roaring erotic, steampunk, Victoriana adventure with much daring do, mysterious conspiracies, murder, mayhem, mucky books and glass Golems. It's completely daft but I've been hooked since starting it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metalman Posted August 31, 2017 Share Posted August 31, 2017 The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by G.W. Dalquist. A rip roaring erotic, steampunk, Victoriana adventure with much daring do, mysterious conspiracies, murder, mayhem, mucky books and glass Golems. It's completely daft but I've been hooked since starting it. I've got a copy of this somewhere (and its two follow-ups) but haven't got round to reading it yet. According to Wikipedia it was quite well thought of but still lost its publisher nearly a million dollars! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feargal Posted September 1, 2017 Share Posted September 1, 2017 This week's offerings have been Splinter the Silence by Val McDermid (enjoyable, but nothing outstanding), and The Lake House by Kate Morton. I really enjoyed this until near the end. Chugs away nicely, then there's a clunky and predictable resolution, which is so obvious that I thought that only a fool would shoehorn it in. I hate when authors do that! Also been dipping into a biography of Vivian Stanshall "Ginger Geezer", which is about my fourth re-reading of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metalman Posted September 4, 2017 Share Posted September 4, 2017 Anna by David Reed turned out to be as depressing and harrowing as expected. Although the events in question only took place in 1973, which for some of us still seems fairly recent, mentally ill people were still being locked up in mental hospitals and treated with electric shock therapy; 'Reed' didn't want his wife to undergo this (and to be fair neither did she) so he consulted a psychiatrist who was one of the clique surrounding R.D. Laing, at about the time they were running their commune where schizophrenics and doctors lived together on equal terms. It didn't really work in this case as eventually she tried to commit suicide by pouring petrol over herself and setting it alight, then spent a month dying of 75% burns as a result. In hindsight the 60s and 70s were a weird time in all sorts of ways and since then Laing's ideas have been largely discredited but I suppose it must have seemed the right thing to do at the time. Two minutes on Google shows that the real identity of 'David Reed' (and of the psychiatrist) are now known; in the book however 'Reed' himself comes across as a pretty unlikeable, pretentious character that I didn't really warm to, even if he went through something you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taxman Posted September 5, 2017 Share Posted September 5, 2017 The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver. A rip snorter of a police/forensics procedural chase of a serial killer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
top4718 Posted September 5, 2017 Share Posted September 5, 2017 The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver. A rip snorter of a police/forensics procedural chase of a serial killer. I used like Deavers books around that time but couldn't get into the later ones, The Coffin Dancer is also very good. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest - Steigg Larsson - About halfway through the 3rd book in the Millenium trilogy - better than the last one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lectrolove Posted September 7, 2017 Share Posted September 7, 2017 Restless by William Boyd. I've got off to a slow start with this, I've read 3 or 4 others by Boyd and got into them very quickly but this one, not so much. Early days so reserving judgement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feargal Posted September 8, 2017 Share Posted September 8, 2017 This week I 'are mostly been reading... The wrong side of goodbye by Michael Connelly. Pretty good, nothing out of the ordinary. I seem to be lacking in oomph with book choice at the moment. I think I need to trawl back in this thread for ideas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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