It’s a lovely sunny day here. Perfect. Yesterday it rained. All day. Hard. Tomorrow it will be too hot. By the weekend it’ll be cold again. Summer in Seattle…
This is a busy week (editing, catching up with routine medical things like the dentist, etc.), so I don’t know how much I’ll be around. I’ve just finished reading Inseparable, by Emma Donoghue and Faithful Place, by Tana French. I’ve just started Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black. (Wild POV antics.) At some point I’ll find time to talk about them. Really.
At some point, too, I’ll take some photos of the garden, pretty herbs and flowers (parched lawn–well, after the rain, less parched than it was).
I hope your gardens are blooming and your reading going splendidly. Any particularly good (or vile) books you want to mention?
Nicola Griffith 
I quite liked FAITHFUL PLACE but WOW, talk about depressing…
Y'know, I didn't find it that depressing. I thought it wrapped things up nicely at the end–perhaps even too nicely for its set-up. Interesting.
I'm reading Slow River – helps me not miss you and Lambda-land quite so much ;-) Also dusting off a few of those craft books (Maass, Lukeman) to support this minor rewrite/draft-finishing frenzy you've started…
Re: depressing books – how do people get away with (or stand) writing those? I recently read Nami Mun's Miles From Nowhere and did little but console myself with Miyazaki and ice cream for days after. Same would have gone for AnneMarie MacDonald's Fall On Your Knees, except for that glorious ending. She just barely saved that one. What say ye publishing genii? How hard can/should an ending really be? Just because the author can soak in that much pain for however long it takes to write the book, should s/he?
I'm reading “I Came Out For This” by Lisa Gitlin. It's funny and poignant, about a woman who comes out in her mid-forties and immediately falls in love with a woman who dumps her.
I hope SR ends up being Good rather than Vile :) I know the Maass–I know of it, anyway–but what's the Lukeman?
Depressing books, hmmn. I think it's a YMMV issue. I can't read a lot of women's commercial fiction because it's drenched in victimhood. It depresses me horribly. I find lots of genre horror too terrible to read. Spy fiction can be too relentlessly tension-inducing. 'Realistic' fiction too grindingly, boringly, mind-numbingly grim.
But some tough novels have seams of joy running through them. (That's what I aimed for with SR.) And some fun books end with heartbreak (TBP). And some epics end well for others and no happy-ever-after for other (LotR).
So my answer: it depends. Helpful, right? :)
I just finished reading Afterimage by Helen Humphreys. It had me enthralled — novels by poets can usually have their way with me — but then it went and lost me right before the end.
I didn't buy any of the last chapter, Cosmographia Universalis. I still can't put my finger on what it was that kicked me out of the experience. Was it the grand finale that changes everything for everyone and in the process pushes characters out of character? Don't know. Will have to think more about this one.
Have any of you read Afterimage?
Fran, light-hearted coming out story? Cool!
Sapiente, nope, haven't read it. But characters acting unlike themselves? Very uncool. It would piss me off.
I'm reading a fascinating book about a cross-dressing lesbian speedboat racing big-oil heiress who eventually bought and ruled an island. I'd never heard of her before a friend of mine stumbled across The Queen of Whale Cay: The Eccentric Story of “Joe” Carstairs, Fastest Woman on Water by Kate Summerscale.
Melody – I read that book many years ago and LOVED it!
Nicola – I am reading Blackout by Connie Willis and I just picked up Mockingjay, which is the third in a trilogy by Suzanne Collins. The first is a historical time travel sci-fi novel; the second is a young adult dystopian sci-fi book.
I'm reading Donoghue's Inseparable too. Very good, though not (I think) as good as her earlier Passions Between Women. Next will be The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia. Just before, I read Oliver Twist for the first time, and was surprised at how sensationally trashy it was.
Melody, yes, I read part of that book a few years ago. I still remember the cover…
jill, K *loves* the Collins books. I think I'm going to have to read them.
promiscuous, oh, yep, Dickens is trashy! Just the ticket, sometimes.
Nicola – when you get around to the Hunger Games I'd love to hear what you think!
The Lieutenant of Innishmore by Martin McDonaugh. It's a play, but reads like a book, which (in my opinion) is the best kind of play.
I just finished Rubyfruit Jungle and Oranges are not the only fruit . The latter I found rather fractured, but then, it's only art of this autobiograhy-ish cycle, so maybe I should read the rest of them as well :-).
Currently, I'm reading Automated Alice and sme other Alice-related books both for fun and an university class :-)
Oh yes, and I read some other books as well, also both for fun and universitywise, but I don't wantto spam here, after all, it's just supposed to be a comment :-)
Decided to read some of the books in Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series–wanted some light reading before school starts back up again next week. Eeep! It's good fantasy that draws me in and doesn't involve a helluva lot of thinking.
Ammonite is next on the list for the umpteenth time. .grin. .bounce.
Jill, will do.
Monica, I honestly can't remember the last time I read a play–must be 20 years. I don't think screenplays count :)
Ophelia, I see Joanna Russ on your goodreads list: excellent!
Janine, I (still) haven't read any Valdemar books. Enjoy Ammonite.
I'm doing this 50 book challenge (50 in a year), which is more books than I've read in the last, oh 50 years. I'm on #40, Sweet Creek, by Lee Lynch. Best of the lot so far: The Likeness by Tana French; The Slow Fix by Ivan Coyote was excellent; Hood, by Emma Donoghue, maybe the best yet. Most depressing: A Seahorse Year by Stacy D'Erasmo. Polished off some fine books by a dyke named Nicola Griffith–Ammonite and Slow River. I'm caught now up till Hild appears.
Last week I finished Small Favor and Turn Coat from Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. Both very good.
I also just got The Female Man by Joanna Russ. I've had Ghost Story by Peter Straub in que for longer than I care to admit. Plus four books by Carol Berg that a friend sent me.
Though if anything, I'll probably read Stephen King's The Shinning, first.
Hi Nicola–if you read any plays, read The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh. It's quick, dirty, hilarious, and utterly absorbing. Also makes a fantastically good play. McDonagh is my favorite contemporary playwright.
Elaine, Tana French does have some lovely moments.
transceptor, The Female Man–wow, I can't imagine reading that for the first time as we move into the 2nd decade of the 21st C. It's such a product of its time. There again, on some level it's all still true. Ooof. BTW, I like the notion of a novel called The Shinning :) I had an instant picture of two Yorkshire lads being so bored and drunk they had nothing better to do than indulge in a shin-kicking competition…
Monica, The Pillowman. Got it.
Nicola, oh Ha! I didn't catch that. Yeah I meant the Shining XD
Actually The Simpsons did a parody called “The Shinning” in the episode “Treehouse of Horror V”.
I thought about that a lot when when I put it on my amazon wish list a long while back when I had first heard of it. Just after I had bought it you had put up your “Sex, booze, joy, and the modern novel” entry. It got me to thinking about just where Russ would be coming from. It should be an interesting experiance and I'm certain I will pick up something from it.
foolishly, i suddenly have too many books on deck to read. when that happens i kinda panic and shut down. ugh. but they all look promising- among them- Tropic of Orange by Karen Tei Yamashita & her new novel, I Hotel. also have Italo Calvino's The Path to the Spider's Nest and Isherwood's A Single Man. plus, just rescued a worn copy of The Blue Place, from the library where i work. it was about to be weeded. I loved Stay, but haven't read this one yet.
I have a Calvino book in my TBR pile, too: The Baron in the Trees. No idea when I'll get around to it.
Wow, lots of new things to look for. I am reading Kraken by China Meiville, and just finished years best SF latest which includes It Takes Two!! (which I voted for in the hugo. Before that was the fist novel by Paolo Bacigalupi which is Ship Breaker, not as good as Wind-up Girl but still enjoyable.
Hey, Keith, thanks for the vote!
I've just found out that the Hugo awards happen in the middle of the night–3 am of our wedding anniversary…
Well I expect I will be at the ceremony, hope you win!!! Wedding anniversary sounds more important though.