What books are you reading right now?

I'm about 7/8 through The Heaven Tree Triology by Edith Pargeter, who is better known as Ellis Peters for her Cadfael novels. The three novels are entertaining, but not particularily well written.

What I do find interesting in a very bad way is the numerous similarities between her three novels, and Ken Follet's The Pllars of the Earth , World Without End, & Fall of Giants. I don't know if there were any lawsuits filed, need to research it, but IMO Follet very clearly ripped off Pargeter. The first novel of the triology, The Heaven Tree, was published in 1960/1961; The Pillars of the Earth was published in 1989. Hmmmmm.

Follet is a much better writer than Pargeter, but I have lost a lot of respect for him.

 

for Halloween ... The Zombies of Lake Woebegotten by Harrison Geillor
xoxoxoo

 

I just sent Ken Follet a strongly worded message via his website.

 

Most writers knowingly and/or subconsciously borrow from earlier works. With Follet there is no way he could claim no previous knowledge of Pargeter's books.

In both novels the time period is around 1200AD, the main characters are stonemasons, and their central projects are the building of a specatular church. While Follet might not have stolen everything from Edith Pargeter, it's pretty clear that he "borrowed" the main plot.

 

I'm about 1/2 into Commanche Moon by Larry McMurtry, the last of the four "Lonesome Dove" novels. I started with Lonesome Dove, not realizing there were actually four novels. I wasn't blown away by LD, but felt compelled to read the second novel Streets Of Laredo, still wasn't blown away, and I'm not really impressed with CM. I'll probably give Dead Man's Walk a miss.

I can, however, see how LD would make for a good TV western. Which of course it did.

 

Just finished the new novella/long short story The Slow Regard of Silent Things, by Patrick Rothfuss. A weird, evocative, haunting little piece, spectacularly written. It's a an offshoot story from the Kingkiller Chronicles trilogy that he's still working on, set completely in the life of a very minor character-- the story is basically incomprehensible unless one has read the two Kingkiller books and paid attention. I was actually pleasantly surprised that this piece got published at all-- and, judging from his afterword, so was Rothfuss.

But if you've read his other two books, and liked them, and are prepared for strangeness, I highly recommend this story.

 

Breakthrough by Michael Grumley, good story

 

The Old Colts -- Oldtimers Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp looking for one last adventure in 1916 New York City.

 

I read this and enjoyed it.

 

Yesterday I finished Dead Weight by Batt Humphreys, a historical novel set in Charleston in the early 1900s. I liked Humphreys' straightforward writing style. While the novel does include two tragic events, one real and one fictional, overall the book is faiytale-ish. The main character, the fictional reporter from NYC, has too much good fortune to be believable. If a director followed the book it would make a good Hallmark movie.


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I'm 74 pages into Accelerando by Charles Stross, his third novel. I read and enjoyed his first two novels, Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise, even though SF isn't a genre that I usually read. Stross is known for his use of technoterminology and futurespeak, but in this novel he goes overboard. I'm also waiting for something engaging to happen; Stross is taking his sweet time getting to the self-replicating artificial intelligence that far exceeds human intelligence, and decides to eliminate humans.

 

Accelerando sucks. In the forward Stross mentions that it took him five years to finish it; it feels as though it's taking me five years to finish reading it. In the novel Stross mentions crystal meth several times, and I'm under the impression he was mainlining crystal meth when writing it. It's seriously fragmented, reads as though it was written in bits & pieces with little regard for what was previously written. I rarely give up on books once I've started them, but in this case I should've followed my gut and stopped after about 100 pages.

 

Next on my list - 2 A.M. at the Cats Pajamas

 

I'm currently enjoying A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away by Chrsitopher Brookmyre. It took him a while to get the story moving, much like his Boiling A Frog, unlike his One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night which started with a bang, literally & figuratively. A better understanding of British, Scottish to be more precise, music & politics would be helpful, but not necessary.

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Since I'm a boxing fan, today I bought a copy of George Plimpton's Shadow Box. I've only read short articles by Plimpton. I'm not sure if SB is is going to be focused enough on boxing for me, and I've always felt that at times Ali was FOS (a large part of the book focuses on Ali). We'll see.

 

The ending of A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away was a bit too "Hollywood" for my taste (I won't post a spoiler), but all in all it was a pretty good read.


I've nearly finished Shadow Box. This is the first Plimpton book that I've read--I have read some of his articles--and I really like his style. The downside is he's something of an Ali cheerleader. That could be just me, because while I think that Clay/young Ali was the most talented heavyweight in boxing history, his self-promotion and the circus that surrounded him put me off. Plimpton wites that away from the media Ali was quiet and somewhat withdrawn, the only time you saw 'Ali The Entertainer' away from the media is when he was around children.

 

Comic Wars - About the battle between junk bond trader Ronald Pereiman and hostile takeover artist Carl Icahn over Marvel comics at the end of the 80's.
Really interesting read.