pontalba's 2010 Reading List

[pontalba]

JANUARY

 

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest by Stieg Larsson 5/5

The Night Listener by Armistead Maupin 4/5

How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed by Slavenka Drakulic 3/5

2666 by Roberto Bolano...started, finished half, to page 453 - don't know if I'll finish or not.

 

FEBRUARY

The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill 2/5

Company of Liars by Karen Maitland 3.5/5

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood started, only read about a quarter, to page 101, boring and mean. doubt I'll finish. Edit

 

MARCH

 

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane 5/5

The Language of Bees by Laurie R. King [library book] 4/5

Little Bee by Chris Cleave [library book] 5/5

 

APRIL

 

The Tamarind Seed by Evelyn Anthony 4/5

Elizabeth Costello by J. M. Coetzee 3/5

Last Night by James Salter 3/5

Son of Holmes by John Lescroart 2/5

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene 4/5

 

MAY

 

Tinkers by Paul Harding 5/5

The Last Child by John Hart 5/5++

One Second Later by William R. Forstchen 4/5

A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee 5/5++

The Loves of Charles II by Jean Plaidy 4/5

The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster 4/5

 

JUNE

 

Bitter Steel by Charles Allen Gramlich 4/5

A Pale Horse by Charles Todd 3/5

The God of the Hive by Laurie R. King [library book] 4/5

Invisible by Paul Auster 5/5

Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg 4/5

 

JULY

 

The Blue Afternoon by William Boyd 5+/5

The Last Thing I Remember by Andrew Klavan 3/5

Restless by William Boyd 5/5

Close to Shore by Michael Capuzzo 5/5

Nemesis by Jo Nesbo 4/5

The City & The City by China Mieville 4/5

Elegy For April by Benjamin Black 5/5

Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean 5/5

 

AUGUST

 

A Widow for One Year by John Irving 5+/5

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts 4/5

Caught by Harlan Coben 5/5

In A Dry Season by Peter Robinson 5/5

Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay 3/5

Maigret and the Burglar's Wife by Georges Simenon 2.5/5

Watchman by Ian Rankin 3.5/5

Flood by Stephen Baxter 3.5/5 [# 43]

SEPTEMBER

The Secret Pilgrim by John LeCarré 5/5

The Thousand by Kevin Guilfoile 3/5

Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson 4/5

Death of the Adversary by Hans Keilson 4/5

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson 4/5

A Murder of Quality by John Le Carré 4/5

The Snowman by Jo Nesbo 5/5 !!

The Fourth Man by K.O. Dahl 4/5

Dissolution by C.J. Sansom 3.5/5

 

OCTOBER

 

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger 3/5

Dark Fire by C.J. Sansom 4/5

Night Train by Martin Amis 0.1/5

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham 4.5/5

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester 3/5

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje 4.5/5

Sovereign by C. J. Sansom 5/5

 

NOVEMBER

 

The Deep Blue Good-By by John D. Mac Donald 4/5

Tripwire by Lee Child 4/5

The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep by Lawrence Block 2.5/5

The Painted Kiss by Elizabeth Hickey 2/5

World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler 3.5/5

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley 4/5

Regeneration by Pat Barker 5/5

The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker 5/5

DECEMBER

 

The Ghost Road by Pat Barker 5/5

Cat Coming Home by Shirley Rousseau Murphy 4/5

The Passage by Justin Cronin 5/5

Blackout by Connie Willis 4/5

All Clear by Connie Willis 4/5

Cleopatra, A Life by Stacy Schiff 4/5

Cleopatra's Daughter by Michelle Moran 3/5

True Grit by Charles Portis 3.5/5

Edited January 3, 2011 by pontalba
fixed formatting

[pontalba]

For some reason I thouht I'd already started this list here. What a brain. :roll:Anyhow regarding the two on the list I didn't actually finish, 2666 was so depressing and so upsetting to me I couldn't finish, but having read that much of it, I thought it should be listed, for the time put in at any rate.

Perhaps I shouldn't have listed Oryx and Crake, but the 100 pages I actally did read were so boring and mind numbing to me, I listed it as a warning to myself. A warning something like.....thar be snakes thar me dearie...

 

I'd heard practically nothing about Shutter Island, and happened to see the movie poster when we were over near the theatre. We decided to go in and see it, and wow! On the way home that night we stopped at Books-A-Million and bought the trade paperback...full price! Started reading it that very night. Good stuff.

 

I've heard varying comments about Little Bee, I read it firstly out of curiosity, then couldn't stop, I had to know what happened to this girl. Some have written that the ending was not a realistic one, and that events were glossed over. I didn't find that to be so, I thought it was realistic.

 

I've read high praise for John Lescroart, so when I spied the book Son of Holmes, I thought, great! A new [for me] good author, and Sherlock, who could ask for anything more? Hah, think again, no Sherlock, darned little Son of Sherlock, and the thinnest of thin plots that I could hardly care a whit about. Bleh.

 

Just last night finished reading Tinkers by Paul Harding. Find it. Read it.

The imagination of this new and Pulitzer winning author is amazing and just plain lyrical. His first book! Wow.

Edited May 10, 2010 by pontalba

[nursenblack]

Tinkers sounds wonderful! I put it on my amazon wishlist.

[pontalba]

Tinkers sounds wonderful! I put it on my amazon wishlist.

 

That's great!

[pontalba]

As post-apocalyptic novels go, One Second Later is not the best, nor my favorite. It is however realistic without being excruciatingly detailed regarding the horrible things that happen when we lose all of our electric power, all computers of course, and any modern car that has any computer parts to run it. All from what is called an EMP [electromagnetic pulse], basically an atomic bomb that is detonated above the atmosphere.

 

Forstchen specializes in military history and the history of technology and it shows. He is precise and a little cold blooded in his presentation of what would happen if the above happened. Not a place I'd care to be.

 

Recommended.

[Ooshie]

That's One Second Later on my wish list then! I do like a post apocalyptic novel (Then I start hoarding tins and bottled water and collecting coal... )

[pontalba]

That's One Second Later on my wish list then! I do like a post apocalyptic novel (Then I start hoarding tins and bottled water and collecting coal... )

 

I'm with ya there! I have a good excuse to "buy ahead" though, we live just north of New Orleans, so therefore near the Gulf Coast, hurricane country. We have to keep canned goods, non-perishables and oil lamps, batteries etc on hand. Just in case. Not to mention extra books.

 

The hurricane season runs from June 1 - November 30, so we are nearly there again.

 

AIE: Ooshie, since you like post-apocalyptic books, let me recommend one that is my all time favorite. Malevil by Robert Merle, here is a review I wrote here a while back. http://www.bookclubforum.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=1709&highlight=Malevil

Edited May 12, 2010 by pontalba

[Chrissy]

I have just ordered 'Malevil'. Darn your recommendation!

[Ooshie]

I'm with ya there! I have a good excuse to "buy ahead" though, we live just north of New Orleans, so therefore near the Gulf Coast, hurricane country. We have to keep canned goods, non-perishables and oil lamps, batteries etc on hand. Just in case. Not to mention extra books.

 

The hurricane season runs from June 1 - November 30, so we are nearly there again.

 

AIE: Ooshie, since you like post-apocalyptic books, let me recommend one that is my all time favorite. Malevil by Robert Merle, here is a review I wrote here a while back. http://www.bookclubforum.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=1709&highlight=Malevil

 

 

Malevil does look good, pontalba, and I hadn't heard of it before - nearly time for an Amazon order, my wish list is building up nicely again!

 

You certainly have a good excuse for your hoarding - unfortunately, I don't, and therefore seem slightly deranged to most people! But hey, you can never have too many candles and boxes of matches... And everybody was very pleased with my bottled water when the whole mains system to our area went down

[pontalba]

I have just ordered 'Malevil'. Darn your recommendation!

LOL I do my poor best.

 

I think you'll both enjoy Malevil.

 

 

Just finished another good one A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee.

 

It's the story, told by an unreliable narrator, of a Korean man's life...begins in the "present" in America and slowly folds out backwards, finally to his time in the Imperial Japanese Army. He had been adopted by a Japanese couple and raised in the Japanese way.

 

He tells of his time in the Army, and then of his relationship with his adopted daughter, a difficult one to say the least.

 

Love, redemption, friendship, and how we view ourselves plus what we actually admit to ourselves all come to play in this heart wrenching life story.

 

Highly recommended.

[pontalba]

The Brooklyn Follies is the 5th Auster I've read, that's not counting his New York Trilogy......I couldn't finish that one, and was quite discouraged about ever trying another Paul Auster book.

Wrong!!

 

I love his voice. It's different, quirky, possibly heart breaking on occasion. He knows the human condition and makes fun of it beautifully. Makes fun in a way that isn't hurtful, sarcastic or mean, only in a truthful, self deprecating manner.

 

The Brooklyn Follies is a families story told through one Nathan Glass who has returned to Brooklyn supposedly to die. Doesn't sound too funny? Well, he isn't dying [anymore] and his dry sense of humor regarding himself, his humorless ex-wife and extended family is wonderful. That's not to say there isn't plenty of pathos, there is enough to go around, and then some. Deliciously written, I highly recommend it.

[pontalba]

I just finished Bitter Steel by Charles Allen Gramlich, it is sub-titled "Tales and Poems of Epic Fantasy".

 

I'm not usually too much of a fan of Fantasy as a genre, I believe I posted somewhere else here that the author is in our writing group, leads it in fact. He is an interesting fellow, and his prose is wonderful.

So when a new book came out I thought I'd give it a shot.

I've very glad I did. As mentioned Gramlich's prose is beautiful, and the world he has created in this series of short stories and poems is both fearsome and familiar. Six of the stories feature a particular character, Thal Kyrin, a strong and versatile warrior that I hope shows up in more of Gramlich's work.

 

Fans of Fantasy genre should definitely take a closer look.

[frankie]

I've picked up The Brooklyn Follies from the library a couple of times but have never gotten to actually reading it, although I am determined to do so at some point in the future. So glad you liked it! And I'm happy to hear The New York Trilogy didn't discourage you from picking up another Auster

[pontalba]

In the last couple of days I've finished A Pale Horse by Charles Todd and The God of the Hive by Laurie R. King.

 

Regarding A Pale Horse, I am slightly disappointed. I thought this was part of a series that I'd heard high praise of but I found it rather disjointed. It had so many great elements to it, but somehow seemed too scattered, and disjointed for me. Plus it repeated itself endlessly, not finishing thoughts.

It's a mother/son team that writes it apparently, and somehow they simply did not jive.

 

Now The God of the Hive was a different story entirely. I was much happier with this as opposed to it's prequel The Language of Bees. King told the story, didn't have useless characters, kept them straight and finished with a flourish. Wish I could say the same for APH.

[pontalba]

It was only due to Smilla's Sense of Snow being a Reading Circle choice this month that I got on my horse and finally extracted it from the deepening TBR stacks. I'm very happy I have, unlike many others in the group it seems.

 

I didn't find Smilla to be anymore contradictory than any other character in fiction. An introverted, prickly pear she was, but feeling abandoned by her parents, rightly or wrongly will do that to a person. She was at a vulnerable age when her mother disappeared and her erstwhile father uprooted her to a culture that was so unlike anything she'd known before. Her method of dealing with reality is, I think, fairly common and certainly understandable. She retreated as much as possible.

 

The mystery of why the child Isaiah died reached a bit for my taste, but was plausible to me all the same. I loved the explanation of her 'sense of snow' and her curious and brilliant mind.

 

I'd recommend it for readers that like a slow moving sort of literary mystery with loads of introspection.

[Kylie]

I've found your comments on Smilla really interesting Pontalba, even though I didn't really like the book myself.

[Ooshie]

I'm so glad you enjoyed Smilla, pontalba, I was feeling guilty for single-handedly killing everyone's reading mojo by suggesting it in the first place!

[Kylie]

You needn't feel guilty Ooshie. It only slowed my mojo down, it didn't kill it altogether.

[pontalba]

I'm so glad you enjoyed Smilla, pontalba, I was feeling guilty for single-handedly killing everyone's reading mojo by suggesting it in the first place!

OTOH, your suggesting it pushed me over the edge into reading it! I'd had it in the TBR stack, literally for about 3 years, maybe 4!

[pontalba]

Around 2 this morning I finished The Blue Afternoon by William Boyd. A wonderfully atmospheric love story, murder mystery, redemptive tale of a man's life.

 

It opens in 1936 Los Angeles, moves to Lisbon and in-between to the Manila of 1903. Boyd creates the worlds of those diverse cities beautifully, capturing the humid jungle-like aura of Manila, his characters moving through the heavy heat almost languidly, in a dream like state to their destinies.

 

The story unfolds, and then enfolds the reader, we must know if the man is telling the truth, but whose truth will it be? If it be truth at all.

 

Highly, highly recommended.

[chesilbeach]

I really want to read all of William Boyd's back catalogue. I've read a few of his books, and thought they were all great reads, but haven't got round to catching up with the older ones. This sounds like another cracker, pontalba, so I'll be bumping it up my wishlist, I think!

[pontalba]

I've managed to collect two more of Boyd's today from the second hand book shop. Brazzaville Beach and Restless. Both look good.

[chesilbeach]

Those are two of the ones I've read! Restless was excellent, and took over from my previous favourite of his Any Human Heart. I like that he writes about different things, and from both male and female perspectives, and in different styles too. A very interesting author. Oh, and he keeps manuscripts he's working on in the fridge, as he was always told that burglars never look in there!

[pontalba]

I'll have to look for Any Human Heart the next time we go to the book store. We first visited the second hand store, then passed by Barnes & Noble as the 2nd didn't have the author OH was looking for, and while he found his in B&N, I forgot to look for anymore Boyds.

[pontalba]

I don't really remember the last time I read a book in one sitting. I'd bought The Last Thing I Remember on a whim at B&N only reading the synopsis on the back, not noticing it was considered "juvenile" fiction. That discouraged me a bit when I did notice at home, but the plot sounded so interesting, I thought I'd start it. Figuring I could always put it down and trade it at the 2nd hand book store. heh

 

Although it is in a rather simple prose style, and the characters are somewhat prototypes, the story carries the reader along, we care about what happens to this hapless, helpless 17 year old boy who wakes up tied to a chair with duct tape at his wrists and ankles, beaten and burned and generally in miserable shape. The last thing he remembers is going to bed in his own room, in his parent's house thinking about a girl he'd finally had the nerve to ask out. Then he wakes up to...this torturous existence, hearing men casually ordering his murder outside the room he is tied up in.

 

This kid is someone that any parent would be proud to have raised. As we slowly learn where and why he is where he is, at least as much as this first in a series of, I think, three books tells, we see a kid that has had a fairly calm existence and uses his faith in the rightness and fairness of life to plow through seemingly insurmountable odds.