pontalba's 2010 Reading List

[pontalba]

Today I finished a fictional account of Gustav Klimt and Emilie Floge's relationship, The Painted Kiss. One of Klimt's most famous painting is one called The Kiss. It is beautiful to say the least.

 

 

For all the fascinating life he led, and the blurb in the book alluding to the "tempestuous lives amid the tawdry bohemia of artists' studios and the glittering innuendo of Viennese café society".....the book was mundane and rather superficial. Bohemian Society was only very vaguely touched on in a round about manner. The characters did not mean anything to me, it was practically immaterial how matters ended, or came about. The tension was zilch. A disappointment. 2/5

[Mac]

Tripwire was an exciting, fast paced, mile a minute adventure/mystery story, with the inevitable love story added in, just because they could. It was enjoyable as such, but certainly nothing mind bending. It did highlight a scam that must have actually happened more than a few times to do with the Vietnam War survivors/victims. Well worth the read if you take it for what it is. A plain, straight forward adventure of hulking good guys, and devious, twisted bad guys and beautiful women.

 

The MacDonald was my first, and definitely not my last. A philosophical detective, with loads of sense and smarts, without the usually prerequisite happy ending. A flawed good guy. Great series. Recommended for sure.

 

I'm a huge fan of Lee Child and, while there is a certain formula to his novels, he's one of these authors that can reintroduce my wandering mojo back to my physical shell. He's got something extra with Jack Reacher. Awful strap line, excellent thrillers.

 

I'm keen to try the Sansom books and this MacDonald chap as well - we really seem to share similar literary tastes. I'll give them a go.

[pontalba]

 

Well, the good news is that Winter's Bone (which is brilliant) is only 196 pages long, so I'll finish it today, and I'm still keen on reading Sovereign next so ...

I saw the adverts for this film a few weeks ago, looks like a good one. I will be getting the book, I know it.

 

I'm a huge fan of Lee Child and, while there is a certain formula to his novels, he's one of these authors that can reintroduce my wandering mojo back to my physical shell. He's got something extra with Jack Reacher. Awful strap line, excellent thrillers.

 

I'm keen to try the Sansom books and this MacDonald chap as well - we really seem to share similar literary tastes. I'll give them a go.

I have to ask.....what does "awful strap line" mean?

[Mac]

I have to ask.....what does "awful strap line" mean?

 

"Men want to be him. Women want to be with him." Awful. It's that that put me off reading him for years, and now I can hardly wait for the next novel to come out!

[pontalba]

"Men want to be him. Women want to be with him." Awful. It's that that put me off reading him for years, and now I can hardly wait for the next novel to come out!

 

Gotcha. Thanks for explanation.

[pontalba]

I finished World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler this morning about 3 a.m. No, it wasn't because it was such a riveting read. I'd have to say because I just wanted to get it over with. By 3/4ths of the way through the book, yes, I am slow, I finally realized that there would be no break through, nor would there be a denouement in store for the reader. This was a gentle dystopian novel that bumped along with a few interesting stories.

 

Now I realize that the words "gentle" and "dystopian" rarely fit into the same sentence. Here it is appropriate I think, with it's somewhat typical characters reacting in a fairly typical manner. World Made by Hand chronicles one summer in a small town, or what's left of it after what seems to have been a war with multiple bombings taking out main cities in the United States. They don't know what has happened overseas, of course, no communication with anything further away than a few miles up the road.

 

Yes, there are "lessons" to be learned....how humans react under pressure of course, but there is nothing new, no twist that makes this tale special for me. I had high hopes, the writing is a straightforward but rich prose that held great promise. Yes, I will look for his other books, but not avidly as I would have if WMbH had lived up to my expectations.

 

Recommended but with some restraint.

2.5/5

[pontalba]

Regeneration by Pat Barker, the first of an anti-war trilogy based on true First World War events was not a revelation to me, I've read a few books on WWI, and too many concerning WWII. Regeneration does not take place in the trenches, instead focusing on the aftermath, the detritus if you will, of trench warfare. We are not directly exposed to the actual fighting for the most part, but hear of what caused mental and emotional breakdowns in various soldiers.

 

Barker focuses on a main character one Sigfried Sassoon, a real person that interacted with and knew the poet Robert Graves well. This is based on actual events and interactions between Sassoon and Rivers, his doctor.

 

The cover of the book compares Barker to Hemingway and Fitzgerald. I've only read a slight bit of Fitzgerald, and part of Hemingway.......whose Farewell to Arms came dangerously close to being flung across the room by me for it's reporter-like wooden prose. I can't speak for the Fitzgerald comparison, but as to the Hemingway comparison, I say PAH!

No way, Dick Tracy!! Barker's prose is clean, elegant and inventive.

 

Highly recommended. 5/5++

[Kylie]

Great review Pontalba. I saw this book going very cheaply the other day but didn't buy it because I thought I already had it. Turns out I'm wrong, so I'll be adding it to my wish list now. I hadn't realised it was part of a trilogy. I hope the next two are just as enjoyable for you!

[pontalba]

Thanks Kylie, I'm almost finished the second one, and looking forward to the third. I have to highly recommend the whole thing!

Edited December 1, 2010 by pontalba

[Mac]

It's going on my wishlist, also! Thanks, lady!

[pontalba]

Kylie and Mac, You're welcome!

Only thing is, for me at least, to read them all together. They flow into one another so smoothly and easily...they easily could have been one book.

[pontalba]

Last night I finished The Passage by Justin Cronin. Something about this story drew me from the time I read an article on Cronin before the book was released. I did however, see it as a "vampire" book, and ordinarily that is not my cuppa. I continued to hear good things about it, and it was Mac's glowing review that 80% convinced me to read it. I thought I'd wait till the paperback came out, but after looking it over in B&N one evening, and showing it to my OH, I again put it down, saying, well lets wait till the paperback comes out. I walked around the corner to look at something else, and when I returned my OH had it in his hand saying "lets buy it now".

 

Happy Days! I read it in a 3 days, could hardly put it down. I love post-apocalyptic fiction, and this qualifies as the mother of same.

The detail that the author goes to in each time frame, and characterization of a grieving scientist, to an FBI man, to a young woman that is going through her own hell. Then the details of "frontier living" in an odd mix with modern, or lack of modern conveniences was done perfectly.

 

Cronin's taking of all the vampire legends down the centuries and making them eerily believable and truly logical, with a mix of militarism is breathtaking.

 

I've read that the second one won't come out till 2012, but will begin almost at the beginning [for those of you that have read it,

read that to be Denver

]. I can hardly wait!

 

Highly Recommended.

[pontalba]

In-between Ghost Road and The Passage I needed something light and sweet to clear my head.

 

Cat Coming Home by Shirley Rousseau Murphy filled the bill admirably. Murphy came through again with Joe Grey, Feline Private Eye. The bad guys will never catch our Joe or his pal Dulcie flat footed. They skewer the bad buys, with a little help from their humans. Murphy catches all the nuances of catly behavior beautifully. This woman knows cats.

 

The whole series is great, the first one Cat on the Edge tells how Joe Grey comes to be able not only talk, but understand and develop a very uncatly empathy with people of all things! One of my favorite detectives in fiction.

Edited December 10, 2010 by pontalba

[Kylie]

Excellent review Pontalba. I think I'll make this an early read of 2011.

[pontalba]

Excellent review Pontalba. I think I'll make this an early read of 2011.

 

thanks Kylie. You mean The Passage I take it?

 

I noticed Pixie is starting another Cronin...I'll have to investigate more of his earlier books.

Edited December 11, 2010 by pontalba

[Kylie]

Oops, yes, I meant The Passage. For some reason I thought this was Cronin's debut novel. I'll have to look into his earlier works too, but I'll try to resist until after I've read The Passage.

[pontalba]

Last night I finished Blackout by Connie Willis. This was a book I'd tried to start, oh, I guess a few months ago and couldn't get into then. I re-started it the other day and was again flummoxed, but persevered this time due to a poster on another forum mentioning something about it. I am super-glad I did. It takes a bit for the penny to drop, but once it does, the reader is hooked. Ostensibly this book is about time traveling historians, and I love a good time travel story.

 

Blackout is more about the triumph of human.....will, emotion, love and general stick-to-it-tivness than time travel. Willis portrays war-time England in one of the most realistic and human ways I've read. I won't be giving plot points away as this is mentioned in the synopsis, so just imagine you are a historian, young man or woman that is somehow "stuck" back in the air raid warnings, bombings of the London blitz and don't know if you'll ever see home again. Or, if you've somehow changed history by accident...something that was here-to-fore thought impossible. Willis puts all these conflicting emotions right out there on the platter and serves it up in style.

 

I can't wait to get a hold of the sequel All Clear.

 

Highly recommended.

[pontalba]

All Clear by Connie Willis is the very satisfying sequel to Blackout. It continues in the same vein, following the time-traveling historians and their travails. Can the past be changed? Do they change the past? Have they already changed the course of the war? These are the questions that both fascinate and horrify. The historians can't get home, and don't know why, their "drops" won't open and their time is running out, literally.

 

The threads all come together to a heart wrenching conclusion, and we are left wanting even more. These books keep the reader on their toes till the very end. All in all an extremely emotionally gratifying read.

[pontalba]

I just finished Cleopatra, A Life by Stacy Schiff.

I bought this book, to begin with, based on Stacy Schiff's reputation and my previous reading of Vera.....Vera Nabokov's biography. The first 2/3rds or so of the book were a bit on the slow side. Repetitive descriptions of the gorgeous Alexandrian architecture, the many different colored and types of marble used began to wear on my nerves to some extent. The descriptions of how people lived though, and the way Cleopatra, indeed the Ptolmies in general were raised is fascinating.

 

Alexandria was an amazing place, a beautiful cosmopolitan city that would rival any of our large cities for magnificence. A fact that I certainly was not fully aware of and is brought out beautifully by Schiff.

A great metropolis, Alexandria was home to malicious wit, dubious morals, grand larceny. Its residents talked fast, in many languages and at once; theirs was an excitable city of short tempers and taut, vibrating minds.

 

Schiff walks as fair a line between fact and propaganda as possible from a 2,000 year distance, and brings a real and vibrant Cleopatra to the pages, one well worth reading in my opinion.

 

Highly recommended.

[willoyd]

Read your last few posts with considerable interest. I've got both Blackout and All Clear on my TBR pile, having read, and thoroughly enjoyed, both The Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, both of which use the same conceit of time travelling for academic study, with some characters reappearing throughout the sequence. Have you read either of the earlier books? From your review, it sounds as if these latter two are more in the style of Doomsday (set in the early 14C), whilst TSNOTD is a more humorous pastiche on Victorian melodrama (but equally enjoyable, in a different way, although still retaining the suspense!). I loved both books, even though some of Willis's language grated with me slightly, as too many Americanisms started creeping into what is meant to be an English setting.

 

I've also been looking into Cleopatra biographies, as she is the subject of the first part of a course I'm studying, so thanks for that promising review! Have you read any other biogs to compare with the Schiff version?

Edited December 28, 2010 by willoyd

[pontalba]

Read your last few posts with considerable interest. I've got both Blackout and All Clear on my TBR pile, having read, and thoroughly enjoyed, both The Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, both of which use the same conceit of time travelling for academic study, with some characters reappearing throughout the sequence. Have you read either of the earlier books? From your review, it sounds as if these latter two are more in the style of Doomsday (set in the early 14C), whilst TSNOTD is a more humorous pastiche on Victorian melodrama (but equally enjoyable, in a different way, although still retaining the suspense!). I loved both books, even though some of Willis's language grated with me slightly, as too many Americanisms started creeping into what is meant to be an English setting.

 

I've also been looking into Cleopatra biographies, as she is the subject of the first part of a course I'm studying, so thanks for that promising review! Have you read any other biogs to compare with the Schiff version?

 

Thanks willoyd. I have The Doomsday Book somewhere in the house. I hope it wasn't one that I gave away in a spree several years ago. I'd started the book, but couldn't seem to manage it. Actually it was the same, initially, with Blackout. It was only after reading rave reviews on another forum that I decided I'd better go back and try again. Phew! Close call. If I don't fine TDB soon, I'll have to find another copy.

 

Re bios of Cleopatra, no, I know of no other reliable, or for that matter, unreliable ones. That was partially why I nicked onto Schiff's, she has a way of making non-fiction interesting, not dry a bit.. Sounds like an interesting course, what else does it contain?

[willoyd]

Sounds like an interesting course, what else does it contain?

It's the Open University's Year 1 course: "Arts: Past and Present", so quite a variety is the answer. First unit looks has reputations as its main theme, first of all looking at Cleopatra, then Christopher Marlowe and Dr Faustus, followed by modules on Cezanne, Michael Faraday, Stalin etc. - basically it tries to link all the key arts subjects together. Reviews by past students are really positive, so am looking forward to it rather a lot! I suspect it may impact on my reading though (don't know whether positively or negatively yet).

[pontalba]

It's the Open University's Year 1 course: "Arts: Past and Present", so quite a variety is the answer. First unit looks has reputations as its main theme, first of all looking at Cleopatra, then Christopher Marlowe and Dr Faustus, followed by modules on Cezanne, Michael Faraday, Stalin etc. - basically it tries to link all the key arts subjects together. Reviews by past students are really positive, so am looking forward to it rather a lot! I suspect it may impact on my reading though (don't know whether positively or negatively yet).

 

Sounds like a wonderful course, a great base. Of course it will impact your reading, it can't help it. But I'd say it has to be a positive affect, you'll be led into paths yet unimagined.

Cheers!

[pontalba]

Cleopatra's Daughter by Michelle Moran is a fictional account of Kleopatra Selene and Alexander Helios, twins born to Kleopatra VII [and Marc Antony] in 40 BCE, the only children of hers to survive to reach Rome after their parents deaths. It is mostly Selene's story, told by her of their treatment by Octavian, and their lives in Rome as 'guests'. They were not enslaved, they lived with Octavia, Octavian's sister and were schooled in the Roman way.

 

The book purports to be historically accurate, and I see no glaring faults, although in Moran's afterword I found her "What Happens to Them" a little superficial, accurate, but superficial. It is, if nothing else a fascinating look at everyday Roman life as lived by the patrician class, and it's court system. Plus there is a nice love story thrown, true at that, for good measure. So, all in all I can recommend Cleopatra's Daughter, just don't expect great revelations.

 

I've rated it 3/5

[pontalba]

I squeezed in the ending of True Grit just a half hour before midnight of the 31st.

It really isn't a book I would have picked up aside from having seen the film, both the older version with John Wayne, and the one just out with Jeff Bridges as the reprobate Rooster Cogburn. A one-eyed U.S. Marshall that has a reputation for getting his man. Rooster met his match in 14 year old Maddie, whose father was shot down in cold blood by a coward. She is determined the man will pay for killing her father, and she and Cogburn make the original Odd Couple in said trek.

 

Interesting speech patterns, good background on the Old West, and a story that will have you on your toes, wondering just what will happen next. The new film follows the book faithfully, only alluding to background that is thoroughly explored in the book.

 

I recommend both.