December 31, 2011
Reading books 2011
I will list the books I've read this year in this entry. My goal is 50 books this year, again, after failing to reach that milestone last year - I ended up reading only 43. The summer really killed me, I was doing fine up till then - and read next to nothing for the three summer months. I will be more consistent this year. I hope.
I have read 8 books so far this year.
And one audiobook. [Griftopia]
Currently reading:
Death Du Jour by Kathy Reichs
1. The Score by Richard Stark
**
In this entry in the Parker series [#5], Parker and his cohorts plan to rob an entire town set in a box canyon. The setup is interesting and it is a fun read, it's just not that remarkable. I did find the use of the word "of" when he meant "have" a bit annoying.
****
The first Tony Hill / Carol Jordan novel by Val McDermid. Having watched the entire "Wire in the Blood" series based on these novels, I was already familiar with the story. Despite that, I was still able to enjoy the novel. It's funny how perfect Robson Greene was to play Tony Hill, I definitely pictured him in that role throughout the novel, even though the novel was written before the TV series. It was a well written and entertaining novel, but if you have a weak stomach, you might want to skip this one. The descriptions of the murders are very gruesome and detailed, not for the faint of heart. I think I've read all the novels in this series now, except for the second one - The Wire in the Blood. I'm sure I'll get around to that one sometime this year.
Actually, I don't think I've read the 3rd book "The Last Temptation".
*
I had heard a lot of good things about this novel. It was supposed to be a "post-apocalyptic" novel, a genre I'm rather fond of, so I thought it would be right up my alley. Unfortunately, it is nothing more than a "Disney-fied" version of the film/manga "Battle Royal". But it's worse than that, in so many ways. It is easily one of the worst written novels I have ever read.
Where to begin? The protagonist is a girl by the name of Katniss, who has to be one of the stupidest characters ever created. Really obvious things pop up in the story but she doesn't clue in for about ten pages or so, every freaking time. She's a complete moron, and yet, the author seems to want us to be believe she is "smart". And beautiful, and talented and kind and everything under the sun, it's really quite sickening, I absolutely hated her by the end of the novel.
Gaping plot holes present themselves throughout the novel. And as soon as they appear, the author has a convenient, contrived story to explain it all away. To say the back story is thin is an understatement. She dedicates a couple of paragraphs to describe the post-apocalyptic world, and that's it. We get no further exposition to the roots of this world in the story either. Most of the characters are not drawn out well, if at all. There are a slew of characters who are only described as "the boy/girl from district x" and that is all we get to know about them. This novel seems like a first draft, large sections seem like mere outlines meant to be filled in later. The narrative seems like a series of set pieces designed to provoke an emotional response from the reader rather than tell a cohesive story. After realizing this, the story becomes very, very predictable. There are absolutely no surprises in this novel.
The "hunger" in the title isn't the hunger of a starving, emaciated child in drought-stricken Africa. No, it's more like when your pizza pop comes out of the microwave with the center still frozen and you have to throw it back in for a minute to cook. Oh, the hunger! I can't help but think Suzanne Collins was on a diet when she wrote this book, she goes on and on about food like a person obsessed. Not exactly riveting reading.
The main focus of this novel isn't the post-apocalyptic world of Katniss and friends. It's the overwrought, teenage angst riddled melodrama of her and her friends. It could just have easily been set on a deserted island, or in medieval times or a suburban shopping mall. It's all about that self obsessed, infantile drama of the prepubescent set.
I gave this novel one star because you can enjoy this novel in the same way you can enjoy the film "Plan 9 from Outer Space". You can enjoy the astonishing ineptitude of the piece to a certain extent. But after awhile, that novelty wears off and I had a hard time slogging through the latter half of this novel.
No, I did not like this one and I won't be wasting my time on the sequels.
4. Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell
***
I've seen the TV series with Kenneth Branagh, so I thought I'd check out the novel it was based on. I wasn't disappointed, it was a quick easy read. The murder mystery aspect wasn't that exceptional, but the setting (Sweden) and the overwhelming sense of despair we get from the main character (Wallander), made it worth checking out.
5. Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed
****
Very well written and researched book on the four main central bankers in charge of the world's banking institutions from roughly 1914 to the stock market crash of 1929 and beyond. I thought this book would be rather dry and boring, but it turned out to be a rather riveting read.
6. Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
****
Another Raymond Chandler Philip Marlowe novel. Well written and entertaining, but a fair amount of racism detract from an otherwise great novel.
7. The Big Short
*****
A very good book on some of the people who saw the sub-prime mess coming and managed to find a way to make money off of it.
8. A Study in Scarlet
****
The first Sherlock Holmes novel. After watching the recent BBC series, I had an interest in reading the book where it all began and I wasn't disappointed, a very good read. Halfway through the book, it goes off on a completely different narrative, which I must admit, threw me off a bit. But it eventually comes back to the main story and it all comes together fairly nicely. After reading this book, I have a better appreciation of how aspects of it were woven into the modern Sherlock television show, very well done. I can also understand why people disliked the big budget movie with Robert Downey JR., besides being crappy in general, it totally misses out what makes this character great. On the other hand, The Beekeeper's Apprentice was pretty awesome. I need to read more in that series, as well as the originals.
9. Ashes to Ashes by Tami Hoag
*
Pretty horrible novel. The characters were stereotypes and caricatures, the story was trite and cliche-ridden, a paint -by-numbers mess. Worse, half the book read more like a cheap romance novel than a crime thriller. There's endless pages recounting what the main characters are feeling, mostly concerning how they feel about each other than the case at hand. And the author repeats herself over and over again, it gets very grating after awhile. I knew the identity of the killer about halfway through the novel, she drops a few too many hints for it to remain a mystery. Altogether a sorry mess of a novel.
10. All the Devils are Here by Bethany McLean
**
This book gave a pretty decent overview of the financial crisis, but it did have a few glaring faults. For one thing, the narrative is all over the place. It jumps around chronologically and from character to character and from business to business, making the story hard to follow. It feels like reading a reference book at times, the central narrative thread is pretty thin. And there is a large cast of characters to keep track of. It doesn't help that so many of them have the same names, either! There's a couple Paulson's, Lehman's (a company and a man, who works at a different firm!) and a couple Rubin's I think.
Worst of all, the author seems to be very forgiving of the people involved in this mess, despite all the evidence against them, particularly the people at Goldman Sachs. Her attitude seems to be "Hey, they weren't so bad. And everybody else was doing it, too!" I can only assume she took this position to avoid lawsuits. I didn't care for it.
11. Get Rich with Options by Lee Lowell
****
Pretty simple, straight forward introduction to trading options with four strategies from an industry veteran. I have no idea how well they actually work, but I hope to give it a shot someday.
12. Stowaway to Mars by John Wyndham
***
Starts off as a rather conventional, dated novel about rocket-men on the first voyage to another planet [Mars] but gets much more interesting when they discover a stowaway, a girl [Joan]. The idea of "machines" evolving to take the place of humans is very much ahead of its time [1935!] and is handled pretty well. As always, Wyndham has an interesting take on the state of our civilization and where it is heading.
13. A Monstrous Regiment of Women by Laurie R. King
****
The sequel to "The Beekeepers Apprentice", the story continues the adventures of Mary Russell and, to a lesser extent, Sherlock Holmes. Like the last book, this one was very well written and entertaining.
I did find the plot was rather slow and in the end, didn't amount to much, at least as far as the "crime thriller" aspect of the novel went. The character Marjorie Childe and the whole "woman's rights issues" were interesting, though.
The other thing I was disappointed in was the fact that Sherlock Holmes spent much of the novel on the sidelines. I understand that this book was more about Mary Russell finding her own way and solving her own cases, independent of Holmes, but I missed the constant back and forth that we got from the main characters in the first book.
14. Death du Jour by Kathy Reichs
****
The sequel to Deja Dead, this novel was an easy-to-read, enjoyable book but it did have some glaring flaws.
Some of the dialogue was nothing but massive info-dumps. Conversations would go like this:
"Tell me about this"
"Blah, blah, blah"
"Ah, interesting."
"Blah, blah, blah"
"Mmmm, I see."
"Blah, blah, blah."
While the information itself was interesting, structuring it as a conversation was really lame. Also, Brennan is supposed to be this super intelligent woman, yet she comes across as a bit of a novice, asking basic questions about subjects she should clearly be well acquainted with.
The other problem I had was with the number of coincidences in this story. They are endless and it really tests the reader's willing suspension of disbelief. She just happens to be working on a project that is connected to a multiple murder that is connected to her hometown and her university and her friend on an isolated island... It just goes on and on, it becomes a tad bit ridiculous after awhile.
15. The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell
***
The second Wallander novel. This time he investigates a couple of bodies that wash up on the shore in Sweden, eventually leading him to Riga, Latvia during the breakup of the Soviet Union. The first novel was interesting because of its setting [Sweden] and this is likewise interesting because of its setting and time in history. Wallander continues to be a morose, downbeat hero with more than a few flaws, but that's what makes him interesting, he's a real human being. Sometimes the plot can be a little bit far-fetched, especially towards the end, but it is a well written, entertaining story.
16. Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis
***
Michael Lewis's first book about his experiences as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers during the mid-1980's. Not quite as caustic or entertaining as "The Big Short" but still worth a read. It's funny how he describes Michael Milken in such glowing terms, knowing in hindsight what would eventually happen to him. He also talks about how the market for mortgage-backed securities began with Lewis Ranieri at Salomon and we all know how that turned out.
17. The Black Ice by Micael Connelly
***
The second Harry Bosch novel, this one involves the death of a police officer and Mexican drug gangs importing a new drug called black ice. It's an ok novel, but seems to cover a lot of the same ground as the first book and just isn't as good.
The Windup Girl
18. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
***
I didn't really like the first half of this novel, but it does get more engaging in the second half. Most of the characters were not sympathetic nor interesting. And I will die a happy man if I never hear the words "kink spring" used together in a sentence ever again.
19. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
****
A pretty entertaining novel, a good followup to the first book in the trilogy. I started the last one already and it picks up right where the this one ended, as if they were one big novel that got split in two.
20. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
***
The final book in the Millennium Trilogy, this book was mostly a continuation of the last novel and as such, it did drag on a bit. I grew a little tired of the Salander character, she was just a little too perfect. She was rich, good looking, has a photographic memory, a genius level IQ capable of solving Fermat's Last Theorem on a whim, world-class hacker, she always comes out on top in every altercation, trained by a champion boxer, has tons of friends in high places despite her anti-social behaviour, and on and on and on. It's hard to take a character seriously when she's so flawless.
The story itself wasn't too bad, but Larsson does repeat himself quite a bit in this book, making it much longer than it needed to be. Some of it was to make sure it was still readable to people who hadn't read the previous novels, but still, I kept reading stuff that was already covered in depth earlier in this novel. And he does seem to cover almost everything in depth, even useless trivia like exactly what people are buying at the grocery store and the clothing they're wearing.
He also did this thing where all the bad guys are always stroking their chins/goatees, ala Doctor Evil. He paints his characters with broad brushstrokes where they're either really evil or really good.
And what's with these Scandinavians and their coffee thermoses? It seems every Scandinavian novel I read has people breaking out a thermos to serve coffee. Very strange.
21. Our Man in Havanah by Graham Greene
****
I've seen the movie that was based on this book, so I already knew the basic story. It's about a mild mannered vacuum salesman living in Cuba who gets recruited to be a spy for the British government. He's completely ill-suited to the role and the results are pretty funny. This is definitely one of the more enjoyable Greene novels and after his last novel that I read, The End of the Affair, a nice change of pace. The main character, Wormold, is such a sad sack and yet a really nice guy and resourceful when he needs to be. I especially like the dialogue in this book, it's really well written and funny.
22. Tainted Blood aka "Jar City" by Arnaldur Indridason
****
An Icelandic mystery novel that starts off with a pretty simple murder that grows more complex as the plot unfolds. I saw the movie "Jar City" before reading this, so I was a bit spoiled as far as the way the plot develops, unfortunately. Still, it was a pretty enjoyable read. The narrative is rather spare, especially after reading the bloated prose of Stieg Larsson. Not that I minded, it was actually kind of nice to read a novel that dispenses with all the unnecessary details and gets right to the point. There's also a fair bit of wry humour in the novel, although the general tone of the novel is very dour and bleak. And of course the setting, Iceland, is a nice departure from, well, just about anywhere else. They sure have weird names, for people and things. It's like they deliberately name things to be almost unpronounceable.
23. The Woman Chaser by Charles Willeford
***
This novel was pretty bizarre - there's very little woman chasing going on and a lot of first person narrative about selling used cars and making movies. The main character is quite the bastard, abusing women and throwing tantrums when he doesn't get his way. Although, it is a fascinating character study of a man on the road to self destruction.
24. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
****
Pretty excellent novel. Having seen the movie already, (many, many times!) I'm quite familiar with the plot and the novel doesn't vary that much from the movie. There seems to be more character development involving the detective, the assistant and the housekeepers. Blatty seems fond of using sentence fragments a lot. They. Are. Everywhere. But he does have a way with words, he writes a lot of stuff like this: "The child was slender as a fleeting hope". Which is kinda poetic most of the time, but sometimes I had to re-read sentences to decipher what the hell he was trying to say. Very creepy novel that hasn't lost its edge, even after forty years.
25. In The Woods by Tana French
***
Three kids go into the woods, but only one comes back out. The kid, Adam Ryan, grows up to be a murder investigator who is called upon to investigate a murder in the same woods where he lost his boyhood friends.
This novel is told from a first-person perspective and this is a big problem for much of the book. The guy is a jerk and it's hard to sympathize with him. He also has a tendency to ramble on and on about things that have very little to do with the main plot. This tendency is a constant source of frustration and makes the book much, much longer than it needs to be. After 100 pages, we are only on day 2 of the investigation! There is the "unreliable narrator" aspect to the story which makes it a bit more interesting as you try to decipher what is true and what isn't.
The solution to the case is merely OK, nothing earth shattering. As for the other mystery of the novel, we get no resolution, nothing. It's a pretty huge disappointment that this major part of the novel goes absolutely nowhere.
26. The Jugger by Richard Stark
**
Not the best Parker novel, this one involves Parker going to the funeral of an associate and getting caught up with the local law. There is no "caper" that usually makes a Parker novel so interesting.
27. The Sherlockian by Graham Moore
***
This novel was pretty decent, it's about a missing Arthur Conan Doyle diary. The events of the diary are told in tandem with modern day events concerning the death of a "Sherlockian" and the hunt for the missing diary. It does get a bit too cute, silly and whimsical at times, and Mr. Doyle comes across as a self absorbed little prick towards the end, but the story itself is well told and the friendship between Doyle and Bram Stoker make for some good fun reading.
28. Axis by Robert Charles Wilson
**
In this sequel to "Spin", we find out a bit more about the world on the other side of the arch, Equatoria. Unfortunately, if there ever was an unnecessary sequel to a book, it's this one. The story really goes nowhere, and worse, the characters are shallow and uninteresting.
There's Lise and Turk, two characters that I think we're supposed to like, but I found Lise to be an insufferable, self-absorbed little bitch and Turk was just blah. Then there's Dvali (Devil?), whom we're supposed to hate, but I never did, he just never does anything worth hating him for. Sulean Moi was interesting at first, she seemed very mysterious, but then the POV switches to her and we find her thoughts are very pedestrian and mundane. I think Isaac is supposed to be like Paul Atreides/Muad'Dib from the Dune novels, but he's a very pale imitation.
And when the novel is over, nothing has really changed. Some weird things happen, it all goes away and then everybody goes back to life as normal, more or less. A sequel to this novel (Vortex) comes out soon, I hope it's more like "Spin" and less like "Axis".
29. The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo
****
This Norwegian crime thriller was a very good read, I liked it a lot. It's part of the "Harry Hole" series, but this was the first one I've read so I wasn't familiar with the character and the author doesn't spend much time giving you his back story. One thing I really liked about this book was the amount of time you spend with the antagonist, getting his back story and the reasons he is doing the things he does in the current day. One weakness in the story is how he is always referred to as "the old man" or an alias, so we are left guessing as to his real identity. This part felt a bit forced and artificial. It took me awhile to warm up to the Harry Hole character, he is a very flawed individual, but by the end I liked him well enough. He can be very funny at times.
30. Darwin's Children by Greg Bear
*
It was a real chore to work my way through this novel, it was not very good, at all. I did not care for any of the characters and the plot was very flat, it went nowhere. The only thing remotely interesting in this book was the science it was based on. But he only goes into it halfway through the novel and then not very deeply at all. There is an addendum at the end that explains some of the science and those few pages are way more interesting than anything found in the novel proper.
31. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
****
The story of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and two very different men who were there and made their marks on that event. Daniel H. Burnham was the lead architect and mastermind behind the fair while H. H. Holmes was the depraved serial killer who used the fair as cover to go about his morbid business. A fascinating read, both stories were compelling and worthy of the telling. It's a study in contrasts: good and evil, the rich and the poor, the white city of the fair and the black city of the contemporaneous Chicago.
32. The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist
**
There was very little in the way of plot in this book, not much of anything happens. For that reason, it was pretty boring. A quick and easy read, though. It seemed like a book written by a woman for women, so maybe I just didn't have the right hormonal aptitude.
33. E=mc²: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis
***
An analysis of the famous equation where every part is examined in an effort to make it more understandable to the average layperson. It's a pretty good read, I especially liked how he went into the history of all the scientific figures who contributed to its creation. It's surprising how many women made contributions in this regard - Émilie du Châtelet, and later Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin in the discovery of the composition of the Sun and Lise Meitner in the study of nuclear physics. I think he does "dumb down" the science a tad too much at times. The book is relatively short, but comes with a large number of footnotes. I think the book would have been better served if a lot of these footnotes had been integrated into the body of the text rather than seperate tidbits of information.
34. The Wire in the Blood by Val McDermid
****
The second Tony Hill/Carol Jordan novel, this one was a real page-turner and I was quite engrossed [and grossed out!] all the way through to the end. The characters and their relationships are very well fleshed out. The plot itself is quite dark and disturbing, but it never feels gratuitous. Ok, well not too gratuitous! Sometimes it felt a bit too predictable, but that could be because I've seen the TV series that was based on these novels. And sometimes it felt like the perpetrator was just too obvious, how could he actually get away with what he does with so much evidence pointing to his guilt? Regardless, the novel was a great ride and I would heartily recommend it.
35. The Last Temptation by Val McDermid
****
The third Tony Hill/Carol Jordan novel, this was the last one for me as I have already read the ones that came after, except for the one that just came out a few days ago. The new one's called Retribution, I think. Anyway, this was another good solid entry in the series and I was glad to find out what happened in Berlin that was constantly being referred to in subsequent novels. The main plotline is pretty gripping and intense, especially in the way it affects the relationship between the two leads. On the other hand, there's a secondary plot that doesn't really quite work and is wrapped up rather perfunctorily in the last ten pages or so.
36. The Ring by Koji Suzuki
*****
Having seen the Japanese movie as well as the lackluster American remake and sequels, I thought I might not get that much out of this novel. But I was pleasantly surprised at how different it was from the movie[s] in both tone and substance. The book has a great atmosphere of dread as we count down the week to Asakawa's doom, ratcheting up the tension day by day. His sidekick, the crazy, unpredictable Ryuji is a great contrast to Asakawa's stiff, staid demeanor, and makes for some very funny banter between the two. The story of the girl Sadaka is revealed as the plot unfolds and it's all pretty weird and creepy. I really loved this novel, a very entertaining read.
37. The Split by Richard Stark
***
Another Parker pulp novel. After the last story, The Jugger, Parker is left high and dry, needing some quick cash to re-establish himself. He gets a part in a stadium heist and the job gets pulled off without a hitch. But afterwards, he goes out for ten minutes for beer and smokes, and comes back to find the heist money gone! The rest of the novel is about the search for the missing cash and who ripped him him off. A quick, easy read, but nothing too exceptional.
38. Passage by Connie Willis
***
This was a bit of a chore to finish reading - the story had a very slow moving plot that I had a hard time staying interested in. So much of the novel is spent in descriptions of moving from one part of the hospital to another, down hallways, across walkways, up elevators, down stairwells, on and on. I did not really care for the main character, Joanna, terribly much. Nor Dr. Richard Wright [groan!] or Vielle. Some of the secondary characters were more interesting, like Maisie and Mr. Wojakowski. Towards the end, the plot takes a surprising turn that almost makes it worth the effort.
39. Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
***
The first half of this novel was rather slow, but it did set the groundwork for the last half, which was pretty good. If you've seen the movie, and I have, you might not get that much out of the novel as it is not much different from the Polanski version.
40. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
***
A bit slow at times, but for the most part a pretty entertaining novel. I've seen the movie and the book was very different, particularly the ending. Which was a good thing, as the book's ending was pretty cool. I like the way the book was written, it really brought out how eccentric, and unstable, the main character was. Also, the title of this book is kind of a double entendre.
41. Hell House by Richard Matheson
***
Having confused "The Haunting of Hill House" with this novel, I thought I'd give this one a shot. And no wonder I confused the two, they both involve a group of four people (two men and two women) investigating an infamous haunted house where the original owner was a tad unhinged. There are many small details that are present in both novels and I think Matheson did this on purpose as an homage to Shirley Jackson's story. Although Matheson certainly puts his own unique spin on the tale, his is much more violent and unrestrained. He seems to take great relish in describing the big bad Emeric Belasco and his house of horrors. The four houseguests make for interesting foils (and cannon fodder) to Belasco and story has a quick pace that keeps you turning the pages.
42. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
*****
An excellent ghost story!
43. Psycho by Robert Bloch
****
It's too bad I'm so familiar with the Hitchcock movie, it would have been fun to read this without knowing anything about the story. The movie follows the book pretty closely, but the book does give you a lot of insight into the minds of the characters, especially Norman Bates. About the only difference between the book and the movie is that Bates is a bit overweight and wears glasses in the book. It is a pretty fun book to read, there are lot of twists and turns that keep the plot rolling along at a healthy pace and a fair amount of black humour to spice things up.
44. The Manitou by Graham Masterton
****
This novel was a real hoot. The plot is totally over the top and the main protagonist is a wisecracking, fortune telling con artist. I'd hate to spoil this novel for anybody because the premise of the novel is so outlandish and get's even more so as the novel progresses. It's a lot of fun, although I thought the last half of the novel wasn't quite as crazy and entertaining as the first half.
45. Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
*****
Just about everybody in this novel is totally messed up - one of the only normal characters here is the gym teacher, ironically enough, a foreigner. Oskar is a bullied bedwetter shaping up to be a serial killer when he befriends his new neighbour, Eli. And so the fun begins. I liked how the characters did things without really thinking about the consequences, almost unconsciously, because they were depressed, or angry or just drunk. Despite the fantastical underpinnings, the characters themselves felt really real. I've seen the movie and really liked it, and it captured the flavour of the novel pretty well. The book does follow quite a few more characters than just Oskar and Eli, whereas the movie focuses mostly on them. Such a sad group of characters though, they all seemed doomed to their fates.
46. Double Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
***
This started out really great but after about a hundred pages or so, it began to lose steam. And then the ending felt rather contrived and rushed, as if he needed to get the novel out the door before the latest season of the TV show began. This is a pattern I've seen in the last few Dexter novels, unfortunately. It's too bad because he starts off his novels firing on all cylinders, if only they could follow through on that potential.
Dexter becomes very "stupid" about halfway through this novel, he's downright pathetic at times. For instance, the antagonist gives him a bunch of personal details on a blog that Dexter could use to track him down using his extensive police resources. So does he do that? No, he goes about his daily routine, fretting helplessly about how he can't figure out what to do. Later on, it becomes extremely obvious who this guy is and how he is staying one step ahead of Dexter, but Dex is just too stupid to see it. I always liked how relatively intelligent and imaginative the Dexter character is, but in this novel he seems completely out of his depth, bested by a rather lackluster opponent.
Rita was a bit shrill in this one, or more annoying than usual. The storyline involving the kids was a little too familiar, I think he put them in a similar situation in an earlier novel. Sorry, I forget which one at the moment. The only secondary character who was really intriguing was his brother Brian - yes he's still alive in the novels. I would certainly like to see more of him in future novels.
Despite my criticisms, I still enjoyed this book overall. The dark, cynical humour is right up my alley and I have a hard time finding the same kind of humour in any other novel. I just wish Jeff Lindsay would take more time to flesh out a more compelling plot and characters for the next novel.
47. Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter
****
The first book in the Inspector Morse series. What I liked about Morse is the way he is so determined and doggedly follows up on every clue and constantly re-examines the evidence, trying to get at the truth. I've read more than a few novels where the protagonist has evidence conveniently thrown in their lap, while you get the feeling Morse has to work for every scrap of evidence he can find. He's also a very human character, drinking a bit too much, making mistakes and saying the stupidest things even though he's not a stupid person. He's kinda cool, I like him.
48. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
****
I must admit, I was a little put off by the beginning of this book with all this talk of the "deliverator". But as the story unfolded, it settled in to a little less silly narrative. Although a lot of the ideas in the book are a bit over the top. A virus that can be delivered over the internet, through speech and through blood? Yeah, ok. The story is very entertaining even if it is a little rough around the edges.
49. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
****
The unnamed main protagonist is a very insecure young lady who finds herself swept up with a much older man who soon becomes her husband. The deceased titular character, his first wife, comes back, in a sense, to haunt their lives. It can be a bit slow at times and the main character can be a bit annoying, she's very neurotic and prone to flights of fancy. In fact, large parts of the novel are taken up by her daydreaming about things that may or may not have happened. She's a bit of a wack job. But it's all worth it in the end as some pretty startling things get revealed towards the end. Very cool book, I'll have to rewatch the movie to see how they compare.
50. The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
*****
I started reading this novel not knowing anything about it other than a lot of people really liked it. I was surprised to learn it was a "Western" of sorts, not a genre I'm particularly fond of, but it immediately sucked me in with its wry, dark humour and the engaging banter between the two brothers. The brothers are very endearing and very funny, I did laugh out loud, in public, more than once. A very entertaining novel, highly recommended.
And that's it, I read 50 books this year, with barely a day to spare! Yea me, I made it!