Just finished Behind the Curtain by Peter Abrahams, a juvenile mystery set in the imaginary Echo Falls. I read the first of this series, Down the Rabbit Hole and really enjoyed it. His heroine is refreshing and interesting - Ingrid, soccer player and sometime theatrical player with a passion for Sherlock Holmes. I love it! (sounds an awful lot like me!)
I also read The Train Now Departing by Martha Grimes - her web site is www.marthagrimes.com. I really enjoyed it. It was a nice departure from her Richard Jury detective novels. The Train Now Departing is 2 novellas linked thematically. Each has a desperately lonely woman ("of a certain age" as they used to say) as the main character. Each novella is finely focused and relentless in its pursuit of the source of each woman's desperation. Well worth reading and a good example of a novella.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Saturday, November 17, 2007
A Crazy Fall
The fall has been crazy, but I have been doing some reading. Actually, I feel like I've been reading a lot, but the number of volumes is not great. I have read Ilium and Olympos by Dan Simmons, and honestly, I really felt like I accomplished something and learned something.
Dan Simmons is a visionary with the most incredible imagination I have ever come across. If I were a writer, and I do admit, I do aspire to be a writer, I would like to be like Dan Simmons. Perhaps not stylistically or thematically, but I would like to emulate him in his fullness of vision. Every Dan Simmons book I have read is fully realized and complete. From the realistic novels to the futuristic sci-fi, it all rings true and feels real.
The other books I read this fall are So Big by Edna Ferber and The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho. So Big was a fabulous American portrait that reminded me of Willa Cather. I will have to read more Ferber. The Alchemist I have to admit, I did not care for (sorry, Julie). It was a very new agey tale with lots of solopsistic philosophy going on. Not really my thing.
I am trying to find a lighter tale to get me through the holidays - tried a Preston-Child novel but got bogged down with the overwhelming number of characters that everyone but me was obviously already familiar with.
Dan Simmons is a visionary with the most incredible imagination I have ever come across. If I were a writer, and I do admit, I do aspire to be a writer, I would like to be like Dan Simmons. Perhaps not stylistically or thematically, but I would like to emulate him in his fullness of vision. Every Dan Simmons book I have read is fully realized and complete. From the realistic novels to the futuristic sci-fi, it all rings true and feels real.
The other books I read this fall are So Big by Edna Ferber and The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho. So Big was a fabulous American portrait that reminded me of Willa Cather. I will have to read more Ferber. The Alchemist I have to admit, I did not care for (sorry, Julie). It was a very new agey tale with lots of solopsistic philosophy going on. Not really my thing.
I am trying to find a lighter tale to get me through the holidays - tried a Preston-Child novel but got bogged down with the overwhelming number of characters that everyone but me was obviously already familiar with.
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