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What I'm reading lately
Oct. 9th, 2005 07:52 pm--Just finished "Anansi Boys": Wow! The characterization of Graham Coates, the villain of the piece, was a little thin, but other than that, this is fun! "American Gods" was a ramble through America's heartland, but this was a delightful, globetrotting romp from Florida to London to the Caribbean... ti the end and the beginning of the world, with a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor along the way. "The Englishman with the lime..." ::Laughs out loud at the implied pun:: Birds described as "little velociraptors with wings" -- I won't argue that metaphor. ::Considers the nip that Merry the Vampirekeet tried to take out of my finger::
--"From the Dust Returned" by Ray Bradbury. I started reading this book last October (I try to read something spooky during the month of October), but somehow I got interrupted and laid it aside. Rather appropriate, since it took Ray the better part of fifty years to get this book published. Apparantly, the story was inspired by a painting by Charles Addams (whose deliciously macabre cartoons, sort of like a Gothic version of Gary Larsen's "The Far Side", were the inspiration behind the TV series "The Addams Family"), but for some reason (I think a copyright entanglement was part of the problem), the book never made it to the presses for quite some time, though parts of it were published as short stories. ...Yum. It's a little drier than some of his earlier stuff, but it's in the same -- henh! -- vein as "The Halloween Tree": full of imagery that evokes autumn and its gathering shadows, or what Ray calls "the October Country", an inspired epithet if there ever was one. If you've ever wondered what kind of family would inhabit a creaky, rambly, abandoned Victorian Gothic house, and get their perspective on things that go "bump!" in the night, find yourself a corner in a drafty nook and read this book.
--"The Darkness Did Not" by William L. Biersach. I spotted this in a Catholic book catalog last year and since the blurb described it as a vampire story, and one of the quoted blurbs for it hailed the author as "a Catholic answer to Dan Brown", I thought I'd give it a chance. I just started reading it, and so far, the only resemblance to Dan Brown's work is the one-scene long chapter-device. The author's style is more like G.K. Chesterton's mischievous American cousin than Dan Brown's tendency to write top-heavy on concept, and so light on plot/characterization that you could sneeze on the pages and blow the story out of the book.
--"From the Dust Returned" by Ray Bradbury. I started reading this book last October (I try to read something spooky during the month of October), but somehow I got interrupted and laid it aside. Rather appropriate, since it took Ray the better part of fifty years to get this book published. Apparantly, the story was inspired by a painting by Charles Addams (whose deliciously macabre cartoons, sort of like a Gothic version of Gary Larsen's "The Far Side", were the inspiration behind the TV series "The Addams Family"), but for some reason (I think a copyright entanglement was part of the problem), the book never made it to the presses for quite some time, though parts of it were published as short stories. ...Yum. It's a little drier than some of his earlier stuff, but it's in the same -- henh! -- vein as "The Halloween Tree": full of imagery that evokes autumn and its gathering shadows, or what Ray calls "the October Country", an inspired epithet if there ever was one. If you've ever wondered what kind of family would inhabit a creaky, rambly, abandoned Victorian Gothic house, and get their perspective on things that go "bump!" in the night, find yourself a corner in a drafty nook and read this book.
--"The Darkness Did Not" by William L. Biersach. I spotted this in a Catholic book catalog last year and since the blurb described it as a vampire story, and one of the quoted blurbs for it hailed the author as "a Catholic answer to Dan Brown", I thought I'd give it a chance. I just started reading it, and so far, the only resemblance to Dan Brown's work is the one-scene long chapter-device. The author's style is more like G.K. Chesterton's mischievous American cousin than Dan Brown's tendency to write top-heavy on concept, and so light on plot/characterization that you could sneeze on the pages and blow the story out of the book.
