The Kingkiller Chronicle: The Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss

This 2nd book of the trilogy was a long time coming because Mr.Rothfuss had to deal with some very serious personal issues (re: the deaths of both his parents). It was worth the wait, as the plot most certainly thickened in Kvothe's story, both within his narrative and in the world outside of it. If you're a fan of good fantasy, I highly recommend it and the previous book, The Name of the Wind.

American-Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (coloring by Lark Pien)

A graphic novel that neatly intertwines 3 separate stories into one in dealing with the travails of 2nd-generation Asian (in this case, Chinese, as per the title) children when trying to find acceptance into America. One story is based on an old Chinese legend, the 2nd deals with a child's attempt to find acceptance among his peers during his school years, and the 3rd story deals with Chinese stereotypes. In the end, the 3 stories twine to address the question: how should a child born of immigrant parents deal with living in their country of birth? Clearly, the author is leaning towards embracing one's heritage rather than trying to run from it. I get him in one sense, but my gripe is that it's a bit of a simplistic way of looking at it. Then again, I understand that this novel was aimed at a younger age demographic, so I see why it wasn't made into a more complex story. It's still a good read and one that I recommend.

In the past couple of weeks, I finished up Ernest Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls, and breezed through John le Carré's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Both I liked very much.

Next up, either Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal or a long overdue re-read of Cormac McCarthy's Suttree.

Just finished up The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest. A good back-to-back read since they literally flow one right into the other, but the stories themselves aren't really as compelling as The Girls With The Dragon Tattoo. The second 2 are even more procedural than the first and can get a little dry. A bit of me found the characters and events in the books a bit too "self important"; it seemed for long stretches that the entire country was revolving around a half a dozen characters yet what they were doing wasn't remarkable enough to merit the attention, though that just may be me coming at it from an American perspective.

So it's been reported that Larsson had 10 books in the offing for these characters? That would have been tough to slug through. 3 is more than enough.

Working on Douglas COupland's The Gum Thief.

Coupland to me has always been hit and miss. Liked Hey Nostradmus, couldn't get through All Families Are Psychotic, Liked Shampoo Planet but wasn't as big on Generation X, Microserfs had its ups and downs but I liked Jpod more. This one is so far falling into the hit category.

Total disagreement. I loved these books. I read the first one for five hours straight.

I'm reading a book called Defending Jacob. It's about a suburban lawyer who finds out that his son is charged with the murder of a fellow student. This isn't John Grisham or James Patterson. It's really a tragedy a la "In the Bedroom." That's exactly what I was hoping for and it's totally heartstopping.

I'm currently starting to read the Hunger Games trilogy, being halfway through the first book. The author's prose is not particularly complex or showy, but it's well written, the characters well developed, and it's interesting to read some more background for certain events and characters that was missing from the movies. Plus, the fact that the books are written on the first person certainly helps - because of this, a couple of things make more sense in the book than in the film.

All in all, I'm having a pretty good time reading the first book, hopefully the other two will be as good. (Although most people seem to be saying they're not.)

There is one thing that Suzanne Collins can and does very well is generating SHIT JUST GOT REAL MOMENTS.

You actually read the whole thing? You're a brave man. I got about 300 pages into it, figured out where it was going and what it was all about, said "enough of this shit, don't feel like wasting my time" and never picked it up again. I think Atlas Shrugged makes a good paperweight, little more.

On an unrelated note, I recently finished Burroughs' Naked Lunch. I love the prose in the book...not that it makes much sense, but Naked Lunch is a fantastic example of free-form writing when you're on a lot of drugs. There's practically zero plot to speak of, but oh the imagery...

When I read The Hunger Games, I knew exactly why Hollywood was so interested in them. They're fast, simple, action-packed, and contain thinking material that is simply written and has been used before. Plus it has a two way "Twilight-ish" romance (Team Peeta vs Team Gale).

As part of my graduate studies, I'm taking a class this semester that focuses on Gothic literature. So far I've read:

The Castle Of Otranto by Horace Walpole
The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

I just finished up the last one and now I'm moving on to Bram Stoker's Dracula. After that it should be Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.

I also have a couple of Kazuo Ishiguro novels and Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing sitting around to get to eventually, although I have no idea when that will happen.

A Widow For One Year - John Irving

This was the basis for the Kim Basinger/Jeff Bridges film "The Door In The Floor", unseen by me. The book was tedious to get through. Somehow, the book managed to get through without an editor seeing it or one wasn't employed in the first place. There were too many times that so much detail was provided, it took away from the actual story. I didn;'t need to read manuscripts and book chapters written by fictional characters multiple times. A very aggravating exercise.

I liked that book. John Irving has only one story to tell (bears, circuses, prostitutes, E.B. White, dwarves, orphans, bi-sexuality and a missing father) and results have always varied. Widow has an unusual stucture and a great, inspired-by-Dickens (of course) run through Amsterdam's red light district -- very good storytelling in this long middle section and with two well-drawn females to make it a kind of antidote for his Garp-era accidental sexism.

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Currently reading Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra as well as Memory Babe, a biography of Kerouac.

Are these topics of his other books? WFOY was the first book by Irving I've ever read, so to say I'm unfamiliar with him is an understatement.



I thought the entire trip through Amsterdam, complete with hanging out with her prostitute buddy Rooie and the cop was completely unnecessary and took me a while to get into. I realize the book had to take different turn going from the latse 50's to the early 90s, but I couldn't get into it. I also hated Eddie and the fact Ruth dad came out of nowhere and was treated as "oh, by the way this is what happened".

I just completed "Worst Case" by James Patterson. A cop with ten kids is put on a high profile case with an FBI agent. Mutual attraction, high stress, politics from higher-ups, etc. The book was a quick read, and could easily have been an episode of CSI or other crime drama. The villain started of as interesting, but his reasonings and actions fell flat with me the more I read. I liked the first 3/4 of the book, but it fell off a little at the end.

Hitchcock by Francois Truffaut.

I've been interested in this. Let us know how it is.

I just finished rereading No Country For Old Men. It was my first McCarthy book and I'd read Suttree and Blood Meridian since then, so I figured I'd revisit it. Way more sparse than the others.

Richard Russo's The Risk Pool. My fourth Russo novel after Empire Falls, That Old Cape Magic and Bridge Of Sighs.

One of my favorite books, I might have found it funny at one point that I'd find this novel more tragic than terrifying but damn did this one get me (opening passages were a chore the first time through though).

It really is a great piece of work, despite the initially-confusing narrative structure, and there's definitely a tragic undercurrent to it all. The monster, despite being created with a monstrous appearance, is not inherently evil. It's only when he is rejected both by his creator and society that he turns to evil actions. The whole account by the monster of his "education" by observing the family, and his eventual rejection by that family, is heartbreaking.

I read it a long time back in high school but had forgotten quite a bit of it. This time, due to the parameters of the class I was taking, I had to analyze it from a feminist critical perspective, which led to some very interesting layers that I hadn't fully considered before.

It's fantastic. It's basically a written version of an interview, but since Truffaut is an actual accomplished filmmaker (as opposed to a journalist), the two go pretty in-depth. They seem to genuinely like each other, and Truffaut is able to bring out a willingness to talk about his work in Hitchcock that most couldn't.

Hitchcock is refreshingly objective and open when it comes to his movies. He'll plainly state which movies he thought were successess and which he didn't think turned out very well. It's really surprising how critical he is of some of his actors.