thematahara

Finished:

Goonies85

I was reading Chris Whipple's The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden's White House, and I never do this, but I'm only like 30 or 40 pages in and I'm going to go to the store and exchange it for ANY other book tomorrow, because this is awful. Because, of course, as the book states, Jared Kushner is such a rational, reasonable, good-hearted person (minus the $2 billion dollars he got from some Saudis for no discernible reason...aside from access, that is). The author is clearly bought off and is just a complete joke. The book is horrible. Nobody should buy this. I don't know what I'm going to exchange it for, but ANYTHING else that isn't propaganda sounds good to me. Rant over.

Geofferson

thematahara

Finished:

brainee

Finished:

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix. If you like other books by Grady Hendrix, you'll like this one too. It has his pulpy style ... silly at times, but overall a legit horror (not comedy) book with sneaky emotional heft and characterization in it. This one might hit you more if you ever had to deal with the death of a parent (or parents).

Even though the title isn't wrong, instead of a standard haunted house story this fit more into the sub-genre of killer dolls/puppets.

thematahara

I also just finished this one:


and...I kinda hated it? Definitely not really a haunted house story and more killer doll, which has never really been my bag. It had some decent moments, but the killer puppet and the nonstop family bickering really had me rushing to the end just to be done with it. I did enjoy Final Girl Support Group, but this was a big miss for me.

thematahara

Finished:


Somehow never read this one and Im sorry it took this long. Loved it, but man it was heavy and had me fighting back the tears for the last quarter or so. Just a beautiful story and I will say one of the best written books King has ever done.

thematahara

Finished:

brainee

Finished:

Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne Valente. Heard this novella recommended a few times in other places as an example of a horror story that was something different and original. I hadn't read anything else by the author, although I had heard of her and other books were on my radar. And this was something different and only took a couple of hours to read. Understandably some readers really won't like the big reveal (and will feel the book pulled a bait-and-switch on them) but I was fine with it. Massive spoilers:


Also finished:

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Another author who'd been on my radar but I never got around to reading him. I quite liked this ... really felt epic in scope despite being a single book, with the story spanning thousands of years. I'd read lots of first contact stories, but I don't remember the others evenly splitting the story between the humans and aliens (in this case, intelligent giant spiders). And somehow the spiders ended up being the more sympathetic of the two.


thematahara

Finished

brainee

Finished:

Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark. A novella that had enough ideas and things going on to be a novel. I love the central idea: Atlanta in the 1920's, where the Ku Klux Klan is a front for a demon invasion (with a trio a bad-ass women kicking demon and human asses to stop them). I appreciated that while there are deeper themes in the story, the story itself is pulpy and action-filled. It looks like Clark has written some other interesting-sounding things, which I should check out at some point.

Also finished:

Insomnia by Sarah Pinborough. Like Behind Her Eyes (which I really liked), this has the front of another one of those female-centered mystery thrillers that there's been a lot of in the last decade ... but is actually a horror story. Which can be tough for a book to pull since it can disappoint fans of either genre. Women's mystery fans might not like the supernatural aspects of the story, while horror fans may get impatient waiting for the "good stuff" to start. I did like how I was kept guessing about what was going on until very late in the book (and I've read so many stories that I can often pick out "twists" early). It can be a bit tedious going, although the short length and snappy chapters help move things along.

Next thing up will take me a while ... Robert Jackson Bennett's Foundryside trilogy. I loved the other things I read of his (Divine Cities trilogy, The Troupe, American Elsewhere).

Kurt D

O Baby, probably my favorite Straub book of all time.

Incidentally, finished If You Could See Me Now by Straub a couple weeks ago.
Currently rereading Danse Macabre by Stephen King. Interestingly anachronistic.

Also grinding through Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.

thematahara

Finished

thematahara

Ive made it a point to read more Straub this year. Previously, I had only read Ghost Story.

How does the rest of the Blue Rose Trilogy compare to Koko (which I really enjoyed)?

I was thinking of Shadowland as my next Staub then moving back to the Blue Rose books

Kurt D

Just hit that trilogy hard. I read it originally out of order (unaware of the loose trilogy status) so Mystery was a bit of a let down to me, but The Throat is an absolute masterpiece. It's all about the characters, and in many ways (as you saw in Koko) their lives/personalities extraneous to the plot.

Overall, I think it's best to just wallow in the Blue Rose world with abandon.

Nick Danger

The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald. It's a sequel to The Princess and the Goblin, which I haven't read yet. A Victorian children's book, it was easy reading when I was tired. For a fairy tale, it's very upright and moral. I did like it when the wicked priest preached a bunch of blasphemies, including prosperity gospel.



The ending is weird. Instead of "happily ever after," the last page describes how Curdie marries the princess, becomes a good king, eventually dies, is succeeded by a bad king, and the whole town gets killed in a disaster.

thematahara

Thanks for the advice, ill shuffle my TBR a bit

Finished:

Kurt D

On that note, hit up The Talisman and Black House some time.

Black House is both amazing and one of those rare books that feels legitimately unclean.

stvn1974

thematahara

Finished:

thematahara

Finished

Geofferson

brainee

Ronald Malfi is one of those authors I've been hearing about for a while, but never read anything by him. Do you think any of his books would be a better "first read", to get a sense of his style and see if I like him or not?

Anyway, I finished:

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett. I've really enjoyed everything I've read by this author, and this was no exception. Interesting magic-system, although I got lost sometimes when "expert" characters would go on at length about technical details. Like Divine Cities, I like that this isn't a standard fantasy setting: more like a late 19th century industrialized age (Divine Cities seemed like 1920's-30's). At its core, it's mostly a heist story ... which again makes it a bit different from a lot of fantasy stories. While this is a trilogy of books, this one thankfully tells a complete story (while certainly leaving things open for a follow-up, complete with an epilog that teases a new "big bad" almost like the post-credits scene in a Marvel movie). I'll read the others eventually soon, but I think I'll read some other things in between.

thematahara

[QUOTE=brainee;14245054]Ronald Malfi is one of those authors I've been hearing about for a while, but never read anything by him. Do you think any of his books would be a better "first read", to get a sense of his style and see if I like him or not? /QUOTE]

Ive only read December Park and Come with Me. If you like Stephen King, I would be pretty surprised if you didnt like Malfi from what I have read. December Park was a great coming of age story, not quite the level of IT or McCammon's Boy's Life, but it is really good. Come with Me was also very good, a mystery with a touch of ghost/spirt thrown in. After reading those two, I will definitely seek out more from him.

I would probably say Come with Me may be the better first read, mainly because December Park is pretty beefy, but I loved DP. I do see Bone White frequently mentioned, and will probably be my next read from him.

Kurt D

Finished

Amusingly anachronistic and fun to revisit King's surprisingly conservative (lower-case C) former self.

Still laboring through


Just started