This Week I are mostly reading (contd)

Human Acts, Han Kang

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Just finished Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man. I know everyone raves about Bradbury but I felt his writing skills were sorely lacking. Great imagination, but poor execution.

Up next is The Earlie King and the Kid in Yellow.

Listening to the entire Sherlock Holmes canon on Audible. (I think I have most of them on my bookshelf.) Stephen Fry is reading the Audible version, along with some introductions that he has written himself for some of the books.

No Second Chance by Harlan Coben

Xofpod wrote: »

Human Acts, Han Kang

Great writing but very harrowing. I'll definitely read more of her stuff but I think I need some recovery time first...

Elif Batuman, The Idiot. Finding it very pretentious and pretty annoying.

Finished George RR Martin's Game of Thrones the first book in that already classic series. What can I say that has not been said about the book already. Simply outstanding.

Two for the price of one Pay Off and The Eyewitness by Stephen Leather

Just ploughed through a couple of noirs:

The Black Eyed Blonde, by Benjamin Black. A Philip Marlowe novel, full of the cutting remarks and self-deprecating humour that you'd expect. The protagonist solves the crime not so much by Holmesian sleuthing as by persistently poking his nose in and getting beaten, coshed & mickey-finned to within an inch of his life. I think I preferred it to Farewell my Lovely, a Raymond Chandler novel about Philip Marlowe.

The Big O, by Declan Burke. It's kind of comedy noir, so the plot relies on a fair bit of farce and coincidence, but the writing and dialogue are fairly sharp and the pace is sustained in the run up to the heist.

Starting on 'The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher' by Kate Summerscale, a Christmas present from a couple of years ago.

Senlin Ascends, Josiah Bancroft and Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall