Thud! by Terry Pratchett

There's really no need to go into much detail about this book. It's a Discworld book, he second one I've reviewed this year, and it was funny, entertaining,and fairly well-plotted, although neihter the plot or the satire are handled as well as in some of his other books.

This is probably the worst review since Chihuahuas.

Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre

Since Chris and Alyson have already read and reviewed this book, I'm not going to go in depth about the plot. I'm going to talk about the things I liked in bullet points, and then I'm going to take a nap.

Despite nearly constant profanity, obscenity, and scatalogical references in the first two thirds of the book, VGL still managed a large number of very poignant moments, which I won't enumerate here since I think Carlton is going to read this book.

- The writing itself was really good, although it took some adjusting, partly due to the things metioned in the previous point.

- You have no idea how strange of a book this is until you get to the last third. There's barely even a hint. I think that's a positive.

- This book is funny.

One of the most interesting aspects was the way that Vernon sees the world. Despite using language that would make Scocese blush, he's really nothing more than a naive innocent, caught in the middle of events much bigger than himself, manipulated by everyone around him, and thrust into situations over which he has no control. Somehow, Pierre manages to make Vernon both vulnerable and likeable.

The only downside is that VGL might be a little much for some people. Frank descriptions of sexual abuse and violence, along with making light of school shootings, is probably going to make this a poor choice for grandmothers or children.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling

Since Alyson already spoiled each and every plot point in this book, I don't feel the need to write much, except that it was quite a bit more enjoyable to read than Order of the Phoenix. There was a lot more sex, for one thing.

Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe

Shadow of the Torturer is the first volume of The Book of the New Sun, a fantasy/sci-fi quadrilogy that is generally considered to be one of the best. The main character is a former Torturer named Severian who is exiled from his guild after extending mercy unbecoming a torturer to a woman in his care. True, “Extending mercy” basically just means hat he killed her in a slightly less painful way, but torturers are, as you might expect, a bunch of hard cases.

Well, when I first started this book, I was pretty excited about it. The buzz I'd read had been almost all positive, the concept sounded very interesting and full of potential, and the writing itself was fairly appealing... at least when I first started the book.

The first section, where we learn about the torturer's guild and Severian's life in there, is pretty cool. Unfortunately, once he gets kicked out, the pace of the book, already pretty slow, grinds nearly to a halt, as Severian has several adventures in which nothing really happens. I'm all for slow books, and I'm all for setup, but between the copius amounts of both, Shadow of the Torturer just wore me down. It doesn't help that the print size in this book is absolutely miniscule.

So anyway, I only read this book, and I'm not I'll finish the series. I'm sure it's great for some people, but not for me. I need more lasers in my sci fi.

RIP Madeleine L'Engle

Buried in the small print of CNN.com:

HARTFORD, Connecticut (AP) -- Author Madeleine L'Engle, whose novel "A Wrinkle in Time" has been enjoyed by generations of schoolchildren and adults since the 1960s, has died, her publicist said Friday. She was 88.

....

Although L'Engle was often labeled a children's author, she disliked that classification. In a 1993 Associated Press interview, she said she did not write down to children.

"In my dreams, I never have an age," she said. "I never write for any age group in mind. When people do, they tend to be tolerant and condescending and they don't write as well as they can write.

"When you underestimate your audience, you're cutting yourself off from your best work."

Atonement By Ian McEwan

My emotional reaction to and hatred for the main character of this book has made it nearly impossible for me to write a review on it. So, many weeks, maybe months late, here are my thoughts on “Atonement”.

The beginning of the story is like a beautiful painting. You can almost see the people talking and moving in their own worlds, unfortunately those worlds have to collide for their lives to continue. The thoughts and differing perspectives are woven together in a realistic way, identifiable in anyone’s life.

In spite of being tragic, book one reads very well. The flow and pace of the story are consistent. The style is easy and interesting. The following books read like a man on speed. They have an over all frame work that stops only periodically for a disjointed overdevelopment of some random scenario.

Overall I do think it is an interesting story, and maybe even a “good book”, just not one I fully appreciated as I should have.

A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut

This book would no doubt have meant more to me if I had already read some of Vonnegut’s works. I selected A Man Without a County from a number of different books by Vonnegut, with little method to my choosing. The cover caught my eye (my left one to be exact) and then I saw this quote right underneath Vonnegut’s drooping cigarette: “[This] may be as close as Vonnegut ever comes to a memoir.” I like memoirs. I figured I would give this book a shot.

After the first twenty pages I almost gave up. Not for good. I simply thought that it might be better if I were to read some of his novels before I read his final work. But I think it just took a little getting used to. Vonnegut was all over the place. He is talking about the art of joke-telling one paragraph, and socialism the next. The book is really just a hodge-podge of Vonnegut’s thoughts, luckily his thoughts are interesting, insightful, and entertaining, but there is no overall theme to the book, nor to most of the chapters. So in the spirit of this book, the rest of this review is just going to be a disparate collection of quotes form A Man Without a County, which I enjoyed reading after I realized what to expect.

“There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president.”

“If Christ hadn’t delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn’t want to be a human being. I’d just as soon be a rattlesnake.”

“We are on earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

“It is almost always a mistake to mention Abraham Lincoln. He always steals the show.”

“Now then, I have some good news for you and some bad news. The bad news is that the Martians have landed in New York City and are staying at the Waldorf Astoria. The good news is that they only eat homeless men, women, and children of all colors, and they pee gasoline.”

While most of Vonnegut’s ruminations were decidedly pessimistic, there were some points of unadulterated optimism. There was a great couple pages about the simple act of mailing a letter and all the different people that Vonnegut interacted with on his little postal quest. My favorite came in the section devoted to Vonnegut’s relationship with his fans. “Joe, a young man from Pittsburgh, came up to me with one request: ‘Please tell me it will all be okay.’ ‘Welcome to Earth, young man,’ I said. ‘It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, Joe, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of: Goddamn it, Joe, you’ve got to be kind!’” Ah, there is just something calming about humanism in its purest form. I guess I should track down some of Vonnegut’s other works.

Mrs. Pollifax and the Lion Killer by Dorothy Gilman

Mrs. Pollifax is a delightful old lady/spy. Yes, that is a contrdiction in my mind as well, and even more so knowing that she was already sixty when she got the job. Unlikely as it is, that stories of Mrs Pollifax are funny and complex.

In this latest adventure Mrs. Pollifax is the protector of Kadi, the daughter of deceased missionaries to Ubangiba. Kadi was taken from her country after her parents were murdered in their mission station. Now she must return, and to keep their identites secret, the murders are now set on ending Kadi's life.

I always enjoy reading Mrs. Pollifax. While it is light and amusing reading it is not a children's book. I think Gilman has a style that is more comedic than you find in other mystery novels.

Confessions of an Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey

"If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, and if I am bound to confess that I have indulged in it to an excess, not yet recorded of any other man, it is no less true, that I have struggled against this fascinating enthralment with a religious zeal, and have, at length, accomplished what I never yet heard attributed to any other man - have untwisted, almost to its final links the accursed chain which fettered me." (from Confessions of an English Opium Eater)

De Quincey's autobiographical account of his opium addiction is his most famous work. De Quincey took opium initially to ease physical pain but eventually increased the dosage enough to become addicted. He did hold to the belief that at the time he began using opium daily, he had no other choice.

The book gives eloquent descriptions of the psychological effects of the drug. The book sounds a lot like the novels of the period where the reason behind his actions seems more important than what he was actually doing, especially toward the end.

It was interesting to read this along with "Over the Underpass". While they were written almost two centuries apart, the story of drug abuse and how it can make a slave of anyone is still that same.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

I think Christie delighted herself a bit to much in the idea for this book. To start with, the conversations overheard at the beginning of the story are so over the top and disjointed you wonder if the author began writing with any idea of how to get where she was headed.

When the reader is eventually let into the story it is without any of the artistic flare Christie readers will admire in her other works. The clues are open and obvious, and the story line follows more "How to solve a mystery." than "What is the conclusion to this puzzle?"

To finish it off the conclusion is most unsatisfactory, much like this one