Thursday, August 26, 2010

I'm running a little behind.  I blame it on over work, and doing a little less reading.  You can also see some of my other activities at my new blog, Adventures In Blacksmithing.

Here are two books I didn't talk about:

I finished The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.

I like almost everything Gaiman has done, and this is not an exception.  It's a well written variant of Kipling's The Jungle Book, if you substitute "graveyard" for "jungle".  It's probably intended partly for a YA audience, but I enjoyed the story as well.













I also finished Blood's A Rover by James Ellroy.

I'm also a fan of Ellroy, but this book didn't work for me.  Ellroy's sparse, intense style has gotten so concentrated in this, and his last book, American Tabloid, that they are almost un-readable.  The characters come off as minor variants of misogynist, racist thugs and the usually thrilling plot twists are obvious and over set up.  I saw him do a reading last year, and it was amazing, but I hope he follows his promise to move on from his current style and do something different with his next book.