I read that one too a while back. Did the second and (part of) the third one on audiobook. The reader, Simon Vance, is amazing.
Note: I just looked up books two and three on Audible and they have different versions with different readers. The ones by Blackstone Publishing have Vance. I see that the audiobooks are pretty expensive on Audible, but I got them from my local library for free. Worth looking into IMHO.
Might be recency bias but I think Orphan Masterâs Son was the best book Iâve ever read. Setting it in North Korea allowed the author to do some things with the plot that I donât think most other novels could have gotten away with.
Man, Ray Bradbury is just fucking excellent and I love this quote:
First of all, I donât write science fiction. Iâve only done one science fiction book and thatâs Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, itâs fantasy. It couldnât happen, you see? Thatâs the reason itâs going to be around a long timeâbecause itâs a Greek myth, and myths have staying power.
This is on my list.
A twitter user made a thread asking for recommendations and there were hundreds of replies of pandemic books.
Cheers. Will definitely check them out (so to speak).
I read Station 11 and The Doomsday Book back to back (didnât realize they had similar content tbh). Station 11 was pretty good but Doomsday Book is top tier imo.
Despite your earlier hesitation to give domestic thrillers a shot, your appreciation of An Unwanted Guest leads me to think you ought to give these psychological suspense books a read at your earliest convenience
Our love story is simple. I met a gorgeous woman. We fell in love. We had kids. We moved to the suburbs. We told each other our biggest dreams, and our darkest secrets. And then we got bored.
We look like a normal couple. Weâre your neighbors, the parents of your kidâs friend, the acquaintances you keep meaning to get dinner with.
We all have secrets to keeping a marriage alive.
Ours just happens to be getting away with murder.
My Lovely Wife in particular is a HOLEE SHIET every chapter kind of book. I read that synopsis and thought I knew what I was in for, but the first chapter has one twist, and then the next chapter has another thatâs organic but mind-blowing, and again the next chapter and the next, and somehow the author delivers on that high every time until the end of the book.
A devious tale of psychological suspense involving sex, deception, and an accidental encounter that leads to murder. Fans of Paula Hawkinsâ The Girl on the Train will love this modern reimagining of Patricia Highsmithâs classic Strangers on a Train from the author of the acclaimed The Girl with a Clock for a Heart âwhich the Washington Post said âshould be a contender for crime fictionâs best first novel of 2014.â
On a night flight from London to Boston, Ted Severson meets the stunning and mysterious Lily Kintner. Sharing one too many martinis, the strangers begin to play a game of truth, revealing very intimate details about themselves. Ted talks about his marriage thatâs going stale and his wife Miranda, who heâs sure is cheating on him. Ted and his wife were a mismatch from the startâhe the rich businessman, she the artistic free spiritâa contrast that once inflamed their passion, but has now become a clichĂ©.
But their game turns a little darker when Ted jokes that he could kill Miranda for what sheâs done. Lily, without missing a beat, says calmly, âIâd like to help.â After all, some people are the kind worth killing, like a lying, stinking, cheating spouse. . . .
Back in Boston, Ted and Lilyâs twisted bond grows stronger as they begin to plot Mirandaâs demise. But there are a few things about Lilyâs past that she hasnât shared with Ted, namely her experience in the art and craft of murder, a journey that began in her very precocious youth.
Suddenly these co-conspirators are embroiled in a chilling game of cat-and-mouse, one they both cannot survive . . . with a shrewd and very determined detective on their tail.
I have a fan theory about the book I can discuss with you and verify/debunk, but only if/when you read the book.
To me, the thing that makes psychological suspense of all sorts stand out, including domestic thrillers, is if the writing is exquisite and the author offers clever insights into whatever situation is the vehicle for their story. That is present in both of these books.
Iâve been going on long walks in the park and listening to audiobooks because thatâ's the only out-of-house thing I can do these days and Iâve been listening to an audiobook of Rain Dogs and itâs one of the best cozy detective novels Iâve read in a long time. Classic locked-room mystery but also Itâs a book that completely transported me into the time of The Troubles in North Ireland. I was convinced that at some point the author had been a cop because of his John le Carre-like attention to bureaucratic procedural details, but no. Honestly, the authorâs wiki entry is a pretty great read all on its own. Also, thereâs an extended discussion of Bayes theorem in the book, which is pretty great.
Also, who doesnât love a Tom Waits reference? Not me, thatâsâ for sure.
I kinda want to recommend this book to my mom because she loves murder mystery novels, but I donât think a story where the RUC cops are the good guys will sit well with her. Itâs a good mystery novel, tho.
PS: Ray Bradbury is just an incredible American institution:
https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/status/1250647064117051392?s=20
Maybe not what people ITT are looking for, but I thought the following were great books - all keeping with an ocean theme:
Finally pushed through Shermanâs March
https://www.amazon.com/Shermans-March-Burke-Davis-ebook/dp/B01BM1TJ7K
The book itself, sadly, wasnât that interesting. Itâs a bit of a dry play by play and doesnât offer much analysis. Shermanâs march, though, straight ace. For some reason all I remembered what that he marched through Georgia and didnât remember he just turned around and marched all the way back to Washington through the heart of the Confederacy.
Jumped there. It was on an Amazon Kindle sale.
Read a couple chapters of Losing Moses on the Freeway, while lying on the hood of my car for vitamin D
In chapter 2 he describes the idolatry of Phishheads
Talking about Animorphs reminded of another book I had read as a kid while in the Walmart book section waiting on my parents to shop.
I couldnt rmemeber the name, only that it involved vampires and the William Blake poem Tiger, Tiger
So I did some google sluething and found it.
In the Forests of the Night by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. I remembered it as a teen vampire novel, this was years before Twilight though, and was impressed that the author was only 13 when she wrote it.
I reread it this week, and it surprisingly holds up as far as a teen vampire novel goes. A teenager wrote it so itâs very angsty, itâs an odd with no teenage romance and an Ann Rice feel to it. Itâd actually recommend it if a teenager wanted to read the teen supernatural genre.
I then found out sheâs written like 7 other novels in the same universe. I was interested because how unique the first one was. Unfortunately the rest of the books revert to every teen cliche novel. Teenagers hopelessly attracted to the new mysterious guy, clunky dialog thatâs supposed to make the guy sound mysterious but would make any normal person think the guy sounded creepy as fuck. I couldnât make it through 50 pages.
Oh well at least she did one good novel for a teenager.
Just finished Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation
I really liked it. With 16 stories they were short enough that I could read one just about any time I had 10 - 15 minutes to myself and there were only one or two that I didnât get into.
Re-read God Bless You, Mr Rosewater on a whim. About how I remembered, though the ending is far more clearly unsatisfactory this time around. Making my way through Blood Meridian, had been on my list for a while. Iâm not sure what effect the protagonistâs inscrutability is meant to have, but itâs mostly making things a little confusing.
The refusal to make any visible distinction between prose and dialogue (except not using punctuation in dialogue for no doubt excellent reasons) is a bit of a headache. I used to have far more time for that kind of thing. At least Irvine Welsh and Hubert Selby, Jr would have a â before dialogue, not our Cormac, though.
It has that Lovecraft thing of always being on the edge of self-parody, too.
He stood in the pit, beard caked with shit and blood and who knew what else. His eyes burned low like a fire dying too long before dawn. The kid watched him, said nothing. Then around noon his jacket fell open, maggots writhing in the heaving mess of his guts like a thousand fishes on a thousand barbed hooks. The preachers lied, he said. Its man must redeem God, not tother way.
Finished
Drunk Mom: A Memoir by Jowita Bydlowska
And it wasnât good. A lot of the reviews said that she wrote well, but that in the story everyone else seemed like props, but Iâd say itâs both. First she doesnât write very well. The entire book is written a style like this
Something stupid is said. What was said? Who cares, itâs stupid. Stupid man with his stupid coat. I blah blah blah. I fall. I stand back up. Someoneâs saying something to me.
Etc.
Itâs works well when sheâs dictating her drunken experiences because thatâs what it feels like to be drunk. Your thoughts go on short connect the dots tangents. You think in short declarative sentences. Your emotions are extremely heightened (or dulled). Places and time seem to be unmoored.
But the whole book is written in that style, which makes everything feel superfluous. I didnât know how she was earning income the entire book. Friends appear and disappear, approve or disapprove of her drinking and then never return. She never explores the causes of her additions until the end in a short one page string of questions.
Anyways, so far as addition novels go I still prefer Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget by Sarah Hepola. Itâs self exploratory, wry, humorous and a good read in spite of not having a lot of crazy off the wall incidents.
Here beyond menâs judgements all covenants were brittle. The black looked up from his pipebowl. About that fire were men whose eyes gave back the light like coals socketed hot in their skulls and men whose eyes did not, but the black manâs eyes stood as corridors for the ferrying through of naked and unrectified night from what of it lay behind to what was yet to come. Any man in this company can sit where it suits him, he said.
I devour anything Hobb writes (only the soldier son trilogy felt a little lacking). Fitz and The Foolâs relationship is awesome and heartbreaking and awesome.