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Mar. 28th, 2011 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yagathaiSo I mostly ignored the internets this weekend in favor of doing something I haven't done in a while -- reading. As in books! I know, I'm so retro (though actually some were in epub format I read on my phone, so perhaps not all that retro). I polished off:
A book of Joe Lansdale shorts, because mojo storytelling never gets old. I think it was the Best Of Joe Lansdale collection.
A re-read of Iron Thorn by Caitlyn Kittredge, which... is this what YA work is nowadays? Wow. Where was this stuff when I was a YA? I mean, I cast no aspersions upon the YA of my youth, but there's a world of difference between this and, say, So You Want To Be A Wizard in terms of the level of maturity in the work (with apologies to Diane Duane, to whom I mean no disrespect. SYWTBAW was as good as it got back in the day).
All three currently extant novels in Dan Wells' John Cleaver series. My reactions, respectively: "Oh, that's interesting." "Meh." "Wow!" The premise, a teenage sociopath and budding serial killer hunts other serial killers, bears obvious similarities to the Dexter novels and TV show, but if you can get past what seems like an extremely derivative premise and equally derivative execution then I recommend the series -- if you like horror/mystery books, anyway. The first book is promising, and though the second was a bit of a letdown the third one paid all debts. It was well-written, exciting, emotionally engaging and a damn sight better than the third Dexter novel. In fact, having read all the Dexter novels as well, I'll go so far as to say that this series is better, at least so far. The very end hints at potentially shark-jumping developments, but I will hold out hope.
Divine Misfortune, by A. Lee Martinez. Didn't engage me as much as some of his previous works. It wasn't bad, but I wasn't blown away.
A small book of Cajun folktales, the title of which I can't recall right now. This was either microscopically-small press or self-published, and the copyediting and editing overall is pure amateur hour. Still, it was interesting enough to keep me wincing through to the end.
Freaks of Nature, a nonfiction work on teratology and developmental anomalies from Oxford University Press. Fascinating stuff, despite the sensationalistic title. The author seems to have a bit of a chip on his shoulder against the evolutionary science establishment, but he did manage to both teach me several new things and change the way I look at developmental biology.
A book of Joe Lansdale shorts, because mojo storytelling never gets old. I think it was the Best Of Joe Lansdale collection.
A re-read of Iron Thorn by Caitlyn Kittredge, which... is this what YA work is nowadays? Wow. Where was this stuff when I was a YA? I mean, I cast no aspersions upon the YA of my youth, but there's a world of difference between this and, say, So You Want To Be A Wizard in terms of the level of maturity in the work (with apologies to Diane Duane, to whom I mean no disrespect. SYWTBAW was as good as it got back in the day).
All three currently extant novels in Dan Wells' John Cleaver series. My reactions, respectively: "Oh, that's interesting." "Meh." "Wow!" The premise, a teenage sociopath and budding serial killer hunts other serial killers, bears obvious similarities to the Dexter novels and TV show, but if you can get past what seems like an extremely derivative premise and equally derivative execution then I recommend the series -- if you like horror/mystery books, anyway. The first book is promising, and though the second was a bit of a letdown the third one paid all debts. It was well-written, exciting, emotionally engaging and a damn sight better than the third Dexter novel. In fact, having read all the Dexter novels as well, I'll go so far as to say that this series is better, at least so far. The very end hints at potentially shark-jumping developments, but I will hold out hope.
Divine Misfortune, by A. Lee Martinez. Didn't engage me as much as some of his previous works. It wasn't bad, but I wasn't blown away.
A small book of Cajun folktales, the title of which I can't recall right now. This was either microscopically-small press or self-published, and the copyediting and editing overall is pure amateur hour. Still, it was interesting enough to keep me wincing through to the end.
Freaks of Nature, a nonfiction work on teratology and developmental anomalies from Oxford University Press. Fascinating stuff, despite the sensationalistic title. The author seems to have a bit of a chip on his shoulder against the evolutionary science establishment, but he did manage to both teach me several new things and change the way I look at developmental biology.
