For a while there, I'd had a bad run of books. Godawful things I didn't get through fifty pages of, and godawful things I followed right to the end, turning pages in mute shock.
But lately, my run of luck has changed. It all started in Australia, with Gil Brewer's The Vengeful Virgin. Then, the rest of John Ramsey Miller's Winter Massey series. There was some Lee Child in there, and Andrew Vachss's newest, Mask Market.
Oh, and Theresa Schweigel's Officer Down. And of course, I've just finished re-reading the Harry Potter books so as to be fresh for July 21.
And the good times didn't stop there. In the last couple weeks I've also enjoyed Joe Hill's fantastic debut, Heart-Shaped Box and Barry Eisler's Choke Point and taken some time to visit with old friends: Walt Whitman's poetry and F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories.
I'm also reading the final installment in Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver trilogy. Daunting sizes on those bad boys, but man, can Stephenson ever deliver the goods!
It's a run of luck so fine I'm afraid it can't last.
But no. Here on the table (up on deck, as it were), I've got a James M. Cain omnibus, John Connolly's The Unquiet, Sarah Gran's Come Closer and Swords of Talera, a pretty cool fantasy tale by some guy named Gramlich.
Charles, I hope your mum's okay!
This year, I also want to re-read Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca and maybe pick up one fo the biographies about her that're due out.
Utterly spoiled...
PS Just started Charles's book. It's like being a kid again, discovering Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E Howard and Fritz leiber for the first time. Loving it!
I am so truly and utterly spoiled!
Showing posts with label sarah gran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sarah gran. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Shock and Awe
Status: 30,000 words
Some writers don't read while they're in the middle of a book. Some writers read, but not in their genre. I can understand why. A couple years ago, all it took was one good book to shift my narrative voice. Suddenly, I was piling on the adjectives like Michael Connelly, or waxing poetic like John Connolly. Or trying to reel out the laconic, time-stretched action sequences of Sarah Gran, UPSIDE DOWN by John Katzenbach. Truly fine books, one and all. DOPE was the most intimidating for me, though. It's closest to my own writing style, and she's intimate with the same world I write in. If we weren't on the same bus ride through Hell, we definitely booked with the same tour company.
I'm glad I read it now, while I'm full of enthusiasm for my new work, and not in another month or two, when I'm lost and lonely and not at all certain this thing I'm doing will come together at all.
It will, of course, but a sleepless night or two is a part of that process.
Anybody out there have books/authors they avoid while writing? Or ones they seek out for inspiration?
Some writers don't read while they're in the middle of a book. Some writers read, but not in their genre. I can understand why. A couple years ago, all it took was one good book to shift my narrative voice. Suddenly, I was piling on the adjectives like Michael Connelly, or waxing poetic like John Connolly. Or trying to reel out the laconic, time-stretched action sequences of Sarah Gran, UPSIDE DOWN by John Katzenbach. Truly fine books, one and all. DOPE was the most intimidating for me, though. It's closest to my own writing style, and she's intimate with the same world I write in. If we weren't on the same bus ride through Hell, we definitely booked with the same tour company.
I'm glad I read it now, while I'm full of enthusiasm for my new work, and not in another month or two, when I'm lost and lonely and not at all certain this thing I'm doing will come together at all.
It will, of course, but a sleepless night or two is a part of that process.
Anybody out there have books/authors they avoid while writing? Or ones they seek out for inspiration?
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