Dog Eared Copy's 50!

I've set my goal to fifty from my stacks, upping my level from this past year's achievement of having read 38!

All books will have been acquired prior to 01/01/2014, will not include any re-reads, ARCs or library books but *will* include some ebooks and audiobooks.

Some books will be selected using a random number generator against my books db, others will be chosen for having been in my stacks the longest, some will be crossovers from other challenges and, yet still others will be spontaneous selections!

Besides digging into my backlog, I'm also hoping to be better about writing reviews/commentary. Posts will be "quick & dirty," nothing I can't finish off within 20 minutes each) :-)

This is my first year with this group and I'm really looking forward to it!




01. Small Favor (The Dresden Files, Book #10; by Jim Butcher; narrated by James Marsters)
02. Eleven (by Patricia Highsmith)
03. Solar (by Ian McEwan; narrated by Roger Allam)
04. My Korean Deli (by Ben Ryder Howe; narrated by Bronson Pinchot)
05. Material Witness (Joe Ledger series, Book #1.2; by Jonathan Maberry; narrated by Ray Porter)
06. Deep, Dark (Joe Ledger series, Book #1.3; by Jonathan Maberry; narrated by Ray Porter)
07. The Dragon Factory (Joe Ledger series, Book #2; by Jonathan Maberry; narrated by Ray Porter)
08. Dog Days (Joe Ledger series, Book #2.1; by Jonathan Maberry; narrated by Ray Porter)
09. A Wallflower Christmas (Wallflower series, Book #5; by Lisa Kleypas)
10. Turn Coat (The Dresden Files, Book #11; by Jim Butcher; narrated by James Marsters)
11. Anansi Boys (by Neil Gaiman; narrated by Lenny Henry)
12. Every Dead Thing (by John Connolly)
13. The Last Good Man (by A.J. Kazinski; narrated by Simon Vance)

Welcome, Tanya!

Welcome aboard! I find this group a great motivator to read my own books :)

Tanya, hope you have a great time while you ROOT!

Woo Hoo! Good to see you here :-)

I hope you will enjoy the company!

Hi Tanya. Good luck with your challenge.

How is Villa Triste doing? Is your husband still reading?

YES! And he is absolutely *loving* it! He's already bought a couple of her other books on the strength of what he has read so far in Villa Triste!

Also, he wanted to pass onto you his thanks :-)

Thanks, Tanya. In Holland we have only access to 2 translated books. I hope there is more in the future.

Just curious: what triggered him to start reading this book? If it's the WOII part I might have other recommendations.

>53 Tanya-dogearedcopy: Hi Connie!

When I read you comment about Villa Triste, I automatically knew it would be something that would interest my husband. Not having read it myself, I could only say that it was an intuitive thing, not anything specific. Some books seem to have a aura of quality about them and this was one of them!

Hi, Tanya. Right now I am completely submerged in Villa Triste. So much so I read for an hour in the middle of the night and another one this morning. The book has taken over my thoughts so when I could not fall asleep because the book kept popping up I decided I might just as well be reading instead of sleeping.

You might want to try Het ijzig hart by Almudena Grandes or Winter in Madrid by C.J. Sansom. Both about WOII in Spain. Really recommendable and intriguing books.

Here I am again, Tanya and Hubbie. I am now at page 364 and I have been googling for images a lot. Certainly when old churches and palazzo are mentioned. That really adds to the experience.

After a personal best reading in 2013, my New Year's Resolution had been to "Read Less and Do More!" I had an image in my head of more hiking, biking and kayaking, never mind that the weather sucked! Well, I have been getting some hiking in, but I'm still reading, reading, reading... and the time for that reading seems to be coming from the time I previously spent on the internet My klout score has plummeted, but I'm already tackling my 13th book for the month! It will be interesting to see if the trend continues... Anyway my first quick & dirty review for 2014:

Small Favor
The Dresden Files, Book #10
by Jim Butcher (@longshotauthor)
narrated by James Marsters
(P) 2008, Penguin Audio
13 hours, 50 minutes

Harry Dresden, White Council Wizard and Warden (and the only practicing Wizard listed in the Chicago phone book!) repays the second of three favors owed to the Winter Queen, by rescuing crime lord Johnny Marcone from the forces that have kidnapped Marcone from his own panic room. The reasons and the method for the abduction, as well as the Winter Queen’s interest, are the substance of the story; but needless to say, Fae politics and grasps for power are at the heart of it all.

This is one of the better Dresden Files novels in that the writing is solid with few if any continuity errors (after listening to few Dresden Files, you learn to just roll with it and get to the point of the scene or action) and the cliches feel more natural to the dialogue. Karrin Murphy, a Chicago police officer and ally of Harry’s, returns to her recognizable self: a person of moral character and of the law, which had been distorted in Blood Rites (The Dresden Files #6. Fans of the series will recognize all the usual suspects as well as many of the pop culture references - from Shakespeare to Tolkien to Hollywood ;-)

Despite an over-the-top showdown near the end of the book, Small Favor still feels rather subdued by comparison to the rest of the series thus far. At one point, Harry Dresden, heading into what is sure to be a confrontation thinks, “Where was the drama? Where were the explosions, the howling screams, the deafening sound track?” and; the listener may wonder as well. Is it the writing (lack of vitality?), the narration (uninspired?) {Or me (jaded?) That said, by the end of Small Favor, I was fully engaged and yes, I cried a little. OK, a lot (8 Kleenexes.)}

From the start, with Storm Front, James Marsters has been Harry Dresden. Interestingly, Small Favor was recorded at about the same time as Blood Rites (#6) in 2008 but the performances in Small Favor far outstrip those in Blood Rites. Marsters is more in command of the story, able to imbue the right tone to “Fuego” (fire spell) as the scenes’ moods dictated; and infuse the characters with humor and pathos. There were times that Marsters didn’t seem to have much to work with, but the drag was temporary and short.

13!!!!!!! Okay, you have really been doing some serious reading!

Wow! that's a lot of books! Klout is just a random number generator anyway.

>14 Tanya-dogearedcopy:, Yes, I am with you in the 'do more' thought. My problem, though, is that I do my best to weasel out of anything that resembles (shudder) exercise. I'm trying to get audiobooks on the i-pod as an incentive to get out and moving. Thank goodness for books as a distraction.

I am not actually a great lover of the outdoors or a gym rat by any stretch of the imagination, but my weight became a serious health issue a couple of years ago. I led an extremely sedentary lifestyle and had to do something! I chose hiking because I live in an area prolific with hiking trails and, biking and kayaking followed suit. As much as I love audiobooks though, I never take them on my excursions. I need to be able to aware of my surroundings which may include threats like rattle snakes, mountain lions, black bears, hunters and aggressive mountain bikers! I do, however, bring along my Nikon :-)

Oh, I swoon with cheerful envy! My walking surroundings are one house, another house, a third house, and so on. Of course, I'm only a half hour away from beautiful wooded woods, but that laziness thing will kick in. Did you ever read that book by Anne McCaffrey where the woman's brain was hooked up to the space ship, and she controlled the entire ship with it? And she never used her body for anything?

The day that started to sound like a good idea to me was the day I knew I had to stop my sedentary-ing.

Now, I'm going over to your profile in hopes you posted some cool pictures of wildlife. :)

LOL, no pictures of mountains lions or bears! If you come across either the last thing on your mind is "how to frame a great shot!"

I've been terrible about posting any sort of photos or images to my profile or threads. I know it makes the comments "bling" a little more, but I've been terrible lazy about it!

I think I did read that Anne McCaffrey book a long time ago! Didn't the heroine fall in love with another mind and have to be reminded the physicality is truly a necessary function of a relationship?

Actually, the way I remember it, she falls in love with...ooh! I get to legitimately use the new spoiler alert! Thanks, Tanya!

She falls in love with her pilot, a man who has full functionality of his body, and after some frustrations on both their parts over not being able to physically interact, they work it out to love each other without sex as we know it. Best I remember, they stay in love until he dies. After which, romantic weenie that I am, I quit reading the books about her, lol.

Tanya & Merry - I think McCaffrey wrote a whole series of "Brainship" books (with other authors) that I read growing up. My favorite was The Ship who Searched - where the ship in question was a precocious girl named Hypatia (after the librarian of the Great Library of Alexandria).

I liked her more space opera stuff better than the Pern series - I must have been about 12 and was a bit put off by some of the mating stuff. I really ought to find those again to see if they hold up...

Caramellunay, I loved the Pern books; I was quite a few years older than you when I started reading them, and even more years older when the light bulb went off over my head regarding the specifics of mating, lol. Perhaps because I so liked Pern, I never really gave the Ship books a good chance, and should try them again now.

It's been decades since I've read any Anne McCaffrey! In high school, I devoured Anne McCaffrey, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov in particular (and of course Tolkien!) Since then, I've only dipped my toes in occasionally, reading a little Neal Stephenson and William Gibson. This year though, I've noticed that quite a bit of my reading already has veered into the SFF realm and it may be the year that I go back and revisit some of my first loves! :-)

My first Ray Bradbury is on my TBR Group list. :) The Halloween Tree. Have you read it? Is it good?

I know what you mean about being aware of your surroundings when you are hiking. I can see the start of the trail from my living room window so the wild life is quite close. My son saw a bear at the entrance of the trail last summer. Even when I am walking in from the other direction after dark I'm not afraid of running into strange people, I am more afraid of surprising a bear.

When I visited Scotland a couple of years ago it felt so wonderful to walk in the woods and not have to look out for predators (well, except for the human kind).

>25 Merryann: I love The Halloween Tree! It's a bit more "fantasy" than "science fiction" and, it's not poetic or lyrical in the same way that Neil Gaiman is; but it appeals to the senses of adventure and history of the reader :-)

Oh, good! I'll be starting it tomorrow.

>I did not know there are no bears to worry about in Scotland in the woods, not that I suppose I've ever thought about it. Interesting.

Yep, Scotland, no bears, no wolves, very few trees even on the "mountains" so it was nice to find a patch of woodland. I didn't realize how much I missed the trees until I got home. There are trees all over the place here.

I've only been to Scotland twice, once in 1987 for a week and; again in 1997 for two weeks but I absolutely loved it! The first time, I had just finished an internship at The Abbey Theatre in Dublin, Ireland. My friend and I decided to see a little bit of Scotland. We thought Ireland was beautiful, but Scotland blew our minds away! We went to Edinburgh, Loch Ness and Glasgow (OK, admittedly we weren't that keen on Glasgow) and we vowed to return every ten years. When we went back, this time we enjoyed the Edinburgh Drama Festival and then headed way up north to Aberdeen, the Orkney Islands and visited Shetland and Fair Isle. Though these trips were long ago, I remember them very vividly and with a longing to return.

We didn't go back in 2007 as I had by then, a 4-year old that I didn't see carting about the Highlands with any grace; but we are planning to return in 2017. I'm looking into a walking tour along Hadrian's Wall, visiting The Rosslyn Chapel and spending a bit of time West at Mull and Lewes :-)

I loved Scotland when I finally got to visit it in 2010. I went to Skye, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Islay. I liked the islands best but that might be because that is where my roots are. I would really like to go back so I understand why you wanted to go back every 10 years.

Oooh! Skye!

I have no known Scottish ancestry, though my DH does , albeit very long ago! There is something about Scotland that both feels rather exotic and like home at the same time! :-)

This conversation makes me want to re-watch 'Happy Go Lovely', the old musical comedy set in Edinburgh, starring David Niven and Vera Ellen. :)

There's a strange little movie called "I Know Where I'm Going" which was released in 1945 (starring Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey.) It's something of a romance movie for it's time, but not a romantic comedy: London girl gets stuck on the isle of Mull en route to meeting her fiance. Despite being in black & white, there are some amazing outside shots of the landscape and sea. The reason I say it's strange is that I actually think it's a pretty terrible movie; but at the same time I can never get it out of my head! I once spent a week, rewriting the script in my head to my satisfaction! :-)

Well, that actually makes me want to watch it! Does it end with happy romance?

Yes, it does have the prerequisite HEA ending of a Romance :-)

Eleven
by Patricia Highsmith
with a Foreword by Graham Greene
Atlantic Monthly Press, January 1994

01. The Snail Watcher
02. The Birds Poised to Fly
03. The Terrapin
04. When the Fleet was in at Mobile
05. The Quest for Blank Claveringi
06. The Cries of Love
07. Mrs Afton, among thy Green Braes
08. The Heroine
09. Another Bridge to Cross
10. The Barbarians
11. The Empty Birdhouse

Eleven is a collection of eleven short stories, ostensibly shelved in the “Mystery and Suspense” genre, but really tends to be more in the vein of “Psychological Thriller” or even “Horror.” Mysteries generally develop along the lines of “whodunits”: plots with clues and denouement; whereas Highsmith’s shorts are studies into the dark taint of the human mind. Greed, vanity, paranoia and cynicism are treated in the stories with morbid fascination and leave the reader with a sense of unease and maybe even a shiver of recognition. The stories are disturbing for what they suggest: that each man, woman and even child lives with a fragile tension between their dark natures and societal constraints and; that it doesn’t take much for any individual to tip over and indulge their more horrific aspects.

Ooh that sounds good!

Keep it up!

Ah , thanks for the encouragement! I'm a bit behind pace, but after this month, which is very work-heavy, I hope to catch up!

Solar
by Ian McEwan
narrated by Roger Allam
(P) 2010, Recorded Books
11 hours, 50 minutes
(includes interview between the author and his editor)

This isn’t so much a review as it is a witness testimony, not like on a court stand, but more like what you might see and hear at a religious revival! I admit that, in the past , I have committed the literary sin of not “getting” Ian McEwan. I read On Chesil Beach and Saturday with due diligence and lit-fic sobriety. In doing so, I was underwhelmed by the prose and declared McEwan “overrated” in rendering the psychological thriller to nothing more than a Tale of Anxiety (and at that, of a white older male anxiety!)

Then, I saw the light. Someone here on LT (wookiebender) mentioned that they had heard Ian McEwan read an excerpt from On Chesil Beach out loud with comic flair! And that the audience was not only enthralled, but laughing along with him! Hmmm, perhaps if I hadn’t dismissed my own sense of humour and replaced it with self-righteous literary pretensions, I might have enjoyed On Chesil Beach, and come to think of it, Saturday more than I had. With that in mind, I picked up Solar which I had heard was supposed to be pretty funny. Admittedly, I had also heard that this was not McEwan’s best and, as a validation of that opinion, it was not nominated for a ManBooker award. So it kind of figures, considering the high rate of ironic incidences in my life, that the McEwan that no one seems to like is the one that I absolutely adore!

The story features Michael Beard, a Nobel laureate who, when we meet him in his early fifties, is wallowing around in the collapse of his fifth marriage, a deteriorating body, and work in physics that is neither intellectually stimulating nor rewarding. The whole of Solar takes place over the course of about ten years (1999-2009) in which we watch Michael Beard muck his way around and through relationships, work and his health, always holding onto the promise of the next chapter in his life. It would be very easy to attach a lot of symbolic import to various artifices in the novel; but after listening to the interview of the author with his editor, you realize that, in doing so, you would be projecting too much into the novel. It is what it is and; what it is is a very honest portrayal of a man with all the absurdist elements that that may imply. Perhaps those who don’t like this novel don’t want to acknowledge that Michael Beard is very much an Everyman and, by default themselves; but I found common cause with the character for being flawed. Rather than finding Michael Beard an unlikable character, I was morbidly fascinated with his ability to have gotten as far as he had. I often found myself cheering for Michael even while admitting that he brought on most of his problems himself.

Roger Allam is a British narrator who delivered Ian McEwan’s novel flawlessly. The production uses British pronunciations, which may sound awkward to American ears, but it does not interfere with the understanding or enjoyment of the story. Allam reads the book “straight,” without comic intonations and also without dropping into the deadly neutral zone :-)

I loved Solar and I can’t wait to read McEwan’s next novel!

I love Roger Allam! He has a splendid voice. I'm tempted to borrow this audiobook just for him :)

My Korean Deli
by Ben Ryder Howe; narrated by Bronson Pinchot)
8 hours, 52 minutes
(p) 2011, Blackstone Audio, Inc.

The author and his Korean wife buy a deli for her mother as a grand gesture of gratitude on behalf of the daughter. The mother-in-law, Kay, is a hard-working immigrant who channels her drive and ambitions into the Brooklyn store, ensnaring the whole family to work the deli to make it a going concern. Encroaching gentrification, razor thin profit margins, hard line revenue-seeking municipal authorities looking for store violations, eccentric customers and, Howe's cultural and physical ineptness at being a store clerk (rather than the Paris Review editor he really is) are some of the many challenges that the family encounters and meets head-on. The story ends rather anti-climatically, but overall the narrative provides interesting insight as to the workings of a convenience store and the thoughts of the author as he sheds the confines of his WASP upbringing. Bronson Pinchot demonstrates his range of character work without drawing attention to himself or making any of the characters seem like caricatures. His impersonation of George Plimpton is remarkable, but not less noteworthy are the voices he uses for Howe as the story's narrator, the mother-in-law, and the varied ethnic personalities.

Three stars for the book and an additional star for Bronson Pinchot's performance.

"Material Witness" (Joe Ledger series, Book 1.2);
"Deep, Dark"(Joe Ledger series, Book 1.3);
The Dragon Factory (Joe Ledger series, Book #2) AND;
"Dog Days" (Joe Ledger series, Book 2.1)
(by Jonathan Maberry; narrated by Ray Porter)

The Joe Ledger series combines military fiction and speculative fiction bordering on horror. Listeners can expect a lot of ordnance, martial arts and monsters, all set within a context of fighting a world threat. It's a lot of "hoo-rah" action, somewhat tempered by Joe's introspection and flaws. Not the best writing, but lot of fun if you're in the mood to kick some ass! Ray Porter is quintessentially Joe Ledger and definitely makes these stories work. I also have print editions of the shorts and, they just don't live and breath the way the audio does.

"Material Witness" takes place early in Joe Ledger's career, but after the first-in-series, Patient Zero. The Echo Team of the DMS (an elite and secret military arm of the US) is sent in to secure an author who has become a security risk. Joe and his comrades-in-arms find themselves in Deep Pines, the setting for Maberry's YA Rot & Ruin series, encountering strange allies and long odds against...

In "Deep, Dark," Joe and his unit are sent to Colorado to an underground lab facility to eradicate a terrorist infiltration; but to say that things are not what they would seem would be something of an understatement!

The Dragon Factory is a full-length novel that has Joe and the Echo Team racing against the clock as they try and stop an evilly mad scientist from implementing an Extinction Wave - a genocidal plan that would be executed through specially designed pathogens. There's a lot going on in this story: genetically engineered pathogens, transgenetic coding, gene therapies... and one could credibly argue that it's pretty over the top.

In "Dog Days," Joe wraps up a loose end from The Dragon Factory and; a canine comrade, Ghost, is introduced.

Maberry divides Joe's personality into three parts: The Civilized Man, The Cop and, The Warrior and; for the missions that Joe and the Echo Team are assigned, it is essential that the Warrior become the dominant aspect. As The Warrior is called upon time and again to go forward and The Civilized Man and The Cop are put on the back burners, the core - maybe even the soul - of Joe is being chipped away at. I think every boy blogger on the planet will rave about the high octane thrills to be had in any given installment of the series and in the series as a whole; but oddly, while many talk about the action hero, I think we're actually seeing the fracturing of a man from the inside out.

"Material Witness," "Deep, Dark" and "Dog Days" are interstitial stories in the Joe Ledger series and can be found in both short story collection, Joe Ledger: The Missing Files and Joe Ledger: Special Ops. They are also available individually.

Oh I love Bronson Pinchot, now I'm curious just to listen to him! Lol.

I happen to think Bronson Pinchot is brilliant! As a narrator, he's a veritable chameleon! I've only listened to a few of the books that he has narrated, but each time I come away impressed by not only by his range of characters, but how he was able to lead me into the world of the book without my noticing him. For instance, when I think of My Korean Deli, I immediately recall what it was like to work the counter of a convenience store, the challenges of being an Anglo having married into a Korean family and what a character George Plimpton was! I hear the book, not the narrator (if that makes any sense.) :-)

Q1 UPDATE

I'm waaaay behind on tackling my TBR stacks thus far, having only read 8 out of a projected 12, and none from my nightstand. I have four reviews/commentaries that I need to write up this week-end!

I'm reading The Kite Runner (by Khaled Hosseini) now though and hope to get back on track by the end of the second quarter :-)

As long as you're enjoying what you're reading! :) Good luck with the second quarter.

I'm starting to set up my personal Summer reading challenge, The Dark & Stormy Summer Reading Challenge 2014. Last year I challenged myself to read & review 40 books. This year, I'm setting the total number of books at 50; but only committing to writing about a dozen reviews. I realized last year that some books don't bring out the review-writing muse, they just "are." I will probably write more than a dozen reviews, that's all I'm wiling to promise though! I hope to make some serious headway on my TBR stacks over the course of the next few months!

What a good idea, Tanya! 50 books is a lot though. I will be happy to read 50 books this year, ROOTs included.

A Wallflower Christmas
Wallflower series, Book #5
By Lisa Kleypas

Hannah Appleton, Lady Natalie Blandon's companion, is called upon to vet Rafe Bowman, the prospective fiancé of her ladyship. Rafe Bowman is the relatively crass but undeniably good-looking brother to Lillian, Lady Westcliff (the first of the Wallflowers to find her HEA in Kleypas' popular romance quatrain.) Rafe, an American, needs a bit of acculturation to British manners if he is to succeed in wooing Lady Natalie; but the unprepossessing Hannah doesn't think Rafe will suit.

Surprisingly, owing to the merits of the first four Wallflower novels, A Wallflower Christmas is weak in its plot development and sexual tension. The opening chapters (boy meets girl) showed promise; but story was quickly reduced to its formulaic bones - what follows is a variation on the Classic Cinderella tale set in Victorian Era England - and the end result was little more than a gloss of what could have been an engaging full length novel in its own right.

To a certain extent, A Wallflower Christmas serves as a coda to the Wallflower series as readers catch a glimpses of the married lives of Lillian, Evie, Anabelle and Daisy; but if readers skip this title, they haven't missed anything. Overall, it's disappointing end to the series.

Turn Coat
The Dresden Files, Book #11
By Jim Butcher; narrated by James Marsters
(P) 2009, Penguin Audio
14 hours, 40 minutes

Warden Morgan comes to Harry Dresden, famed Chicagoan wizard detective and fellow warden, for sanctuary and help. It appears that Morgan has been framed for the murder of a senior White Council wizard. The act could create a schism within the Council and further fuel an ongoing war with other supernatural factions. Though Morgan has been historically Harry's enemy within the Council, Harry decides to take up the cause in the name of truth, justice, and the discovery who might be behind this treacherous double act of homicide and treason. The hook into the story was excellent and the plot tracks very well. Butcher's writing seems to have evened out and gotten better since Blood Rites (the nadir of Butcher's writing skills in The Dresden Files) though there are a few cut-and-paste phrases that are used multiple times within the story, and Butcher is addicted to his movies and cliched physical prototypes. Marsters, as always, inhabits the character of Harry completely, though there are moments where the narrative flow seems to jump in logic, maybe from the way Marsters interprets the lines. Characters are clearly delineated and Spike fans get to hear a bit of Marsters' British clip in the character of Binder :-)

Anansi Boys
By Neil Gaiman
Narrated by Lenny Henry
(P) 2005, Harper Audio
10.1 hours

"Fat Charlie" Nancy is a rather unprepossessing guy. He’s an accountant. He has a fiancée that he hasn’t slept with yet. He suffers from stage fright when confronted with a karaoke mic. When things get rough there’s nothing more than he’s like to do than find succor with a bit of goat curry and a cup of tea. But when his unrepentantly flamboyant father passes away, Charlie travels from his home in England back to Florida for the funeral. From there on out, Fat Charlie discovers things about his family, his brother in particular, and especially himself that are harrowingly frightening, funny and amazing all at the same time. This story is Afro-Caribbean in nature and feels very different from Gaiman’s usual style of weird, drippy, wet London. The story dazzles with bright sunshine, flashes with slick and clever dialogue, and echoes with the rhythms of ancient drum beats from West Africa. But Gaiman’s trademark other-world-that-is-nowhere, a land where reality has a rather tenuous grip and is fascinating for its strangeness is still here in the form of a dreamlike place where the world begins and ancient folkloric figures inhabit.

Lenny Henry (Dawn French’s now ex-husband) is the British narrator who reflects the world beats of the story with relative facility: The English accents (natch) of Fat Charlie and other UK characters, and the smooth American voice of Fat Charlie’s brother in particular. While I wouldn’t say all his character voices (i.e. the older figures in the story) were on the mark, the rest of the cast, men and women alike, were well delineated without resorting to overly/extreme comic interpretations. There were a couple places where I didn’t catch a word; but overall, well paced, clear, and entertaining.

How's the summer reading going?

To be honest, my summer reading is not going as well as I had hoped. Last year, I read 40 titles and I had raised the bar to 50; but if I get even 30 titles in, I'll be surprised. The demands of my family this summer as well as some minor bouts with depression - which leave me enervated and uninterested in doing my favorite things, have bogged me down a little bit. I've finally realized that I really need to let go of any reading goals and challenges for the rest of the year and just read what I can, when I can, and be satisfied with that! :-)

Yes, I agree with you Tanya, read what you can, enjoy it, and don't be pressured to press on with a "number." I hope things get better for you!

I'm currently reading Every Dead Thing (by John Connolly.) The story is about Charlie "Bird" Parker, a former NYC cop who leaves the force after his family is brutally murdered and no culprit is found. Now doing some scut work for bail bondsmen and the sort, his current assignment takes hime to the Tidewater region of Virginia and to pre-Katrina New Orleans. The protagonists all show complexity of character and development, and the settings are richly drawn. However, the villains of the piece are one dimensional ("evil") which underscores my theory that writers who create characters who perpetrate violence upon children are manipulating readers: There is no other way to feel about such a criminal other than they are corrupt. No gray area can be perceived, so in a way, the author has saved himself a lot a of work in providing an irredeemable character.

I've had this book in the stacks since February of last year when a good friend recommended it to me based on my love for gritty mysteries. Unfortunately, my friend either did not know or forgot that I have an issue with stories (fiction and non-fiction) which feature children being abused, tortured, and/or killed. Every Dead Thing starts off with a gruesome double homicide, one of the victims of which is a little girl. I thought that the worst was over, but there's more. I'm taking my time with this book, only doing as much as I can handle at any given point. After this, I will give the book away, most likely not continue with the rest of the series, and go find another book of lighter fare :-)

>55 Tanya-dogearedcopy: If that's what you need, you have to do that. Setting and reaching reading goals is not that important, feeling better is!

Every Dead Thing
by John Connolly

Charlie “Bird” Parker is an ex-cop who left the NYPD in the wake of the double homicide of his wife and daughter. The crime created a cloud of doubt, guilt and suspicion over Parker, who is haunted by ghostly images and memories. Now doing scut detective work for bail bondsman and the like, a former colleague asks him to discreetly look into a probable missing person case which has mob implications, and which takes Parker from New York to Virginia and eventually to pre-Katrina New Orleans.

Every Dead Thing is a character study of a grief stricken man who struggles to get his life back on track even as he is unsure of the ground upon which he stands. The action of the novel is carried by two cases which are related by the type of criminals ultimately pursued, serial killers. Some of the victims are children and on the whole the carnage is graphic and gruesome. Acknowledging that the antagonists are the foils against which the protagonists are defined and developed, and that Connolly makes feints at speculating at the natures of the killers, the homicides still have the effect of polarizing the readers into viewing the killers as irredeemably evil and thus rendering the antagonists as as one-dimensional. Richly descriptive detail and with a touch of mysticism, Every Dead Thing is a Southern Gothic tale that evokes some visceral responses and is not for the faint of heart. If you liked the movie, Seven Deadly Sins (starring Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, and Gweneth Paltrow) and/or R.J. Ellory’s, A Quiet Belief in Angels, it is likely you will like Every Dead Thing as well.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Last night I was at a dinner party and the subject came up about villains and how they are portrayed. Does a well developed antagonist (e.g. back story, motive understood…) make the antagonist more sympathetic to a reader? Does having a well developed antagonist steal focus from the protagonist, or make for a more balanced (more interesting?) narrative?

Ooh, excellent question! My initial thought is 'more balanced and interesting'. But I want to give it some good thought and right now I have to go. I'll be back to answer better the day after tomorrow when I have time to be here again.

The Last Good Man
By A.J. Kazinski
Narrated by Simon Vance
Ⓟ 2012, HighBridge Audio
13.9 hours

The "Tzadikim Nistarim" are the 36 hidden righteous people of the earth according to Jewish mystic tradition. None of the 36 people self-identify as being good or righteous, but their actions have the effect of being socially just or averting a greater humanitarian disaster. If all the Tzadikim Nistarim are eliminated, humanity is doomed. In 2009, a number of seemingly unrelated deaths span the globe, and one man - an Italian police detective named Tomasso di Barber in Venice, makes the connection: Someone is killing the righteous people of the world. And so begins this international thriller that races against the clock to identify and secure the eponymous man of the book.

The Last Good Man has all the makings of a great thriller: a touch of the occult, international settings, deadlines with dire consequences if not met, spiritual musings, flawed protagonists, and an elusive villain... and yet, it all falls a bit flat. The novel's arc is robbed of tension with its schizophrenic quality: Is this going to be a police procedural set in Italy? Or is it going to be a Scandinavian crime thriller ? Is the whole of the novel supposed to be a sort of modern, metaphorical, Talmudic commentary? A.J. Kazinski seems to have mashed three novels into one, supplying the listener with an overabundance of detail and sub-plots (e.g. eighty cents, Skype sex, an Arab terrorist, an architect...) that do nothing to advance the story and worse, weaken the overall narrative until it collapses into a series of anti-climactic events.

Simon Vance is the British-American narrator who brings his BBC4 polish and credentials as a reader of international thrillers (e.g. The Millennium Trilogy - by Steig Larsson) to The Last Good Man. His reading is clear, the pace steady, pronunciations are consistent, all characters are delineated well and credibly... all the things that listeners have come to expect as de rigueur from a seasoned professional such as he.

OTHER: I originally borrowed a CD copy The Last Good Man (by A.J. Kazinski; narrated by Simon Vance) from The Jacskson County Library System (Southern Oregon) on 08/12/2013; but there was an issue with one of the discs. I ended up dnloading a digital copy of The Last Good Man (by A.J. Kazinski; narrated by Simon Vance) from downpour.com. I receive no monies, goods or services in exchange for reviewing the product and/or mentioning any of the persons or companies that are or may be implied in this post.

OK, It's mid-December and instead of playing the end game, I'm overwhelmed by end-of-the-year commitments review-wise, library work-wise, and Holiday-wise. I need to stick a fork in this and call it done.

I'm in the middle of reading my 130th title for year, with a reasonable expectation of only being able to get 3 more titles in before the end of the year. Of those 133, only 23 were loans/library books which means I will have read 110 of my own books BUT only 13 were acquired before January 1, 2014. I wrote reviews for those 13; but overall I fell very short of my original goal of 50 read and reviewed.

I definitely got sidetracked from whittling down my TBR stacks, which was the main goal of my participating in this challenge, so I cannot say that I successfully completed it; but hopefully next year's Category Challenge and participating in a couple of the CATS will help me do better in 2015 :-)

It's crazy how the commitments pile up at the end of the year! I am seriously impressed that you read 110 of your own books, even if only 13 qualified for your challenge. I hope you had fun with us anyway :) See you next year!

A very happy Christmas and a good New Year, Tanya

>64 connie53: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you too, Connie!