BOOKS THREAD

"California Fire and Life" is the one that really got me hooked on Winslow. "The Death and Life of Bobby Z" is also very good.

His best may be "Power of the Dog," which is set in the drug war in Latin America. Really, really well done.

 

Friend of the Friendless:

Just warpped up Cloud Atlas. Really admired its ambition and wonder how one man could be so talented he could pull off that kind of ventriliquism and make it feel credible. The middle story, the only one unbroken by the genre shift, was the only part I couldn't get into. Might have been the phonetic language. I just never embraced it the way I was supposed to. But the other sections were pretty outstanding. I'm not sure Cloud Atlas was I book I'd recommend to others since kind need to be up for the magic trick to enjoy it, but I'm glad to have stumbled onto Mitchell. I'm interested in picking up his books with a more traditional structure if he can pull off that kind of tightrope walk.

 

Mira, I'm 220 pages into Freedom and I think its excellent. But I'm biased because I've been waiting nine years for this one. It picks up speed as it goes.

 

I'm also reading The Men Who Would Be King, about the creation of DreamWorks. Pretty interesting stuff, and hearing how paranoid they are about. ...everything. ...reminds me of covering Tyrone Willingham.

 

An interesting point, Breaker of Leopold and Loeb, because in "The Nasty Bits," he calls KC an obnoxious, overtestosteroned memoir, or some such slam -- almost like he was apologizing for what he wrote.

Bourdain has nothing to apologize for in that book.

 

OK DD, I'll get into Freedom and see how it goes. I did like The Corrections, but wasn't floored by it.

I put down Freedom last weekend and tore through Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Read it in three days. Outstanding.

 

Been wanting to read that for several months now, ever since I saw it on the Millions Best of the Millennium list. (Which is why I read Cloud Atlas.) I have a ton of books in my queue (Moheringer's Agassi biography; The Imperfectionists; The Ask; Soldier of The Great War, Winesburg, Ohio; The Known World), but thinking of bumping that one up.

 

Finally finished The Passage. It really broke down after the time jumped forward after 100 years. I slogged through the middle section. Only the action scenes got me through the last third. Normally those aren't the parts of a book I look forward to.

Now 400 pages into Freedom. Enjoying it so far. It pales in comparison to The Corrections, but that doesn't mean it's no good. Haven't read many reviews, but can imagine people being disappointed. There's a hell of a lot of whining by every character.

 

I feel like the Passage was almost two completely different books. I'm really surprised at the universal praise it received. The first section was perfect, but I think Cronin took a real gamble expecting I would get 200 pages into a book, meet an entirely new cast of characters with no connection at all to the people I just spent all my time with, and care about them simply because they were suppose to represent the fate of the human race. I felt like he took several years to write the beginning of that book, and several months on the next 400 pages. It moved fairly quickly for me, but in the end, I just didn't think any of the characters were well drawn enough to feel deeply invested in their fates. It wasn't Twilight by any means, but it didn't quite live up to the tremendous hype it garnered.

I have some thoughts about Freedom, but I'm not quite finished yet, so I'll hold off. The reviews from book critics have been rather fawning, the reviews from readers commenting on-line less so. But I think it's very hard for people to write about Franzen's worth without letting their feelings about the author shine through. Some people just hate him -- or hate what he represents -- and can't get past that. I think, even when he misses, he's still writing and thinking about the major issues of our time. I think he's very interesting thinker and he's not afraid to write about social issues as they're actually happening.

 

Upon review, I agree completely The Passage seems like two books with two sets of characters. That's a great way of looking at it. Cronin got lost a bit in parts, but I still think he's a heck of a writer. And I get your point, DD, that it would be tough to invest time in caring about the characters' fates, but with me, I think I paid more attention the plot twists.

The Twilight books aren't bad. I think Bella is so whiny, though, and that was a drawback for me. But considering Twilight was written with younger readers in mind, I get where Meyer was coming from.

Once I finish Freedom, I would really like to hear what you all thought of it.

Never Let Me Go is stunning. Curious to see what the movie is like.