BOOKS THREAD

Finished this over the weekend. A really harrowing tale of an English writer traveling through the Sierra Madre, a pretty much lawless part of Northern Mexico. He makes it out alive, obviously, but without some close calls and the help of a bunch of locals. Joe Bob says check it out.

 

"Kicking and Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul and Rock n Roll" by Ann and Nancy Wilson

Entertaining read if you're a Heart fan. The Wilson sisters interviewed quite a few of their fellow musicians, family and friends and include their quotes in the book ... including their former boyfriends, the Fisher brothers.

Time — and Rock n Roll HOF induction — heals all wounds, I guess.

 

Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog.
This is one of those books that makes you envious you didn't write it.

 

I couldn't possibly read that book.

 

Well, I have lived a situation like that, with a rescue dog.
I am surprised it took so long for somebody to write a bestseller about the love of a pet.

 

Fun read.
Endlessly charming.

 

One of the year's best books (literary fiction category) is just $1.99 on Kindle today.

Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson.

http://www.amazon.com/Fourth-July-Creek-Smith-Henderson-ebook/dp/B00FJ37BWI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413563564&sr=1-1&keywords=fourth+of+july+creek

Dark and heartbreaking at times, but really good.

 

Thanks to a recommendation by Care Bear, I just read "Cuckoo's Calling" by Robert Galbraith. Loved it, especially the character of private detective Cormoran Strike. Didn't realize until I'd finished that Robert Galbraith is J. K. Rowling. Really good stuff.

 

If anyone likes mystery/horror, try "The Troop" by Nick Cutter. Well done and suspenseful.

 

I've been on a kick of reading old pulp and weird fiction for a year or more.

Now I am hooked on A. Merritt - 'The Moon Pool,' 'Burn, Witch, Burn' and 'Creep, Shadow, Creep.'

I just got two more of his novels. I just love this kind of stuff. The plots are so crazy, and the style is so specific.

 

An A. Merritt sample:

"In this great crucible of life we call the world — in the vaster one we call the universe — the mysteries lie close packed, uncountable as grains of sand on ocean's shores. They thread, gigantic, the star-flung spaces; they creep, atomic, beneath the microscope's peering eye. They walk beside us, unseen and unheard, calling out to us, asking why we are deaf to their crying, blind to their wonder.

"Sometimes the veils drop from a man's eyes, and he sees — and speaks of his vision. Then those who have not seen pass him by with the lifted brows of disbelief, or they mock him, or if his vision has been great enough they fall upon and destroy him."

 

Groovy.

Just started "Empire of Sin." Gonna finish it pretty fast.