the_siobhan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_siobhan) wrote2024-01-01 08:40 pm
the_siobhan) wrote2024-01-01 08:40 pm
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2023 books: 10-14
Man, if I need to prove that this was a hard year, I only have to point to this number. This is it, 14 books in a whole year and I didn't even finish all of them. I used to easily do that in a week. (I also used to finish everything I started, even if I hated it.)
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The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena A sidewalk library book. A couple goes to a dinner party that runs late. Their infant is asleep next door with a baby monitor and the parents check on her every 30 minutes. Some time after midnight the mother goes home to discover that the front door is open and the baby is missing. There is deception. There is plot. There is drama. I'll be honest, this is not my usual genre. I found the writing a little flat, possibly because the writer felt like she over-explained everything. The story itself kept me fairly well-engaged right up to the point where one of the character had a very convenient dissociative episode that had me yelling, 'Oh come on' at the book. |
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Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty
Loaned by a friend. Vignettes about the life on a man who grew up on a Penobscot reservation. It jumps back and forth in time so you get the story in pieces. Come to think of it, that's kind of how memories come out in therapy so maybe that's appropriate. I'm not going to lie, parts of this book are really hard to read. It's just trauma all the way down. |
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Bad Cree by Jessica Johns Also a loaner. I had high hopes for this book - I was delighted to read this book was written out of spite, the author said that she was told never to write a book that uses dreams as a central plot device so she went out of her way to prove her teacher wrong. Unfortunately I bounced really hard off the dead sister and couldn't get past second chapter. It's too bad, I liked her writing. |
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The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood by David Simon and Edward Burns
The housemate loaned me this book because it was written by the creators of The Wire, a show they love. I assume the show has a plot, but the book does not. I gave up about halfway through because it was just misery porn. Not my thing at all. |
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Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Another from the Little Free Library. This is a weird book. The premise is that there is a massive network of human-populated worlds called "The Hegemony". War breaks out with a rival civilization and seven unrelated people are sent on a journey to a planet where they will visit an ancient artifact that may serve to be some kind of weapon. Over the course of the story it is revealed that the artifact is moving backwards through time and is the home of some kind of murderous being that is the weapon in question - only nobody knows who put it there and which side is it's target, This doesn't prevent an entire church being founded on it. Over the course of the journey each of the people tells the story of what their relationship is to this artifact and why they are involved in this trip. Each story gets progressively weirder and more messed up. I really have to start looking up these books before I start them, because this is another one that is first in a series. Even though I don't know how the mission or the war is going to turn out, it was worth it just for the world-building. (Short version, colonialism and capitalism will never stop being entirely awful.) |
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Simmin's Hyperion has been in my to read pile for almost as long as I have known you.
The good news is, while there are four books, the only one you need is the direct sequel (Fall of Hyperion) - but it is also a brick.
From what I recall, the second two books are not strictly related... and, in the tradition of these things, not considered as good.
I have quietly moved it to my bedside table stack.
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(There is a TV show described as 'basically Hyperion with the names changed'. Can't recall what though.)
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