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Back at the books
May. 16th, 2004 11:57 amCross-posed from 50-Book Challenge
It's amazing to think how far behind I have gotten in my reading over the last several months. While being out with pneumonia helped me get a lot of reading done, catching up after that has kept my reading -- and often my LJ posting -- down to a minimum.
As I begin to correct both things, here are three more books to add to my list. None is very deep, but that's OK. Lately I have been reading for pleasure rather than for learning.
17. Wild Pitch, by Mike Lupica
A re-read but it's been a while. Sportswriter Mike Lupica spins the tale of the washed-up Showtime Charlie Stoddard, his many stories, his comeback, his wife, his manager, his son and the curse that has not allowed we Diehard Red Sox fans to enjoy a World Series victory since 1918.
It's a funny book, and I particularly enjoyed some of the little details woven in, including the mention of a real-life catcher who I knew when he played in high school 20 years ago. Lupica is a fine reporter and his descriptions ring true.
It's a lot more fun than David Ferrell's "Screwball," which is a much darker comedy complete with serial murders.
The Lupica book would be a good beach read this summer.
18. Jinn, by Matthew J. Delaney
The immediate comparison here is with this debut novelist is wither writers like Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, as well as Matthew Reilly. Very much like Preston & Child's "Relic," in which everyday people are suddenly confronted with the supernatural. This one focuses on several Boston police officers as they deal with a string of particularly gruesome murders somehow connected to a ship that sank during World War II. Delaney uses some out-of-the-ordinary narrative techniques, and they work. As someone who lives near Boston, I enjoyed the settings.
19. 1632, by Eric Flint
You gotta love these "plausible" scenarios. A group of West Virginia coalminers are celebrating a wedding when a "cosmic accident" dumps them back to 1632 (hence the title) and into the middle of the 30 Years War. The immediate comparison has to be with S.M. Stirling's "Island In a Sea of Time" series, which I only made it part of the way through. If you liked that series, you'll like this one, and I find that the characterizations and some of the dilemmas are much more thoroughly examine by Flint. It's good, solid alternative history, and will probably lead me to read 1633, 1634 and the anthology that has been published. If you like Flint, David Drake, Eric Weber and similar authors, I recommend the site at www.baen.com.
