Currently reading
Double Feature
The Portable Dorothy Parker
Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow
The Hobbit
The Complete Stories
Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time
Good to Great in God's Eyes: 10 Practices Great Christians Have in Common
Well written but ultimately didn't quite come together. I kept wanting more attention focused on the most interesting characters and that might have given it a stronger emotional impact. Part of that may be the drawback of a somewhat disengaged lead.
Clearly a very intelligent book that suffers under its own weight, no particularly likable characters, and a central conflict that was hard to care about. But other than that, I was intrigued by the characters and impressed with the writing, so I'll check out some more Franzen.
William Tell Told Again
Once I figured out the original illustrated William Tell story is available on the Internet, it was worth the quick read for fans of P.G. Wodehouse. The free (non-illustrated) Kindle download is missing the source material and suffers for it.
Virals (Virals #1)
If it wasn't for those meddling kids... Somewhat inconsistent at times but overall, not terrible.
My Man Jeeves
A delight. Several Jeeves (and Wooster) stories followed by a few Reggie Pepper tales and concluding with another Jeeves and Wooster.
Hm. Wallflower Perked Harry Potter in Narnia. Somewhat choppy at times and increasingly frustrating and self-aware, but I thought the writing was pretty good with some decent twists. Some people probably hate it and I can see why.
The Revenge Of The Radioactive Lady
Just when I started to care about the characters, the book cured me of it when they turned mean-spirited. Too much exposition in the multiple character points of view as they thought about their motivations instead of showing the reader. Could have been handled with more humor, sensitivity or drama, but never really excelled in any of them.
Read this after watching the Netflix series, which was sooooo slooooow. I still recall with acidic fondness a lengthy and meaningless tie tying scene with Olivia and Norman. Pointless. The book was more compact and things actually happen one after another. The writing was too clunky at times, trying to be cool or rhythmic, I think, although sometimes it worked. Point of view shifted inexplicably a couple times. With this much interesting material, it could have been improved with another edit to fix some of those distractions.
Maybe my expectations were too high because I enjoy Simon Pegg, but this was only ok. I didn't connect with it very well (despite growing up at the same time with some similar TV/movie experiences), timelines were hard to follow and I was disappointed with the last few chapters.
I wanted to like this based on the concept, which is sort of Running Man meets Starship Troopers. Too much jargon too soon made me work too hard to get into the story, and once the action started, it never let up. That could be exciting, but in this case, the characters and story suffered for it.
I started this book several times and put it aside within the first hundred pages before really getting into it. I knew that some of the disturbing things were going to happen, but I was surprised by other parts and in the end, found it engaging and well worth finishing.
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