Saturday, April 18, 2009

recent reading

Quite some time back I posted a request for reading suggestions and got a bunch of good ones. One of those suggestions, from Rebecca K. O'Connor, was for Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files". Butcher has just published another installment of the series and I encourage anyone who's not fantasy-adverse to check them out (that last link has sample chapters). The protagonist, Harry Dresden, is a private investigator very much of the Jim Rockford school and the books are nicely plotted detective procedurals with good character development and a good series story arc as you get farther into it.

Another good recent read is Guy de la Valdene's "Red Stag". I'm a big fan of Valdene's "For a Handful of Feathers" and his mention in an interview (about a tarpon film) of "writing a book every ten years to justify [his] existence" and the link below that interview to Amazon led to my ordering the novel, which is silly cheap. The novel is set in Normandy in the 1950s and has shooting, poaching, dogs, guns, romance and all sorts of other good things.

Since the last call for suggestions was so successful (and so long ago), what are you all reading that's good?

8 comments:

Heather Houlahan said...

I am reading The Voyage of the Beagle for, astonishingly, the first time.

Fantastic. Adventure story + window into the mind of the young genius as he stands on the shoulders of giants. It's all there, waiting for him to put it together.

Borepatch said...

Love My Rifle More Than You, by Kayla Williams. Iraqi Freedom vet, she writes about her experiences.

I'll probably post about it tomorrow, but well worth a read.

mdmnm said...

Heather,
I haven't read "The Voyage of the Beagle", either, and I really should.

Borepatch,
Thanks!

Rebecca K. O'Connor said...

Yay!! I'm glad you liked Dresden. He's still my favorite guilty pleasure.

Matt Mullenix said...

Just read Peggy Noonan's "Patriotic Grace" (a bit belated since the election, but still relevant) and you'll enjoy it if you like Noonan (I do).

Re-reading now a couple W.Berry essays from a collection of his agrarian non-fiction. Keeps mentioning "I'll take My Stand," the agrarian manifesto I have yet to read but must.

And I just ordered Wayne Barlowe's novel God's Demon, plus the two related art folios, "Barlowe's Inferno" and "Brushfire." Looks to be a Tolkienesque epic, and pretty scary.

mdmnm said...

Matt,
Thanks!

Rebecca,
Thanks again for the suggestion.

Rebecca K. O'Connor said...

Oh and for a suggestion, I'm loving "The Story of Edgar Sawtell" ---Hamlet, with dog breeders. How could you go wrong??

Andrew Campbell said...

Finished Beverley Gage's 'The Day Wall Street Exploded' about the bomb attack of September 16th, 1920. The subtitle 'The Story of America in its First Age of Terror' sums up why this book is a fascinating read. Gage writes good social history, not just pulp history, that neither beats the reader over the head with a contemporary agenda, but leaves one wondering what else we've conveniently forgotten in the last 90 years.

best
Andrew