OT: Post-season/pre-holiday book thread

by HCE, Wednesday, November 29, 2023, 08:44 (437 days ago)
edited by Jay, Wednesday, November 29, 2023, 16:42

It's been a while since the last one, and we all have Christmas shopping to do, so book recs are helpful. Some stuff I've read recently:

David Peace, Red or Dead: a novel about Bill Shankly, it reads a bit like one of the later episodes of Ulysses, but also 600 pages long and all about Liverpool Football Club. I suppose that makes me very much its target audience, but I found the style tiresome after about 400 pages or so. The Damned United is better.

Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle/Zone One: Whitehead does some cool stuff with "genre" fiction, and I really liked both of these books. Zone One, his zombie novel, is occasionally clunky, but mostly compelling; Harlem Shuffle is uneven, but often brilliant, and the middle section might be the best thing Whitehead has ever written.

Hilary Mantel: A Change of Climate/Eight Months on Ghazzah Street: I love Mantel, and these are both worth your time. I've seen the latter aptly described as "a Middle Eastern Turn of The Screw," but the former might be the scariest, most disturbing novel I've ever read. No spoilers here, but proceed with caution, particularly if you're a parent.

Fiona Barnett, The Dark Between the Trees: it's pretty much Blair Witch meets the English Civil War. I liked this one.

Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express: I first read this when I was 12 and somehow forgot just how stupid the plot is.

Currently reading: Matthew Reilly's The Tournament, which takes a great premise--a murder at a chess tournament in 16th century Constantinople--and makes it idiotic by casting the future Elizabeth I in the Watson role and loading it with more far-fetched historical cameos than an episode of Young Indiana Jones. (In the part I just read, Elizabeth had lunch with Michelangelo and Ignatius of Loyola, then got hit on by a teenaged Ivan the Terrible.) I'd suggest skipping this one.

Next up is an annual post-semester tradition of mine: re-reading an old favorite from my younger days, while drinking a lot of Belgian Christmas beer. This year's pick is Carl Deuker's On The Devil's Court--it's Dr. Faustus, but with high school basketball, and if memory serves, it rules.

So, what have you guys been reading?

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