Saturday, February 10, 2007
So I was trolling around Mr. King’s site a few weeks ago and found an entry where he raves about an American author, Meg Gardiner, whose books are awesome but are published in the UK only, not the US. King laments this loss to the US readers, who can only get her books if they order them in. King compared her to Lee Child and Michael Connelly. As soon as you compare someone to Child, you intrigue me and you better be prepared for a fight.
Luckily I am Canadian, and our bookstores carry a lot of UK books in stock. I was able to get 3 of her books in store, ordered the first one in and then - horror of horrors, the second book seemed unavailable (within a reasonable amount of time). I am a purist, and if there is a series of books I absolutely must read them in order or I feel I am doing the author and characters a disservice. I found a slightly used copy of the second book on eBay, and voilà, I was now armed and ready to read.
While for me, Gardiner is certainly no Lee Child/Jack Reacher, her first Evan Delaney book, China Lake, is quite good and the main characters are certainly ones to enjoy another adventure with. I think King’s impassioned review of this book in this week’s Entertainment Weekly, is a bit hyperbolic though. I mean, the book did not change my life or stop my world from turning. However, I am now a little more than halfway through the second book, Mission Canyon, and am enjoying it even more than the first. I think the story is more controlled and closer to the main characters.
Aside from his note on his website, King has now used his back-page column in this week’s Entertainment Weekly as a plea to readers to go out and demand access to Gardiner’s books. King is a smart one, his pleas have worked before, getting an audio book published for a much turned down author, and getting a CD made for a much turned down band. Let’s hope his plea works, and soon the American people can walk into one of their mega bookstores and pick Gardiner’s books off the shelf (well, the literate ones anyway).
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Fun movie.
My exclamation to my husband in the parking lot after the film:
“Those 3 crazy fuckers all covered in blood, man they were so cool, they were like something right out of a Richard Laymon book!” The best thing is I know I am the only girl on the planet who would ever exclaim such a thing.
Oh yeah, and Ryan Reynolds was really good, and super cute.
If you don’t like guns or crazy guys covered in blood don’t bother. And don’t tell me it’s too violent. It’s just make-believe kiddies.
Picked this up cause I had nothing to read while waiting for Meg Gardiner’s books to arrive. It’s a cute little book, I may even pick up the sequel. Sansom writes in a similar vein to Magnus Mills, who is a favourite of mine. However, Mills is far superior, try All Quiet on the Orient Express or The Restraint of Beasts instead.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Friday Night Lights, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Brothers & Sisters, 30 Rock, Veronica Mars. All really good shows.
I don’t know why I am addicted to Friday Night Lights, but I am.
But see, since I live in Canada it does not matter what I watch or what I think. We don’t count when it comes to the stupid ratings, regardless of the fact that there are almost 40 million of us and lots of shows are actually filmed here.
So I picked this up under duress, as my choices were limited and I had nothing to read while I await the delivery of Meg Gardiner’s books.
I hate, hate, hate buying books with covers like this, particularly since most of my reading is done in public. I must say, however, that if the North American version had the same cover as the UK version, I certainly would not have purchased it at all.
I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed this book. Publisher’s Weekly said, “fans of Anita Blake and Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse vampire series will be rewarded” and I agree completely. The publisher is releasing the other 3 in the series one a month for the next 3 months, which means at least I’ll have something to read.
So it’s not a bad book.
The writing is okay, but it’s also nothing to write home about.
Entertainment Weekly’s review of it is a certainly over the top:
"You know you're holding a first-rate thriller when you take it with you in the car to read at stoplights."
- Entertainment Weekly. Grade: A. (Jennifer Reese)
First of all, EW, if your need to read is that intense might I suggest that you take an alternate form of transportation from place to place? Secondly, if this book makes you want to read it a stoplights, I fear what would happen if you read something that was actually thrilling, or in fact, in any way exciting. Because this book is neither of those things. The guy from the LA Times must have been reading a different book than me, because, “exciting and out of the ordinary... full of funny, touching and alarming surprises...” is pretty much the opposite of how I would describe this book.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
I usually enjoy Iles’ books and this one does start fast and hard and for the first few hundred pages you don’t want to put it down. Somehow Iles gets away from himself and decides to jump the shark by finding a highly improbable way of skipping over the whole trial - not that I wanted to read a couple hundred pages of a trial, but the way the trial happens without the reader experiencing it is more than slightly ridiculous. A great beginning, but in the long run Iles’ story takes the reader to a pretty trite ending.
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