Holiday Reading
I love me some reading, that’s never been a secret. But between working a full-time job teaching, and then trying to write full-time in the hours I find spare, my reading has been lacking in the vigour it once possessed. That all changed when I traveled for three weeks. I surprised myself at how much time I found to read on my trip, but the opportunities were always there. And boy did I take advantage of them. I read four books in three weeks and they were all cracking books. This is who they were, and how they went down.
The Vengeful Virgin - Gil Brewer
This old school pulp comes courtesy of Hard Case Crime. It’s short, to the point and packs some serious punches that I didn’t see coming. There were some harsh scenes and some quick plot movements that I didn’t expect to happen, but I loved that they did. I couldn’t get enough of this book, and have subsequently raced out to get another Brewer book, which I’ll mention later, but for now, have fun tasting this little paragraph of his that completely enraptured me.
Doom. You recognise doom easily. It’s a feeling and a taste, and it’s black, and it’s very heavy. It comes down over your head, and wraps tentacles around you, and sinks long dirty fingernails into your heart. It has a stink like burning garbage. Doom.
Yeah, you wanna race out now and get it, don’t you?
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Seth Grahame-Smith, with an assist from Jane Austen
I’ve mentioned this already, and I loved it. Zombies chewing on annoying British people. I can only ask, when’s the movie coming?
Let The Right One In - John Ajvide Lindqvist
Holy crap! Best book of the holiday! I had heard the hype, but I wish someone had pulled me aside and said, “Ryan, ignore the hype, it’s so much better than all that.” This book is phenomenal. It warrants all of the, many, reviews that tout it as being on par with the King, Stephen King. It’s like reading King when he was on his game back in the late-70’s. It’s golddust sprinkled on your breakfast cereal. It’s what you’ve been looking for in a horror novel ever since King started knocking out dire stuff like Dreamcatcher. It is the book you will go out and track down now to revel in its superiority.
Clans of the Alphane Moon - PKD
This is one of the best PKD’s I’ve read in a long time. I would rate this in my personal choice of his top three works, with A Scanner Darkly and A Maze of Death. I thought it was really well put together and simply completely readable. His psychological metaphor, made explicit, is well constructed and his characters all bring something different to the table, or to the moon. This was a great book to bring me home on.
It was a treat getting to read so much, but now it feels that I am back to the real world and I won’t be chewing down any books at that rate for another long time.
I wonder, can you take books on your honeymoon?
Posted on June 21st, 2009 by ryan
Filed under: books
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