Books finished in August 2011
Aug. 30th, 2011 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vivdunstanNearly the end of another month, and I'm not going to have finished another book by tomorrow night, so will do my recap of books finished tonight instead.
Firstly I finished The Obverse Book of Ghosts. I started reading this quite a long time ago, but put it on hold while I read others. But recently I picked it up again and finished it. It's a collection of short stories about ghosts, generally written by people associated in some way or another with Doctor Who, often Doctor Who in written form. The standard was generally high, and I'd be interested in reading another similar anthology from these publishers. And some of the stories were extremely unsettling indeed.
Next up was Return of the Bunny Suicides by Andy Riley. I wanted to enjoy this more. When it was very funny it was very very funny indeed. But too often it missed the mark, so overall I was disappointed. It's also very very sick. You have to have a black sense of humour to like it. But I was amused.
My next book was The Dracula Papers, Book I: The Scholar's Tale by Reggie Oliver. I was gobsmacked by this book. I did not expect to like it so much, but was stunned by the quality of the writing and the imagination of the writer. It's a new origins tale for Dracula, the first of four planned parts, and is set in the 16th century. And, basically, just read it. I'm going to nominate it for a Hugo award next year, I think it's that good. And now I want to read the sequels!
And then I read The Singing Sands by Josephine Tey. This featured her detective Alan Grant, and was largely set in Scotland. I wanted to enjoy it more, and expected to, but I found it frequently laboured and padded in parts, and the internal debates of the central character were annoying. I'll definitely read more books featuring this character (I have previously read The Daughter of Time - a classic), but this was not as enjoyable as it should have been.
Most of the above books were read on my Kindle. Next up I'm going to try a print book, but am unsure how I'll get on. I went to the Edinburgh Book Festival and saw Neil Gaiman in conversation with Audrey Niffenegger. And that reminded me that I want to read The TIme Traveller's Wife. But it's not available as an ebook. I've got a large print edition from my local library, but there's still an awful lot of text on the page to concentrate on, which is my main problem. So not optimistic, but will try.
Firstly I finished The Obverse Book of Ghosts. I started reading this quite a long time ago, but put it on hold while I read others. But recently I picked it up again and finished it. It's a collection of short stories about ghosts, generally written by people associated in some way or another with Doctor Who, often Doctor Who in written form. The standard was generally high, and I'd be interested in reading another similar anthology from these publishers. And some of the stories were extremely unsettling indeed.
Next up was Return of the Bunny Suicides by Andy Riley. I wanted to enjoy this more. When it was very funny it was very very funny indeed. But too often it missed the mark, so overall I was disappointed. It's also very very sick. You have to have a black sense of humour to like it. But I was amused.
My next book was The Dracula Papers, Book I: The Scholar's Tale by Reggie Oliver. I was gobsmacked by this book. I did not expect to like it so much, but was stunned by the quality of the writing and the imagination of the writer. It's a new origins tale for Dracula, the first of four planned parts, and is set in the 16th century. And, basically, just read it. I'm going to nominate it for a Hugo award next year, I think it's that good. And now I want to read the sequels!
And then I read The Singing Sands by Josephine Tey. This featured her detective Alan Grant, and was largely set in Scotland. I wanted to enjoy it more, and expected to, but I found it frequently laboured and padded in parts, and the internal debates of the central character were annoying. I'll definitely read more books featuring this character (I have previously read The Daughter of Time - a classic), but this was not as enjoyable as it should have been.
Most of the above books were read on my Kindle. Next up I'm going to try a print book, but am unsure how I'll get on. I went to the Edinburgh Book Festival and saw Neil Gaiman in conversation with Audrey Niffenegger. And that reminded me that I want to read The TIme Traveller's Wife. But it's not available as an ebook. I've got a large print edition from my local library, but there's still an awful lot of text on the page to concentrate on, which is my main problem. So not optimistic, but will try.