Apparently, I don't read at home; which may be because I'll stay up way too late reading. But last week I was on vacation, and had time to read a ton, which was kind of nice. It may have helped that my cell reception was markedly intermittent, which prevented me from reading too much Twitter.
Despite having read about 98% of Stephen King's work (and I say 98% because I know there's two new ones in the last year or so) I hadn't read any from his sons. Joe Hill's
Strange Weather was pretty good, though. Dan Abnett has been mentioned on the blog more than a few times, and
Everybody Wants to Rule the World has a ton of villains all in the middle of their own things, splitting the Avengers up for most of the book: a fun read. I've read more than a bit of Max Allan Collins; although I think he also has a
ton of books:
Quarry was enjoyable, although I particularly liked his description at the end, that he would have Quarry do something terrible at the start of the book, to give the reader a chance to bail out, then have him do something else terrible maybe three-quarters in to remind the reader who they're pulling for there.
A Man Called Ove isn't my usual fare; my mom had it handy: an aging Swedish man just wants to kill himself in peace, but gets sucked into the lives of his neighbors. Heartwarming, even for someone mildly dead inside like me!
Solo was a decent James Bond story, set mostly in Africa, 1969; a change from most Bond stories. The Iron Man novel
Femme Fatales was a bit of an update of classic S.H.I.E.L.D. continuity, and features both the Viper and Madame Masque: Tony sleeps with one of them, and you just guessed the wrong one.
Despite a lengthy career at NASA and a brief one in the NFL, Leland Melvin is probably best known for his astronaut photo with his dogs, which is also the cover of his autobiography. Lastly, I read
the Prisoner before, which felt like less an adaptation of the classic show than its own thing. There's also a Shakespeare play performed as a distraction towards the end, that I kind of need to read the play as well. Some later vacation, I suppose: I've already set aside four more books for my next one...
2 comments:
Damn dude, you certainly do get your ead on. I read too, but it's mostly online articles as opposed to real books. I guess I should work on that. I can't even tell you the last real book I read, maybe since college, and even then I don't think I didn't read anything other than a textbook for homework.
Anyhoo I recognize Collins' name from his brief run on Batman. He wrote a bunch of stuff for DC in the 80's and early 90's before moving on from comics to write books, with the odd exception here or there. I mistakenly thought he wrote the 90's Peter Cannon Thunderbolt DC series, but that was MIKE Collins, not MAX. Simple mistake I guess, ha ha.
Strange Weather was pretty good. I like Joe Hill. I read Full Throttle earlier this year which was another very solid anthology. I'm actually chronologically making my way through the Stephen King books that I've never read. I just finished Christine a couple of weeks ago and I just started Thinner a day or two ago.) Strange Weather really reminded me of Different Seasons (one of King's best), and I'm sure the thematic resemblance is intentional.
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