Reading Books 2010

1. Dearly Devoted Dexter *****

This one was great, the best of the series so far. Deliciously dark, morbid humour.

2. Dexter in the Dark ***

A pretty big departure from the previous novels. Gets into some "supernatural" stuff that really doesn't work that well. Still pretty entertaining, though.

3. Dexter by Design ***

Gets back to the original tone of the series, and yet doesn't quite hit the mark. It's just not as funny or engrossing as the second novel.

4. Mickey Spillane: I, The Jury *

Even if you can ignore the racism, misogyny, and juvenile wish fulfillment that this novel is so full of, it's still not a very good novel. It reads like something drummed up by a twelve year old boy with poor grades and raging hormones. Sorry, I just don't see the appeal of this novel.

5. A Place of Execution *****

Excellent book! It did seem slow paced at times and the main story seemed to end at the book's halfway point, but from there it builds up to a pretty terrific ending!

6. The Stars My Destination ****

An entertaining novel, very much like Phillip K. Dick's stuff. It's funny how they have instant teleportation and space travel, but tattoo removal? Impossible, I tell you! I've read "The Demolished Man" as well, another great story from the same author.

7. Deja Dead ****

The TV show Bones is based of this book series and this is the first book of that series. The book is nothing like the TV show, thankfully, as the TV show is pretty horrible in a lot of ways. It's set in Montreal and seems very genuine and authentic - the author lives and works there and Carolina, so she has good firsthand knowledge of the city. While it's a pretty good book, especially for a first novel, it also has some glaring, annoying flaws - the characters aren't very sympathetic, the men in the book are almost always ugly, repugnant, filthy pigs [which becomes a bit tiresome after awhile] and the ending has a very long conversation with two characters [although it's mostly one character talking] where they tie up every loose end leftover from the story's climax. Ending the book like that really exposes how contrived much of the plot was and is a rather contrived way in itself to tie up all those messy loose ends. Despite that, I still liked the book, it had a good "Silence of the Lambs" vibe to it.

8. Point Blank ****
Having seen both movies based on this book [1967's Point Blank with Lee Marvin and 1999's Payback with Mel Gibson], I thought I'd check the book out and see how it compares. Pretty good book, not terribly well written as such, but the Parker character is quite the badass and it's fun reading about his exploits. He's definitely one of the more amoral anti-heroes I've ever come across.

9. The Scar ***
This was a brilliantly written book, very imaginative if a tad verbose. Unfortunately, it has a couple of glaring problems. One is a very unsympathetic main character, the same problem I had with Perdido Street Station. I started off not liking Bellis Coldwine from the very beginning and by the end of the novel, I hated her. Self-absorbed, judgmental, bitch. Also, the end was a total dud. Everything leading up to the end was pretty great, but then... nothing. Just a totally useless, meaningless ending. The novel also starts off very slowly, it took awhile to get into. So close to being great, but in the end, it left a bad taste in my mouth.

10. Hominids **
The Neanderthal world presented in this book was pretty cool, but other than that, this book was disappointing.

11. Broken Angels ***
This was a pretty fun novel. Not terribly deep, but the Takeshi Kovacs character was a hoot, a badass with a wicked sense of humour.

12. Frankenstein

Posted by Fungii at January 16, 2010 08:31 PM |