Kingdom of Knuffel

So it was great mind-candy! Very funny. I'm not sure all the things I found funny were *supposed* to be funny, but I still laughed...


Anyhow, finished that one and then "Wild Justice", by Kelly Armstrong. Which made me wonder how we ended up with so many books being published with hitmen/assassin protagonists that it's almost become its own genre. It makes me a little bit worried about current society! It was still an interesting book, and I was caught up in it, and enjoyed it, but... it's like the base assumption anymore is that it's not possible to get true justice legally. That is not a good place to be.

Need a new book, now...

Now I'm in the middle of Ross MacDonald's "The Moving Target", one of the Lew Archer books.

Have to admit, it's hard going to finish it; the first person hard-boiled detective stuff is not my gig unless something else about the book compensates, and I'm not particularly attached to any of the characters (any. At all. Not even the briefest of cameos), there's no snappy or clever dialogue, the humor doesn't match mine, the plot so far has failed to intrigue me, I'm not feeling any sense of urgency or tension, the world is our own and there's no interesting bits of flavor or history to hook me... I'm bored! I grant you, the grammar/vocabulary is perfectly decent and well-crafted, but it's not *interesting* or *poetic* so it's just not enough.

I'd put it down but I don't know what I want to read instead, so I'm slogging through anyhow.

I'm finally reading Game of Thrones and I'm nearly finished with the first.
I find craving roasted meat and vegetables bathed in butter, because that's pretty much all Martin talks about, as far as I'm concerned. It makes me hunnnggrrryyyyyyy

Okay, this isn't really so much of a "read right through it" book, but today in the mail my order came, and I now have the book, "How to Draw Celtic Knotwork: A Practical Handbook" and I've been having so much fun working through it. I was completely winging it before and things were kind of a mess and this has just been so helpful and even if I'm utterly ignoring the original style guidelines, it's just been wonderful to have this to play with!

I'd recommend it, if anyone else is interested in drawing or design.

i'm reading a chris wooding book called silver.

it's about this remote boarding school who is basically quarantined due to a mysterious virus that turns its victims into grotesque metal monsters who then target and attack the healthy students, which spreads it further. as the monsters grow in number and literal size, they also grow much more intelligent, eventually organizing into large groups and coordinating large-scale attacks.

it's got interesting horror elements even though it's really short, and i believe it's also a series.

The library just sent me a message that "The Clockwork Crown" was ready for me to pick up to read...
I want to go by and get it so badly, but I need to do other things this weekend and it's a three-hour trip!

Maybe on Monday.

I just read a translation, I don't know what it is in the original but in English it is called "The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared", by Jonas Jonasson.

I laughed very hard at parts and winced at others, and enjoyed it a lot! Has anyone else here read it?

(The Clockwork Crown was interesting, but not so good that I will find a copy to keep. I think I will keep track of the author, though, because I have a feeling that a few books down the line, they will be so good that I will want to own them...)

Right now I'm reading The 100 series. I started watching the show and I thought that I'd give the books a try. They're pretty good. Though I might actually like the show more. So unusual.

Now I've picked up something called "The Hum and the Shiver" by Alex Bledsoe.

Not sure what the book is about yet, entirely. Not really. But I am very much enjoying his turns of phrase!
So far it's an army vet coming home after a nasty injury and some kind of action everyone tells her was very heroic -she doesn't remember it at all, though. And the home she comes back to is an insular, isolated, and possibly occult home.... which appears to be having its own trouble. Her father has this super dry sense of humor, her little brother is boundlessly enthusiastic, her mother is quietly supporting all of them, and the PHRASING the author uses has me in stitches! I don't get it, the set-up isn't actually that funny, at all, really. But I'm giggling at it all anyhow...
I don't even know what the plot is yet.
I don't even know if this army vet is the actual main character.

And yet I'm quietly laughing here.


So... I guess I'm enjoying it? So far? But I can't really describe the book!