Juan Gabriel Vasquez, The Sound of Things Falling

Juan Gabriel Vásquez, The Sound of Things Falling. Translated by Anne McLean. A story about about fear, the aftershock of random violence, and  the detachment of a young law professor in Bogotá.

Ian Pears, Stone's Fall

Ian Pears, Stone's Fall. Great fun. I actually listened to this one rather than read it and the cast of readers (many who read the Game of Thrones books) made the structure of different narrators of different facets more interesting. Not as fabulous as The Evidence of the Fingerpost, (or at least the setting wasn't as enthralling to me - I prefer natural philosophy to the origins of modern financial markets), but another intricately detailed period mystery that I was reluctant to leave.

Start this up again, beginning to forget both authors and titles and am useless in conversation.

Well, some things I have read and enjoyed (or not) over the last few months:
Jonathan Dee, A Thousand Pardons; Jami Attenburg, The Middlesteins; Emma Donogue, Astray; George Saunders, Tenth of December; Julia Stuart, The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise [yuck, sentimental and awkward, although occasionally funny]; Terry Pratchett, Unseen Acedemicals, Going Postal, and Making Money [these last two very good]; Macbeth; Michael Crumney, Galore; Twelfth Night; Dorothy Parker, Complete Stories [read these ONE at a time if you don't want to drown yourself in your morning coffee]; Charlotte Bronte, Wuthering Heights [I liked this more than I did when I was twelve, although I still think every character should have been drowned at birth]; All of the Adventure Time comics;  David Rakoff, Love,Dishonour, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish; Allie Brosh, Hyperbole and a Half; China Meiville, Railsea [not my favorite Meiville]; All of Dorothy Sayers Lord Peter books [necessary therapy]; DFW, Oblivion; Robert Charles Wilson, Spin; Haruki Murakami, After Dark and IQ84; Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo [more hilarious than I remembered]; Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch; Nick Harkaway, The Gone Away World [enjoyed very much, no one agrees with me, dammit].

Rilla Askew, The Mercy Seat

Rilla Askew, The Mercy Seat. Two related families migrate to the Oklahoma frontier in grinding poverty amidst the family drama and tragedy that they had been fleeing. The environment is so alive that you can taste the dust and smell the mules, but the whole spirit and story didn't grab me.

Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island. Bryson can be engaging and chatty but this book was like being trapped on a greyhound bus with a dull and cantankerous old codger who will not shut up about how the world was so much more interesting and difficult in his youth and how people are so boring to talk to on buses nowadays.

Neal Stephenson, Reamde

Neal Stephenson, Reamde. Just too much fun. And made me want to play Skyrim or something. It reminded me of Cryptonomicon in its pace and plot and I enjoyed it so much I just re-read Snow Crash.

Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Certainly precious, and not as hilarious as Everthing is Illuminated. But you know, sentimental is ok if it's convincing and I did love Oskar. I am a sucker for precocious children. I loved his grandmother. I loved the friends he made. I like the letters and the narration - I wish his mother had had a voice. Somehow though, I felt emotionally manipulated and I don't think Foer lives up to his promise.

E. B. White, One Man's Meat

E. B. White, One Man's Meat. I really love E. B. White and he is always a pleasure to read. However, this collection of essays written for serial publication in Harper's from his refuge on a saltwater farm was mildly self-indulgent. That said, I am the child of parents who removed themselves to a hobby farm and raised chickens (while continuing to support the family with a white collar job), and this might be why I kept rolling my eyes.

T.C. Boyle, World's End

T.C. Boyle, World's End. One of those multi-generational stories with recurring characters and layered events. Set in New York state and stretching from Dutch colonialists and their vassals to their descendants in the 1960s. Many funny moments and bits of fabulous description but disappointing. At times the twisting of the plot interfered with the parts of the story that could have been more satisfying. I love Boyle's wordplay but not his people.

Aimee Bender, An Invisible Sign of My Own

Aimee Bender, An Invisible Sign of My Own. A fun, whimsical story of young Mona Gray, lover of numbers and of knocking on wood.

John Mortimer, Paradise Postponed

John Mortimer, Paradise Postponed. An hilarious story of an eccentric vicar and his family in the postwar years.

Jonathan Dee, The Privileges

Jonathan Dee, The Privileges. Ew. What crap people. I though at first it was going to be a witty social comedy and then I thought it would be a financial thriller, but it fell flat on all fronts.

Patti Smith, Just Kids

Patti Smith, Just Kids. I found the writing style exasperatingly earnest, but I felt affection for Patti and enjoyed her story of friendship and adventure with Robert Mappelthorpe. The photographs were lovely.

Lan Cao, Monkey Bridge

Lan Cao, Monkey Bridge. A pretty story of Vietnamese-American immigrants and the aftermath of the Vietnam war in their lives here. It's a traditional format: a daughter recounts her experience in America as an immigrant and her complex relationship with her mother and her gradual understanding of her own history through that of her mother unfolds.

Judith Schalansky, Atlas of Remote Islands

Judith Schalansky, Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On and Never Will. Since being cabin-boy on an Antarctic expedition is not in my future, this book was a good substitute for exploring barren, desolate, and weird landmasses without the risk of scurvy or mutiny. In short, a perfect atlas for those of us afflicted with severe motion sickness who also possess an unrequited love for seagoing exploration.

Tim Dorsey, Nuclear Jellyfish

Tim Dorsey, Nuclear Jellyfish. The adventures of the insane and hyperkinetic travel writer/hotel vigilante/florida arcana enthusiast Serge A. Storms are wild, crass, and funny. However they're also formulaic and a little stale - unforgivable for gonzo slapstick.

Augusten Burroughs, Magical Thinking

Augusten Burroughs, Magical Thinking. Well, he seems to have become a bit happy and metaphorically plump, but he's still delightfully narcissistic.

Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge. Once again, a book about parents and children, but this one hangs together in a way that Amy and Isabelle didn't. Perhaps because Olive carries and fills the book by force of character alone. A story of love and kindness and anger; the edge between despair and managing to muddle along each day.

Abraham Verghese, My Own Country

Abraham Verghese, My Own Country. Verghese tells his own story of being an infectious disease doctor in the 1980's in rural Tennessee. A moving personal history of the AIDs epidemic in America: sometimes a little clunky and in need of editing, other times dated in language and perspective, still a riveting story and one we need to remember.

Carl Zimmer, A Planet of Viruses

Carl Zimmer, A Planet of Viruses. I expected a bit more from this primer on viruses.