Brimstone, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

See below, once again.

Still Life with Crows, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

See post below.

Reliquary, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

You can pretty much scroll down and look at the entry for any of the books by these guys. Still fun to read, despite overflowing with ridiculousness.

Remainder, by Tom McCarthy

This is a quiet book, but fascinating. I've never read a book with a premise quite like it. The narrator receives a huge settlement for an accident in which something fell from the sky and gave him serious amnesia. Don't worry, it's not one of those amnesiac-gets-life-back thrillers. It follows him trying to become a functional person again, until he has a vision and decides to use his newfound wealth to recreate it, down to buying and rebuilding an entire apartment building, and hiring actors to live in it and re-enact moments he remembers (or at least has visions of). It's surreal...he uses a facilitator--someone he hires to make the things he imagines happen, down to incredibly minute and mundane details. It's a if he is sidetracked from his attempts to return to normalcy, and uses the re-enactments to keep real life at a distance. A really neat book, and written in lovely, spare prose.

The Good German, by Joseph Kanon

I picked this one up because of the movie, which we haven't seen. Based on what we've heard, we may not bother, though now that I've read this unbelievably convoluted book, I'm dying to know how they tried to simplify it into a 2-hour story.

I liked this WWII-aftermath story, mostly, and I thought it was a good choice to make the protagonist a reporter rather than a soldier...a little less cliched, and easier to relate to for most readers, I figure. I'm a sucker for WWII stories, anyway, and this one would have been really good except for the weird, squeeze-everything-in, tie-every-character-back-in ending. I could tell what was happening, so I more or less skimmed the last 40 pages or so to confirm.

Still worth reading, though. Really interesting war details and nicely drawn characters.

The Uses of Enchantment, by Heidi Julavits

A great title, but I don't know about this one. I kept thinking, this is going to get good, and it did that jumping back and forth between the present and the past, but...it was really boring. It never did get good, and the end was unsatisfying, and felt forced.

Whiffleball In The Park

Friday afternoon Chris and I loaded up beer, chairs, and whiffleball equipment (we have bases and everything!) and headed over to Griffith Park, where we passed a lovely afternoon and evening playing hard-core, serious, whiffleball with some friends. We were basically playing in the shadow of the area of the big fire a few months ago, which was kind of surreal. Green, green, grass under our feet and burnt out trees on the hill above us. Chris and our friend Will gave me a lesson in pitching, which I did respectably at. It's all about the grip and the release, like so many things in life. I never played any of those hand-eye coordination sports, so this is all new to me, but boy is it fun! And hard work. I pitched one inning and sweated like a racehorse.

We followed up with dinner at Palermo's, a cute Italian place in Los Feliz. All in all, a very satisfying start to the weekend, which has continued to be fun. Saw Knocked Up with a friend last night, and it's very funny. Working today.

Relic, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

I think this is the first one in this series of books by then, and is by far the most plausible (at least in relation to the other crazy stories) that I've read by these guys. Spooky, but still pretty darn silly. More of these guys' books await me on the hold shelf at the library.

The Majority Rules, by Eugene Sullivan

Not a good book. Unmotivated, unlikeable characters, a really dense story. Bleh.

The Book of The Dead, by Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston

Utterly implausible, ludicrous stories, ridiculously unmotivated characters that I don't buy at all, and yet I sort of enjoy reading these guys' books. They're so off the wall and conspiracy-laden, they're sort of fun, especially when you need a literary palate cleanser. I'm reading a bunch of these to catch up on the most ridiculous of the ridiculous characters. They're very diverting (which I'm realizing is the word I use when I don't actually think a book is very good, but I still like to read it).

The Prestige, by Christopher Priest

This one was really fun to read. We saw the movie a few weeks ago, and its fascinating how they conflated characters and shifted events. The book is framed with a contemporary setting, which was really cool, but would have made the movie unwieldy, I think, so they were right to excise that. It's a whole bunch of twists inside of twists and kept me highly engaged, and reading at odd times to try to finish as soon as possible. Always a good sign in a book.

Interesting Things I've Seen On The Highway

So, in the last few weeks, I have seen:

A load of rubber gloves scattered all over the highway. Strangely interesting. A man on the side of the road was out of his car, as if to collect them back up, despite typical heavy LA traffic. He looked really sad.

Also, on the exit to our neighborhood someone had lost a load of those tablecloths you see at picnics and Italian restaurants. Red ones and blue ones. It was the prettiest, most festive exit ramp I've ever seen.

Dust, by Martha Grimes

A new Richard Jury book. I love British mysteries, and Grimes' are full of interesting characters, even if the premises seem to be getting a little more out there.

The Vatican Connection, by James Brant

Standard DaVinci Code style thriller. Good diversion.

Shadow of A Doubt, by William Coughlin

Standard legal thriller. A good diversion.

Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood

I haven't read any of her stuff in a while, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I really liked this one. It was that kind of post-apocalyptic, dystopian thing, like Children of Men, and also like Children of Men, it seemed pretty feasible to me that this is where things could go, in the extreme. It starts of with a kind of weird, sci-fi vibe, which did not excite me, but quickly starts to jump back and forth in time, revealing small pieces of story as it goes. Really interesting.

Calling Out, by Rae Meadows

A weird book. One of those books where you cringe all the way through, the characters are so intent on their own destruction and unhappiness. I don't know if I liked it, but it kept me engaged.

Night Class, by Tom Piccirilli

Awful, awful book. Terrible writing, terrible inconsistent characters that I didn't care about at all. I only finished it to see how bad it really was and it was really bad. I don't say that about books very often, but this one really sucked.

The Runner, by Christopher Reich

Classic WWII thriller. Good fun.

Catch-22, by Joseph Heller

I had thought I read this in high school, but it rang no bells. Really fun to read, and full of beautiful, clever language and vivid characters. I believe there was a movie made; I need to see it. Seems like a hard one to adapt.

The Enemy, by Lee Child

Highly diverting reading. Good for insomnia.

Tyrannosaur Canyon, by Douglas Preston

More dumb, completely ridiculous, and yet somehow compelling reading. Sort of like a really bad movie sucks you in sometimes, because even though you recognize the ridiculousness of the characters, premise, and story, you still want to know how it ends.

Stern Men, by Elizabeth Gilbert

I actually read this fictional book by Gilbert before I read the two non-fictions. It's a good story with vivid characters, but the coolest thing about this book for me was that I was certain I knew exactly how it came about. I've always loved books that are framed with really specific information (in this case, lobster-fishing), and I can totally imagine how she came to it. I have the inclination to make stories out of really interesting new bits of information myself, and maybe someday I'll actually write one down. In this one, she takes arcane bits of lobster lore and uses it as the framework for the life of Ruth, and child of a lobsterman, and at its heart it's basically a coming-of-age story.

Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert

This one kept popping up on my radar...aside from the play it's been getting in the press (many reviews, Kathryn Heigl is reading it!) my acupuncturist recommended it, 2 friends have recently read it and declared it amazing, so I got it and 2 others of her books from the library. It is pretty amazing. Her style is so conversational, and even what I consider the fruity spiritual stuff comes off believable. The book is in 3 sections, following her travels to Italy, India, and Indonesia after suffering a nasty divorce and a tragic love affair, not to mention a lifetime of worry and an inability to be still. It will be interesting to people who are seeking their own spiritual path, but also to the general population, which is a testament to her facility with language and storytelling.

The Last American Man, by Elizabeth Gilbert

This book was a fascinating portrait of a really complex man, written from the interesting perspective of a kind of friend. Eustace Conway is sort of a mountain man/naturalist, but has also been intent on sharing his way of life, sometimes fairly aggressively. Gilbert's style of writing is laid back and casual, like friends talking at brunch or over beers, and is extremely easy to read. I read two of her other books along with this one, one fiction and one memoir, and it's cool to see how her voice changes or stays the same as she works in different styles. Some of her themes overlap as well. More on the others to come.

Catching up, losing sleep

Have I really missed an entire month? That's no good. It's 7 am and I've slept for an hour, so don't expect miracles of eloquence here. Terrible insomnia this week, despite everything I've tried, including sleeping pills. You know it's bad when the hard core pharmaceuticals don't even work. I just cancelled my two morning appointments, since while I'm awake, I'm hardly feeling logical. We'll see how it goes.

In my sleeplessness last night I read one entire book (The Last American Man), finished the second half of another (Eat, Pray, Love), and began a third (The Enemy). I think since I'm so far behind I'll just start with where I am, and then go back and catch up on what I read in May, and notable events.