Great! My second entry in, and I’ve already missed a deadline on a new blog feature.
Since I didn’t get around to checking my Sunday edition of the BookBub discounted books for the day, I’ll be discussing a bit about what I’m reading. On a bit of a small vacation last week, I managed to read a goodish chunk of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, which I’m pretty impressed with. I like the simple, basic prose combined with the more elegiac interludes and dream sequences. There’s a lot of striking imagery in those spots of the novel, while the rest is focused on crisp momentum and progression, as well as character development in some small doses.
I’ve also been listening to The Rooster Bar by John Grisham. It’s my first Grisham novel since… oh hell, 2000 or so, and it’s a surprisingly good one. I generally tend to prefer his work to many of his peers – he doesn’t generally talk down to readers, and weaves the courtroom specifics in a pretty entertaining manner. I did get a little burned out on his samey characters, but Rooster Bar so far has introduced some likable, fascinating characters that seem pretty interesting so far.
I’ve also been catching up on John Sandford’s Prey novels, and I’m up to Mortal Prey (roughly halfway through the series). I keep waiting to get burned out on them, but truthfully, I’m not. They’re all generally perfectly entertaining novels, leaning more on the side of entertainment than procedure. I’ve mentioned before my own style is influenced in a lot of ways by his – I love his dialogue – nut purely from a readerly perspective, his earliest novels still hold up.
All right, sorry for the brevity of this post, but I’m in a writing blitz at the moment, a rarity after a recent hospital stay. Thanks for reading!
The Rankin Flats Observer 