I've managed to get through 3 already and am onto my 4th!
I've pretty much enjoyed them all... Except for the book I'm currently reading, and don't flame me for this one, Twilight. I read New Moon and thoroughly enjoyed it - it grabbed me at the beginning and I couldn't put it down! I've watched the movie of Twilight, and enjoyed that too. But, the book is tedious. I'm struggling to read the badly written prose. Still, I am guessing, since it was Stephenie Meyer's first book, she could only have improved, especially since New Moon was so good! It hasn't put me off reading the other two books in the series because I really want to know what's going to happen to this multi-layered love story.
The first three books:
The Day After Tomorrow Allan Folsom
Touted as a blockbuster, this assured debut thriller delivers in full--and then some. A young American doctor haunted by his father's murder stumbles into a chilling international conspiracy and crosses paths with, among others, a weary L.A. cop investigating a series of surgically precise decapitations, a naive physical therapist and a hypercompetent German assassin. Dr. Paul Osborn, visiting Paris, recognizes the man whom he witnessed stab his father on a Boston street in 1966. Determined to learn the reason for his father's unsolved death and take revenge, Osborn hatches a plan that unexpectedly leads to the gruesome execution of a hired PI and to other killings. Clearly some serious powers are involved. Soon Osborn, aided by Vera Monneray, a Paris medical student, is hiding out from Paris police, Interpol and the L.A. cop who has been summoned to Paris. Meanwhile, Joanna Marsh accompanies Elton Lybarger, a Swiss national whom she has helped recover from a stroke in a posh New Mexico sanatorium, back to Zurich, where he is greeted rapturously by high-ranking German business leaders. As an extensive Nazi resurgence plot emerges, Folsom adds extra flashes--Joanna in a drug-induced sex marathon, a massive train wreck, Vera's other affair with a very important French leader--to heighten the suspense on these rapidly turning pages. A huge explosion in secret chambers under the streets of Berlin sends Osborn on a final chase through Europe and up into the Alps, where the high-tech hopes of an earlier generation are finally exposed.
Monster Island: A Zombie Novel David Wellignton
In Wellington's energetic horror debut, the first of a promised trilogy, Manhattan has become Monster Island after a plague has turned all its denizens into shambling, rotting animated corpses, except for a couple who have kept their intelligence and also acquired psychic powers. When an expedition from Africa arrives, composed of teenage girl-soldiers and a former U.N. weapons inspector, the zombie masters mobilize their forces to kill or eat the living humans. Page by page, the story is inventive and exciting as Wellington exploits his familiarity with New York's nooks and crannies as settings for flesh-chomping battles and narrow escapes. As a whole, though, the book satisfies less since the author selectively forgets anything about the situation or the characters that would inhibit further gross-out episodes. Still, the novel offers some provocative thoughts about the purpose of life and death underlaid with some ultra-dark humor.
Valley of the Dolls Jacqueline Susann
Sex and drugs and shlock and more--Jacqueline Susann's addictively entertaining trash classic about three showbiz girls clawing their way to the top and hitting bottom in New York City has it all. Though it's inspired by Susann's experience as a mid-century Broadway starlet who came heartbreakingly close to making it, but did not, and despite its reputation as THE roman á clef of the go-go 1960s, the novel turned out to be weirdly predictive of 1990s post-punk, post-feminist, post "riot grrrl" culture. Jackie Susann may not be a writer for the ages, but--alas!--she's still a writer for our times.
The first three books:
The Day After Tomorrow Allan Folsom
Touted as a blockbuster, this assured debut thriller delivers in full--and then some. A young American doctor haunted by his father's murder stumbles into a chilling international conspiracy and crosses paths with, among others, a weary L.A. cop investigating a series of surgically precise decapitations, a naive physical therapist and a hypercompetent German assassin. Dr. Paul Osborn, visiting Paris, recognizes the man whom he witnessed stab his father on a Boston street in 1966. Determined to learn the reason for his father's unsolved death and take revenge, Osborn hatches a plan that unexpectedly leads to the gruesome execution of a hired PI and to other killings. Clearly some serious powers are involved. Soon Osborn, aided by Vera Monneray, a Paris medical student, is hiding out from Paris police, Interpol and the L.A. cop who has been summoned to Paris. Meanwhile, Joanna Marsh accompanies Elton Lybarger, a Swiss national whom she has helped recover from a stroke in a posh New Mexico sanatorium, back to Zurich, where he is greeted rapturously by high-ranking German business leaders. As an extensive Nazi resurgence plot emerges, Folsom adds extra flashes--Joanna in a drug-induced sex marathon, a massive train wreck, Vera's other affair with a very important French leader--to heighten the suspense on these rapidly turning pages. A huge explosion in secret chambers under the streets of Berlin sends Osborn on a final chase through Europe and up into the Alps, where the high-tech hopes of an earlier generation are finally exposed.
Monster Island: A Zombie Novel David Wellignton
In Wellington's energetic horror debut, the first of a promised trilogy, Manhattan has become Monster Island after a plague has turned all its denizens into shambling, rotting animated corpses, except for a couple who have kept their intelligence and also acquired psychic powers. When an expedition from Africa arrives, composed of teenage girl-soldiers and a former U.N. weapons inspector, the zombie masters mobilize their forces to kill or eat the living humans. Page by page, the story is inventive and exciting as Wellington exploits his familiarity with New York's nooks and crannies as settings for flesh-chomping battles and narrow escapes. As a whole, though, the book satisfies less since the author selectively forgets anything about the situation or the characters that would inhibit further gross-out episodes. Still, the novel offers some provocative thoughts about the purpose of life and death underlaid with some ultra-dark humor.
Valley of the Dolls Jacqueline Susann
Sex and drugs and shlock and more--Jacqueline Susann's addictively entertaining trash classic about three showbiz girls clawing their way to the top and hitting bottom in New York City has it all. Though it's inspired by Susann's experience as a mid-century Broadway starlet who came heartbreakingly close to making it, but did not, and despite its reputation as THE roman á clef of the go-go 1960s, the novel turned out to be weirdly predictive of 1990s post-punk, post-feminist, post "riot grrrl" culture. Jackie Susann may not be a writer for the ages, but--alas!--she's still a writer for our times.
3 comments:
Try reading The Shack! Its wonderful! marion
Hi! Glad you are getting in some reading time. I am reading "Wicked" for a different spin on the Wizard of Oz story. It is fascinating.
On another note, I wonder if you could give me some more info on One World - One Heart: I am planning on joining in too. It is a great idea to increase connectedness (is that a word??)
I went to the site, but couldn't get the code to display as the logo on my blog. Help!
Happy New Year!
~ Gabriela ~
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