Books, May Through Early July

Sonde ton coeur, Laurie Rivers, Stéphane Bourguignon

C’est, honnètement, son livre que j’ai le moins apprécié. Histoire assez intéressante et quelques beaux moments mais comme avec Un peu de fatigue, il s’éloigne du type de thème et de personnages de ses premiers romans et je trip moins. C’était des histoires de gens qui auraient pu êtres “ma gang” dans mon quartier, ce n’est plus le cas ce qui laisse l’histoire elle même et les sujets des deux derniers m’attirent moins. Je vais probablement acheter le prochain rapidement quand même mais peut-être pas instantennément, j’hésite un peu.

Le roman de l’été, Grégory Lemay

Un lac, un chalet, un chien, quelques jours de répit… Pour Pat, Flave et Jan comme pour nombre d’entre nous, c’est un peu l’image du paradis sur terre. Mais les vacances sont comme des bulles de savon aux couleurs irisées: magnifiques et légères, mais si fragiles! Un miracle précaire, qu’un rien peut faire éclater… Dans ce roman à trois voix, léger et grave, Grégory Lemay met en scène les membres d’une famille recomposée dont la vivacité d’esprit et l’humour plongent leurs racines dans un fond de tristesse. Car le bonheur, même l’été, même mouillé, n’est-il pas un combat de tous les jours? Voici un livre fort et fort agréable, qui est en quelque sorte l’antithèse du bronzage idiot.

Stardust, Neil Gaiman

Stardust is fun, a nice little fantasy story with good rythm and some cool ideas but that’s about it.

Judas Unchained, Peter F. Hamilton

I don’t read much “deep future” books anymore but I’ve impatiently waited for the paperback versions of all of Hamilton’s latest novels. He creates fantastic, detailed, believable, fascinating worlds and then creates complex, multi threaded stories spanning decades or even centuries, planet after planet and tens of fleshed out characters. I’ve recommended his books to a couple of friends who just went “meh” so I know it’s not for everyone but to me those books are awesome trips in universes of a complexity akin to Asimov’s Foundation series. Judas Unchained is highly recommended if you like complex far out trips to the future.

Shaping Things, Bruce Sterling

I’ll probably come back to this one in more detail at some point. For the moment let’s just say that I’m as impressed with the ideas Sterling offers in Shaping Things, with the scope and breath of his thinking as I am disappointed with the design of the book itself. Way too many fonts and bad little visual devices, I’m kind of floored at the contrast between content about design and the look of the book itself. Highly recommended anyway.

SoMa, Kemble Scott

In SoMa Scott takes us through a funny, creepy, sexy, twisted visit of San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood. It rates a bit too high on the gay content for my taste and some passages are at Palahnukian levels of cringyness (think Haunted) but I still had a lot of fun reading it and breezed quickly trough the whole thing so I’d recommend it.

Book of The Dead, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

I love Preston / Child books and Aloysius Pendergast, the main character in Book of the Dead is one of my (the?) favorite characters ever so I’m sure I’ve lost all sight of objectivity when it comes to new Pendergast novels but who said I had to be objective anyway? I blasted through the book over the weekend, thank god I didn’t have work planned because I would have been thorned. Honestly, not the best of the series and the conclusion unfolds a bit weirdly but as usual it’s a very detailed world I love visiting for a few hours and it’s a bit like dinner with friends, you don’t always come up with new subjects for discussion and you might even repeat yourselves but it’s fun to catch up and spend time with them. If you do pick up one of their books, make sure to Wikipedia names, weapons, techniques, books, music, artists, etc. that the characters mention, they all exist and reading up on them makes for an interesting add on to the book, fleshing out the characters’ tastes and idiosinchrasies even more.

Total

Keeping in mind the one book a week target, that brings me to 22 for the year, at the closing of week 27. I have 3 books that I’ve started and paused and another I started today so I could easily catch up as soon as I take a week off work.

5 Comments

Stéphane Z. July 10, 2007

Bordel, comment tu trouves le moyen, le temps et le courage de lire autant… ça me dépasse…

Patrick July 10, 2007

Le courage ça prend rien, j’aime ça. Le temps ben ça dépend des semaines mais règle général j’ai plus de la difficulté à arrêter qu’à commencer donc le temps se trouve tout seul.

Un bon truc si tu compte ton nombre de livres lus ou que de façon générale tu veux lire plus c’est d’alterner les courts et les plus longs et les “faudrait que je lise ça” avec les “je trip”, ça facilite le rythme.

edemay July 10, 2007

Shaping things, c’est celui avec le Comic Sans dont tu me parlais?

Patrick July 10, 2007

Oui

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