American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Just finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman; interesting concept and well written. I'll warn you it's a darker sort of fantasy novel -- you won't spend a lot of time laughing on this one. But it's definitely worth reading and, after Neverwhere and American Gods, while Gaiman isn't on my must read list, he's on my probably read list. Since the must read list doesn't finish off my reading appetite, I'll likely pick up a few of my own over the coming months . . . instead of waiting to borrow one from a friend again.

Boca Knights by Steven M. Forman

I ended up disappointed by this one. To start with, if you take out the various history lessons you have about half a book. I'm actually fairly interested in history and have read an historical book or hundred on purpose -- but I'd rather they be written by an historian and not a fiction writer. I don't order chicken at the Oyster Shack and I don't read history by fiction writers.

With the half a book left, it had the occasional moment -- at one point I approached almost thinking about considering the possibility of laughing (well, chuckling) out loud -- but overall I tended to not be involved in the characters or story arc. Everything was pretty predictable, with indistinguishable characters. As a semi-aside, I always find it interesting when characters (or people) tend to rationalize violence when in support of their ideology, but find it abhorrent when in support of those in opposition. While that could be a topic for a later blog entry, the part of the aside that makes it semi is this book marked the first time I've had a character -- via first person writing -- explain why the two are clearly different. I think the convoluted rationalization it took to pull that concept off was the funniest part of this book, though not intended to be humorous.

Overall, not a lot of imagination in the stereotypical characters, and nothing story-wise to hold my interest, but I did read to the end so it had some merit.

I'll add a standard disclaimer: I like raw oysters, SWMBO hates 'em. In other words, different tastes yield different results; you might love it.

Book Log 101109

Wow, it has been awhile since I put anything here. I think I'll start again utilizing this blog occasionally -- if for nothing else, I'll use it to log the books I've read. I have a bad habit of buying books I've already read, primarily because I read enough that they can fake me out the first few pages. I may throw another post in here or there along with the books.

So, to start, I'll list the last few books I've read; it won't be an exhaustive list since the last time I blogged about books, as I've no idea what all should go there. I'll just start with the ones from this week.

I had never read Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged and decided it was high time -- particularly considering the current political trend and the general knowledge I had of Rand's book. I think there is one key point any reader of Rand can agree on -- she was verbose! I won't go into depth on the ideology and, as mentioned long ago in this blog, I'll have limited review of the books, but it was an interesting view that, though much simplified, has a hard truth: you can only bleed folks for so long.

Many Americans seem to have a distorted view of how our republic works. They think "the government" should pay for this and "the government" should pay for that. The government has one means of paying for anything, and that's to take it from those who earn it. So when someone says, for example, "the government should ensure I have availability to good health care" what they mean is "since I haven't provide the means to pay for my health care, I think the government should take the money by force from those who have earned that money and cover my health care cost." It's a viewpoint, I suppose, but folks just need to understand that the money ain't coming from the government. We are rapidly heading to the point where two families are living next door in the same neighborhood, driving the same brand of car, shopping at the same stores, eating the same food, wearing the same clothes, only one of the two are paying for both families to live at that social level. Eventually the working folks will decided it isn't worth working, and the Ponzi scheme of socialism will crash.

But I digress.

After Atlas Shrugged, I read Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. It's the first book of Gaiman's I've read, and found it pretty interesting. I borrowed it from someone else, along with American Gods (another Gaiman book), in a "loan swap" where I loaned her the first two Dresden books by Jim Butcher.

After finishing Neverwhere, I read John Sanford's latest Virgil Flowers book; enjoyed it, and have now loaned it to my brother who took it on a trip to Arizona.

I'm currently reading a couple of books. I started American Gods, but was in Barnes & Noble and picked up a few books including Boca Knights by Steven M. Foreman, which I started reading in the bookstore while waiting for SWMBO to finish hitting the mall. So I'm sort'a reading them both at present, and reading two at a time is something I rarely do. Not sure which one I'll finish first, but I'll make another post when I complete one or the other.

And that's the book log for today.