What are you currently reading?

[mhatchett]

I've enjoyed reading some biographies and nonfiction. Sam Weller's The Bradbury Chronicles, Jonathan Eller's Becoming Ray Bradbury and Bradbury's Bradbury Speaks. Reading these has increased my appreciation of his work. He had a really interesting life and knew a ton of equally interesting people. There was a thread of quiet sadness that ran through life and it turns up in his writing. The term fantasist, I think, says it all.

[Theli]

Finished The Grapes of Wrath a little while back, which was great. I then picked up To Kill A Mockingbird. I liked it as well. Quite different than I had expected. I thought it was mostly about the story of Atticus and Tom Robinson, but while that's an important part it's mostly a coming of age story of Jean Louise "Scout" Finch. She learns a lot of life lessons in a short time, and even as an adult reading this book nearly 60 years later some of those lessons come as a welcome reminder. Not ot mention just having enjoyable characters within the story as well.

Just started up The Trial by Franz Kafka. Needless to say it's a bit of an oddball story. I think the oddest thing so far is actually the structuring. There is huge blocks of uninterrupted paragraphs that sprawl over several pages. Conversations between characters are not broken up in the usual sense and are instead organized together in one paragraph. it does cause a bit of a cluttered and confusing feel to the novel. But honestly the novel seems to be mostly based on confusion and it does fit the tone. I'm not sure if these are translators choices, editors choices or the author himself. So far as I know none, or few, of Kafka's works were published in his life.

[Theli]

Finally starting up my first Cornell Woolrich novel. I have I Married a Dead Man in an American Library Noir anthology. I'm really enjoying so far. It has a certain gothic eloquence that is not normally associated with crime fiction.

[Theli]

Finished off the Trial. It's an interesting work. Insightful, but bleak. Dizzying and paranoid. I've never read anything quite like. It reminded a bit of La Nausee by Jean-Paul Sartre (which I never finished) in that it has a sense of dense prose, hopelessness (like fighting a tide) and repetition. But it's also distinctly odd, not quite in this world, but almost. Hard to say I liked it, the prose itself is rather dry, but I did appreciate it for it's ingenuity.

After reading through several classics and works by renowned authors I've decided to get back into something a little easier and faster pace. I picked up Hit Man by Lawrence Block to read while riding the bus to and from work and still reading Woolrich's I Married a Dead Man at home (loving it so far). I actually snatched up a proof copy of Hit Man at a used book store a little while back, $5-10, though I already had a cheap paperback to read. Still a cool find.

[jeffingoff]

I just finished Gerald's Game for the third time since I bought it when it first came out. Before that I was reading some short stories from Out of the Dark by Steve Rasnic Tem. Brilliant stuff. I love his writing. Surreal and poetic. I've never read anything by him before and I'm looking forward to the rest of his stories in that edition.

Before that, it was Rendezvous in Black by Cornell Woolrich. Great book. Really took me out of this century. My brain projected it in black and white. Loved it. I considered buying other editions from the Black series from Centipede Press but I have to put my credit card on ice. It's burning my hand. And there are too many other books that top my list.

I just started The Drive In by Lansdale and I'm already hooked. I'm so glad I was turned on to Lansdale in this forum. I have a feeling I'll be hunting everything on his bibliography.

[RonClinton]

I just finished Gerald's Game for the third time since I bought it when it first came out.

You bested me by 2.5 times. Tried once to read that one...got halfway through, and figued once was enough. I blame GERALD'S GAME, DOLORES CLAIBORNE, and ROSE MADDER as being the trifecta that ultimately and progressively revoked my Faithful Reader designation in the '90s. I was on-and-off (mostly off, but did read and enjoy a few, e.g. THE GREEN MILE) with his work for the next two decades, finally coming back in '09 with UNDER THE DOME. Loved the next two, 11/22/63 and JOYLAND, as well. DOCTOR SLEEP was a real disappointment, and I haven't been back to the King well since, skipping REVIVAL and the Bill Hodges trilogy. Love pre-'90 King; post-'90 King is very hit and miss with me, and continues to be so.

[RonClinton]

I picked up Hit Man by Lawrence Block

I love Block's Keller series. The hitman genre niche is one that I'm a sucker for anyhow, but the Keller series is one of the best. You might want to give Max Allan Collin's Quarry series a try as well, once you exhaust the Keller series...and I think it's safe to say there will be another Keller installment in your future. They're like potato chips: You can't eat -- er, read -- just one.

[jeffingoff]

You bested me by 2.5 times. Tried once to read that one...got halfway through, and figued once was enough. I blame GERALD'S GAME, DOLORES CLAIBORNE, and ROSE MADDER as being the trifecta that ultimately and progressively revoked my Faithful Reader designation in the '90s. I was on-and-off (mostly off, but did read and enjoy a few, e.g. THE GREEN MILE) with his work for the next two decades, finally coming back in '09 with UNDER THE DOME. Loved the next two, 11/22/63 and JOYLAND, as well. DOCTOR SLEEP was a real disappointment, and I haven't been back to the King well since, skipping REVIVAL and the Bill Hodges trilogy. Love pre-'90 King; post-'90 King is very hit and miss with me, and continues to be so.

We're almost on the exact same wavelength. I couldn't finish Rose Madder. I gave up on that one. I contemplate reading it every now and then--I still have my bookmark in it where I left off so many years ago--but I come to my senses every time. Dolores was OK. I only read it once. But I LOVED Gerald's Game.

I couldn't agree more about Doctor Sleep. What a let down. The bar was high as a "sequel" to The Shining. So I understand if it couldn't measure up to that expectation. But it didn't even come close.

SKIP Revival! That is the only King book I really hated.

[Martin]

We're almost on the exact same wavelength. I couldn't finish Rose Madder. I gave up on that one. I contemplate reading it every now and then--I still have my bookmark in it where I left off so many years ago--but I come to my senses every time. Dolores was OK. I only read it once. But I LOVED Gerald's Game.

I couldn't agree more about Doctor Sleep. What a let down. The bar was high as a "sequel" to The Shining. So I understand if it couldn't measure up to that expectation. But it didn't even come close.

SKIP Revival! That is the only King book I really hated.

I really enjoyed both Dolores Claiborne and Gerald's Game but did not care for Rose Madder. I forced myself to finish it but it is easily my least favorite King novel. I enjoyed Revival, nothing special but a good read. Under the Dome was also not an enjoyable read but I loved 11/22/63 and Joyland. I have not read Doctor Sleep or the Hodges Trilogy yet.

[RonClinton]

I will say of the aforementioned trifecta that I thought GERALD'S GAME was the best of the disappointing three. That's not saying much, I suppose, but...

[Theli]

I got about halfway through Doctor Sleep but found it to be a drag. Haven't really tried King's 90's works. I'm not a one author man. I don't feel the need to read everything by one author, but like to try many different authors and genres. If I like their work I will return to the well though. Which is why I have read and enjoy many King books, and why I am reading Hit Man now after enjoying Burglars Can't be Choosers by Lawrence Block.

As for Quarry by Max Allan Collins. I had picked up Quarry's Ex several years ago, not knowing at the time that it was part of a series. It was the name that attracted me, I knew Collins' comic work Ms. Tree and of course Road to Perdition. I was really underwhelmed. I found the writing pretty subpar. It doesn't mean I won't try him again, but it did turn me off at the time.

[Sock Monkey]

You bested me by 2.5 times. Tried once to read that one...got halfway through, and figued once was enough. I blame GERALD'S GAME, DOLORES CLAIBORNE, and ROSE MADDER as being the trifecta that ultimately and progressively revoked my Faithful Reader designation in the '90s. I was on-and-off (mostly off, but did read and enjoy a few, e.g. THE GREEN MILE) with his work for the next two decades, finally coming back in '09 with UNDER THE DOME. Loved the next two, 11/22/63 and JOYLAND, as well. DOCTOR SLEEP was a real disappointment, and I haven't been back to the King well since, skipping REVIVAL and the Bill Hodges trilogy. Love pre-'90 King; post-'90 King is very hit and miss with me, and continues to be so.

I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only that feels that way. King has always been hit-or-miss with me. Sometimes I absolutely love the book like Lisey's Story or Duma Key and other times I'm left baffled like with Desperation.

I've never been a huge King fan and I think some of that comes from lack of reading him when I was younger. I always hear about how King was their first true experience with a horror book and he wasn't with me. My first two brushes with horror was Koontz's Watchers and Matheson's A Stir of Echoes. I also got busted with Stinger by McCammon at a young age, but I got no more than five pages in, I think. It could also have been that my first brushes with his work aren't "Classic King". If I remember correctly, the first two books I read were Four Past Midnight and Needful Things and I wasn't blown away by either of them. Either way, King never grew to the stature for me as he did for others.

[RonClinton]

As for Quarry by Max Allan Collins. I had picked up Quarry's Ex several years ago, not knowing at the time that it was part of a series. It was the name that attracted me, I knew Collins' comic work Ms. Tree and of course Road to Perdition. I was really underwhelmed. I found the writing pretty subpar. It doesn't mean I won't try him again, but it did turn me off at the time.

I would agree with you that the more recent Hard Case Crime installments pale to the initial four or five Quarry novels written in the '70s. I'd highly suggest trying these original ones, and see if perhaps you like them. They have a dark edge, an immediacy, that the more modern volumes seem to lack (and progressively so, as the series goes on):

Quarry (a.k.a. The Broker) (1976, reissued 2015)
Quarry's List (a.k.a. The Broker's Wife) (1976, reissued 2015)
Quarry's Deal (a.k.a. The Dealer) (1976, reissued 2016)
Quarry's Cut (a.k.a. The Slasher) (1977, reissued 2016)

[Theli]

^Noted. I will probably give them a second shot sometime. Are the Hard Case Crime reprints the same as the original or have the been re-edited or anything?

[RonClinton]

^Noted. I will probably give them a second shot sometime. Are the Hard Case Crime reprints the same as the original or have the been re-edited or anything?

Not really sure. I'd suspect that they're the same, but I really don't know.

While I still like the series, including the more recent ones (THE FIRST QUARRY, in particular, was a fun "origin" read), the latter volumes do have almost a cozy, quasi-detective, empty-calorie / episodic TV feel to them and their plots (e.g. working on a film set, going undercover in strip club, involved in a race rights conflict, etc.). The early ones -- at least, as I recall them, given that it's been at least a couple decades since I read them -- are darker in tone, more hard-edged as would suit a series about an assassin.

Of course, even at its best, though, the Quarry series does not for me reach the level of either Block's Keller series or -- most especially -- Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake's) Parker series, this latter series being I believe the finest series ever created in crime fiction.