Books to be read in 2005

[One Eyed Cat]

The sort of bittersweet thing about her work is that you really feel like you've made a friend reading it.

Michelle and I were both presenters at the Firecracker Book Awards a number of years ago. This was before I'd heard of her, but she said a naughty word very very loudly on stage and I was charmed and we chatted for a while.

When I later read her stuff, I didn't realize it was the same girl, until Clint Catalyst set my ass straight.

She and I were in the same edition of Susie Bright's Best American Erotica and she later moved a few blocks away from me for some time. Aside from occasionally running into her in a used bookstore she worked at and one sort of abortive shoot where we had planned all this elaborate stuff and then her significant other decided that she wasn't allowed to get naked . . . except then she took her shirt off anyway and I didn't know how to proceed . . . well, I'd had this notion after reading her Crue story and Passionate Mistakes, that she and I would be the best of pals if we hung out. I almost felt like a jilted lover that we didn't really connect until I thought about the fact that really she had just written a terrific book which felt personal and moved me and there was no sense expecting it to be more than that. Which is just as well because I've made three runs at getting through Chelsea Whistle with no success.

I wonder how many people react to her writing that way.

Whatever happened to Clint Catalyst? I remember that name from years ago.

OEC

[Ichigo]

I need to get back to reading the Anita Blake, vampire hunter series by Laurell K. Hamilton. I haven't had any time to read them since college started, so I still need to read Blue Moon.

[keiko]

Much props to my fellow E. Gorey fans. Save me the trouble of listing them all. I also want to add my fiction section to all this severity.
Hade's Daughter and God's Concubine, Books One and Two of the Troy Game Trilogy by Sarah Douglas (Book Three "Darkwitch Rising" due in April).
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Good Omen's by Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman
Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Henry Lincoln
Everything You Know is Wrong~ A book of essays BUY THIS ONE WITH CASH!
You Are Being Lied To~ More essays edited by the same people as above. Also one to be bought cash only.
I'm sure there are several dozen more as always but my rambling brain and my rambling fingers are once again out of synch.
K

[DharmaLion]

I know I already chimmed in but I just finished a fantastic book titled

The Zanzibar Chest: A Story of Life, Love, and Death in Foreign Lands by Aiden Hartley.

If you are into journalism or Africa in general then you should definately check this out....from Amazon.com:

The Zanzibar Chest: A Story of Life, Love, and Death in Foreign Lands

FROM THE PUBLISHER
"In his final days, rising from a bed made of mountain cedar, lashed with thongs of rawhide from an oryx shot many years before, Aidan Hartley's father says to him, "We should have never come." Those words spoke of a colonial legacy that stretched back over 150 years through four generations of one British family. From great-great-grandfather William Temple, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for his role in defending British settlements in nineteenth-century New Zealand, to his father, a colonial officer sent to Africa in the 1920s, building dams and irrigation projects in Arabia in the 1940s, then returning to Africa to raise a family - these were intrepid men who traveled to exotic lands to conquer, to build, and to bear witness. Finally there is Aidan, who becomes a journalist covering Africa in the 1990s. Weaving together stories of his childhood in Africa, his family's history, and his experiences as a reporter, Aidan tells us what he saw." After the end of the Cold War, there seemed to be new hope for Africa but again and again - in Ethiopia, in Somalia, Rwanda, and the Congo, the terror and genocide prevailed. In Somalia, three of Aidan's close friends were torn to pieces by an angry mob. Then, after walking overland from Uganda with the rebel army, Aidan was witness to the terrible atrocities in Rwanda, appearing at the sites and interviewing survivors days after the massacres. Finally, burnt out from a decade of horror, Aidan retreated to his family's house in Kenya where he discovered the Zanzibar chest his father left him. Intricately hand-carved and smelling of camphor, the chest contained the diaries of his father's best friend, Peter Davey, an Englishman who died under mysterious circumstances over fifty years earlier. Tucking the papers under his arm, Hartley embarked on a journey to southern Arabia in an effort not only to unlock the secrets of Davey's life, but of his own.

[Morning Glory]

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Good Omen's by Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman

A fan of neil's, eh? yeah american gods is a great book. The DL is that there's not going to be a sequel per se`, I asked him about it and kinda got on his case allueding to the fact that that would be lametastic, but I guess he's going to (or maybe allready has at this point) write a short story set in the same storyworld, but about different characters for one of those sci-fi /fantasy complilation books. In case you were interested.