Starting Louis L'Amour's "Silver Canyon" later this morning.

According to my online library card I've checked out 195 books since May last year.
I'm going to go back and try to pick out at least some, as I feel I let you down badly by being such an infrequent reviewer.
Not all of course.
Some I barely remember and some I simply didn't care about enough to comment on.

These will not include biographies/ autobiographies as I think they depend on an interest in the subject (Alan Carr, anyone? Julian Clary? Both exceptional books).
Or books I've been lent - some of which have been superb.

Marco and the Blade of Night - Thom Madley
A tween book - quite good as I remember. I still read these because they almost always have a rollicking good narrative. It's set in Glastonbury and certainly made me want to visit there.

Aenir/ The Fall/ Castle - Garth Nix
I have little memory of these. I think I was going through a bad patch and wanted the comfort of fantasy aimed at children. Diana Wynne Jones almost always delivers, Philip Pullman less reliably but packs a pucnh when he does, Margaret Mahy's books often haunt me even if I've not been charmed at the time... Garth Nix - not so much. As always a good narrative, but the endless writing of series is wearing, Stories never seem fully completed.

The Dead Fathers' Club - Matt Haig
Very good! Based on Hamlet, but I got that from the cover. Knowing that, I was able to pick up the sly references throughout the text. I suppose it is a coming-of-age story as much as a Shakespeare homage, in that the protagonist is only 11. A lovely combination of fate and reality which comes to a believable conclusion.

Lucy's Monster - R L Royle
Do not read. Dreadful book. Riddled with plot holes big enough to trash Jinx's Jeep. And not even properly proofread - some real zingers of mistakes. I actually complained to the librarian when I took it back, suggesting they removed it from the shelves. And I didn't finish it. And that is so not like me.

Blood is the New Black - Valerie Stivers
Worth reading for vampire fans simply for the frothy treatment of vampires meet fashion. Set at a magazine HQ - Tasty - it's The Devil Wears Prade meets any recent lightweight vamp fic. Nicely written at least.

Procession of the Dead - Darren Shan
A really good read. Dark, fantastic, confusing in places (confusion later resolves) a cross between a gangster novel and something along the lines of Ian Banks' The Bridge. It's not real life, although it's gritty. It's not fantasy but it isn't set anywhere recognisable. Something like Murakami. It's the first of a trilogy and I'm now writing down the author's name as I'm determined to read the rest of them!

Creepers - David Morrell
Okay. Pretty much a pedestrian suspense/ spook novel about people who go exploring in abandoned buildings getting more than they bargained for. More could have been done with it.

The Family of Max Desir - Robert Ferro
Wonderful, moving novel about a gay man's relationship with his family and how it changes over time and due to outside events. At times heartwarming and brutal.

The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters - Gordon Dahlquist
Something went wrong about the time I had this book out of the library. I read 2/3 of it, enjoyed it enormously, got a library fine for it but didn't finish it. I think the 'rents might have been away and I was on a drunk. It's now another I have on my list to get out again. It's a densely plotted novel, set in what would appear to be Victorian Europe - perhaps even London - with a twist. It's proper fantasy, with its own rules and regulations, but tethered to the feeling of a particular time and place. Rather wonderful as I remember, dark and atmospheric and complex.

Tis enough for now. I hope to come back to this (I'm up to August 2009), my library session has just timed out.

"The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre"
.....its bit a difficult read for me as per Lovecraft's writing style. But as soon as I was engrossed within myth and darkness of the book, it didn't matter any more.
Highly recommended.

Read every single book he wrote many years ago. Then read them all again. Loved his westerns. Another good man gone.

Breakthrough! (Free Book for a Limited Time): How the 10 Greatest Discoveries in Medicine Saved Millions and Changed Our View of the World (Kindle Edition) - Jon Queijo

I am fascinated by the subject, and I also really like the "free" part.

Is the whole book free or is this a partial?

A month or two ago it was a free chapter. This week it's a whole free book, not sure how long the offer is good. B&N wants $20 for a nook download. (I check because I have two friends with nooks, and I try to include the nooklink in my recommendations to them)

Coolness

Just finished re-reading the Diana Tregarde trilogy by Mercedes Lackey

- Children of the night
- Burning water
- Jinx High

I really enjoyed those. I wonder if I still have them ...

I'm reading an electronic galley of 2010 Best American Comics.

There's a site called netgalley.com that allows you to sign up for review copies of prepub galleys. I just started getting books from them (mostly electronic).

There have been a number of people here who liked the Stieg Larsson trilogy.

There's a spoof on the series at The New Yorker by Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle) called The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut.

Comes a Time for Burning - Steven Haverill

another electronic galley, the book is due for publication in February 2011, according to amazon.com.

It's a frontier medical thriller. I know I'm staring a number of anachronisms right in the face, but I'm trying to look past that and just enjoy the story.

am into the left behind series. on book three of eight now.....

I only read the first one, but enjoyed it more than I expected.

I liked Joel Rosenberg's series that starts with The Last Jihad better.

Bloody Mohawk by Richard Berleth was my main beach book this week. It is a narrative history of the Mohawk Valley but by necessity extends its reach into Pennsylvania. It is an excellent read so far. You see the Iroquois making some pretty astute political moves but they knew and from here we know, it was only a matter of time before they lost their grip on the land.

As an aside, I had to rebuff a Baptist proselytizer who was reading Cooper's The Prairie and saw it as an opening to request my email address. I still managed to recommend the book to him, I wonder if it will have any effect on his chosen people view of American history.