Book # 48 Remembrance of Things Past (Part 6 of 7)- The Sweet Cheat Gone by Marcel Proust

I can't wait to be done with Remembrance of Things Past.. This volume picks up right after the last one with Albertine having broken up with the narrator. He spends the first 100 pages or so obsessing over Albertine's possible affairs and trying to figure out how to get her back. She writes him about reconciling but his response is to say no in the hopes that she begs him to come back. Yeah I'm tired of this guy. So then *spoiler* he receives word that Albertine has died in an accident and still he mostly obsesses about her past affairs and sends a friend out to investigate whether or not they happened. He then spends the last half of the book talking about whatever happened to Gilberte... and her story isn't particularly interesting. Well only one more to go... C+.

Book # 92 - The Ambassadors by Henry James

The most positive thing that I can say about Henry James' The Ambassadors is that I liked it more than the last couple list books I've read (The Captive and To the Lighthouse). Still.... it isn't a book that I'd really recommend.

The book follows a man, Strether, as he goes to Europe in the hopes of talking his fiance's son, Chad, into returning to America. However he sees that the young man has been improved by living in Europe and the good influence of a woman that he has met there. Strether also begins to feel that he's wasted his life so far and that he would be better off in Europe also. So then he must decide if he should really try and convince Chad into returning or not and what effect this would have on his own engagement.

The book started out kind of interesting and established the main plot quickly, but then it just started to drag and go over the same stuff over and over. By the end I was pretty bored with it. Basically imagine the plot of The Talented Mr. Ripley but replace the sociopath with a well mannered widower. Yeah... that isn't quite as interesting now. I'll give it a B-.

Book # 48 Remembrance of Things Past (Part 5 of 7)- The Captive by Marcel Proust

I've had enough of this book series.... Volume one I enjoyed. Even volume two was interesting. But it just goes on and on and on and nothing happens in volumes three four and five. It has not been a fun read. Sure some passages are really thought provoking and beautiful but it is surrounded by so much inconsequential stuff that I don't care. In this volume the first 250 pages are so is just the narrator thinking about how jealous and suspicious he is of his girlfriend... even though he is pretty sure that he doesn't even love her. The next 150 pages is just the narrator talking about his friends lives which is boring because they are all pretty unlikable and are mean to each other. The last 150 pages or so is just him and his girlfriend arguing and finally breaking up. I'm dreading the last two volumes... C+. On a side note the book mentions both War and Peace and Crime and Punishment.

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

I've always been a bit curious about Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. There are just so many of them though that it makes it look kind of intimidating to dive into. So after reading a couple of interesting articles on the Onion's AV Club (one of which served as a handy guide on where to start and the other comparing the author to Kurt Vonnegut) I figured I'd give one a shot.... And you know I liked it. The series is set in this fantasy world called Discworld but the books follow several different characters. This particular book, Guards! Guards!, is about the City Watch of Discworld. Basically they are the bumbling police of the city that nobody pays any attention. In an attempt at a political coup someone magically summons a dragon so that it can be slayed by someone pretending to be a descendant of an old lineage of kings who would then act as a puppet king for the person that summoned the dragon. However things go wrong and the City Watch has to figure out a way to save the city. I laughed several times which must mean that I liked it. Sometime soon I'll have to try reading another book from the series... this one gets a B+.

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

This is the second time I've read Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert and my opinion pretty much remains the  same. It is a bit of a weird book in that the first Dune book is full of action as it follows Paul Atreides from a teenage boy to leader of the Fremen people to inter-galactic emperor, while in the second book Paul does very little even though he is the ruler of pretty much everything and has led a jihad across the galaxy that has killed billions of people. The book starts out twelve years after the previous book and follows a plot that attempts to get rid of Paul by various factions that have it in for him. It actually seems like a bit of a bummer since it mostly shows how the ending of the first book wasn't really all that happy after all and now Paul has to deal with remaining emperor and his life really doesn't turn out all that great. Still I enjoyed it even though it is nowhere close to being as awesome as the first book. At least this time while reading it I knew that much of the book is really just setup for what follows in the series. B+

Book # 22 - To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Much like Mrs. Dalloway, I don't really know what to make of To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. The book is written in a stream of consciousness that flows between the emotions and actions of various characters as they go about their day. There is some lovely writing here but I couldn't really get that into it... mostly because I can't really figure out what it is about. Plot-wise very little goes on, a kid bugs his parents about wanting to visit a lighthouse, his dad is kind of mean about it and they have some guests over and have dinner, then years later they actually make a trip out to the lighthouse and nothing else really happens except someone paints a picture. Maybe I need to do some in-depth studying of it to figure it out but it just doesn't appeal to me enough to make that effort. I'll say it is a B-.

Oh yeah, the book also mentions Middlemarch and Anna Karenina.

Horror Book # 5 - 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King

I hadn't been planning on reading 'Salem's Lot anytime soon, but the other day I was playing around with the LAPL website and discovered how easy it was to check out books for the Kindle... so I figured I should try one out to see how well it worked.

'Salem's Lot is Stephen King's second book and has all of the usual tropes that show up in his later works... the protagonist is a writer, it is set in a small Maine town, characters have psychic flashes, a child plays an important role, etc... This time the story centers on vampires and how they are able to take over a remote town in just a few days. And these aren't the romanticized type of vampires, these are the violent bloodthirsty kind. There are quite a few scary scenes and I was surprised at how willing King was at killing off characters throughout. He also builds tension up very well in the first half of the book when the town suffers a rash of disappearances and accidents and no one yet suspects that it may be the work of something evil.  I enjoyed the book overall but I could have used a bit more characterization of the main vampire. I feel like King didn't really explore his motivations very much or try to give his actions any justification.

While reading it I couldn't quit thinking of the book as a small town version of They Thirst by Robert McCammon which came out a few years later. Maybe because that book was set in Los Angeles I liked it a bit more... I'll give 'Salem's Lot a B+.