Thursday, February 27, 2014

That Uncertain Feeling, by Kingsley Amis

  • Title:  That Uncertain Feeling
  • Author:  Kingsley Amis
  • Purchased Used on Amazon.com
  • Started:  2/15/2014
  • Finished: 2/26/2014
 
Being a librarian in my professional life, at some point I must have decided to read books where the protagonist was a librarian. Years ago I heard abou the book I'm discussing in this post, and when I couldn't easily locate it, I lost interest.
 
Well a few months ago while flipping through the channels waiting for my wife to get ready before we headed out, an old Peter Sellers movie was starting.  That movie was called "Only Two Can Play" and while I only caught a few minutes, it opened with a great quote from Emerson ("It is not observed that Librarians are wiser men than others") and was very entertaining.  At least the 20 mins or so I watched.
 
When researching  the moving "only two can play" I discovered it was based on the book I'm discussing, "That Uncertain Feeling" so I decided to just buy the damn book and read it.
 
I liked liked some of it, and disliked other parts.  I found the first half of the book very enjoyable.  Funny, smart, entertaining.  It reminded me to the Updike Rabbit books.  But then it devolved, in my opinion, and was quickly wrapped up with a somewhat lame ending.
 
So much for librarian books, I suppose...

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson

  • Title:  Case Histories
  • Author:  Kate Atkinson
  • Borrowed from DC Library (Audiobook)
  • Started: 2/18/2014
  • Finished:  2/26/2014
 
A recommendation by a coworker, I really, thoroughly, enjoyed this mystery.  The start of a series involving PI Jackson Brodie, the story & wrting in this one really grabbed me.  Will definitely pick up others in this series.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures, by Edward Ball



My wife and I had a five day weekend over this period due to our taking Friday off, Monday as President's day, and a favorably timed snow storm on Thursday that closed down our offices.  Favorably not just because it was 5 days off, but because we had a big-ish home improvement project that ended up taking almost every waking hour of that 5 day period.

To kill the time when we were not being too noisy and/or not listening to Pandora, we would put this book on for an hour or two at a time.  It was pretty enjoyable, and while it mostly focused on the photographer (murderer), the rain tycoon part was probably even more interesting to us.  All in all a great book for a long and sometimes tedious DIY project.

21: The Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey


I'm way somewhat behind in posting updates so I'm going to blow through a few quickly.  I won't dwell on the end of the Aubrey/Maturing (aka Master & Commander) series, I've done enough of that in the past.  But the little bit of unfinished manuscript that is the 21st book shows that I would have likely loved this one as much as the others, had O'Brian survived to finish it.