Get Lost in Literature

  "What if? Maybe those two words were the first steps out of any swamp." This is the story of Dan Lambert, a Vietnam veteran, suffering from a bad combination of PTSD, poverty, and a brain tumor. When he accidentally kills a man he must go on the run, heading south he looks for a place he can disappear. He meets a women named Arden, who is desperately and obsessively searching for a faith healer. The two are pursued by the strangest of bounty hunters, parasitic twins Flint and Clint Murtaugh and their apprentice, Elvis impersonator Pelvis Eisley. I thoroughly enjoyed this from beginning to end. It reads like a mystery, but thriller is probably more accurate a description given that we already know who the killer is. It was a fast-paced adventure through the bayous, being pursued by all manner of strange and morally gray individuals, which brings us to... The characters. They were so quirky and weird, it made no sense, and yet it worked seamlessly with the plot. A parasitic t...

Book Blogger Hop Q: Do you have a favorite novel that captures the enchantment of summer nights or has unforgettable moments set under the stars?  ( submitted by Billy @  Coffee Addicted Writer ) A: I don't know if these are odd choices, but two horror novels come to mind. Dan Simmons' Summer of Night , and John Ajvide Lindqvist's Handling the Undead . Handling the Undead features a heatwave in its setting, you can feel the sweat dripping down your skin as you read.  Summer of Night features kids in what should be a time of innocence: playing baseball under the sun, staying out until the streetlights come on...

 This week's TTT was listed as Debut Novels I Enjoyed (submitted by Angela @ Reading Frenzy),  hosted by    That Artsy Reader Girl . I'm not sure I've read ten debuts, and if I have, I don't know which ones they are. So I decided to make my own list today, hence my Top Ten Songs That Should Have Been Books.  I hope the videos play alright; I've never added them to a blog before. 1. "The Fighter" by The Fray 2. "Careful What You Wish For" by Jack Harris 3. "In the Woods Somewhere" by Hozier 4. "Painters" by Jewel 5. "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons 6. "Paparazzi" by Lady Gaga 7. "Blown Away" by Carrie Underwood 8. "Medicine" by Grace Potter & the Nocturnals 9. "Hotel California" by Eagles 10. "House of the Rising Sun" by The Animals What about you? Can you name a song you wish had been a book?

  "The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience." Frank Herbert, Dune Please forgive my lackluster review, this one is not current, written in 2020. As you know, 2020 was a trying year, Covid-19 sucking the life out of most people, myself included. I can see why this book touched so many and I enjoyed reading it for the most part. I think some of the plot devices were a tad bit lazy: every oh-so-convenient moment that fell in line with The Prophecy, for example. But the characters were delightful in their schemes. The setting was great. Plot would probably have been better for me if I wasn't overthinking on overdrive, stress makes me cynical. I maybe think the world building and vocabulary could have been improved upon, just a bit, but I might also be reading this at the wrong age. I liked the touches on environmental and ecological issues. I liked that he addressed political and theological conflicts, and the void between the ruling class...

Book Blogger Hop Q: July is a month for getaways and adventure. What is your favorite book that takes the reader on an exciting journey or transfers them to a captivating destination?  ( submitted by Billy @  Coffee Addicted Writer ) A: For exciting adventures, you can't go wrong with fantasy and sci-fi, they're all about adventure. I'd recommend Christopher Paolini who has written for both categories, with a high-fantasy trilogy, The Inheritance Cycle , and his space opera To Sleep in a Sea of Stars.  I could name a hundred fantasy and sci-fi novels worth the read but if that is not your cup of tea, I quite enjoyed The Terror  by Dan Simmons which took me on a frightening ride through the Arctic Circle, and Life of Pi  by Yann Martel, a slightly more general fic, which gave me an adventure on the high seas. If mystery is what you're after then I'd recommend The Da Vinci Code or Norwegian by Night, by Dan Brown and Derek B Miller, respecti...

  "Here the vast bed of waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand different channels, burst suddenly into frenzied convulsion - heaving, boiling, hissing - gyrating in gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which water elsewhere never assumes, except in precipitous descents." Edgar Allan Poe, A Descent into the Maelstrom Because saying, "The waves below us were rough," just won't do. I'm plucking my way through a collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe and just started A Descent into the Maelstrom . What are you reading this week? Thursday Quotables  invented/hosted by  Bookshelf Fantasies . 

Today's Top Ten Tuesday was listed as 'Ten Things I Loved About (insert title)'  hosted by  That Artsy Reader Girl .  I've gone with one of my favorite horror novels, Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist. This is a book I've re-read multiple times and I still like it each and every time. I never gave this book a proper review, but this is pretty close to one. In case you haven't heard of it, the story is a vampire novel about Oskar, a boy who's bullied relentlessly in school, and Eli, the very strange girl next door. There. That's the smallest synopsis I can give you. Here are ten things I loved about this book.  Police looking at the evidence and not seeing the truth. The people witnessing the unusual events aren't considered credible. I love how Oskar is introduced as almost having a double life. There's the part of him getting bullied at school, and then there's the part of him that harbors dark fantasies of revenge and blood. E...

"The English are never going to think I'm posh, but if I fit into their fantasy, then they'll at least think I'm royalty."   Robin Swift is a Cantonese boy rescued from cholera and spirited away to London by his new caretaker, Professor Lovell. Professor Lovell impresses upon Robin the importance of words and makes him spend every moment studying language. Robin works hard to impress the Professor and before long he's accepted into the college of Babel... A school designed to study language so it can be translated into magic. I really liked this book. To start with, the writing was absolutely impeccable, including very literal word play, and even though I'm no linguist, the translations seemed well-researched. The setting is designed to mirror our own world, making it easy to imagine the fantasy is real. Within the story, the author included footnotes that added to the story's intrigue rather than slowing it down. The plot had plenty of meat on its bon...

 Today's topic for TopTenTuesday hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl  was listed as Throwback Freebie and I decided to continue my list of  Top Ten Favorite Movie Adaptations . 1. The Hobbit J.R.R.Tolkien. 60 years before Frodo's trek, Bilbo Baggins receives an unwelcome invitation to go on an adventure, where he'd be required to steal from a greedy dragon. 2.  Life of Pi by Yann Martel . It's Castaway  meets The Jungle Book  as a young man is lost at sea with a hungry bengal tiger. 3.  The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. An actress's daughter becomes possessed, and the only one who can end the horror is Father Karras, a priest who is beginning to question his faith. 4.  Jurassic Park: The Lost World by Michael Crichton . Ironic it's called The Lost World when everyone knows where it is. The dinosaurs survived the fall of Jurassic Park and have begun to populate the island Isla Sorna. Are they an opportunity to study long dead species, or a...

  "What's done in the dark always comes to the light." Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones Today's review is short and to the point. I don't really feel the need to summarize the book as it's blurb is pretty accurate, except where it calls Skeet's dog his "prize pitbull." The dog, China reads as her own unique character, same as the kids her fight and loyalty run strong in her blood. But for those of you who've never heard of it, this is about a family living in rural Mississippi. It's about the kids who rule the household as the father drinks himself into a stupor, at a time when Hurricane Katrina is coming ashore to tear their worlds apart. The opening chapter is kind of weird, detailing the dog giving birth, but afterwards, I couldn't put the story down. The bond between the children runs deep, which is good thing because the father is not Father of the Year. His kids take care of him, rather than the other way around. The hurricane bar...

  Happy Sunday!  The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted by  Caffeinated Reviewer . I will be posting on the first Sunday of every month and I hope you'll join me. Summer is here and it's hot and I'm okay with that. I just spent my vacation at a lovely beach, I swam in the ocean and didn't get eaten by a shark but I did get sunburn everywhere the sunblock couldn't reach.  I bought three books before heading off to the beach:  Babel by R.F.Kuang,   The City of Brass by SA Chakraborty, and  The Abominable by Dan Simmons. I had a tough decision to make: which to read first. I started with Babel,  and have found it surprising in its content.  In June, I reviewed the following stories: Forging Silver into Stars by Brigid Kemmerer The Unidentified by Colin Dickey A Killing Cold by Kate Alice Marshall Rakkety Tam by Brian Jacques This month I finished reading  Flyboy  by Kasey LeBlanc , and already posted the review on the 1st. The ...

  "As I feel my way through the kitchen to the stairs... I realize there's one good thing about the dark. In the dark I can't see myself." Kasey LeBlanc, Flyboy Asher is a closeted trans boy who goes to sleep every night dreaming of a circus, where he is himself for the first time. By day, he lives his worst nightmare: Catholic School. Then one night, he's transported to his fantasy world, where dreams and reality begin to blend. I was skeptical during the prologue. I was promised a story that was similar to  The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern , but the prologue wasn't just comparable, it was downright derivative. The circus is even named, " The Midnight Circus. " Which, to be fair, it probably is hard to name a circus that comes only at night... But then the story morphs into its own. Asher lives with his mom, a nurse who is almost never home, and cared for by his ridiculously old-fashioned and super controlling grandparents. Grandparents who drag...