Hello everyone!
Here we are….almost 11 months since my last WWW Wednesday.
To point out the obvious, what a year! What a crazy, tough year for all of us.
This post was suppose to happen last week. However Thursday came too quickly and telling you all what I’ve been reading a day late just didn’t feel right; like showing up to a party after everyone had gone home and the hosts were in the middle of cleaning up. But hey, at least you brought a bottle of wine, right??
Yeah, I didn’t think so either.
But this is a new week and today is Wednesday and it is time to regale you all with my three dubs. Grab yourself a warm beverage and let’s get to it.
Oh! A quick reminder of what WWW Wednesday is:
WWW Wednesday is hosted by Sam Stevens on Taking on a World of Words. Anyone can participate. All you do is answer the three questions below and then comment on her post with a link to your own. Don’t have a blog but want to participate? No problem, just answer the three questions in a comment on her blog.
The three Ws are:
1.) What are you currently reading?
2.) What did you recently finish reading?
3.) What do you think you’ll read next?
Finished Reading: Fair Warning by Michael Connelly. Jack McEvoy is a reporter for a consumer watchdog website, called Fair Warning (more fun facts: it’s a real website!). However, when a woman he had a dalliance with turns up dead, he relies on his journalistic skills to clear his name and find the real killer.
I’ll level with you. I’m not sure how I feel about this book. In my opinion, it has a few problems. The most glaring is that the MC, Jack, is a lot (and I mean a lot) like Connelly’s very famous character, Harry Bosch; except that he’s a reporter instead of a retired (at this point) homicide detective. As I read Fair Warning I kept wondering why Connelly chose to use this reporter instead of Bosch. I think it would have worked better if McEvoy’s characterization was different.
Another is that the story took a while to get going. It wasn’t until the second half of the novel that things started to pick up and make it a hard to put down novel. Also, I tip my hat to Connelly for subverting expectations. But is this a must read novel? Probably not. If your local library has a copy (and they’re open), then it might be worth checking out. At the heart of the novel, it is an exploration into the problems with protecting one’s identity and the popularity of ancestry sites and that was pretty fascinating stuff.
Currently Reading: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. This is my second time reading Neverwhere and I am very glad to have picked it up again; with the added bonus that enough time had transpired so that I couldn’t remember everything that had happened. It feels like a first read through, and that is always great when it comes to a novel. This isn’t exactly an obscure novel – but on the off-chance you’ve not heard of the book – Neverwhere is a modern, adult fantasy story set in two Londons. The London Above is where everyday, ordinary people live out their lives. The London Below is the spaces beneath London that are inhabited by those that have fallen through the cracks. It’s a place where all Londons Below exist along side each other. It is a dangerous world of tunnels and magic. Neverwhere is a realm where Richard, an unremarkable 20-something, suddenly finds himself after coming to the aid of a young woman, named Door.
It’s a very good book. If you haven’t read it, you really should. It does have some tense moments and some unpleasant antagonists, which can lead to troubled dreams if you’re easily frightened. But, honestly, it is good. And another another fun fact: the book is actually based on a TV series by the same name that Gaiman wrote for the BBC in 1996.
Up Next: Excession by Iain M Banks. Yes, dear reader, I am still exploring the galaxy in Banks’s Culture series. Excession represents about the mid-point in the series and I am looking forward to reading it. Earlier in the year, I read The State of the Art which is a collection of short stories. Only one of the stories is set in his Culture universe. So Excession will be a return to a place I have sorely missed.
According to the blurb on the back cover, a jet black sphere appeared in a remote corner of the galaxy over two millennia ago and then disappeared. Now it’s back…
Exciting stuff right?!?!
That’s it for this week!
Thank you for reading along, and feel free to drop a comment below if you want to share to my tens of readers your own WWW.
Kev
Skid Rogue Haven 
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