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The Silent Corner by Dean Koontz, 2017

I don't necessarily seek out the works from blockbuster authors with their 790 generic thrillers, but I'll read them just the same. My prior experience with Dean Koontz was the book Tick Tock, a truly impressive work in that the very last sentence somehow managed to ruin all that came before, which was only half interesting in the first place. But at least the Silent Corner didn't provoke any sort of vigilante onslaught in the name of literary justice. The story's simple, highly unrealistic but simple. All about subcutaneous nanobots making people kill themselves after finding out too much of the whack agenda that we have here.

It had great paranoia.

3.75/5

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The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood, 2012

Wonderful novel here that takes a look at the highly privileged and wraps it up in a chill. The main character, who is an atheist, finds himself wandering into a church after hearing the music being played therein, almost drawn to it involuntarily like a magnet. Then he gets mixed up with a girl and her brother and their whole circle of snobby douchebags. That's not true I guess, the brother is really the only one bagging any douche. He's narcissistic to the point of disorder, narcissistic personality disorder in fact. He believes his music can heal any and all ailments and employs some very insane methods to demonstrate. I'm sure it goes without saying that he takes it too far.

4.5/5

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Unravel by Calia Read, 2014

Much along the lines of extreme young adult fiction with the struggling and the despair and the madness. What's being unraveled is a question of why the narrator is stuck in a mental hospital, claiming time and again that she's the only sane one there, just like those who are most insane.

Sexy and simplistic.

3/5

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The Methuselah Enzyme by Fred Mustard Stewart, 1970

Drama emanates from a youth clinic in Switzerland, where three pairs have come for a mystery treatment to reverse the aging process. The three wealthy and old clients had brought along their young companions, who are unaware of the true dealings at hand. It's not long before they find out and the tension begins. There's deceit, bribes, alliances and that.

But eventually it becomes clear that the body is in fact not able to age in reverse and the troubling developments that come during their stay are often ghastly.

4/5

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The Blue Afternoon by William Boyd, 1993

Charming and engaging touch of historical drama spooled together with medical miracles, murder, midair machines and Manila. Starts off with an architect in 1936 being encountered by an unfamiliar man claiming to be her father, and then we get his story, which is more or less the whole story in terms of content. Great historical air with gruesome bodily detail and irrational romance. I tend to naturally envision everything I read cinematically, and this turned out a great reel, could be a tight movie I think.

The payoff, though, didn't consist of many dollars, but the journey there was moving and lushly multifaceted.

4/5

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Little Deaths by Emma Flint, 2017

Pretty solid crime/mystery revolving around the death of two children and everyone trying to get their mother in prison because they disapprove of her character

3.5/5

Based off what you've been reading lately, you should really check out "I Am Pilgrim" by Terry Hayes. Trust me on this.

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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, 2001

Another tremendously grand, yet somehow just as modest, Pulitzer prize winner. I think it's actually pretty easy to compare to Middlesex, the other one I've read. There's much thematic overlap despite the conceptual distinctions: insanely satisfying linguistic acrobatics and frequent hilarity, themes of starting a new life of theoretical prosperity, the plight of the characters' paradoxical longing to escape and remain in equal measure, the realized contentedness of simply being.

But this story is about two Jewish comic book masterminds and their claim to fictional fame during the golden early years of the graphic novel, and the post-WWII state of being a washed up artist. The mainer of the main characters, a Josef Kavalier, is inconspicuously shuttled from Prague to New York as a burgeoning master of illusions and escapes, to find anyway to help his run down family. His cousin seems to invoke a dormant artistic ability, and together they pretty much just put on a clinic in the comic book world. But if it ended on that high note the book would be pretty lame and pointless. There are toils, suffocating the characters like shovelfuls of grave dirt upon a freshly lain casket.

That's the plot, but it's not about the plot. The delivery is poetic and moving and never dull. So much ground is indeed covered under the seemingly non-complex guise of the general story line, a lot that I looked forward to every time I opened it.

5/5

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Beyond All Reasonable Doubt by Malin Persson Giolito, 2012

A lawyer attempts to get a retrial for a would be pedophile murderer who she comes to feel was unjustly imprisoned and experiences backlash from the public.

That's about the size of it.

3/5

Stop trying to cheat.

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City of Endless Night by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, 2018

After a string of at first seemingly unrelated decapitations occur in very close proximity to each other time-wise (I guess the back to back decapitations isn't uncommon here until like 4 happen), the obligatory eccentric special agent steps in to find out what's going on.

I'd say that this is a cut above the rest with relation to other supermarket thrillers but that's not saying much. The field needs much more creativity/diversity. But this was alright. Don't expect to be floored.

3/5

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Purity by Jonathan Franzen, 2015

Fairly large scale coming of age story, though admittedly that particular facet of the tale is dwarfed by the recounting of events that lead up to the age in question needing to be come to.

About a young girl living in an anarchist squat in Oakland with student debt and a father shaped hole in her life. The quest she embarks on takes her to a cult-like commune in Bolivia where its even more cult like leader had assured her she would be granted any desired information if she comes to intern, cults naturally having all the connections.

It's her fable in essence though on a strict page-ly basis the book spends more time telling us about the background and various motives of various parties. It can seem long winded here and there but it's genuinely impressive in its way of building and divulging the truth of our protagonist's plight.

It's more contemporary and slice of life-y than exciting but I found it pleasant to read, and was personally quite enamored with the downright anticlimactic ending, it just seemed more real.

4/5

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An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears, 1997

Arcadia had already shown me what a force Iain Pears is as a writer, and this here just enhances that knowledge. It's a fairly different animal thematically but the deft and utterly engaging prose is still present and perfect. It's a historical mystery about a murder, and it's told through four separate narrators whose accounts of the same event all vary in credibility and perspective, obviously. While that is the core of the novel's conflict, it reaches out incredibly far to cover much ground of a political nature, and relates it all quite impressively.

For its expansiveness nothing is without purpose to the dilemma at large. Occasionally it may not seem so, but you know how books are, and we reach a point deep into it where it all becomes so clear and the greatly intricate weaving of plot lines is genuinely flooring. The man has an uncanny ability with the pen.

5/5

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My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier, 1951

This has a very strong and obvious Rebeccian atmosphere and tangles with many similar themes like obsession and romantic secrets. But this one is about a young man who is somewhat over attached to his cousin, and comes to harbor a resentment of a woman he's never met for stealing away his only friend. This contempt festers and becomes downright ulcerous after said cousin dies under perhaps mysterious circumstances. But when this woman comes to visit him personally his obsession ultimately does a 180 and he finds himself envying his cousin for having this lady he would soon become infatuated with. All the while we wonder if she's just a gold digger with a deadly influence or a truly bereaved widow.

His cousin takes on a curious illness and his letters leading up to his death become increasingly frantic and paranoid and perplexing, but the nature of his wife's and in the matter is the novel's primary speculation.

I don't think it reaches the level of Rebecca but it's still a highly engaging yarn that holds its own atmosphere of foreboding danger and love.

4/5

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Mean Streak by Sandra Brown, 2014

One of the better supermarketcore books I've read. Went by real quick.

4/5

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Doomed by Chuck Palahniuk, 2013

The tweets of a snarky dead girl cast from Hell to earth to save it from the doom she'd ultimately caused. Pretty unfocused and at times vulgar in a try hard way. Didn't leave with much.

2/5

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Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, 1847

More than justifies its widespread prestige, quite a classic tale of the bitterest of rivalry, spanning generations. Upon renting out the adjacent manor but soon seeking shelter from the weather, our narrator comes to stay a night at Wuthering Heights and its wretched landlord. His curiosity is piqued by the carved names in the room he finds himself, and in asking a servant what the deal is, a tremendous fable unfolds and the sordid history of the place is laid bare.

Profoundly brooding and atmospheric, dripping with liquid tension.

4.5/5