Mining the Depths

I'll read almost anything and love what captures my imagination. Best of all is responding to books in the larger cultural sense, loving or loathsome. Literature should have a place in the wider world.

 

And I'm another GoodReads refugee. 

The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor - Robert Kirkman, Jay Bonansinga Received from Goodreads' First Reads!First, I must confess, I somehow missed everything this book was actually about when I applied (I think I just liked the cover that much). I wanted something different from my usual tastes--I've never read a zombie book or even seen a zombie movie, and clearly, this counts as different--but I completely missed that it is part of an already established fictional universe. I don't even read comic books.But I just joined the local library's book group, which recommended for October a book "outside your comfort zone" and scary. Since my reading comfort zone is very large The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor arrived just in time!And I enjoyed it.So okay, I questioned some of the world-building logic, and wasn't impressed with the quality of the very few female characters (Penny doesn't really count as a character), but the suspense ratcheted along and I was invested in the characters even though they were all despicable in one way or another or every way at once. And it even took me by surprise, in a good way. It managed to reverse my expectations of who the identity of The Governor was TWICE. Nicely done, authors. Overall: Chilling and thrilling, with a solid 'ending'* on a note of horror.*I guess this first in a trilogy? Or is it 3-in-1, because there are three sections? I thought it wrapped up its story neatly enough at the end, since the plot is effectively a character study underneath all the gore. But maybe those more familiar with the audience would know better.

Currently reading

The Well of Ascension
Brandon Sanderson
Progress: 325/781 pages
Steelheart
Brandon Sanderson
Progress: 26 %
Fearsome Journeys: The New Solaris Book of Fantasy
Daniel Abraham, Robert Redick, Saladin Ahmed, K.J. Parker, Scott Lynch, Elizabeth Bear, Ysabeau S. Wilce, Ellen Klages, Jonathan Strahan, Jeffrey Ford, Trudi Canavan, Glen Cook, Ellen Kushner, Kate Elliott
Progress: 57/395 pages
Dracula
Leonard Wolf, Bram Stoker
The Guermantes Way
Christopher Prendergast, Mark Treharne, Marcel Proust
The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present
Phillip Lopate, Various Authors
Mad Ship
Robin Hobb
Pitch Like A Girl: How A Woman Can Be Herself And Still Succeed
Ronna Lichtenberg
A History of Pi
Petr Beckmann
English Creek
Ivan Doig