_Hoodtown_ by Christa Faust. Uh, wow. Noir with lots of stuff--a culture created by Lucha Libre crossed with Japanese, with everyone wearing wrestling hoods all the time, for life. Near future, but close enough to now for nevermind. Dealing with racism in the form of hood vs skins. Female protagonist dealing with loss of youth, career, lover. Oh, and she's being targeted for death too just to spice it up.
Brutal, sexy, thoughtful, high-speed and merciless. I'm loving Ms Faust's writing.
_Airman_ by Eoin Colfer. A non-Artemis Fowl YA from Mr Colfer. Hard to connect with a protagonist from him who is mostly all good. Takes place on the Saltee Islands off Ireland. In reality, they are a bird sanctuary which makes them an appropriate place, I suppose, for a talk of the "real story" of the first power flight.
_The Drop_ by Michael Connelly. Harry Bosch is back and with an unexpected relationship with Irvin Irving. Also weaving through the book is a decades old murder that Harry and his partner are called on to solve: they get a cold hit on running DNA from an old murder, matching the blood of someone currently in the system as a criminal. The problem is that the criminal would have been eight at the time of the crime.
Always a good read from Mr Connelly.
_Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire_ by Christa Faust. Read an earlier entry in the series and this one falls right in line--pulp to the nth degree. It's nice to even notice extra adjectives and adverbs slipping in to the text to the right "word padding" degree of the authors from the 30s +/-. Still, you can see Ms Faust's influence with the sudden, almost casual, death of an important character.
_Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks_ by Ethan Gilsdorf. Tour through the various worlds of geekdom--D&D, LARPing, SCA, online, LotR, and others. Gilsdorf uses the tour to reflect on challenges in his life and others, but never in an overpowering way. Kind of fun to revisit chapters of my life as he does his.
Plus knowing some of the folk in the book is always cool.
_The Hunger Games_ by Suzanne Collins. Excellent dystopian YA of a brutal, politically laden contest in the future. Karen and I listened to most of it on our trip to & from the TC to visit Lydia The-TattooedLady last weekend. (Oh, yeah, and for me to work there a couple of days this week.)
_Fires of Heaven_ by Robert Jordan. The series flows on in non-challenging, "comfort fantasy." As far as I've gotten in the series so far. Next one will take us into the unknown... :)
_Le Avventure di Pinocchio_ di Carlo Collodi. Un "Beginning Reader" edizione e il mio primo libro di italiano. Un burattino di legno รจ un monello e alunno svogliato, ma la Fata Azzurra lo perdona molto volte. Infine, lui salva Geppetto e diventa un bambino vero. Il suo naso cresce solo una volta. Disney non qui. Oops, non vero. Anche ho letto _Prosciutto e Uova Verdi_ di Dr Seuss, ma non lo conta.
_The Shadow Rising_ by Robert Jordan. Fantasy just like you seen/heard before, only longer. Still having fun on the listen through. I'll see how far I get in the series before giving up.
_Kim_ by Rudyard Kipling. The last time I read this was as a kid in a "Classics Illustrated" edition. Little did I know that a whole chunk of my life would be entwined with India. I must admit that reading one of the descriptions of dawn over the countryside brought back memories of leaving Bangalore early in the morning and breakfasting along the road watching the countryside. I'd like to go back fairly soon.
As far as the book, a good read and both more exciting and less "British Raj is God' than I expected from Kipling. Maybe I haven't read enough of him to really make that assumption. Also good to read since several character appeared in a Sherlock Holmes pastiche I recently read.