
Tripwire, Lee Child
Good work, Lee, but I need to find some just slightly better books.
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Dolorous, but a more scientifically comic command of English I have not seen.
Wolves Eat Dogs, Martin Cruz Smith
Grimy, black, wet and hot. But not the hot you think: excellent book.
Comment parler des livres que l'on n'a pas lus ?, Pierre Bayard
LP++
The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
I wish I could say I liked its comedy, its impertinence and its sexy girls, but it's hard to "like" a book that rent international diplomatic relations; and besides, it's just a little biological bit too gross.
Die Trying, Lee Child
Okay, we are clearly dealing with exciting, well-told stories, but in every one the bad guy gets shot in the head without knowing who killed him.
These are good revenge stories, but they are missing the watch-the-big-guy-fall pieces that make books like A Man in Full or Le Comte de Monte Cristo so satisfying.
The Killing Floor, Lee Child
The heart pumping action and Reacher's not possible cleverness make up for the quick, weak ending.
A Wanted Man, Lee child
Odd narrative engineering: the story ends in the middle of the book, then a new one starts. It's pretty good, but feels like cut-and-paste.
And who's the actual wanted man?
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
Is it illiterate of me to say that this was very funny?
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
It's cold. But I happen to like the cold.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie
The sheer yet gentlemanly audacity of the ending should tie tighter to a murder motive. And then it would be genius.