(no subject)

[lakeeffectgirl]

Lolita: Somehow I'd never read this before? What even to say? The writing was beautiful and the subject matter horrifying and tragic. Unlike how it seems to be perceived in popular culture, the text is very clear that HH is a pedophile and what he is doing is sexual assault on a child.

The Scarlet Letter: This I read because I wanted to see if it would be just as much of a struggle as it was when we had to read it - twice! - in high school English, or if I could get more out of it as an adult. It was not quite as difficult as I remembered, and I was able to follow what was happening without any trouble, but I did have to force myself to read slower than I would normally so that I didn't miss anything. And I do feel like I got more out of it, or at least felt the tragedy of it more strongly, as an adult reader.

Dark Matter (Blake Crouch): I guess it should tell you something that I immediately forgot about this thriller after I finished reading it. (A college professor gets abducted and injected with something, wakes up in a universe not his own, and has to get back to his own timeline because he loves his wife and child just that much [heteronormativity alert!], and deal with other versions of himself along the way.) Do I remember if he gets to his own universe or just one that's really close? No, I don't remember. This one was interesting enough while I was reading it but clearly: no lasting impression. Wisconsin note: at one point the MC and his family flee to a middle-of-nowhere cabin.

Twenty Years Later (Charlie Donlea): This was a combination murder mystery thriller and 9/11 missing persons thriller, and was entertaining. (I read Donlea's Don't Believe It earlier this year and that was entertaining enough to put holds in for the author's other works, and they took several months to be available. hence the two on this list.) Wisconsin note: The MC spends her teenage summers at a sailing school in Door County and there's a paragraph that reads like the author just looked at GoogleMaps, which I was amused by.

Artemis (Andy Weir): So I really wanted to read Project Hail Mary, but the wait for that ebook is like A YEAR LONG somehow right now, and this was available immediately. The actual heist/mystery/thriller part was fun and the plot made sense, but there was so much welding. No one needs this much welding. Also I have to agree with one of the Goodreads reviews which was basically: this is just Mark Watney if you made him into a Saudi Arabian woman living on the Moon. Maybe Weir can't write a non-snarky/sassy main character (I never made it all the way through The Martian because I got tired of the Watney-explains-everything-in-detail gimmick.)

Those Empty Eyes (Charlie Donlea): A teenager is suspected of murdering her parents and brother, wins a lot of money in a defamation case when she's able to prove that being arrested for it had a significant impact on her future prospects, goes to Europe under the cover of attending university but continues to investigate the murders, and eventually returns to the States to change her name and work as an investigator for a law firm. This one I figured out one of the killers before they were revealed, and had my suspicions that another character had to be involved somehow more than we're told (and they were), but this one I have to give the Best Job of Plotting award to, as I only figured out the one killer a few pages before it's revealed, versus how I was pretty sure I knew who the murderer was in Don't Believe It by halfway through.

Here is where I tried reading an old Robin Cook medial thriller just for the nostalgia but the immediate homophobia plus Gross Male Gaze had me returning it to the library after about twenty pages.

Final Approach (John J. Nance): This is a "this plane crashed into this other plane on the runway, but why?" investigative thriller. If you like a lot of airplane stuff, it's good. I would also call it ultimately a tragedy, given what the reason behind the crash ends up being. However: negative points for the MC being unable to look at his female co-workers without mentally commenting on their bodies (Gross Male Gaze strikes again). I get that it's a straight white man writing for an audience he assumes is the same, and in the 80s, but still: gross.

Noor (Nnedi Okorafor): This was about as far from those 80s/90s thrillers as you could get - a Nigerian woman with several robotic limbs/implants is attacked in a market and flees into the desert, where a never-ending sand storm rages, with people who live inside of it (like in the eye of a tornado). I really enjoyed this one. Looking at the author's other works, Lagoon looks interesting but my library doesn't offer it in ebook. I should just read the first Bindi novel, since I own that one.

Comments

[viggorlijah]

Robin Cook! I used to devour those when I was a kid and now looking back, all I can remember is the victim in a coma having perpetual orgasms, like wtf.

I've just borrowed Those Empty Eyes - Maggie loves plotty thrillers, so if it's in her range, I'll buy her a copy.

And oh Lolita, isn't it wonderful! It's such a absolute tragedy of a book. The bitter irony of the pop culture use of Lolita and the book design covers - https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/designing-lolita and https://lithub.com/the-60-best-and-worst-international-covers-of-lolita/ are good reads on this

[lakeeffectgirl]

I have really enjoyed all the Donleas I've read so far - they're fairly quick reads, the plot keeps moving at a good pace, and so far none of them have fallen into the bad plotting trap of a totally out of left field killer (I feel like for these sorts of thrillers, a reader should be able to figure things out along with the main character, so the resolution shouldn't be a 100% complete surprise).

Just FYI re: Maggie reading them, Twenty Years Later does have some referenced kinky-ish sex; it doesn't happen on-page but there's a videotape that characters watch/discuss.