What are you currently reading?

[epilogue]

Looking for a book to read on vacation next week. Ideally fiction, 250-350 pages, pulpy but not trashy, along the lines of this https://www.amazon.com/Descent-Novel-Ti ... 161620477X or this https://www.amazon.com/Beartown-Novel-F ... B01KG5GQDS or this https://www.amazon.com/Lake-Woods-Tim-O ... 061870986X. Interesting plot, strong characters, breezy writing. No Stephen King. Please and thank you.

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith
Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Are the three that leap to my mind immediately. All great. The Galbraith book is the first in series. All of them are amazing.

[guestT]

Ghostman by Roger Hobbs. 373 pages. Too long. Reviews mixed. Rejected!
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. Excellent, but I've read this already. Rejected!
Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith. 480 pages. Too long. Rejected!
Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. 487 pages. Too long. Too many uses of the word "erotic" in the description. Rejected!
A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman. This is a possibility. But sorta feels like more of a winter book to me. Rejected!

[epilogue]

Didn't realize you were so strict about a page count. If the writing is breezy and it's well paced and the characters are good... what difference does a page count make?

[BurtReynolds]

Books should be no longer than two hundred pages.

[epilogue]

I don't remember anything overtly erotic in Shadow of the Wind, either. *shrugs*

[epilogue]

What about Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel?

Oh wait... Amazon says it's 352 pages. Never mind. I'll keep looking.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[epilogue]

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley is also awesome. But it's over 400 pages...

[The Argonaut]

Maybe George V. Higgins. The Friends of Eddie Coyle is probably his most famous. Cogan's Trade or The Digger's Game are my preferred books, especially the latter.

[guestT]

Oh wait... Amazon says it's 352 pages. Never mind. I'll keep looking.

A 350 page book will take me, on average, about two weeks to read. The odds of me finishing it decrease dramatically every day after that.

(Station 11 was great, tho.)

Books should be no longer than two hundred pages.

Yes. 180 pages = Perfection.

[epilogue]

Oh wait... Amazon says it's 352 pages. Never mind. I'll keep looking.

A 350 page book will take me, on average, about two weeks to read. The odds of me finishing it decrease dramatically every day after that.

(Station 11 was great, tho.)

SO Good!

[epilogue]

How To Get Into the Twin Palms by Karolina Waclawiak is really funny and breezy and strange in a good way. 192 pages. I read it in one day and I'm a slow reader. I flew threw that book. The writing is great.

[guestT]

Maybe George V. Higgins. The Friends of Eddie Coyle is probably his most famous. Cogan's Trade or The Digger's Game are my preferred books, especially the latter.

192 pages! We might have a winner.

[epilogue]

Hey guestT, just in case you hadn't committed to anything yet and wanted one more option...

Check out Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. 288 pages.

[bune]

Tried browsing Goodreads but you can't sort by page length so that didn't pan out the way I wanted.

[epilogue]

Currently reading and am absolutely loving the holy shit out of...

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[guestT]

Hey guestT, just in case you hadn't committed to anything yet and wanted one more option...

Check out Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. 288 pages.

[epilogue]

tell me more about that one?

Are you asking me?

It's a part memoir and part mediation on a theme. It's poetic and powerful. The writing is outstanding. It's philosophical and poignant without being pretentious and overly dense. So far, the vignettes have revolved around femininity, motherhood, the Mormon church, passion, the environment/shared world, and, of course, voice. It's all about finding/using/defining/exploring one's voice and our connection to the world around us spiritually, physically, environmentally, and socially.

The book is absolutely brilliant. I thought I'd read it in one sitting because it's so short. But each sentence has so much to think about and unpack that I find myself re-reading each line multiple times, putting the book down and actually considering what I've just read, and moving on only once I've either gotten totally stuck on a concept or actually grasped what she's saying. Or what I hear her saying, at any rate.

It's a book I will gift to many, many people in my life, I can tell already.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.