November reading list

While the impeccable Kat has been ploughing ahead with our monthly reading challenge for 2011, I've taken quite the break. In my defense, I haven't been reading any new material because I've been writing a novel of my own. Titled Who's Afraid, I finished my book last month and have been in the editing process before sending it off to literary agents for rejection, cough, I mean, potential representation.

Anyway, with the ink nice and dry on my debut I lifted the reading ban last month and caught up on a few books at the top of my list.
I had been meaning to read this for a while after I saw a glowing review on it by Nick Hornby. The best and worst thing about this was the format, flashing forward and back in time over 20 years in the lives of two people. It was frustrating at times, enthralling in others. For the most part I found it jarring because just as you would sink into a part of the story you would be thrown out of it again. The strong point was the characters Nicholls created, both very realistic and witty. They weren't hugely likable, which was refreshing so they felt more like people you actually knew. They were flawed, fucked up and floundering. I also liked how the romance developed over a very realistically represented friendship.
Earlier in the year I read the first in Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme series - The Bone Collector - and adored it. It was chilling, clever and flawlessly written. The sequel was a tad lacking in the brilliance of the first, but there's no doubting Deaver is one of the best living crime writers. The problem with this, I felt, was the lack of a villain as interesting as `the bone collector'. There was also too much going on with sub-plots and schemes. That's not to say this wasn't good, it was, but it wasn't great like The Bone Collector. I'm not sure if I'll keep reading the other books in this series. Deaver's stories are so well researched and content packed, I might need a break between the next Rhyme mystery with something lighter.In April I read Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder and loved it. It was a brilliantly clever twist on the sci-fi genre. I decided to track back to her debut works and New York Times best-selling series with Poison Study (the first of three). Again, I liked this a lot. I think Snyder is a great writer and she creates very strong, intelligent and fascinating female characters that you can't help but want to spend time with. This was hugely different from Inside Out, being a medieval fantasy and all that, but I really dug it. Although this is lumped into the Young Adult category I wouldn't call it that since there are some pretty hardcore themes and violence. I'm looking forward to reading the remaining two novels in this series. And Snyder, man, what an imagination. This is an author I'm going to be paying a lot more attention to.