"Still Life with Crows" and some school stories

soooo....I honestly wasn't expecting much from Still Life, given it's setting. Rural Kansas, in the middle of a dust storm just didn't seem to be my cup of tea. Lincoln and Child however, have brilliantly recreated Kansas in an image that they could use for a story that grips you from the very beginning with it's suggestions of ghosts and the supernatural. Other than reliquary, which seemed to be an attempt to capitalize on the runaway hit success of Relic, all of the Preston and Child books have been phenomenal. This story opens with a murder in the cornfields in rural Kansas. The murderer has set the body up in an odd fashion with ancient indian arrowheads and crows set in a ritualistic manner. Pendergast calls himself in on his vacation in an attempt to determine just what is going on. Hints of ghosts, of serial killers, and a plucky young assistant all help Pendergast solve this mystery.

All of the Lincoln and Child books follow a similar winning formula of hinting broadly that something truly mysterious and out of the ordinary might be going on...ghosts...the devil...the museum beast. In general, these fantastic assumptions are found out to be not quite the whole truth. Something is going on, that would never happen in real life, yet it isn't so outside the boundries of what might be considered normal that it smacks of implausability. Lincoln and Child are awesome. Still Life gets a 4/5.

For class, I have been reading short stories lately. The mammoth book of modern ghost stories includes many, many (many) stories about ghosts and various ways they can manifest. some funny, some scary...all of them pretty decent at the least. some great, some not so great. the shear size of this volume ensures that not everything would be top quality...but its comprehensiveness also assures that someone looking for ghost stories would find a plethora in one single volume. 3/5 for its mediocre nature (due to not all stories being top quality).

We are also beginning to work on Lovecraft. So far, ive found the lovecraft pieces to be....not so much scary as creepy. He is definitely an awesome writer, and i look forward to reading more of his work. Lovecraft also has a serlingesque element to his work. There seems to be at the end a 'gotcha' of some sort. Ive also loved stories that do that, so this is especially awesome for me. I'm going to hold back a rating though until we are done.

I don't know if i mentioned it in my last post (if i did, i will edit this out), but we also finished the turn of the screw by Henry James. I read online a bunch of essays regarding this work and their various theories regarding it. I also read where Henry James wanted this to be a simple, straight up, ghost story. Im going to have to side with the author in this regard. I dont feel as though there is anything untoward or secretive going on in this story apart from the kids strange behavior.

Ok. so. whats next? Well, The scourge of god is still not out in paperback (lets check amazon real quick and see if we can get a date on that! nope, no details yet :/ at any rate...that leaves that out :(. The next Pendergast book is one that ive already read called "Brimstone". I plan on reading it again to get the full, in order, pendergast experience....but im not sure if thats my next goal. I recently bought a steampunk anthology that i might try my hand at. Like ive said before, im into short stories lately, and this one seems very good. This might also be a good gateway into steampunk literature that ive been looking for. in addition, there are several other books on my bookshelf that have been calling out to me to be read. We'll see where it all goes. For the moment though, the two big contenders would be brimstone and the steampunk book called "Extraordinary Engines".