"Unnatural Practices Yes"

Amaryllis Night And Day, Russell Hoban, ISBN 0747553815

The second Hoban I've read and I felt it a better read than the already engaging Angelica's Grotto (or does time destroy quality?) The story concerns love, names, memory, interconnections, the past, symbols and buses, among other things; the language is competent and playful. I don't really have much to say about it; I enjoyed it, go read it if you want to find out more, I doubt you'll consider the time wasted.

"Choose any book at the library"

Diary, Chuck Palahniuk, ISBN 0224063898

Few real surprises here, if you've read any Palahniuk before. (If not: chatty style, horrible jokes, black themes, a gracefuly exploited penchant repetition; perhaps a similar niche to early Iain Banks in some ways.) Diary concerns the fate of Misty, a painter with strange abilities and afflictions, the weird town she goes to live in with her husband, and the unpleasant plans that the occupants have in mind, with guess-who as the key.

Unfortunately I found Misty a rather annoying character; while her troubles are not self-inflicted, her reactions seem so feeble that they almost might as well be. I was left feeling that Palahniuk was coasting when he wrote this; perhaps it is time for a new direction?

"Something's happened at Blizhny"

Archangel, Robert Harris, ISBN 0099282410

This is a relatively straightforward (as such things go) thriller concerning a hypothetical legacy of Stalin's; a well-constructed plot, a reasonably interesting cast, etc, but at least for me nothing much to make it particularly stand out in the terms of its own genre. That said I did like the description of and ruminations upon Russia, over its recent history and in the near-present, which made it appeal to some of the enthusiams that have gripped me over the past couple of years.