Daniel Shellenbarger > Recent Status Updates

war were declared

It's funny, I consider Red Storm Rising one of my two favorite Clancy novels (alongside Hunt for Red October) but I've only read it once, like 25 years ago. Guess I'll see if it holds up.

PROGRESS! I wish I could claim a good reason I haven't finished this. I've thoroughly enjoyed it when I've read it, but it's the old "read the thing you own or the thing you have checked out from the library first" dilemma and I keep going with the library items.

This has been... a surprisingly un-fun read. The first book was very whimsical and sweet, but this one... let's just say the last story I read, Kiki delivered shoes for a senile old lady who was obsessed with an event from her childhood and wanted to make it right far too late and the story before that Kiki's delivery was taking an old man's cane around his usual walking route because he was dying. Just... grim.

Can you believe it, Beck, years and years after you recommended this, I'm finally reading it :)

This book is so close to greatness, but the villains are so cartoonishly evil they give a bad name to cartoonishly evil villains (Snidley Whiplash would spit on them) and the story goes out of its way to make everything work out for them. I hate that. Worse, they basically don't interact with our protagonists until the end of the book, just trailing them, which makes their hatred of the heroes feel stupidly petty.

Ok, I'm done with having books on my currently reading shelf that i haven't touched in years, so I'm going to add a new "on hold" tag for stuff I'm not abandoning but... I just don't feel like finishing yet