Tag / Araminta Hall

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Prolific Authors – Two Books

It is time once again to take a look at the authors I have read the most, dating back to high school.  This year, I’m once again on pace to set a new record for books read in a year, so I thought it would be nice to take a deeper dive into those books I’ve read through August of this year. Since our last check-in, I’ve read an additional 114 books, so there should be some movement over the past two years.  Without further ado, it’s time to take another look and see if my “favorite” authors have changed much over the years.  We begin today with the 40 authors I’ve read two times, one fewer than two years ago.

Laura Caldwell

I have no idea how I came across the work of this local author, but I must have enjoyed it enough to go back for seconds.  Unfortunately, she passed away in 2020, leaving behind a back catalog of fourteen novels and two non-fiction books.

Michael Chabon

Winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, the most recent of the two works of his I’ve read.  I have another, Wonder Boys, waiting in the to read pile, so he rise up some day.

Matthew V. Clemens

The co-author, with Max Allan Collins, of the final two chapters of the Reeder and Rogers trilogy.

Ready Player Two – Ernest Cline

Ernest Cline

The man responsible for both Ready Player One and Ready Player Two.

Bill Clinton

The former president has co-written two novels with James Patterson.

Michael Connelly

The creator of Harry Bosch makes his first appearance thanks to his Renée Ballard spin-off series.

Laura Dave

I read my second novel from her, The Night We Lost Him, earlier this year.

Felicia Day

The first author here that I’ve happened to meet in person.

Cameron Dokey

She makes the list based on two entries in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series.

Warren Ellis

The comic writer, currently in exile after being called out for abusing women, makes the list thanks to two prose novels.

David Fisher Continue reading →

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Book 26 (of 52) – One Of The Good Guys

One of the Good Guys – Araminta Hall

After his marriage fell apart, Cole moved to the countryside to try and rebuild his life and figure out what went wrong.  He supported his wife, gave her everything she wanted or needed, and he truly doesn’t understand why she paints him as the bad guy.  When he meets Lennie, the two appear to have an easy connection.  All is not as it seems, however.  Is Cole truly the good guy that he envisions himself to be?  Or does he use the trappings of being a good guy to coerce and force women to give in to his every whim and desire?

Araminta Hall’s latest, One of the Good Guys, takes a look at gender, power, and fear, and how, despite most men claiming to be good, most women are still afraid to walk home alone in the dark.  This does seem to be something of a recurring theme in Hall’s work, as she claimed the last novel of hers I read stemmed from “the continued injustices perpetuated against woman in our so-called civil society.”  One of the first books published under Gillian Flynn’s new imprint, it was an interesting read, although you could see the turn against Cole coming from a mile away.  But maybe that was part of the point.  These guys hide in plain sight and don’t exactly survive the smell test once you scratch beyond the surface.

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2018: The Year In Books

Another year has come to an end and it is time to take a look back at the 22 books I read over the past year, 6 less than last year.  Of those 22, 7 were non-fiction and, of the 15 novels, only 1 was a TV show tie-in.  Only one of the books came out of my dwindling “to-read” drawer, and 12 were e-books.  I read over 7,000 pages, my lowest total since at least 2013.

Once again, a majority of the books I read this year were by authors I’ve never read before. The 15 authors that I read for the first this year were:
Mamrie Hart
Dan Harris
Ginger Zee
Krysten Ritter
Karin Slaughter
Michelle West
Paul Ruditis
Michelle McNamara
David Ross
Don Yaeger
Araminta Hall
Amber Tamblyn
Laura Lippman
Lauren Graham
Drew Magary

There was not a single author that I read multiple titles from during 2018.

6 of the books I read were released this year, while 1 of them was released last century, exactly 60 years ago

Finally, the breakdown by month.  My vacation in September certainly helped pad its totals a tad bit.

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Book 14 (of 52) – Our Kind Of Cruelty

Our Kind Of Cruelty – Araminta Hall

In her latest novel, Our Kind Of Cruelty, Araminta Hall tells the tale of a young man, emotionally stunted due to a poor childhood.  When his girlfriend breaks up with him after an admitted indiscretion, he thinks she is playing a game in attempt to get him to earn his way back to her.  Her quick engagement and marriage only lead him further down the path, until he has convinced himself that the only way to save her and prove that he still loves her is to kill her new husband.  When both are charged with the crime, the jury, and the reader, must determine if the game was only in his mind, or if he truly was manipulated.

Hall never comes out and tells you if Verity was truly playing along with Mike, or if it was all in his head.  Given some of her comments about the genesis of the story, how “the continued injustices perpetuated against woman in our so-called civil society” fueled the first draft, one can only assume that she was an innocent bystander to the men in her life and got caught up by the legal system.