A friend of mine did a post today on his current reading that led me to write a wee missive on what I’ve been reading of late:

Right now, I’m making my way through Ian McDonald’s The Dervish House , a novel set in a near-future Istanbul. the book revolves around a few themes: nanotechnology start-ups, terrorism, and the search for a Mellified Man. It combines the beautiful prose and ability to bring to life some of the world’s different cultures, while combining science-fiction sensibilities. I can also recommend his River of Gods and Cyberabad Days , set in a 2048 India. His Brasyl is decent, but suffers from being disjointed and ultimately unfulfilling. His Mars-based Desolation Road and Ares Express have a strange, mythic quality to them that reminded me heavily of Faulkner or Steinbeck in their quality. One thing about McDonald, however, all of his books feel about 50-60 pages too long.

A few other authors I can heartily recommend are Jonathan Letham and Arturo Perez-Reverte. Letham has a wide variety of genres he works in, but always with a strange twist to them. His Gun, With Occasional Music is a science-fiction detective novel, a Raymond Chandler hardboiled detective meets anthropomorphic animals mash-up that evokes Who Killed Roger Rabbit? or Cool World, without the cartoons. His two best, however, are Fortress of Solitude, a coming-of-age story set in Brooklyn of the 1970s/1908s, wrapping comic books, the music scene, and childhood angst together; and the other is Motherless Brooklyn, a detective novel where the protagonist has Tourettes Syndrome. It’s a fascinating look at the disease, and it’s probably his best novel.

Arturo Perez-Reverte’s catalogue is so good it’s hard to go wrong. I would suggest Queen of the South , a novel about a Mexican drug moll that becomes a successful smuggler in Spain, as a good starting point. Also his exceptional The Club Dumas, about a book hunter that searches for rare volumes for his customers. He is hired to find a sorcerous tome, and the danger begins. It was made into a movie that was nowhere as good. I’d steer clear of his “I want to be the next Alexandre Dumas” series (Captain Alastride), but that’s just me.