First, Happy Halloween. OK, I said that last thread, but today is actually halloween, so enjoy.
For those of us in the US: Turkey day is coming. Happy Thanksgiving. Don’t eat too much…
Finished The Spirit Rebellion (The Legend of Eli Monpress) the second in the Eli Monpress (series? trilogy?)
In this release we find out why Eli is determined to have such a large bounty on his head. We re-meet Miranda who has been chastised for keeping her vows and doing her job, and both are off to Gaol, to address issues with the spirits there.
It was not as powerful as the first, but still quite fun. This may seem contradictory, but: if it was the second in the series, it was a solid addition to the series. If it was the second in a trilogy - well, it didn’t do enough to further the trilogy’s overall plot and seems like just s filler. I have already pre-ordered the third, due out in Nov.
I’m about a fifth of the way through Aztec, by Gary Jennings. Elendil’s Heir is right, it’s very good. As usual, I just wish I had more time to sit down and read. Also as usual, I keep expecting I’m about to have more time to sit down and read.
Is Aztec good? I bought that off the bargain table for my boyfriend a few months back, and he had a hard time getting through it. I haven’t read it yet.
I’m reading Boy by Roald Dahl and it’s very funny and cute and touching. Next up is Vikram Seth’s Two Lives–I’d love to hear from anyone who’s read it. I had wanted his book A Suitable Boy, but got this instead as a gift.
twickster, I finished The Great Typo Hunt. I think you’ll like it. Being a prescriptivist, I was annoyed when Jeff started leaning toward descriptivism (but he got better), and his girlfriend was kind of creepy, but it was fair overall.
I spent the weekend reading another of Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley mysteries, In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner. I’m really hooked on those books, which are exactly as melodramatic as their titles suggest.
Prompted by a re-watch of The Madness of King George (great movie) I’ve started reading one of Christopher Hibbert’s “Personal Histories” of George III.
Still reading Surface Detail by Iain Banks. I’m finding myself actually slowing down and pondering more in this book. So many ideas, and it is so good I don’t want it to end.
In the hole, I Shall Wear Midnight, and the second Sandman Slim novel. Also up, A Dirty Job and Fool by Chris Moore.
I haven’t read Stephen King in years, but his new short stroy collection has been getting good reviews so I may pick it up.
I just cruised through Finishing the Hat, Sondheim’s collected lyrics (up to 1981) with commentary, cut songs, essays on what makes good lyrics, etc. It was very interesting, and I’ll certainly be looking forward to the next volume.
It did remind me how much I like those crazy early shows, like Anyone Can Whistle. Watchcry! I also enjoyed the behind the scenes photos of a very young Sondheim and his collaborators.
Currently reading Terrible Lizard: The First Dinosaur Hunters and the Birth of a New Science by Deborah Cadbury, as a follow up to last week’s Remarkable Creatures. That was a novel; this is nonfiction about the whole early 19th-century milieu. Fascinating stuff – geology was just being developed, and since we’re 50+ years before Darwin dropped his bombshell, no one really knew how to explain these enormous lizards they were finding. Plus, of course, everyone thought this was going to be resolvable with the Bible.
Almost done with The Jesuit’s Guide to (Almost) Everything, and I recommend it. I have given up on *Breakfast of Champions *and am still chewing on *Obama’s Wars. *
Finished reading Tanya Huff’s Valor books. Now I’m sad and want something that’s Torin IN the military, not the current endbook to the series where she’s not in the military. The somewhat tepid reviews on Amazon convinced me to give that book a pass.
Now I’m working my way through Pterry’s Aching books, starting with “The Wee Free Men”.
After that I have Glasshouse and Zoo City waiting for me.
Elephant to Hollywood by Michael Caine, memoirs. I’ve just started it, but I swear I read this book when it was titled What’s It All About, his FIRST book of memoirs.
I just finished Jim Butcher’s Changes, the 12th Dresden book. Wow, there were some big changes in this book! I’m not sure what I think about most of them. And I can’t believe we have to wait until late march for Ghost Stories, the 13th book.
I don’t think I’ll get much more reading done this month - it’s nanowrimo! Maybe audiobooks.
The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum. About how they learned to identify the presence of different poisons in tissue. Each chapter is titled with a different poison (arsenic, mercury, radium) plus the terrible stuff they put in alcohol during Prohibition. It’s really fascinating.
Maybe if I write it down in public, I’ll actually get around to finishing up Infinite Jest. I enjoyed what I’ve read so far immensely, it’s just… tiring. And now daunting to pick back up
Still also in the middle of Anathem. I loved Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon but could not for the life of me get into the Baroque Cycle. This is somewhere in the middle and so is also being a slog.
If not either of these, I’ve been meaning to read some graphic novels, Logicomix was read and recommended by the doxy so there’s that, and I still haven’t read or watched Watchmen where I’d like to do both (probably in that order).
Yes, I tend to end up in the middle of like 5 books at once. I sort of like it this way…
If you liked Boy, you should also read Going Solo. It picks up immediately after Boy finishes, and is even more interesting (it details, among other things, his service in WW2. I particularly liked the story of how he came to be a writer:
He was in Washington after being invalided out of flying fighter planes due to a serious injury, and was one of the few in America at theat time with actual experience of air combat - he was approached by C.F. Forester, writer of the Hornblower novels, who was tasked by a magazine with writing a short story about air combat (about which he knew nothing). He asked Dahl, introduced by a mutual aquaintance, for a description of what it was like - Dahl found he couldn’t decribe it well by talking about it, so he wrote a short story and gave it to Forester - about the incident in which he’d been injured (ironically, not in combat). Forester liked it so much that he declared he would not attempt to write one of his own, polished what Dahl sent him a bit and sent it in to be published in to the magazine under Dahl’s name, and gave Dahl the cheque.