Khadaji's Whatcha Readin' - April, 2014

Cafe Society
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Hello, everyone - welcome to April. Winter is slowly retreating in my part of the world; today was warm enough to read on the front porch without six protective layers.

Let’s see - since the last thread, I finished ‘A Feast for Crows’, the fourth book in the ‘Song of Ice and Fire’ series. A few observations - by this time, Mr. Martin is just assuming you’ve read the other books recently enough that a simple allusion to a character’s description is going to allow you to realize who it is. It doesn’t always work out that way… It’s interesting that certain spoiler-worthy characters are being developed in a way that makes the reader unexpectedly sympathize with them - I’ll say no more.

In general, he doesn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry to wrap this thing up.

I’m reading my way through ‘An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth’ by Chris Hadfield - it’s interesting for how fascinating a life he has led; his writing style is a bit ordinary, but it’s not everyday you get to read about how someone became an astronaut. (Hint - he’s just a bit of an over-achiever…) I’m also reading Christopher Gillett’s ‘Scraping the Bottom’, which is a follow-up to his outstanding ‘Who’s My Bottom?’ from a year or two ago. This one focuses on how the life of an operatic soloist is nowhere near as glamourous as most people would assume. It’s fun to play ‘spot the director/conductor/singer’ throughout the book.

I’ve just picked up ‘Lockstep’, Karl Schroeder’s latest novel, and an interesting book by Philip Roscoe called ‘I Spend, Therefore I Am - How Economics has Changed the Way We Think and Feel’. I saw it in an NPR news item, and I just had to get it out from the library.

And you - whatcha readin’?
A link to last month’s thread.

This will actually be the last time I start one of these threads - I’ve had to cut back drastically on my internet time, and I find I’m just not visiting The Dope anywhere near as often as I’d like. (I also don’t get enough time to read in my life, but that’s a whole other story…) Last month, I only got a chance to put up the OP, and maybe one other comment - I just started to feel like maybe the people who are contributing the most to the conversation ought to be the ones starting the thread.

And so, gentle readers - AuntiePam will be continuing the tradition of these threads, starting with the May, 2014 edition. Let’s have a warm welcome…

**Khadaji ** was one of the earlier members of the SDMB, and he was well known as a kindly person who always had something encouraging to say, particularly in the self-improvement threads. He was also a voracious, omnivorous reader; and he started these monthly book threads. Sadly, he passed away in January of 2013, and it was decided that we should rename these monthly threads in his honour.

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Welcome AuntiePam! Knock 'em dead!

I should finish Trunk Music tomorrow. After that I’m taking a brain rest and reading a few of the manga that is piling up around here… mostly on the headboard and I fear of making the news for being smothered when the piles tip over. :smiley:

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I’ll be reading Everyday Jews: Scenes from a Vanished Life for awhile. I’ve been on it for two nights now and Kindle says I’m only at 20%.

Here’s the Amazon blurb on this really interesting book:

I don’t know where Singer gets off saying the book is “too bleak to be psychologically credible.” What can he mean? Is he doubting the author’s memories?

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I e-read Raymond F. Jones’ This Island Earth, a sadly neglected book. It’s true that the 1956 film was “inspired by” the book, but they jettisoned most of the original material after the initial Build-the-Interociter segment and substituted a really awful and inane plot that seemed to have been composed by perusing the cover illustrations of SF pulp magazines from the 1940s. The novel has

–No naked-brain bug-armed “mutants”
–No Metaluna
–No trip to Metaluna for our hero and heroine
–The heroine isn’t a screaming incompetent
–No "Thermal Barrier, “compression tubes” Meteorite bombardment, etc.

It doesn’t even have a Flying Saucer (AS in the original story behind “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, the alien ship is an ellipsoid). The movie doesn’t even explain what the title is supposed to mean.And the one part of the book they do try to put on the screen they mess up completely – The aliens don’t send a plan along with the parts, so it’s as if the hero puts together the Interociter like an interplanetary Heathkit – he has to dope out how it all goes together from obscure clues in the catalog. It really is an asptitude test. Of course, I stole my BoardName from the hero – Cal Meacham. They really ought to remake this. I’ve plotted out how to do itr, being faithfdul to the book while still paying homage to the original film.

I did this as prelude to reading another book b y Jones – RTenaissance, which was retitled Man of Two Worlds for the paperback edition, probably so people would realize it was science fiction, rather than historial fiction. The only other thing by Jones that I’d read was “Correspondence Course” in Healy and McComas’ Adventures in Time and Space, and that felt too much like the opening of This Island Earth. This one is very different, but I was amused by the setup in the first third of the book – our Hero lives on a future (possibly post-apocalyptic) Earth (I haven’t finished it yet), surrounded by desert. There’s a large and mysterious Temple in the city, which only properly chosen people can enter, wearing characteristic robes, and our Hero, wondering what all the mystery is, decides to sneak in and learn the Mysteries.

What makes this interesting is that Raymond F. Jones was a Mormon, born and raised in Salt Lake City, with its large LDS TEmple, forbidden to everyone except LDS “in good standing”, who wear their characteristic Garments there. I wonder if the similarity was conscious or unconscious.
On audio, I’m listening to Russell Shorto’s wonderfully weird Descartes’ Bones – A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason. The book is nominally about the fate of the bones of Rene Descartes, which were moved several times after the philosopher’s untimely death (by pneumonia, in Sweden, at the early age of 53) as a symbol of his philosophy, with the skull eventually ending up in a Paris museum. But he uses the book as an examination of philosophy and to tell about the historical characters involved. It’s a real trip.

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Halfway through A Dance with Dragons, the fifth book in George RR Martin’s trilogy A song of Ice and Fire. Very good, a worthy entry in the series.

EDIT:

April here is one hot MoFo, the hottest month of the year. It’s already broiling outside.

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Thanks for continuing these threads, AuntiePam.

I read Jeannette Walls’s memoir The Glass Castle, a moving account of her tumultuous childhood with a mentally ill, self-centered mother and drunken, loquacious father. Her parents weren’t directly abusive but they were shamefully neglectful, and Walls recounts years of being hungry and living in squalor in a small West Virginia mining town. After high school she fled to New York and became a journalist.

I read the first book in Robin Hobb’s Soldier Son trilogy. I liked it okay, not as well as her Fitz trilogies or the Liveship books. I don’t like the frontier setting very much, or the magical system, but I find Hobb’s long-winded writing about mundane activities to be mesmerizing. I enjoyed the basic story of a young man and his troubles in a military academy.

During a long drive we finished the audiobook of Patrick O’Brian’s The Thirteen-Gun Salute and launched right into The Nutmeg of Consolation. My third pass through these books!

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Thank you, Ministre, for your work in keeping up these great threads, and hail AuntiePam as she takes up the torch!
Read a few things off the Kindle while travelling last week:

Wolverton Station, a short story by Joe Hill. A gem, as expected.

Bleeding Shadows, a collection by Joe R. Lansdale. Mostly wonderful. (Although I love Joe, he is no poet). My favorite tales were a couple of westerns about a character named Deadwood Dick; and a story featuring Lovecraftian elder gods and Carroll’s White Rabbit, told by Huckleberry Finn. Yes, really!

A Night of Blacker Darkness: Being the Memoir of Frederick Whithers As Edited by Cecil G. Bagsworth III, by Dan Wells. This tried hard to be a wacky romp, but came off a bit irritating. I just didn’t feel I was in the trusted hands of a professional wacky romper here.

Fool Proof, by our own dear DMark. Ahhhh. Now this is wacky romping! I have to admit I haven’t quite finished it yet (darn that short plane ride) but it’s just plain fun, reminiscent of Dave Barry’s novels.

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I am reading The Little Old Lady who Broke all the Rules by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg because it reminds me of my mother!

It’s about a pensioner who lives in a retirement home and decides to do something exciting with her life - like rob a bank. It’s very amusing and it’s quite a gentle story so it is the perfect antidote to the Ice & Fire bloodfest. It reminds me of my mum because she lives in sheltered housing where they had a “retirement living officer” who took great exception to mum organising little outings to the theatre etc with her group of friends.

Whilst my doting parent does not have a criminal bone in her body, I could just see the devilish glint in her eye at the prospect of doing what the League of Pensioners managed to do :slight_smile:

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Have you read the Mrs. Pollifax Series? Similar premise, older, bored lady turns up at the CIA and asks for a job. Surprisingly they hire her for a simple courier job that blows up. They’re pretty unrealistic for the most part but a lot of fun to read, in my opinion, particularly if you just want something light. Hong Kong Buddha is pretty grim towards the end, but most of them are pretty fluffy.

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Richard Russo’s Elsewhere, which is his memoir about his mother, who suffered from undiagnosed mental illness, most likely OCD and depression. I knew what it was about when I picked it up, but I didn’t anticipate that I would find it so … bleak and hopeless. Obviously, mental illness isn’t going to be a huge comedy, but Russo doesn’t seem to have much personal closure regarding the issues with his mother. It was a well-written book, and he very obviously loved his mother very much, but I can’t exactly say I enjoyed reading it.

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Okay, I finished Trunk Music other than the 2 criticisms mentoned in last month’s thread I really would have prefered to leave out the guns a-blazing finale. I just did a head smack with my book, sighed and asked my driver if he thought it was feasible or not.

I’m thinking two semi automatic police issued Smith & Wessons one in each hand, Powers might get off one good shot but double recoil should have knocked his balance off enough that at least ONE of the dozen other guns surrounding him could have picked him off

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Currently reading For the Win by Cory Doctorow. Very interesting book. I have a few other of his books on my to read list; Little Brother and Makers.

I plan on reading The Rook by Daniel O’Malley next. Read the first few pages on Amazon. Seems interesting. The main character has amenisia and wakes up surrounded by dead bodies with letters to herself in her pocket about what she needs to do to survive because she knew she would forget everything. Some fortune teller or similar had warned her.

Will also try to get through either Piers Anthony’s Apprentice Adept Series (7 books) or Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider series (10 books). Has anyone read both of these series and have a recommendation on which to read first?

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I’m reading a “cozy” - a Maeve Binchy book (Scarlet Feather.) I almost feel guilty reading it because it’s so simplistic but she’s a highly engaging story-teller and once in a while my brain needs a very easy read.

I’m thoroughly enjoying it. :slight_smile:

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Patrick O’Brien, The Letter of Marque for the umpteenth time.

I am reading C J Cherryh, Invader that I found at a flea market.

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I finished The Cold Dish: A Walt Longmire Mystery by Craig Johnson about a Wyoming sheriff. I usually stay away from westerns, but this was set in the present and had Indians, but very little about horses and livestock and I don’t remember a single, “Awww, shucks, ma’am”. I enjoyed it, even laughing out loud once or twice, and will probably continue with others in the series.

Currently reading The Sunday Philosophy Club: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel by Alexander McCall Smith and listening to The Affair (Jack Reacher) by Lee Child.

Unlike chiroptera, I don’t ever feel guilty about my easy reads. I do sometimes feel guilty about watching TV though. :o

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I started and then promptly gave up on Peter Ackroyd’s [London Under](London Under). It was not a systematic uncovering of the layers of earth and history under London’s streets like I was hoping. It was more of a list disguised in elaborate vocabulary. Did not enjoy, will not read this author again.

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I HIGHLY recommend The Rook. It was a page turner from the beginning. The characters were well drawn and the story was funny, exciting and poignant too. O’Malley creates great main characters but many of my favorites were the side characters, particularly Myfanwy’s secretary. I loved her.

I started How Chance and Stupidity have Changed History today. It was cheap at B&N :smiley:

So far it’s well written but sadly it appears to be more vignettes about specific episodes of chance and or stupid rather than an over arching thesis on the subject. The author is very obviously not a historian by his phrasing.

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Will have to look that one up here. Sounds like just the thing to take with me to Singapore next month.

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I finished Ivanhoe this week. I read it once about 25 years ago, and all I remembered about it was jousting and Robin Hood (spoilers for a 200 year old book, I suppose). But reading it again, I was mostly struck by how creepy it is to kidnap a woman and attempt to force her into a sexual relationship. The most horrifying was the story of Ulrica, who was forced to be a concubine by two generations of noblemen. Not exactly the kids story I was remembering!

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I’ve started The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon. It’s something similar to Flowers for Algernon, concerning autism. (The author’s son is autistic.) It’s set a little bit in the future, where a small group of high-functioning autistic persons are doing analysis work (profitably) for a large company, and due to some sort of ADA-like regulations the company provides a special working environment for them. They are offered an experimental cure for their condition, and pressured by company executives to undergo it.

I like the POV of the autistic protagonist, who (like many, if not most people) feels unsatisfied with his life even though he can list many reasons why he should be happy. He’s fallen in love with a “normal” woman, and I suspect this is going to be a reason for him to accept the treatment. I’m less impressed with the characterizations of the other people in the book.