Khadaji's Whatcha Readin' thread - July 2014

I had offered to take this thread over in September but life seems to have conspired against that plan :smiley: So here I am DZedNConfused, but if that’s too long to type, feel free to call me Kris. I answer to that even when people aren’t talking to me!

I started Fantasy in Death by JD Robb today. So far it’s much beeter than Origin so I’m not feeling as UGH! that I bought a handful of her books on other people’s recommendation as i was at the end of Origin.
So what are we all reading, talking about, and trading off for credit at the local used book store?

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 2013, and it was decided that we should rename these monthly threads in his honour.

Thanks for continuing this! I was beginning to wonder when the June edition kept going.

Just finished Stephen King’s Mr Mercedes. Great fun from SK, as (almost) always. Now reading Greg Ile’s Natchez Burning, which I’m enjoying very much. Given the subject matter (white supremacist killings covered up in the 1960s and the modern-day fallout) I’m not sure the term “fun” applies but it’s definitely a good read.

As a side note, the best used book and media store in this county was destroyed by fire caused by a lightning strike on May 7 of this year. RIP Jellybeans. I’ve been a regular there for over a decade.

Currently reading three:

  1. January First: A Child’t Descent into Madness and Her Father’s Struggle to Save Her - It’s a memoir written by the father of a girl with severe child-onset schizophrenia. It’s fascinating in a glad-that-didn’t-happen-to-me sort of way.

  2. Population: 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time - A memoir from an EMT-B and firefighter volunteering in a small town. I’m an EMT and went through a tiny bit of fire school, so it’s fun to see this stuff worked into literature, but his writing style isn’t my favorite.

  3. The Sisters Montclair - About a college-age girl taking on a part-time job as a caregiver for an old woman. I’m only a few pages into it, but so far I enjoy it. I’ve read a lot of books recently with some rather timid main characters with low self-esteem, and this is a refreshing change. The main characters are blunt and lively, and I think I’ll enjoy spending a book with them.

I’ve got a right pile by the side of the bed, etc. at the moment.

I’m nearly finished with Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman. It’s a highly enjoyable peek-behind-the-scenes at what it’s like to be a superhero or supervillain. Tongue in cheek, definitely, but very well rendered. Enormous fun to read if you’ve ever enjoyed a DC or Marvel superhero movie.

About 200 pages to go in Midnight’s Children. I’m still at a loss as to why I don’t like this book more than I do. Magic realism in India? It ought to really thrill me, but doesn’t.

I’ve read a few of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books lately. I used to be a fan, but they’ve been repetitive for a long time, IMHO, and these were no different. Currently on Takedown Twenty on the treadmill at home. No real concentration needed - it’s like eating potato chips but with less calories. :wink:

RIP Jellybeans! Our best used bookstore closed down a couple years ago :frowning:

Midnight’s Children left me cold, too. I love Rushdie with all my heart but for some reason his Great Literary Classic didn’t grab me as much as some of his other works (like The Moor’s Last Sigh).

The current state of my book pile is:
*The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell. I’ve gotten to the part where Boswell meets Johnson and will now spend the next 1000 pages fawning over him and recording all their conversations.
*The Blood Knight by Greg Keyes. Book 3 in the Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series, also known as the book in which all the darkness condenses and hangs gloomily over the pages.
**Firebird *by Mercedes Lackey. A retelling of the Russian folktale of the same name. A light, fun read.
*The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami. I won an ARC off of a Goodreads giveaway. I’m about five chapters in and so far it’s pretty good. It’s one of those books that doesn’t believe in quotation marks, though.
*The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker. I’ve finished up the stories and poetry and now I’m on the reviews which I’m enjoying much more. Not that the fiction was bad, it wasn’t, it’s just that the snark is starting to come through.
*Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko. I forgot how dark this book is. I can only read it a bit at a time.
*Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi. Just got this from the library. I’m a bit burned by *Redshirts *still so I haven’t opened it yet.

Sorry to hear that! Jellybeans has another location but it’s the next county over. I still love book stores - amazon dot com is great, but I’m sad about the gradual loss of brick and mortar stores. Progress, I guess. Onwards. :slight_smile:

Woohoo! Thanks Kris!

Finishing up Caitlin Moran’s How to Be A Woman. It’s been only mildly interesting. Being British, she expresses herself in an utterly adorable and fascinating manner, but I just don’t find her funny. I haven’t been able to relate to her at all.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t want to read two humorists back to back, but if the library is to have their materials back on time, next will be You Can Date Boys When You’re Forty: Dave Barry on Parenting and Other Topics He Knows Very Little About. I expect to get a few chuckles out of it, though I’ve sort of cooled on Dave Barry over time. Recently I donated all my DB books to the breakroom at work…excepting, of course, his magnum opus, Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs. That one still makes me pee a little. :smiley:

Still hammering away at Ivanhoe (on audiobook) and The Price of Silence, a book about the Duke lacrosse rape scandal.

And enjoying the slog in both cases. I am liking Ivanhoe, in a “prithee stout yeoman - avaunt ere I cleave thee to the chine” kind of way. The scene where the kidnapped Saxon woman torments Font-de-Beauf (probably sic) while he waits to burn to death was genuinely creepy.

However, I am struck by how big a bunch of assholes everybody is to Isaac the Jew, and I can’t tell if Scott means it as parody or if he is aware of it at all. The first thought of everybody, hero and villain alike, upon spying Isaac seems to be to rob him and then pat themselves on the back for not killing him. Creepy.

Although the scene where the jester swaps places with Cedric so he can escape and leave the jester to be hanged was genuinely affecting. So was the speech from Gaunt the swineherd, who renounces his loyalty to Cedric for throwing a javelin at Fangs the dog - but then instantly returns to his service when he learns that Cedric has been captured. True chivalry, and not among knights at all.

Regards,
Shodan

I think that the prevelence of brutal, thieving anti-Semitism among everyone was deliberate on Scott’s part, a foil against which (in particular) the heroine Rebecca is supposed to shine, and a realistic assessment of the actual treatment of Jews in 12th century England.

Interesting article on this point: http://www.newenglishreview.org/Ibn_Warraq/Sir_Walter_Scott’s_Treatment_of_Jews_in_Ivanhoe/

Scott’s position appears to have been to accept many of the anti-Semitic tropes (at least, in respect of Issac - Rebecca has essentially no flaws), but in effect to blame them on the treatment Christian society meted out to Jews at the time. In short, if Issac is a cringing, scheming, avaricious coward, it is because the constant robbery and abuse he suffered made it so that acting in that way was the only way to survive.

Still about 20% left in Kerouac’s On the Road.

I’ll be due for an Agatha Christie story after that.

Currently I am trying to read the culture novels. Thought they would make an interesting read right now

What are culture novels?

I’ll be starting Atkinson’s 3rd book in his WWII trilogy, The Guns at Last Light. Also Philbrick’s Bunker Hill.

A series of SF books by Iain Banks.

I’m reading Dies the Fire by S M Stirling for like the third time.

I took a quick break from “The Last of the Mohicans” to read Stephen Colbert’s “America Again: Re-Becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t”. (It was fairly short and had lots of pictures, so it only took me a few hours to read.) Unfortunately, I didn’t like it nearly as much as “I Am America (And So Can You!)”; the jokes were definitely more hit-and-miss.

Incidently I will be on vacation at the end of July. I will still have internet but I might need a friendly poke to get the August thread up.

Phew! That was close. The chain remains unbroken.

A fourth of the way through The Rainmaker, by John Grisham. Very good. A debt-laden fresh law-school graduate stumbles across a golden bad-faith case involving an insurance company that won’t cover a poor dying man’s leukemia treatments that could save his life. Apparently a rainmaker is someone who joins a law firm and brings with him a big slam-dunk case. Written in the first-person present tense, and so has a different feel from other Grishams I’ve read so far.

I’ve been reading a lot of Grisham lately, and one thing I’ve learned is I’m glad I’m not a lawyer.

Thanks! But I think I will hold off on reading the article until I finish the book. I want, if possible, to see if I can come to some understanding without being influenced by other commentataors.

At the moment, I am contrasting Scott’s treatment of Isaac and Rebecca with Shakespeare’s treatment of Shylock and Jessica. Scott even quotes from The Merchant of Venice before one chapter in the Librivox edition I am using - the “My daughter and my ducats” line. Jessica falls in love with Lorenzo and runs off with his money, while Rebecca is kidnapped by Bois-Guilbert and thus costs her father ransom. But Rebecca sticks with her faith while Jessica becomes a Christian. (There is also the forced conversion of Shylock at the end, contrasted with the attempted, forced conversion of Isaac by the Friar Tuck character.)

Another parallel I noticed is that the “central” character in both The Merchant of Venice (Antonio) and Ivanhoe (Ivanhoe himself) is much less active in driving the plot than in many works. Ivanhoe spends a lot of the novel off being wounded and nursed by Rebecca, as Antonio is rescued by Portia.

At the moment it is somewhat easier to believe that Scott is creating parody in his treatment of anti-Semitism, since I am in the middle of the trial of Rebecca. And Scott does a good job of presenting the hopelessness Rebecca feels in being confronted by the mindless superstitious hatred felt by the Knights Templar, so that her “trial” is completely hopeless. But Bois-Guilbert gives her the scroll that recommends that she ask for trial by combat, so he may be a more complex character than anyone else in that plotline. I hope so.

But Monty Python had spoiled my literary reactions once more. In the trial of Rebecca, one of the suborned witnesses says that Rebecca is a witch because she turned into a swan and flew around the castle, then turned back into a woman. To which I responded, inevitably -

“She turned me into a newt!”

Regards,
Shodan

PS - I got better.

Heh, I’ll wait to comment until you have finished, to avoid spoilering - sounds like it won’t be long now, if you are at the trial.

One interesting factoid I mentioned previously: Scott allegedly based his character Rebecca on a real Jewish woman he’d heard of from a buddy who raved about her virtues, which (again, allegedly) caused her no end of embarrasment when Ivanhoe became a best-seller! :smiley: