Now reading Stars Beyond, SF by S K Dunstall. It’s the sequel to Stars Uncharted; no idea if this book will finish the quest or there will be another.
Next will be Victorian London: The Tale of a City 1840-1870, by Liza Picard, and/or 1636: The Atlantic Encounter, by Eric Flint and Walter H Hunt.
Just finished it. Some critics have compared it to Hemingway and Salinger, for its clear, straightforward prose, and I can see that. Pretty bleak, but worth a read, and it was fun to catch all the Cleveland references. One of the banks he robbed is within walking distance of my house.
Just started Turing’s Cathedral by George Dyson, a history of the early days of computing. It’s a bit dry so far; not sure I’ll keep going.
I also zipped through The German Aircraft Carrier Graf Zeppelin: Super Drawings in 3D by Stefan Draminski. Beautifully realistic computer-generated images of the carrier as she would have looked upon completion during WWII, with her flight deck full of planes, and some line drawings. No cutaway views, though, and the text reads like it was run through Google Translate.
Speaking of Cleveland, one of my favorite podcasters did episode on the 1930 butcher killings in Kingsbury Road…
(One of my favorite episodes of his actually)
Yes, those murders have almost become mythic in Cleveland, the way Jack the Ripper’s still are in London. The connection to Eliot Ness also helps.
Finished The Guardians, by John Grisham. In a small, backwater Florida town in 1988, a white lawyer is brutally murdered. A disgruntled black client is convicted for it but misses the death penalty when the lone black juror holds out. Twenty-two years later, an innocence group takes up his cause, as it appears to be an obvious frame. The real culprits seem to be the corrupt county sheriff and a drug cartel, and they don’t want any innocence proved. It was okay, nothing special.
Next up is Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, by Mary L Trump, PhD.
Ah Ness, NOT the likeable baby saving fellow Costner made famous. He really was an awful man. I believe I read that he took most of the credit for catching Capone, work that was actaull done by his team.
Finished The House of Daniel , by Harry Turtledove. Meh. What would’ve been a good novella is weighed down by 200 pages of padding.
Now I’m reading The Art of War, by Sun Tzu. My edition doesn’t say who did the translation.
Gave up on it. Tedious and not for me.
Next up: Windhaven by George R.R. Martin and Lisa Tuttle, a sf novel about a stormy waterworld over which human flyers with ultralight wings are a lifeline, elite couriers between the island colonies. Pretty good so far.
I loved the book when I read it back in my 20s.
Finished The Art of War , by Sun Tzu. This edition was translated by Lionel Giles, with an introduction by James Clavell. It was very interesting, and reminded me of some parts of Simon Singh’s The Code Book.
Now I’m reading The Oysterville Sewing Circle, by Susan Wiggs.
Started The Lamppost Huggers and Other Wretched Tales, by Christopher Stanley, which is a dark fantasy/horror flash fiction collection.
I’m about 1/3 through Stephen King’s If It Bleeds. The book is actually four previously unpublished novellas. The novella with the same title as the book features Holly Gibney of the detective agency Finders Keepers. We first met Holly in King’s Bill Hodges trilogy.
Today I read this:
I heard the author on NPR and although I’d heard ,about QAnon I didn’t know much about it.
I can’t commit to a book right now, but I need to push myself to read more.
Mostly Lang’s The Pink Fairy Book, which is eh compared to the originals of the stories I’m familiar with.
Finished The Oysterville Sewing Circle by Susan Wiggs, which is okay.
Just started Women Aren’t Supposed to Fly: The Memoirs of a Female Flight Surgeon, by Harriet A. Hall.
Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers by Grant Naylor. Comedy/Science Fiction. Pretty much just the first season of Red Dwarf as a novel. Pretty good though with some interesting, quite funny, additions. Also reading a Bio of Al Capone I picked up from the waiting room at the V.A. clinic I go to. By John Kobler btw. Its …ok… but quite superficial. Very little to no deep digging or new revelations. The picture section though fairly widespread as far as his associates and friends looks to be taken directly from photocopies of period newspapers. Not sure I can recommend it tbh. If you enjoy a good laugh or are a Red Dwarf fan who hasn’t read it already though, pick up a copy of Infinity TODAY! lol
Finished The Lamppost Huggers and Other Wretched Tales , by Christopher Stanley, of which the best stories are the title one and “Norfolk”.
I finished If It Bleeds by Stephen King. IMO, not quite as good as Full Dark, No Stars, but entertaining nonetheless. The 4th of the four novellas, entitled Rat, is the best of the lot.
Finished Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, by Mary L Trump, PhD, Chump’s niece. A slim volume, barely 200 pages, but it packs a punch. It should be required reading for every American. While Mary does not state it explicitly, it becomes evident that the family motto must be twofold: 1) Only suckers serve their country – one of the president’s nephews was actually threatened with being disinherited if he followed through with his desire to join the Army; and 2) Lying and cheating are perfectly acceptable business tactics, even if you get caught, as long as you can show a profit. The real villain in the family though is Fred, the president’s father and author’s grandfather. The author meticulously details how his own sociopathy turned the president into who he became while destroying her own father for daring to want to strike out on his own. At the start of the book, the author gives a quote from Victor Hugo: “If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness,” a clear reference here to Fred Trump. I did find it amusing that the president’'s paternal grandfather Friedrich left Germany to avoid mandatory military service and owned a few brothels in British Columbia.
Next up is Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, a 1400-page unabridged version and the source of the quote mentioned above.