August is here already, like a sneaky cat slipping in through an open door and flopping in the middle of the living room floor with an expression of “So? What you gonna do about it?” on it’s face as it cleans it’s whiskers. (If it’s my cats this is followed by a howling demand for food!)
So Whatcha all readin?
Print:
Stone & Sky, the new Rivers of London book by Ben Aaronovitch
Artificial Condition the second Murderbot book by Martha Wells
Kindle:
Randomize by Andy Weir, shenanigans in a Vegas casino!
And on and off, I’ve been listening to The Element of Fire by Martha Wells, but all the politics are making it hard to stick with and the absolutely HUGE cast of characters! I’ll get through it but it won’t be rapidly.
Khadaji was one of the earlier members of 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, who started these threads 'way back in the Stone Age of 2005. Consequently, when he suddenly and quite unexpectedly passed away in January 2013, we decided to rename this thread in his honor and to keep his memory, if not his ghost, alive.
I finished Norse Mythology for Bostonians, which is a hoot. As an extra, the book looks like a Penguin Classic, with its half-black cover and period illustration. But it actually reads “Puffin Carcass”, and the drawing has been altered by making Odin appear to wear a robe with a Boston Bruins logo on it.
I also finished Molly Ivins – Letters to the Nation, a collection of some columns fromm 1982 to 2007.
Not sure what’s up next. I’m re-reading some Robert E. Howard and a collection of Jack Kirby Thor comics from the 1960s, but I’m not sure I should count those.
On Audio, I finished Alberta’s American Carnage. Now it’s on to Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton
I finished Of Monsters and Mainframes. Look elsewhere if you’re snooty about your sci-fi, but it was a fun story.
I started today on Fat Girl Walking: Sex, Food, Love, and Being Comfortable in Your Skin…Every Inch of It by Brittany Gibbons | Goodreads. This book is ten years old, I’m not sure how it came to my recent attention. Anyway, I was hoping for something funny, and I have laughed out loud a couple of times, but dang. This girl had a pretty traumatic childhood. She wasn’t abused so much as neglected. The story is really interesting and I’m looking forward to continuing it, but if anyone else decides to read it, I would recommend that you skip over the part where her dad gets her a kitten.
The setup is this: In the 23rd Century humanity disappears, for reasons unknown. Maybe nuclear war, maybe aliens, maybe the Second Coming.
The only survivors are a small group of people who time-traveled forward past the Extinction event and are now living in fifty million years in the future, divided into mutually antagonistic groups.
Then there is a murder, and the only police officer left on Earth must investigate.
Well-written book with some mind bending big ideas. I enjoyed it more than the prequel, which is pretty good.
The Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman, and the Race to Decipher the World’s Oldest Writing Joshua Hammer
The history of the decipherment of Cunieform writing by a group of British men in the 1800s using linguistics and inspired guesswork.
Interesting and well-written book. highly recommended
Still reading Man With a Bull-Tongue Plow by Jesse Stuart. Finished The Chill, by Ross Macdonald, which was okay. Also finished The Delany Sisters’ Book of Everyday Wisdom, by Sadie and Bessie Delaney with Amy Hill Hearth which I enjoyed.
Next up: The Long Way Down, by Robb White, a YA novel from the 1970’s about trapeze artists; and Rumbles: A Curious History of the Gut, by Elsa Richardson.
I finished Presumed Guilty (2025) by Scott Turow, the last in his trilogy about skilled but often-unlucky former prosecutor Rusty Sabich, after Presumed Innocent (1987) and Innocent (2010). Rusty is semiretired and living out in the sticks north of Kindle County with his girlfriend. Her troubled adoptive son runs afoul of the law and Rusty, against his better judgment, agrees to serve as his defense counsel. Other than a somewhat-less-than-plausible explanation of the book’s central whodunnit, I thought it was worthwhile.
Just started Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller, about a prudish woman in a small Georgia town and her comic comeuppance. It almost failed my 50-page rule, but then it got better, and I think I’ll finish it after all.
Still reading Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary now and then with my son.
I recently read an article from The Atlantic from about twenty years ago disparaging pretentious writing in Literary novels. I don’t remember the title or I’d link it because it was great. However, it has made me much more aware of pretentious writing, leading me to ditching two novels in quick succession.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer: This book commits many sins, pretentious writing being one of the least. A nine-year-old narrator who talks like he’s at least ten years older, run-on sentences galore, gimmicks like pages with one line on them, pages with sentences and phrases circled and underlined in red pen, copies of pen-testing pages from a pen store. Mr. Foer, you are not Laurence Sterne and this is not Tristram Shandy. Please go back and review the rules of English composition.
Ithaca, Claire North. I mentioned this one last month. The narrator, Hera, is an unrepentant bitch and horrible to read the novel through. Also, very bad writing. I mentioned I was taking notes. Here are a few of them with my comentary:
“Rosy-fingered dawn crawled its way across Ithaca’s back like an awkward lover fumbling at long skirts.” What in the actual hell is this supposed to look like? Bad simile, bad!
“…the manhood of Ithaca sailed to Troy.” Ithaca’s penis fell off and sailed away? Is that what you mean?
“…his laughable oar-ish height?” WTF?
“groves of olives and fields of barley as mere and tough” The bolded word didn’t sound right, so I looked it up in the dictionary. Would that Claire North had done the same, then she would know she used the wrong word there.
I’m now reading John Wiswell’s Wearing the Lion which is also narrated by Hera, but she’s a more tolerable character. Also this book is funny.
Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s Happy Land is also enjoyable partly because it’s set where I live. As in the exact town I live in. I don’t know if the author is from here or lives here, but she’s definitely visited because her descriptions of the main branch of the public library and her directions to Pardee’s emergency room are spot on.
I read the first 110 pages of Just Emilia, by Jennifer Oko. The premise hooked me: three people are trapped together in a stuck elevator, and discover that they are all the same person, but at three different stages of life. It seems like a lot could be done with this idea, but it’s just not getting off the ground, and what the author really wanted to write about is the tangled relationships between mothers and daughters. Ugh, goodbye.
I also just finished Nightshade. It was a pretty good read by one of my favorite authors, but I tend to agree with the assessment by @Siam_Sam of a throw-away. It started off strong but faded a bit in the second half of the story. Still, I would recommend.
Next up: A Serial Killer’s Guide to Marriage by Asia Mackay.
I finished the audiobook of Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, which was very good. I was very surprised to learn the details of his life, the broad outlines of which even were not told to me in my classes in high school or college. Chernow keeps referring to “the well-known story of…” , but these stories are apparently only well-known to historians. I was completely unaware of Hamilton’s adultery and being blackmailed later in life, which probably put an end to any presidential ambitions he might have had. I knew he was on Washington’s army staff, but didn’t realize how essential he was to the general, nor that he was writing the Federalist papers at the same time. A truly impressive life.
According to Chernow, Hamilton intended to not fire his shot at his opponent in the duel with Aaron Burr (like Barry Lyndon in the last duel in the motion picture, if not the novel), which makes it even more lopsided, in that Burr had murderous intent from the start, and was so blase about killing Hamilton that his breakfast companion later that morning was unaware that anything momentous had happened. Burr even tried to lead a session in the House afterwards, to the surprise of the members. It took him a while to realize what a tremendous blunder he had made. It definitely put an end to his political career, and Burr found himself prosecuted for murder, forcing him to self-exile.
One of the weirder stories in the book is that, many years later, after Burr could return to the U.S., he visited a wax museum and was confronted with a diorama of his fatal duel with Hamilton. It’ the sort of irony that would fit in a David Lynch movie.
Not sure what’s up next, in either print or audio. I’m drifting through re-reading various things I’ve read before.
I have it.. I wanted to read Blitz last month but everyone else kept putting out new stuff…
I am just about halfway through Stone and Sky by Ben Aaronvitch, quite enjoying it. Though I did have to Google who Paul was because I had apparently missed that memo and I didn’t think Abigail was mourning McCartney…
Finished: The Winds of Fate , by S M Stirling – the second book in Stirling’s latest time travel/alternative history series, “Make the Darkness Light”. In the first book a history professor (former 75th Ranger Regt officer) and four of his grad students are tricked into taking a trip in a time machine, departing from Vienna in 2032, just as WW III is starting, and arriving in Pannonia Superior in 165, a year before the start of the Marcomannic Wars (166-180). In the second book we learn that a Chinese team, consisting of a state security officer and four historians, made a matching trip from 2032 to 165, arriving in Han China with the same goal in mind: Turn the second-century realm into a worldwide empire with no international rivalries to start a worldwide nuclear war. Looking forward eagerly to the third book…
Still reading: Their Backs Against the Sea: The Battle of Saipan and the Largest Banzai Attack of World War II, by Bill Sloan.
Started: Ettiquette & Espionage – first book in the Finishing School series (YA steampunk), by Gail Carriger.
