Well, we made it. This kidney stone of a year is nearly passed. However, Christmas approaches… and the dreaded Christmas Carols on endless loop shudder
Soooo Whatcha all readin?
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’ve gone back to my library audiobook of Patrick O’Brian’s The Thirteen Gun Salute, the next in his fine series of Napoleonic naval adventures. Capt. Aubrey and his particular friend and ship’s surgeon Dr. Maturin are aboard the frigate HMS Diane, in Java on a diplomatic mission to counter French efforts to ingratiate themselves with the local poobahs. Wonderful period detail.
I’ll return to Robert A. Heinlein’s Glory Road, an old favorite of mine, shortly.
Reading “The Ship Who Sang” by Anne McCaffrey and “A Fire Upon the Deep” by Vernor Vinge; both for book clubs (in the case of the Vinge, a re-read - I’ve read the book several times)
Finished All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings , by Gayle Boss, which I thought was wonderful. The author describes how many creatures (insects, birds, reptiles, mammals) survive through the winter, and links them into the Church season of Advent.
Almost done with O’Brian’s The Thirteen Gun Salute, and it’s as good as all his others. Highly recommended.
I’ve also begun reading Arthur Rex by Thomas Berger, an often tongue-in-cheek but mostly respectful retelling of Arthurian legend, aloud with my teenage son. I first discovered it in high school and thought he would now appreciate it.
I finished Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (audio book) - I love it! I more than loved it; I think I’m putting this right up there with one of my favorite books ever. It’s not just the flowery, poetic language that hooked me - though that was a big hook … I could listen to that narrator describe a mutilated puppy rotting in the sun if he used the Queen’s English like that - but the story was so much more than what I expected knowing only what I knew from Frankenstein of pop-lore. I admit, Young Frankenstein was my chief resource when it comes to what I knew about the story. It just works on so many levels. Is it allegorical? Is it straight up horror? Does the creature represent man’s inhumanity to man? Or perhaps he is personal sin, the mask which the baser human hides behind? I don’t know … I was coming up with all sorts of shit. At one point I was convinced the Creature represented Pornography and his victims basement dwelling nerds and not Victor’s relatives. I digress … this is a great book which I highly recommend. I will most likely listen to it again.
I don’t have another credit due for another couple of days but I think next I’m going to go full 180 and read Paul Stanley’s autobiography. Probably not a three syllable word in the whole book.
If you like the audiobook, I strongly recommend one of the copiously Annotated editions. There are at least three – Leonard Wolf’s version from the 1970s (later re-released as The Essential Frankenstein), Leslie Klinger’s recent re-Annotated version timed to coincide with the bicentennial of the story, and an edition “annotated for Scientists and Engineers” put out about the same time by MIT Press. The annotations really add to your experience.
Let me also recommend my own take on the story, A Light so Brilliant and Wondrous published online by Silver Blade last fall
I’m still re-reading The Best of Philip K. Dick, but my nightstand reading is the absolutely wonderful The Phantom Atlas: the Greatest Myths, Lies, and Blunders on Maps by Edward Brooke-Hitching. It’s a series of places that never existed, but which persisted on old maps for many years before finally being erased, listed alphabetically. Part of what makes this book such a delight is that the maps are reproduced in all their fustian glory in full color.
Finished Artemis, by Andy Weir. It was a lot of fun. Normally, I dislike “caper” fiction. I only read this book because it was chosen by my SF book club. But this was excellent.
Now I’m reading Balancing Acts: Behind the Scenes at London’s National Theatre, by Nicholas Hytner.
I’ll be reading Artemis and have the audiobook on my phone, but haven’t listened to it yet.
Just started Smacked by Eilene Zimmerman, a nonfiction memoir about a well-off American family brought low by the hard-charging lawyer dad’s drug problem. I like it so far.
Finished Balancing Acts: Behind the Scenes at London’s National Theatre , by Nicholas Hytner. It had some interesting anecdotes about plays, playwrights, and actors.
Now I’m reading Adequate Yearly Progress, by Roxanna Elden. It’s a novel about a high school, told from the staff’s perspective.
Finished The Watchman, by Robert Crais, 11th in his Elvis Cole/Joe Pike detective series. A spoiled young lady from a wealthy family – loosely modeled on Paris Hilton was my impression – gets into a late-night car wreck in LA and suddenly finds herself a witness in a federal case. The subject of the investigation is now trying to kill her, and Joe Pike has been hired to protect her. Very good, with an emphasis on Pike this go-around, with Cole assisting, the opposite of how it usually is.
Have already started Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, by Walter Isaacson. I previously enjoyed his biography of Leonardo Da Vinci.
