I thought it would be later that I’d get this up, but the siren AKA Ninja kitty woke me up early. So while I wait for the sun to come up I’ll get cracking on the new thread.
Whatcha all readin? Anything Christmasy? Anything with snow (offer not valid in Australia)?
I have the big old doorstopper that is Daniel O’Malley’s newest Chequey book sitting here but I HAVE to finish my book club book first.
Reading:
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich. It’s… good, but damn does it meander around. It’s supposed to be a ghost story but the ghost has barely been in the book.
Word of a Lady by Sahara Kelly. Chessy, totally unrealistic but hella fun read Regency romance. Strong women, sexy men what more do I need? (Dinosaurs, see below)
On audio: Lost in Amber by Maz Maddox A heist novel in Shanghai but with the main characters being dinosaur shifters.
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.
That’s what I’m reading now! I figured I’d have to read at least 50 pages a day to get it back to the library on time, so I’m about 250 pages behind schedule now.
Well, anyway, it’s really good. Blitz
Finished A Divine Language: Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age, by Alec Wilkinson, which is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve read so far this year.
December is here, and life is slowly returning to normal. November was chock-full of the three Vs: Vegas, CoVid and Visitors. Most importantly, I am back to reading.
Am almost halfway through Desert Star, the latest by Michael Connelly, and am enjoying it immensely. Another Ballard-Bosch tale.
I finished Righteous Prey by John Sandford. Another enjoyable novel featuring Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers. This time the pair is pitted against a pack of smart, rich folks who have a mission to kill assholes.
If you’re a Sandford fan, you’ll like this book. If you’re not a Sandford fan, you should be.
Finished Stephen King’s The Bazaar Of Bad Dreams. Loved it. I remembered most of the stories, especially UR. Now I’m rereading (I’m on a rereading binge) Richard Bachman’s Blaze.
Over the weekend I finished Robert A. Heinlein’s 1951 juvenile sf novel Between Planets, which I’d never read before. A young man is caught up in a rebellion by Venus settlers against an oppressive Earth government. (Venus is a swampy planet with a native species of large, friendly, intelligent reptiles in Heinlein’s 'verse, before any astronomers knew better). It was both meh and anticlimactic. Not nearly as good as (off the top of my head) Time for the Stars, Space Cadet, Starship Troopers or The Rolling Stones IMHO.
I’ve now begun 21: The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey by Patrick O’Brian, the novel fragment that the author left behind when he died in 2000. It’s only two hours as an audiobook, the equivalent of three chapters or so - but as a completist, and even though I know it will break my heart a little, I want to hear it all.
Finished How Long 'Til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin, which was very good. The best fantasy story was “The City Born Great” and the best SF story was “The Effluent Engine”, which was alternate history/steampunk (and the best story overall).
Now I’m reading The Kingdom of Speech by Tom Wolfe.
I finished The entence by Louise Erdrich. Tonally, this book is all over the map. The first half, which I really enjoyed, was more of a whimsical, absurdist story, but at the halfway point it suddenly took a hard left into politics and drama, only to make another hard turn at the three-quarters mark when the author suddenly remembered that she’d been writing a ghost story. (And then anoter turn into dramatown for the last 20-30 pages.)
The parts I liked, I really liked and I would have liked the middle quarter a lot more in it’s own book. I feel like the author didn’t have enough material for two books so tried to jam them into one book. There were all sorts of plot lines that never went anywhere and the ending was extremely anti-climatic.
Started listening to The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King. It’s a collection of 20 short stories, although the first one is almost two hours long, so not exactly short. The entire book is 20 hours. I’m about halfway through the first story and am enjoying it thus far.
