Remember when 1999 seemed impossibly far away? Yeah, me too. So here we are about to start a new decade in a new century…
So 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’m here! Thank you so much for posting these threads, @DZedNConfused. They’re my favorites.
Also, it must be nearly time to start compiling my top ten of 2020 for Elendil’s Heir’s yearly thread.
I’m slowly getting into Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline. Hopefully 2021 will bring me more reading time!
I am currently reading… a lot of things, honestly I’ve had the attention span of a hyper caffinated grasshopper on crack lately. HOWEVER! I have made some headway on :
Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon, which is a book of his travels around the country in the late 70s.
Bag Man by Rachel Maddow, based on her podcast about the scandal that took down VP Spiro Agnew.
Complete Ghost Stories by M.R. James. I’ve adored his ghost stories for over 45 years. He was a master at creeping you out without being gross. And when my favorite podcaster, who has a thick British accent, read some of the stories for a Halloween episode, I died.
I finished a book called Explorers: Journeys to the Ends of the Earth by Jon Balchin on Monday. It took me several weeks but I enjoyed it. The book is not heavy in detail about each individual profile so as a layman there were so many names and historical and geographic facts I learned on a foundational level. But it’s one of those books where I felt the need to get a pen and paper for writing notes for future references when I plan to read more advanced depictions.
The first book of 2021 I will be reading is The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. This book has received a lot of good reviews in the literature world and from the recommendation I saw on a blog is that it is a murder mystery dressed up in a mind warp.
Still enjoying reading Arthur Rex by Thomas Berger, an often tongue-in-cheek but mostly respectful retelling of Arthurian legend, aloud with my teenage son. King Arthur, having secured his throne, has found his queen, the lovely Guinevere, and is now hosting a tourney to find enough knights to fill out his Round Table.
I’m nearly done with A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold, the first Vorkosigan novel I’ve read. I could do without the not-especially-funny butterbug subplot, but the political machinations on the Council of Counts, and Lord Vorkosigan’s clumsy wooing of a beautiful and spunky widow, are usually interesting.
I finished Suzanne Palmer’s Finder – a very good read.
I also finished Bill Griffith’s Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Schlitzy the Pinhead. It’s the biography of the real-life character who appeared in Tod Browning’s movie Freaks and was the inspiration for Griffths’ comic strip Zippy the Pinhead. The entire book is in graphic novel form, appropriately enough. Griffiths did incredible research for this, even interviewing some of the few people left alive who knew and worked with Schlitzy.
Finished Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, by Walter Isaacson. An excellent biography of possibly the foremost of our Founding Fathers. I did not know that much about Franklin’s early life, so that part was interesting. But I knew next to nothing about his time in Paris in the 1770s and '80s, negotiating the alliance with the French and the peace treaty with the British. I was especially interested to learn the extent of British spying on the American delegation as well as Franklin’s playing off British spies and French interests against each other for the best possible outcomes for the Americans. This is Isaacson’s second biography I’ve read, the first being the also-good Leonardo Da Vinci, and I can recommend both.
The wife and I visited Franklin’s grave on a visit to Philadelphia eight years ago. There is a custom of tossing a penny on his grave. At the time, I thought a $100 bill might be more appropriate, but I bowed to tradition.
Next up, it’s back to Robert Crais with his Demolition Angel, a standalone that is not an Elvis Cole/Joe Pike entry.
The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World’s Most Famous Museum - James Gardner
The Louvre Museum of Art in Paris may well be the world’s greatest art museum, (although the good folks at the Met in New York would almost certainly disagree), but it’s only been a museum for the last few centuries. Starting in the 1200s, it was a fortress, protecting the Western entrance to Paris from the English. Later it was a palace for Francois I and other great kings of Renaissance France. It only became a museum after the French Revolution, when it was decided that ordinary people should be able to see great art (in fact entrance was free until the 1920s).
I quite enjoyed this book. Mr. Gardner does a good job tying the the history of the building to the history of France and throws in a lot of fun tidbits - for example, Louis XIII liked to cut his advisors’ hair - and the prose is crisp and easy to digest.
As I am unlikely to visit in person anytime soon, this is a worthwhile substitute.
My Goodreads challenge last year was 75 books, and I read 78 (counting middle-school chapter books that I read multiple times, without which I was probably closer to 70). I’m setting the same challenge this year.
So far I’ve read Black Sun, a pretty good epic fantasy based on MesoAmerican culture and mythology; and finished the audiobook of How to Be an Antiracist, a really insightful book on the history of American racism, its roots in power dynamics, the importance of focusing on policies instead of personalities, its intersections with other forms of injustice, and more. A really good read.
Finished Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln , by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It would be pointless to say that this is the best book I’ve read this year, obviously. Nevertheless, it was so well-written, so much the type of book I enjoy reading, that I wouldn’t be surprised if it made my Top Ten list for 2021.
Now I’m reading Miss Julia’s Marvelous Makeover, by Ann B. Ross.
Dendarii_Dame, I dug those Miss Julia books too! I read maybe four or five of them, but it was so long ago I’d have to start back at the beginning now.
It is quite good indeed. PM me if you’d like some more Lincolniana recommendations - I’ve read a lot about him and his times.
I just zipped through Winterfair Gifts by Lois McMaster Bujold, a sf/romance sequel to her A Civil Campaign, about Lord Miles Vorkosigan wooing and winning his true love. A bit too schmaltzy and overwritten for my taste, I have to admit.
Now returning to an old favorite, Robert Heinlein’s fantasy adventure Glory Road; I’m about a third of the way through.
Finished Elatsoe, a solid modern YA fantasy about a Lipan Apache girl who can summon the ghosts of animals. And of people, but that’d be a terrible, terrible idea. Her best friend’s sister’s boyfriend is a vampire, but that’s not too big a deal in a world where magic is generally known and accepted.
Finished Poster Child: A Memoir , by Emily Rapp, which was excellent. It’s a young woman’s account of growing up with a leg which had to be amputated due to a birth defect.
Now I’m reading Challenge the Impossible: The Final Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, by Edward D. Hoch.
