I’m about two-thirds of the way through Against All Odds by Alex Kershaw, nonfiction about Audie Murphy and other U.S. Army soldiers fighting Nazis in North Africa, Italy and France during WWII. It’s kind of meh, but I’ll finish it.
Finished One Day We Had to Run!: Refugee Children Tell Their Stories in Words and Paintings, edited by Sybella Wilkes, which was powerful. Also finished Hench, by Natalie Zina Walschots, an interesting take on a world with superheros.
Next up: The Story of Hebrew, by Lewis Glinert. Still reading The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes.
I finally finished listening to The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. This book is quite possibly the slowest-moving murder mystery that I’ve ever read, even though there were three (or was it four?) murders that needed to be solved. This is the first in a four-book (so far) series; I have no plans to read any more in the series.
I finished Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley and… WTF did I just read? That book was a hot mess with one of the creepiest romances I’ve read in a long time some crowbarred in espionage and a completely obvious author insert . It was the best trainwreck I’ve finished in a long time.
Not to mention probably plagiarized (at least the title and general concept of a ministry of time) from a spanish tv series.
I’m now reading Swords of Shahrazar, a collection of Robert E. Howard’s Kirby O’Donnell’s Afghanistan stories, along with a couple of thematically related ones. I’d never read them before, and am curious about the third – The Trail of the Blood-stained God, because I read the story as adapted into a Conan the Barbarian story by L. Sprague de Camp, but not yet the original.
Afte that I’m not sure what. I’m still plowing through Adrienne Mayor’s The Amazons, but I’ll probably pick up something at Arisia this wekend.
For my bedside reading I’ve been going through Alan King’s Anyone who owns his own Home deserves it, which I’d read as a kid and found hilarious, but now it seems pretty “meh”. The criticisms of the joys of suburban living don’t seem to pertinent nowadays, and the shots seem cheap. Or maybe it’s because I’m too familiar with them.
On audio I read The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s first Superhero by William Kalush and Larry Sloman, which incorporates new findings and scholarship.
I followed that with an abridgement of Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, and am now reading Manhunt: The Twelve Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson.
Since the author states it started life as a kind of fanfiction, I am not surprised.
Just started listening to Testimony by Scott Turow.
It’s another legal thriller by Turow, but this one is set in an international courtroom in The Hague, dealing with an alleged war crime committed years earlier during the Bosnian war. Liking it so far.
Hard disagree on this. I found it absolutely delightful, and the rest are great, too. They are perhaps the drollest books I’ve ever read, and I find them hilarious. You’re mileage obviously varies - to each their own 
You’re not alone, as the books have gotten rave reviews, which is one reason I chose to read this book. But certainly not to my taste, obviously.
I think I will be in your camp. I’m only on chapter five but nothing has happened and the POV has shifted at least three times and I’m frankly bored.
I had some false starts this January, beginning a book then losing interest. Maybe I’ll circle back to them later in the year.
Here’s one I finished and liked:
How the Universe Got its Spots Janna Levin
An overview of modern cosmology and the author’s ideas on how topology is applied to the study of the universe. A bit of a strange book, in the chapters are purportedly letters she wrote to her mother. This means that the book also talks about topics such as moving into a new apartment and her relationship with a man known only as 'Warren". Spoiler alert: They broke up.
Still, I enjoyed it.
Finished The Story of Hebrew, by Lewis Glinert, which was interesting.
Next up: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.
Still reading The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes.
The Impossible First Colin O’Brady
A recounting of the first ever solo, unsupported, and unsupplied walk across Antarctica (i.e. from one coast to the other passing through the Pole, without any supplies cached in advance). Of course, lots of descriptions of blizzards and wind, plus reflections and moments of doubt. Also the author’s life story, including how he recovered from being badly burned.
I suppose it makes me feel better about having to wait outside for a train for ten minutes when it’s below freezing. I’ll still complain though.
Enjoyable book.
Just finished Trainspotting, a very nasty and pointless book. Five stars.
Next up, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, by Grady Hendrix.
Done, and it didn’t get any better. Remarkably bland for a book about infantry combat in World War II, and the author kept using the same annoying phrases and words (several times, soldiers are said to “traipse” down roads).
Next up: Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin, one of my favorite vampire novels, which is set along the Mississippi River before the Civil War. Just as good as I remember.
Swan Song, a post-nuclear-apocalypse novel by Robert McCammon, who appears to have read The Stand first. The title character has many characteristics of Mother Abigail and Friend is very much a Randall Flagg entity. Still a pretty interesting tale taking place over seven years.
Also, *The Next 100 Years * by political scientist and futurologist George Friedman. Published in 2009, we have 15 years already to evaluate his long range predictions and I was encouraged by his very early recognition of the ramifications of declining global birth rates. Still not a widely discussed topic - we’re becoming more aware here at the Dope at least- it was hardly a blip in 2009.
He also has a fairly unique outlook on the US-Mexico relationship in the coming decades, which I’m just now getting into.
I finished reading Swords of Shahryar, a collection of Middle Eastern adventure stories by Robert E. Howard, and finally got to read The Trail of the Blood-Stained God, which was printed unaltered for the first time in that collection. I’d previously read the story as altered into a Conan the Barbarian story by L. Sprague de Camp back in 1955, and later reprinted in the volume Conan of Cimmeria. To do this, they replaced all references to pistols and rifles with bows and arrows (which stretches credulity at times), changed the names and countries (The “City of Thieves” becomes Howard’s Hyborian city of Arenjun), switched locale from Afghanistan to the Hyborian Age’s Zamora, changed Hassan’s name to “Sassan” , driopped references to two prior stories using the lead character, and added a supernatural element – the titular Blood-Stained God is no longer simply an idol covered in rubies, but it comes to life in its own defense. I re-read the deCamp-altered story afterwards to refresh my memory.
I also finished reading Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses by Chris Nashawaty. It’s a book about the career of Roger Corman, with many quotes from Corman “alumni”, and Corman himself. I read it because I was on a panel discussing Corman this weekend at Arisia. I grew up watching his awful and sometimes obscure monster films, but I didn’t watch the biker films and sexploitation stuff, or many of his later films, so I needed to brush up on them. I didn’t actually finish the book until after the panel, but I read 2/3 of it beforehand. Worth the read, especially if you’re into Corman’s stuff.
Jane T. Sibley is a student of mythology who has written several books on the topic, hosts a yearly session on Mithraism, and, as “Aunty Arwen”, sells spice mixes and other things at science fiction conventions and RenFaires . She’s got a PhD. We see her frequently at Arisia and other places. (I stumbled across her selling her wares at a small RenFaire in New Hampshire once). We share an interest in myth, and she has not only read my books, but sold them at her booth. So I return the favor. One of her more interesting and accessible books is Norse Mythology… according to Uncle Einar (2000), which is written as if Uncle Einar is telling the story to his niece and nephew, with the Norse gods treated as familiar old buddies, and with them having access to modern technology. Think of the way Rick Riordan treats the Greek/Roman gods in his Percy Jackson books.
Well, she came out with a sequel – Tales of the North… as told by Uncle Einar (Xlibris 2024) More Norse myths, with the Norse Gods watching football, riding motorcycles, and surfing the internet.
Just started Mark Twain’s Tales of the Macabre and Mysterious, edited by R. Kent Rasmussen (Lyons Press, 2024), which I just picked up. A lot of it is excerpted from longer works, and I’ve probably read most, if not all of them. But it’s nice to have them all in one place.
Finished The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, which was excellent.
Next up: You’ve Got Eight Seconds: Communication Secrets for a Distracted World, by Paul Hellman, and The Shadow of the Torturer, by Gene Wolfe.
Still reading The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes.
Finished Dungeon Crawler Carl, a Christmas gift, earlier this week.
The good: the book is compulsively readable. I finished it on a single snow day.
The action is nonstop, and often creative.
There’s something going on below the surface that’s intriguing.
The nasty misogyny that permeates the book is mostly attributable to the villains.
The bad: the smartest thing I read about it is someone referencing the quote, “There are no anti-war movies.” The book is satirizing some of the most toxic parts of gamer culture along with the worst parts of fascist corporatism; but it does so by making them really fun. When you write a great action scene that involves the protagonist murdering a weeping Latina woman, it doesn’t really matter that she was made a monster by the bad guys: it’s still a great action scene that you’ve chosen to write, and the murder of the woman is exciting.
If the book didn’t have the satirical element, I’d give it one star. But I think its satire is ultimately too fun to be effective, and it undermines its own ideas.