Well…
Here we are learning a new board, though it feels, to me, at least, like we went back in time to the early 2000s. But we will soldier onward, sprinkling commas and book commentary all over the landscape.
Currently I am reading, for my book club: The Merry Spinster by Mallory Ortberg. The book blurb advertises it as retellings of fairy tales with an edge of horror. I am, so far, underwhelmed. Tanith Lee, fangirl squeal, did all of this back in the 80s and did it much better. I don’t forsee myself looking back on the spinster in a year’s time, much less 40 years from now.
I am also rereading A Gentleman Never Keeps Score by Cat Sebastian, because I’m frustrated and fearful and a nice cheesy romance is what I need right now.
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 unexpectantly passed away, January of 2013 we decided to rename this thread in his honor and to keep his memory, if not his ghost, alive.
Just started Indigo Slam, an Elvis Cole-Joe Pike noir by Robert Crais. A 15-year-old girl and her two younger siblings hire Cole and Pike to find their father, who’s been missing for 11 days. Unbeknownst to the two detectives, the whole family is in the Witness Protection program. Odd, but the book has two titles, as I’ve seen it also called Indigo Blues.
I just finished A Song for a New Day. I don’t think this is too much of a spoiler, but imagine a world where a pandemic has led to people social distancing and isolating from one another, only it goes on for a really really long time. This is the dystopia the author imagined way back in 2019.
It’s a little unnerving to read it now, like, I found myself wanting to writhe in discomfort at certain points.
The book is told through the lens of a musician and a musical act recruiter. It’s pretty engaging, but I sometimes felt like the camera was just slightly out of focus, and I had trouble connecting with the characters. If it had been a little bit sharper, if the prose had been just a little bit better, it would be magnificent.
Say Nothing - Patrick Radden Keefe If you want to know about “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, this is an excellent read. Murder, politics, traitors, double crosses and its all true or, at least, alleged to be.
The library pulled back my audiobook copy of Iain M. Banks’s sf novel The Player of Games, which I’m about halfway through and am still enjoying, at the end of my subscription period because someone else ordered it. Annoying. So now I have it on hold again.
In the meantime I’ve gone on to Elmore Leonard’s Road Dogs, a dark comedy/crime novel featuring several characters from previous books of his, including Jack Foley and Dep. U.S. Marshal Karen Sisco (played so well by George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight). Foley, a good-natured career bank robber, is about to be released from a Florida state prison and naturally will get into trouble again because, after all, there would otherwise be no book.
I just finished Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, which I thought was very well written, though depressing.
Tonight, I’m going to start on the second book in Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy, Royal Assassin. I thoroughly enjoyed Assassin’s Apprentice, upon my wife’s recommendation.
Woah, Asimovian ! I haven’t seen you around for awhile. Good to hear from you! (If you’ve been around and I’ve been oblivious, my bad.)
Thanks! I heard the news about the relocation of the board, and got nosy enough to peek through the window, as it were. Glad to see good people are still roaming about (and presumably, still causing sufficient trouble).
Let me know what you think of the Coates book, if you end up reading it.
Finished An Informal History of the Hugos: A Personal Look Back at the Hugo Awards, 1953-2000, by Jo Walton, which I enjoyed. There are a number of books and stories that I’ll be reading because of it.
I’m more than halfway through Jules Verne’s Five Weeks in a Balloon. I got the Wesleyan University translation that came out five years ago, because Verne has been abysmally treated by his translators.until the past few decades. We’re in the Third Verne Renaissance, and a lot of his stuff is being re-translated and scrubbed of his son Michel’s additions and changes.
After this it’s on to Wesleyan’s translation of Robur the Conqueror. I’d previously read the paperback edition that came out in 1961 as a tie-in to the Vincent Price adaptation of Master of the World. . According to the notes in the new edition, the two previous english translations abridged and changed the story in ways that would be unacceptable today.
Wow, susan, you have all those books underway all at once? How can you possibly keep them separate in your mind?
I had just the same reaction.
My middle son and I just read one of my favorite sf short stories, Jack Vance’s “The Moon Moth,” aloud, and next will be turning to George R.R. Martin’s terrific environmentalism satire, Tuf Voyaging, one of my all-time sf favorites.
I don’t know, but I do. Part of it is the medium and location:
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder: Audible, gardening
Along the Way: The Journey of a Father and Son: Hardback, bed
Johnny Cash Reads the Complete New Testament-NKJV: Audible, bed or walking
The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life: Paperback, work desk
The Physicians of Vilnoc (Penric and Desdemona, #8): Kindle, bed
Tales from Concrete Jungles: Urban Birding around the World: Hardback, bathtub 7. Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes: Done
If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir: Kindle on phone, bed when I wake in the night
Impressive. I usually have, at most, three books going at once: an audiobook on my phone (mostly listening during my commute or on long walks), a bedside-table book, and whatever I happen to be reading aloud with my son.
I’ve always had at least two going, but sometimes up to 15. There are others I’m reading but didn’t list since they’re not for fun (for example, a self-help book my client and I are reading as she works through the activities).
Still working my way through Wastelands: the New Apocalypse. It’s an anthology, so you know…a mixed bag. I’m enjoying it though.
I also just finished Bill Bryson’s Neither Here nor There: travels in Europe. I’ve been dipping in and out of it for a couple of months now. I like Bryson; he’s funny. But this was published in ’92, and sometimes came off as being a bit more racist or sexist than us woke folks of the present are comfortable with. I was beginning to feel a little embarrassed for Mr. Bryson at one point because he couldn’t seem to stop talking about everyone’s boobs. Still, as I said, it was funny and I’ll read some of his other stuff should it fall into my path.