Not anymore they don’t.. but blankets line the street for days before.
Too bad. There was nothing quite as surreal as the sight of people reconstructing their living rooms, complete with sofas and standing lamps, along Main Street.
Main Street has a train running down the middle these days..
So I’ve heard. Those SLC streets were so wide they could drop light rail down the middle of several of them without any other changes.
The parade still goes down Main, though, doesn’t it? Or did that force them to move it?
And they did just that.
I don’t live in Salt Lake, but the only thing I see listed is a parade in the Yalecrest neighborhood and a parade in Murray. They’ve move to more festival types of events these days.
Up here in Ogden, we have a parade on the 24th.
Finally finished Hammett by Joe Gores. Overall a damned good read if you’re interested in hard-boiled PI.
The author imagines famed author Dashiell Hammett as a detective in corrupt 1930s San Francisco. It took some getting into, but by the midpoint, I couldn’t put it down. The character has some real emotional weight.
Deals with some very dark issues, including an extensive storyline on the sex trafficking of young Chinese girls. Has a twist I thought I was a bit of a stretch.
It was written in the 70s, so expect some regressive language.
Beyond those caveats, I think it’s a good one.
Next: My friend’s cyberpunk thriller, Afterlife Ascendant, which I helped him with and which he just published, and please to finish the damned Expanse Book 3, Abbaddon’s Gate. It’s the best one yet and I keep forgetting to read it! Then after all that, Project Hail Mary.
Now reading:
Legacy, the sixth Event Group book, by David L Golemon. Same comments on mistakes, grammar, typos as with Legend, the second book in the series. (“Counting the ten German commandos, Jack could field six men besides himself…” Excuse me? If he’s counting the ten commandos, he has at least ten men besides himself. Any ideas why a space shuttle would need a sonar system?)
From an Andy_L post in the “What if Ethiopa vanished?” thread, Without Warning by John Birmingham. An alternate history novel based on the premise that much of the North American population, including nearly all of the contiguous US, was suddenly wiped out by an inexplicable phenomenon.
It’s an entertaining read so far, very Harry Turtledove-ish in nature. A slight quibble: nearly all of the main characters are of the remaining five million Americans around the globe whereas Turtledove’s character roster contained folks of every nationality (and even lizard invaders!).
I had to stop reading when
France is taken over by eeeevvil muslims propped by the government of France, because, as everybody knows the French elites loooove muslims (especially evil muslims) 
(And the only thing saving France from that terrible destiny was the benevolent influence of the United States apparently)
ETA: Forgot that this thread is about what you are currently reading and added some heavy spoilers, now blurred.
But I want to add, unblurred, that the book takes a hard turn into islamophobia, conspiracy theories and general batshittery.
Finished White Line Fever, although I had to skim the last few chapters. It started off well, but then got awfully tedious, presenting the same situation and response from the characters several times. Not recommended.
Still reading Adventures for Readers (Book One), edited by Fannie Safie.
Finished Icerigger, by Alan Dean Foster. Enjoyed the worldbuilding, but yeah, otherwise it is a mixed bag as Cervaise said. Also finished We’ve Decided to Go in a Different Direction, by Tess Sanchez. Not recommended.
Next up: Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty and Obitchuary: The Big Hot Book of Death, by Spencer Henry and Madison Reyes.
I started Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir yesterday and buy does that book grab you and drag you in!
I’m six chapters into Project Hail Mary and enjoying it, too, although not as much as I did The Martian.
Nearly done with Justin Cronin’s big post-apocalyptic vampire novel The Passage. It has its moments but has been a bit of a slog, truth be told.
I finished several books while on vacation late last month:
Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point by David Lipsky is terrific nonfiction about the West Point Class of 2002, the first to graduate after the 9-11 attacks. It’s interesting both as an insightful portrait of several individual cadets - some stellar, some not - and an exploration of the Military Academy and how it’s changed, or not, over the years. Highly recommended.
Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain is his fictionalized autobiography, paired with an account of his early-1880s trip back along the river, revisiting his hometown of Hannibal, Mo. and some of his other old haunts. The chapters on his learning to become a riverboat pilot are the best IMHO.
When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi is a sf spoof in which the Moon actually turns into cheese, and what happens next on several fronts - scientific, political, social and even spiritual. Not his best, but worth a read, with some LOL funny parts.
Very engaging
The Wright Brothers
author is also a good narrator
Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize David McCullough tells the dramatic story behind the story about the courageous brothers who taught the world how to fly: Wilbur and Orville Wright.
On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Wilbur and Orville Wright’s Wright Flyer became the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard. The Age of Flight had begun. How did they do it? And why? David McCullough tells the extraordinary and truly American story of the two brothers who changed the world.
Sons of an itinerant preacher and a mother who died young, Wilbur and Orville Wright grew up on a small sidestreet in Dayton, Ohio, in a house that lacked indoor plumbing and electricity but was filled with books and a love of learning. The brothers ran a bicycle shop that allowed them to earn enough money to pursue their mission in life: flight. In the 1890s flying was beginning to advance beyond the glider stage, but there were major technical challenges the Wrights were determined to solve. They traveled to North Carolina’s remote Outer Banks to test their plane because there they found three indispensable conditions: constant winds, soft surfaces for landings, and privacy.
Flying was exceedingly dangerous; the Wrights risked their lives every time they flew in the years that followed. Orville nearly died in a crash in 1908 but was nursed back to health by his sister, Katharine - an unsung and important part of the brothers’ success and of McCullough’s book. Despite their achievement the Wrights could not convince the US government to take an interest in their plane until after they demonstrated its success in France, where the government instantly understood the importance of their achievement. Now, in this revelatory book, master historian David McCullough draws on nearly 1,000 letters of family correspondence plus diaries, notebooks, and family scrapbooks in the Library of Congress to tell the full story of the Wright brothers and their heroic achievement.
I started to read that yesterday but had to put it down. I’m not in the right mood for spoof.
I just finished Salman Rushdie’s Knife: Meditations on an Attempted Murder. It starts off with the attack itself and a description of Rushdie’s wounds. YIKES. He is lucky to be alive after all that. The rest of the book is exactly what the subtitle describes, and it’s as great as I expect everything from Rushdie’s pen.
I do have a complaint: every time I read one of his nonfiction books, I come away with a list of other books for Mt. ToBeRead. The mountain will never erode as long as he’s around.
I get that. I’m glad I read it a right after release.
Finished The Old Curiosity Shop, by Charles Dickens. Very good. Spoiler alert: Things don’t end well for Nell Trent and her grandfather after he loses the title establishment due to gambling debts, but some other good-hearted souls fare better, some villains get their due.
Am halfway through Nightshade, the latest by Michael Connelly. Murder on Catalina Island. Introduces a new protagonist: Detective Sergeant Stilwell.
Started today on The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H.G. Parry, about a man who has the power to bring book characters to life in the real world. It seems like a tricky concept to handle, but this author may actually have the chops to pull it off. So far so good! I was worried I wouldn’t follow it very well, as I am not a fan of Dickens (sorry @Siam_Sam), but the story is told from the viewpoint of the man’s brother, who is not the most literary person and needs some background on these manifestations.
Finished The Old Man by Thomas Perry. A pretty good action-adventure about a former US Army intelligence officer who is on the run from both Libyan assassins and the US military. The action goes from Libya to Vermont to Chicago to California to Toronto and back to Libya. A decent read in spite of an unneeded late plot twist and a fairly major character left unaccounted for.
Next up: A Small Town by the same author.