runs off to make popcorn
BRING IT ON!!!
I’m almost done with Glitz by Elmore Leonard. It’s problematic in so many ways, starting with the way it treats women. But it’s a page turner. He’s a good crime writer. I’ll probably at least read Get Shorty after this one. I have to say I can’t think of a place I’m less interested in than the Atlantic City casino scene, but he made it interesting.
I’m slowly reading A Whole Life Path by Gregory Kramer. It is the most comprehensive take on the Buddhist Eightfold Path one could ever hope for, but it’s very abstract and every chapter takes like an hour to read. It reminds me of when I studied philosophy. Still I find it useful because it really cements the concepts in my mind. I’m on 3/8.
Finished Angel of the Overpass, by Seanan McGuire, which is the best novel I’ve read so far this year.
Now I’m reading The Ragged Astronauts by Bob Shaw.
It is brought. I’ll repost on Goodreads later.
Yay! Fuck that book!
I am reading a book of short stories by Wole Talabi, Convergence Problems, as recommended last month by @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness. Pretty good!
Well that was awful…
Excuse me I need to go have some Schnauzer time
Doggie in a hat! 
I finished two other books this weekend. Neferura: The Pharaoh’s Daughter by Malayna Evans is a non-recommendation. Cardboard characters, irregular pacing, and a heroine who is dumber than a sack of hammers. Seriously, if the real Neferura acted as stupidly as the one in this book she never would have survived past infancy.
John Adams by David McCullough* was really good. I’ve never read one of McCullough’s biographies before but I’ll look up some of his others. Adams was a surprisingly interesting man. All I knew was he was the second president and Alexander Hamilton couldn’t stand him, but there was so much more to him than that. I would like a biography of Abigail as well. She was definitely a strong capable woman who didn’t take no crap from nobody.
*I believe there was a controversy about McCullough’s sources or plagiarism or something a while back? I vaguely remember a thread about that here.
He’d just passed his first training class.
I have a bio of Abigail Adams somewhere in my mess… Found it! I can’t speak for how good it is, I’ve not read it: Abigail Adams
My wife read the Correspondence between John and Abigal Adams
Quoted extensively by Peter Stone in his script for the musical 1776
Finished The Ragged Astronauts by Bob Shaw. Not recommended.
Next up: True Names, by Vernor Vinge.
That’s why I love this place. Ask for book recommendations, get book recommendations of exactly what you were looking for.
Finished True Names, by Vernor Vinge, which I enjoyed.
Now I’m reading American Flygirl, by Susan Tate Ankeny. What I thought was the subtitle–The True Story of Hazel Ying Lee, Who Followed Her Dream Against All the Odds–And Became an American Hero–apparently isn’t. It’s on the front cover, though. (It seems as if “Flygirl” should be two words, but it’s not.)
Now I’m reading The Company Man by Edward M. Lerner and The Stone of Destiny: Tales from Turkey, retold by Elspeth Tavaci.
No thread yet for July? Posting here then.
Finished Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay. I read it 40 years ago and felt like reading it again. Just as good as I remembered it. First published in 1841, it remains in print. The first treatise on crowd psychology and mass delusions. Covers the South Seas Bubble, the Tulip Mania, the witch mania of the middle ages, the Crusades, alchemy, fortune telling, all that sort of thing. Even haunted houses and the rash of slow poisonings that were fashionable for a couple of centuries. Recommended, although it definitely reads like a book that was published in 1841. I like that sort of thing, but some people find it a bit tedious.
Next up: The Art of Rhetoric, by Aristotle.
I finished re-reading Joe Haldeman’s Forever War – I hadn’t read it i n years, and hadn’t been aware that as originally published it had been altered from his original text. This is the first time I read it as intended. I also read one of its two sequels *well, the only sequel, arguably), Forever Free. This was pretty interesting up until an almost literal deus ex machina at the end made me want to “throw away the book with great violence”.
I was reading both because I had been scheduled to be on a panel discussing Forever War for its 50th anniversary, but I suddenly got yanked from that this week.
I’m finishing up Allen Stele’s anthology Takes of Time and Space, and re-reading the Richard Burton translation of The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night. This time I’m gonna take notes. The damned thing is 17 volumes long, counting the “Supplemental Nights”.
For bedside reading, I finally read Robert A. Heinlein’s own novelization of Destination Moon. And my wife bought me a copy of George Stephanopoulos’ The Situation Room, which I’ve just barely started.
On audio I finished reading Douglas Brunt’s The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel. I had no idea that there was anything odd about his death – I knew nothing about his life, for that matter. A very intriguing book. Now I;m near the end of Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, which I haven’t read all the way in eons (although I frequently re-read parts of it). Well worth returning to.
July thread here.
I read Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay when I was in college, and enjoyed it very much.
My apologies! I got really busy the end of June and completely spaced off the new thread. Thankfully Railer 13 stepped up and started a new one.