March is upon us, spring is in the air… and a 15 pound schnoodle is in my lap, so forgive any typos. Someone got groomed yesterday and is still working through the trauma.
So whatcha all readin?
I started many book in February and that’s as far as I got… until now. Currently I am reading : The Dead Pirates of Cawsand by Steve Higgs. The premise of the series is like Scooby Doo, a paranormal event that turns out to be not so paranormal after all. Great potato chip books!
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 really enjoyed Battle of Ink and Ice, by Darrell Hartman. It’s a well-written and exhaustively researched nonfiction book about the race to the North Pole involving explorers Frederick Cook and Robert Peary, and the influence of New York City’s newspapers in that race. James Gordon Bennett’s newspaper championed Cook; Adolph Ochs’s New York Times supported Peary, sometimes in rather underhanded ways.
The narrative gives a lot of background on Bennett and Ochs and the development of journalism in the late 1800s/early 1900s. It also gives a good accounting of Arctic exploration before the journeys of Cook and Peary that (supposedly) led to the reaching of the Pole.
I came in with a decent understanding of the NY newspaper scene*, and a better knowledge of polar exploration, but I learned quite a bit–especially because I knew nothing about the interface of these two topics. If you have an interest in either, it’s worth a read.
A brief story. Back in the late 1990s I was asked to write a book review and author interview of a newly-released book called When Giants Ruled, which was basically a history of the NYC newspaper scene. The author was a veteran journalist, a very nice fellow who was eager to tell me all about himself and mostly about his book. "So when did you get the idea to write When Giants Ruled? I asked early in the interview. “Right after I got out of the armed forces,” he said. My impression was that he was an “older gentleman,” so I pressed: “And what year was that?” “1946,” he told me proudly.
Finished Dead Pirates of Cawsand by Steve Higgs. While the series is never going to be high literature, each book gets better, and each one more fun than the last.
I’m starting In the Doodoo with Voodoo which is the next book in the series. Just potato chippy enough for my mood lately.
Finished up a stack of books. Finished reading Dan Simmons’ Ilium and Hardy’s history of SF fandom All our Yesterdays. Finished reading Cunk on Everything and the graphic novel of Kindi’s Marked from the Beginning, a history of racism in America. On audio I finished Stephen King’s Fairy Tale and The Epic of Gilgamesh and am halfway through Dirk Cussler’s latest Dirk Pitt novel The Corsican Shadow.
I’ve just started David Grann’s The Wager, which I got for Christmas.
As bedside reading, I’m re-reading The Annotated The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle and Annotated by Roy Pilot and Alvin Rodin. The book is the perfect companion to not only the book, but the 1925 silent film.
I was surprised to learn that foxes are rather controversial in Britain, the author’s home country. in the U.S., if people think about foxes at all, it’s “cute animal with bushy tail”. but in the U.K. it seems people are worried about foxes spreading disease and kidnapping their children.
Anyway, enjoyable book. I wish it had been longer, which not something I say often.
Finished Everywhere an Oink Oink: An Embittered, Dyspeptic, and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood, by David Mamet, which I enjoyed. Lots of great anecdotes. It reminded me of William Goldman’s books about Hollywood.
Now I’m reading Tom O’Bedlam’s Night Out and Other Strange Excursions, by Darrell Schweitzer.
Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America by Les Standiford. A good history of Gilded Age capitalist exemplified by two men who were both partners and rivals.
A Stranger in the Citadel: A desert kingdom executes anyone found with a book, as part of their extreme religion. The princess with a mysterious past meets a man with a book. From this basic description, you can probably figure out about 90% of what happens. It was competently written, but none of its twists and turns were surprising or original. Not the kind of book that actively makes me angry, but I’d only recommend it if you’re entirely new to the genre or are really bored.
The Black Cauldron: I just finished reading this to my 11yo. It’s still so freaking good. Lloyd Alexander remains my favorite kidlit fantasist.
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits: a near-future humor book by a Cracked contributor that’s pretty much what it says on the label. A LOT of jokes about butts and farts and talking toilets, a shit-ton of making fun of toxic masculinity, and a shit-ton of guns. Not gonna lie, I finished it in about a day and a half, it’s a real quick, entertaining read, but this is less foie-gras-and-Bordeaux, more Takis-and-PBR.
Now I’m reading Exordia, by the author of one of my favorite devastating novels, The Traitor Baru Cormorant. In the first sentence, the main character sees an alien eating turtles in Central Park, which sets the tone: it’s very funny, in much the way Gideon the Ninth is funny, and also deals in real-world politics, and every now and then the author is like, “Oh, did you forget you’re reading a Seth Dickinson novel? POW!” and punches me right in the kidney. Very intense, and I like it, but holy cow.
