The good news about this past February was that it felt spectacular to sit by the fire and read; the bad news was that I had to go out from time to time. I love my snow; it’s the slush, sleet and freezing rain I’ve never cottoned to. If it weren’t for the dog, I might not have moved at all. I’m looking forward to whatever March has to offer.
I’ll probably finish ‘What Money Can’t Buy - the Moral Limits of Markets’ by Michael J. Sandel sometime this evening. I’m thoroughly enjoying it, enough so that I ordered his book ‘Justice - What’s the Right Thing to Do?’ from the library about 30 pages into this one.
I’ve also started going through my wife’s collection of Dorothy Sayers. Years ago, I had read the Lord Peter Wimsey novels that also had Harriet Vane in them (Gaudy Night, Busman’s Honeymoon and I forget the earlier two…) but I’ve never read the whole lot. I read ‘Whose Body?’ sometime in January, and now I’m reading the second, Clouds of Witness. I have no idea why I didn’t read these years ago - they’re fantastic!
Also in the queue are Way to Wisdom by Karl Jaspers - an introduction to philosophy, and The Storytelling Animal - How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottshall.
Here’s a link to last month’s thread.
For those visiting for the first time - Khadaji was a long time Doper fondly remembered for his kind and supportive words, and for his passionate love of reading. He passed away this January at the young age of 51. Khadaji was who started this series of ‘Whatcha Readin’ threads, and it is in fond remembrance that they are now named for him.
I sat down to start reading Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One yesterday. I didn’t get back up until I finished it. It’s been a long time since that has happened. Now it’s time to add more Waugh to Mt. ToBeRead because that was an excellently sarcastic book.
I was introduced to Waugh through a SD book thread years ago, and I love him so much I can hardly stand it. There are definitely some “meh” ones though.
I started reading A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki because a friend sent me a copy, and it’s really great so far. Ozeki took a long break from writing to become a Zen Buddhist priest, and it informs the book heavily. I’m going to try to track down her others when I finish.
I’m working on three books at the moment. I’m reading Still Alice as my book club’s March selection. On my Nook I’m reading Iron Lake by William Kent Krueger. I really wish I’d discovered this author sooner; I’m loving the book so far. I’ve also started Truth in Advertising by John Kenney. I won it through Goodreads’ “First Reads” giveaways. So far it’s just “meh.”
Finished Blood Work, by Michael Connelly. A retired FBI agent whose specialty was tracking serial killers gets a heart transplant and goes after the killer who murdered the donor. It was made into a 2002 Clint Eastwood film, which we saw. Most of the movie is vague to me now, but I know it was changed radically from the book. But one key point I remembered from the movie stayed the same, and that allowed me to know the solution to the mystery early on. Still a good read though.
Next up is another Michael Connelly: The Scarecrow, a sequel of sorts to The Poet and The Narrows. Crime reporter Jack McEvoy is about to be laid off from the Los Angeles Times in these hard times for newspapers. He uses his final days on the job to write the definitive murder story of his career and in the process comes to realize the person who confessed to the crime is innocent.
Anf thanks, Le Ministre de l’au-delà, for continuing these threads.
Just finished Taiko by Eiji Yoshikawa. A fantastic read. Anyone interested in the history of the end of the “warring states” period would love it. Though it is occasionally a little hard to figure out who is who, given that the characters are in the habit of adopting new names and each other’s children.
It’s “about” the respective characters and philosophies of government and military strategy of the three great unifiers of that period - Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Mostly, it is in the form of the story of the middle one - Hideyoshi.
It is very much a rags-to-riches story (Hideyoshi went from an itinerant needle-seller to warlord of Japan). The respective approaches of these three was illustrated by a Japanese children’s ditty that goes something like this:
There is a bird that won’t sing. What do you do about it?
“Kill it!” Nobunaga says.
"Make it want to sing! Hideyoshi says.
“Wait until it decides to sing on its own” Tokugawa says.
I’m reading Michael Palin’s diaries 1969-79, The Python Years. It’s got a split-level (heh) appeal between a chronicle of the times and what was going on within the group. If you like his travel books, this has the same readabiliity. I think the best decision has been the absolute minimum of modern editorial input.
I picked up Halfay to Hollywood last year and thoroughly enjoyed that, too, but this one’s borrowed from a friend, so I’m feeling rushed when I’d like to savour each entry.
I really enjoyed it, and I thought the second volume (1980-1988) was even more interesting – maybe because his diaries didn’t go too far into the details behind the scenes of the TV series, but did have a fair amount of interesting background pertaining to his movies.
Polished off Rex Stout’s Triple Jeopardy yesterday. (And I’ve just noticed that someone decided to separate the bibliography on the Wiki pages into “Novels”, “Novellas”, and “Collectioons”. Irritating–I guess I’ll have to rely on the Wolfe Pack bibliography now.) Anyway, I’m well into the middle of the Wolfe corpus, and I think this might be the first time I’ve run into one that I don’t think I’ve read before. (The project is to go through the entire thing, in publication order–when I started reading Wolfe, it was just whatever I could pick up from the library.) I did recognize the story of The Cop Killer, as it was one of the stories that was featured on the A&E/Timothy Hutton “A Nero Wolfe Mystery” show that started the whole thing for me.
Now I’ve just barely started (a paragraph or two) Viktor Pelevin’s Omon Ra. An online friend suggested Pelevin when I mentioned that I was neck-deep in a re-read of Sergei Lukyanenko’s Watches series. I asked him for suggestions, he gave them to me, and I promptly ignored them all and got this one instead. Best rating and highest number of reviews on Amazon, so. We’ll see how it goes.
Perhaps this bibliography would be better for your purposes - Rex Stout, from the Fantastic Fiction website. I use this site constantly, because I have this compulsion (bordering on a fetish) to read mysteries in their order of publication.
