Currently reading My Planet: finding humor in the oddest places, by Mary Roach. It’s a collection of very short, Erma Bombeckian (Bombeckish? Bombeckesque?) essays. I prefer her one-topic books, but this is the perfect thing for me to be reading right now because I will be chucking it tomorrow when Doctor Sleep shows up.
Why, on both counts?
Finished Huxley’s ***Point Counter Point ***and an Ellery Queen novella.
Now about 60 pages into the 900 page ***Parade’s End ***by Ford Madox Ford.
Horns by Joe Hill (Stephen King’s son, I think). Very dark and darkly funny; I’m really enjoying it so far.
Non-fiction: Breaking the Line: The Season in Black College Football That Transformed the Sport and Changed the Course of Civil Rights by Samuel G. Freedman. This was really pretty good, looking at the relationship between football at HBCUs (specifically Grambling and Florida A&M) and the civil rights movement. I will note that there is a lot of football in this book, you would need to have a moderately strong understanding of the game to follow the numerous football parts. I would never recommend it to someone who disliked football, or didn’t know anything about it. (As opposed to something like Friday Night Lights, where you don’t have to know that much about it to understand the larger sociological story that is being told.)
YA fiction: The Golden Day, Ursula Dubosarsky. This was odd, but enjoyable. It’s a very short novel (more like a novella) about the mysterious disappearance of a school teacher, and the impact it has on the girls in her class. It’s getting a lot of comparisons to the film Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Youth fiction: Bo at Ballard Creek by Kirkpatrick Hill. This is terrific, and I am strongly recommending to anyone who is looking for a good read-aloud book to kids starting at about age 4. Bo is a little girl growing up in a small mining town in Alaska in the 1920s, and the entire book is interesting anecdotes about stuff that kids do. It’s so nicely written, and all the characters are very engaging. It’s similar in tone (and reading level) to the first two Little House books, although (thankfully) with a more modern approach to the Eskimo inhabitants of the village.
Picked up Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford from the library over the weekend & am already more than halfway thru.
It’s a lovely, heartbreaking story about a Chinese boy in a Seattle orphanage in the 1930’s. After seeing an actress who resembles what he remembers of his mother, he runs away to meet her. The story alternates between her young adulthood and his current-day situation. It’s a fascinating look at a culture and a time, with some wonderful writing and characterizations.
Well crap. I haven’t been here in a while and just learned of Khadaji’s passing. These book threads were always my favourite go-to places to learn of new reads and probably the main reason my Amazon wish list is at around 2500 titles.
I guess I can’t post without sharing. Currently reading:
The Man Who Ate His Boots - The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage by Anthony Brandy ~ I love love LOVE books on Arctic/Antarctic exploration.
The Last Empress by Anchee Min ~ It’s ok. I’ve found myself skimming a bit.
I am re-reading Kahawa by Donald Westlake. Not one of his “caper” stories, it features Idi Amin and all the horror of his dictatorship over Uganda. It is the story of a, well, okay, a caper. Namely the theft of an entire freight train and its contents, the main export product of Uganda—coffee, or Kahawa in Swahili. While it has many humorous moments and characters it is a very dark book in which people die, often rather horribly. Highly recommended. Westlake at his best.
I’m almost embarrassed to contribute to this thread in light of what sounds like some very sophisticated stuff. But, it’s been a long while since I’ve had the time for reading for pleasure so right now I’m kind of falling back on authors that I’m familiar with.
I just finished Dennis LeHane’s Live by Night which was outstanding. It’s especially interesting if you’re from or are familiar with Tampa, as it takes place in prohibition era Ybor City. One caveat - don’t get the audio book. The reader sounds like a total wanker.
Before that I read (listened to) St**ephen King’s **Joyland. If you like King mostly for creepy subject matter this one may not be to your liking, but if you simply dig his writing style this one is great.
I will be picking up Brandon Sanderson’s latest, Steelheart later today. I’ve found most of his books to be quite engaging and am looking forward to beginning this new series.
The series is getting more supernatural, but so far (outside of Merrily’s head) the books maintain a kind of plausible deniability. If Mulder and Scully came to town, Mulder would see the ghosts and demonic possession that Merrily sees, but Scully would find a rational explanation for it all.
Here’s something light and unsophisticated:
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, by Laurie King. It’s a cozy mystery novel that pairs an aging, semi-retired Sherlock Holmes with a brilliant teenage girl named Mary Russell. I had serious doubts about this conceit, but the writing is charming so it worked pretty well for me. I liked the depiction of Holmes, but then I’ve only read a few of the original stories. I don’t know how well this would go over with those who are more attached to the original character.
I’m also trying to read Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal, a fantasy novel which was nominated for a Nebula Award in 2010. It’s like a Jane Austen novel where well-bred young ladies are taught magic (stuff like creating a “glamour” to enhance a pretty dress) alongside their lessons in French and the pianoforte. So far I don’t like it very much - the writing is clunky and feels like Austen fan-fiction.
Just finished a re-read of Stephen King’s The Dead Zone; now starting Zealot, by Reza Aslan.
This may interest you: http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=38652
I finished ‘A Clash of Kings’ last night. Meh. The pacing from the first book wasn’t there, and I’m starting to find the author’s cruelty to his characters gratuitous. I’ll probably finish the next two books in the series (because I own them anyway…) but I’m not sure I’d cross the street to buy any more. It didn’t help my opinion of his writing that I was down with the flu for part of the last week…
I’m reading ‘Norse Mythology according to Uncle Einar’, which is a good laugh. All too short though - I’ll probably be finished before the weekend’s up.
I saw Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners by Alan Emmins referenced in a SDMB thread recently, so checked it out from the library.
I’ve read other books that cover this topic: *Aftermath, Inc.: Cleaning Up After CSI Goes Home * (nonfiction) and *The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death * (fiction) along with Mary Roach’s Stiff and Bill Bass’ Death’s Acre, so the subject matter itself was nothing new to me. (tho still not recommended for perusing while dining!) However, the author’s take was a bit different.
Emmins’ first contact with Neal Smither, the proprietor of “Crime Scene Cleaners” paints Neal as more than a bit of a jerk. While he is all polite business in front of the customer, once he’s on the job - he sings disrespectful ditties about the deceased, and tells Emmins that most of the people he cleans up after are freaks and scumbags. However, as the book continues, Neal is shown to be an incredibly driven man, who loves his family fiercely and supports his workers 100%. Gallows humor is perhaps the only way to deal with a job where you cope with gore, decay and pestilence on a daily basis.
I was intrigued by Emmins’ approach to following one of the cleanup cases through the associated criminal trial (apparent murder, with the victim left in a bathtub for weeks), talking with acquaintances of the victim, and even providing excerpts of the arraignment and trial. It gave a sense of humanity to the larger story; much more so than Emmins’ personal tales of woe - how he felt caged by his hotel room in suburban San Francisco, waiting almost like a junkie for a call from Neal about the next job.
While Mop Men is almost too self-centered, IMHO, it is a fascinating look at a profession most people never even think about, filtered thru a bit of a whiny prat’s viewpoint. I’d recommend *Aftermath, Inc. * over this book, but they were both worth the read.
Hmmm. I’ve been thinking of picking up a boxed set of this whole series of books that I’ve seen at the bookstore. We’ll be off on an island for a week soon, and I thought it might be a good time to start reading it. Maybe not?
I’m currently reading “Earth Afire” by Orson Scott Card - the second book in the First Formic War series (which are prequels to “Ender’s Game”). I’m really enjoying this series so far - it’s a very interesting subject, to go back and see how humanity got into the position it was in with the “Ender’s Game” universe.
I’m the latter, and I really enjoyed it.
I just finished The Barsoom Project, by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes, and am now reading The Long Earth.
This movie might also interest you: Sunshine Cleaning - Wikipedia