I’m now reading Conversations with Kennedy by Benjamin C. Bradlee, a gossipy memoir by the Washington Post patriarch about his friendship with JFK. Very readable and interesting. I’m also enjoying The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, a comic novel about the Queen becoming an avid bibliophile and neglecting her official duties, and am almost halfway through an audiobook of Robert Heinlein’s 1966 classic The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. Good story, but his libertarian politics are anything but subtle - or persuasive.
Khadaji was one of the earlier members of the 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, and he started these monthly book threads. Sadly, he passed away in January 2013, and we decided to rename these monthly threads in his honor.
I am a third of the way through Wolves of the Calla, part five of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. I would like to finish it before heading upcountry to visit friends for the upcoming Songkran holiday, the Thai New year that is held for three days each year, from April 13-15, although everything shuts down for a whole week.
I am reading Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith. It’s a quick read but not terribly engrossing or deep and I’m not on board with this vicious and angry of a Lincoln.
I also started Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch. This is the 4th, I think, Peter Grant book.
I have started (and compulsively read nearly halfway through so far) a fascinating book called The Golem and The Jinni, a first novel by Helene Wecker. Set in 1890’s New York City, a golem and a jinni* arrive separately from the old world, both passing as human (except to each other, when they finally meet). Lots of interesting background on both mythologies; highly recommended.
*The author’s spelling, I have no idea if it is correct.
I’ve got 2 on the go at the moment. The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey, which is so good I’m only allowing myself to read 20 pgs a day to make it last, and The End of The Affair by Graham Green, which I’ve only just started.
I finally got round to reading something I’ve been meaning to read for ages, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and it didn’t disappoint. One of the funniest books I’ve read in years
At the moment, I’m working on reading through Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I read it previously as a teenager, and found it a hard read then. It’s not much better nowadays.
On the Kindle, I’m working on Fallout (Lois Lane), by Gwenda Bond, which seems to be more of a juvenile novel than I expected. It’s moderately interesting, though.
I read it in my teens as well, shortly after seeing the TV adaptation. Oddly enough the way it worked for me was to read it in bits jumping forwards and backwards in time. I don’t recommend that method obviously, but the book HAS stuck with me for nearly 40 years.
I finished reading “O Pioneers!” by Willa Cather (which follows a family of Swedish farmers from homesteading to the early 1900s). I thought it was very moving, a good mix of funny and heartbreaking and inspiring. I liked it much more than “Death Comes for the Archbishop” but perhaps I’m biased because my own ancestors were homesteaders on the (Canadian) prairie.
I’m halfway through “My Antonia” and I’m enjoying it just as much.
I started Thank You For All Things by Sandra Kring over the weekend, and I was terribly disappointed. I have read three previous books that Kring has written, and absolutely loved all of them, so I had figured I would at least like this book. But it was a character-driven book, and I just couldn’t get into the characters. I didn’t care about them, or what happened to them. So I abandoned the book (at 93 pages in).
In place of it, I picked up Dark Places by Gillian Flynn. I just started it last night, so I’m only about 40 pages in, but man, I did not want to put the book down to go to sleep! The premise is that the narrator is the sole survivor of a childhood tragedy, in which her brother murdered her mother and two sisters. But then she meets some people who think that her brother didn’t do it. I love Flynn’s writing style, and I got so engrossed in the story in that when my husband walked in the room, it startled me to remember where I was!
In print, I finished SF in Dimension by Alexei and Cory Panshin. I’d devoured it by skimming when I got it, but now I’ve read through it more carefully.
I’ve already read the Superman Chronicles, Vol. 1, which I picked up used.
More than halfway through James Branch Cabbell’s Domnei.
On audio, I’ve finished Kenneth C. Davis’ Don’t Know Much About the Civil War, which is better than I thought it’d be, with enbough facts and trivia I wasn’t aware of to make it interesting.
I’m almost finished with Clive Cussler’s Spartan Gold, the first of his “Fargo” series. Next, it’s on to his Corsair, a “Numa Files” book. These are my guilty pleasures. I get them used or from the libraries, and have read the bulk of his non-Dirk Pitt novels that way.
Somehow I made it to my 40s without ever reading To Kill a Mockingbird. I finished it over the weekend and can see why it’s such a classic. I’d love to use it to teach a sociology class on race, class, and gender - it’s a shame that I’m not teaching these days.
A week ago, I started Dirk Patton’s V Plague Series. There are 11 books in the series so far. It is an apocalyptic novel series, not zombies per se, but close enough. The protagonist is a character named John Chase, who is like a Jack Reacher type of character. I’m so far through 6 of the novels. Definitely entertaining and fast paced.
I’m reading Defending Jacob on my Kindle (borrowed from the library. How cool is that!) I’m about halfway through. It’s about the teenage son of the assistant district attorney accused of stabbing a classmate to death. Of course, the ADA had to resign from the case, and he threw away a knife he found in his son’s room because his son absolutely did not commit the crime. No need to test it for evidence, a father knows.
The ADA comes from a long line of violent men (his father is in jail for murder, and it goes back generations) and while he’s managed to suppress it in himself and become a pillar of the community, it’s suggested the “murder gene” has raised its ugly head in his son.
Still slogging through ‘The End of the Affair’. I’m about a quarter of the way through and I’m not really enjoying it all that much so far. At the moment it’s 0.1% plot, 99.9% MC introspectively analysing the 0.1% plot. This wouldn’t be so bad (indeed, Hangover Square, which I absolutely loved, is pretty similar), but the MC comes off as a pretty unpleasant person, so I don’t really care about what happens to him. The book is elegantly written, and quite incisive and insightful at points, but that, by itself, isn’t really enough for me. If anyone else has read it, I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts.
I liked her ability to reproduce Little Syria and the Bowery, she made me feel like I was there. And the last 100 pages were some of the best I’ve ever read, but the subplots dragged the middle down to the point I almost quit reading. I also didn’t care for the objectification of the two main characters, woman, they DID have names. Again this is only my opinion.
