As for recent reads, I just finished The Devil Drives, a biography of Sir Richard Burton (no, the other one), and Liberty! The American Revolution, a revisiting of the history of said war.
I 4th/5th/whateverth The Golem and the Jinni. A marvelous book.
Right now, I’m about 2/3 through Kent Haruf’s last book, Our Souls at Night. Simple but beautiful storytelling; I’m sorry he won’t be writing any more.
Finished Song of Susannah, by Stephen King, Volume 6 in his Dark Tower series. Very good. The author even cleverly includes himself as a character in the story. I’m glad I’m reading these all close together though and not having to wait years between volumes, as this one, similar to Volume 3: The Waste Lands, features a cliffhanger ending.
Next up is Volume VII: The Dark Tower. This will mark the end of the actual series, although I understand a new book featuring the characters, entitled The Wind Through the Keyhole, came out four years ago.
I am currently reading Fallen Man by Tony Hillerman… in between reading a pile of manga and playing on my tablet 
I finished Arcadiaby Iain Pears over the weekend. I know other people on here have mentioned it, so I’ll just add that this time travel/fantasy/spy novel is shaping up to be one of my favorite of the year.
Finished Jonathan L. Howard’s Carter & Lovecraft. Pretty good (though I prefer his Johannes Cabal series), and definitely poised for a sequel. Yay!
Today I started on Peter Cline’s The Fold, a novel about teleportation. Mr. Cline’s writing comes off a bit amateurish to me, but so far the story is good, so I shall press on.
Almost Finished with Robert Irwin’s The Arabian Nights: A Companion. It’s interesting and useful, but he frequently makes references to things I am unfamiliar with NOT related to the Nights, such as British television shows. And some of his opinions are definitely only his own. Still, it’s interesting to learn that the Nights are not highly esteemed in Arab culture (they’re looked down on, and they’d much rather we paid more attention to Arab poetry), or that the story of Aladdin can be viewed as a story about tomb-robbing (I’d never considered it that way, although I have myself made the same suggestion about the pots of gold of leprechauns). It turns out that it can be plausibly be argued many of the stories were likely originated in Cairo, including Aladdin.
I’m halfway through Cussler’s Piranha on audio.
THe same place I found the Cussler novel also has a good collection of DVDs, and I’m delifhted to find they have James Burke’s Connections, which I haven’t seen in ages. I’m devouring the series right now. They also have Connerctions[sup]2[/sup] and Connections[sup]3[/sup] , which I will get to next (I already have the full set of The Day the Universe Changed, a gift from a friend).
I loved that series. Looms to computers…
I read A Tangle of Gold, the third and final book in Jaclyn Moriarty’s YA fantasy series. Overall, the entire series was very fun and readable, and this book wrapped things up nicely. Teenagers in parallel worlds accidentally find a way to communicate with each other, magic and conspiracies ensue.
Double post. ^^
I have been rewatching them myself for the last two weeks. I love how Burke’s opinion on computers changes over 20 years.
I finished reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. I thought the autobiographical elements were interesting, but I have to admit I skimmed the section where Stephen Dedalus goes through his theory of aesthetics at length.
I’m taking a break from Randall Munroe’s What If?, a collection of XKCD columns, for the moment. Not long ago I finished the audiobook of David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers, which was quite good - informative and inspiring. I’m now enjoying the audiobook of Frederick Forsyth’s 1972 thriller The ODESSA File, about a young German reporter in the early Sixties tracking down an ex-Nazi who’s in hiding. I first read it many years ago, and it’s just as good as I remember.
On the other hand, I’m plodding through Michael McGerr’s A Fierce Discontent, a well-reviewed book about the Progressive movement in the U.S. which just isn’t grabbing me. It’s for one of my book clubs, though, so I really think I ought to finish it. After 58 pages I gave up on S.S. Van Dine’s 1926 detective novel The Benson Murder Case, having found the hero, Philo Vance, to be (in the words of a Wiki profile) “supercilious, obnoxiously affected, and highly irritating.”
I quite agree! Along with Stoker’s Dracula and King’s 'Salem’s Lot, it’s one of my favorite vampire books.
I thought that was a pretty good illustrated overview of the Revolution. If you want something more in-depth, try 1776 by McCullough or Washington’s Crossing by Fischer.
Am thoroughly enjoying The Glass Sentence, first of an almost-complete YA fantasy trilogy, book 3 will be published in July. Really interesting alt-histories with disjointed timelines caused by The Great Disruption. I’m trying to catch up on the awesome YA that’s been appearing the last few years, I’ve read most of the “crossover” bestsellers (Hunger Games, Divergent, Fault in our Stars) but maybe have missed the genre hits. If anyone has a resource for these, or recommendations, I’m all ears.
Eh for some reason about the period historical fiction doesn’t really impress me. I already know most of the down-and-dirty details anyway. Washington’s Crossing looks interesting, though.
What I most liked about Liberty! was the maps of engagements.
I might have enjoyed living back then…cider morning, noon, and night! 
I only read the graphic novel adaptation of “Fevre Dream” so maybe I missed something, but I was slightly annoyed by one part:
If I remember correctly, one character tries to kill another one, gets captured and then gets released with a warning. Uh…not a great idea, dude.
As we were watching last night, Pepper Mill remarked at how dated it all looked. That’s a little surprising, considering that the basic ideas and stories are pretty much timeless. But the modern trappings and a few attitudes (like the ones about computers you note) still remain. In particular:
1.) Burke’s fashion sense Connections was 1977, and his hair and clothes show it.
2.) It’s weird to see the World Trade Center still up, and a pre-fix-up Ellis Island
3.) One episode ends with that symbol of modern travel, the Concorde, now long gone.
4.) The first episode of The Day the Universe Changes rhapsodizes about Bell Labs, including a lot of footage from the big facility at Holmdel, N.J. “WE build these centers to instigate change”, Burke says. What does it say about us that not only that Bell Labs, but a great many other industrial research labs from the same period are now gone? (Research labs have opened up elsewhere in the world, largely because it’s cheaper. Research labs in this country are different and don’t do the same kind of research, much of which is nowadays done at universities)
Still these were four great series*, but watching them again reminds us that Time Marches On.
*Besides the companion volumes to Connections and The Day the Universe Changed (which are what Burke reads from for the audio versions of Connections and TDTUC), Burke has published several similar books – The Pinball Effect, The Knowledge Web[, Circles (which seems to be his collected Connections-like essays from Scientific American), American Connections, and others.
Neither of the books I suggested are fiction.
Haven’t read the graphic novel, but in the original novel,
a vampire lord can use his force of personality and air of command to compel obedience by a subordinate vampire. The top bad-guy vampire originally did that to the hero/protagonist vampire, but the latter was eventually able to break free.
Thanks, I forgot some of the details. I still thought it seemed like a pretty dumb idea.
Finished The Fold this morning. The plot was pretty good, and the events of the story had me :eek:ing more than once. Whenever I had to lay the book aside, I was itching to pick it back up again. However. The clunkiness of the writing never ceased to annoy me, and the characters were all cereal-box cardboard. I don’t plan to read any more by this author.
This morning I found out that one of my library holds had been cancelled. Then I found out it was Stiletto, and the hold was cancelled because it’s over a year old. Yes, that’s right, I have been waiting for this bloody book for over a year! I was first in line! I immediately reinstated my hold and called the library. They said they will move me back into position, so I’m going to take a deep breath and hold it…