Well we’ve made it a quarter of the way through 2018. Anything fun happen in your lives recently? Our furnace died… just as the night temps decided to revisit the lower 20s (Fahrenheit)…
To keep warm, I started reading m/m Regency romances I am currently on A Seditious Affair the 2nd Society of Gentlemen book by KJ Charles. She is wonderfull good at settin the mood of London in whatever time period she writes and as always her characters are immensely likeable (or not in the case of the rotters) and well rounded.
I’m also plugging along on In the Woods by Tana French, but man this book suffers badly from the th author being WAY to fond of the sound of her own voice and what I call Windows 95 Syndrome ie it runs for awhile then stops and tons of wordage is spewed out in navel gazing and author cleverness, then it runs again for awhile before halting again…
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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.
Finished The Great Game, Lavie Tidhar’s delirious steampunk Lizardpeople literary mashup. Reasonably fun.
I’ve mentioned before how tired I am of reading Victorian-era fantasy, fantasy set in London, fantasy that borrows characters from other novels. In that spirit, I just started **The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter
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, a Victorian-era fantasy set in London and starring Dr. Jekyll’s daughter. In difficult times, it is a challenge to stick by one’s literary principles.
So far, it’s pretty fun–and I’m trying to read all the Nebula nominees, so there’s that.
Getting close to finishing *David Copperfield *, by Charles Dickens, plus there are some essays on it in the back of the book I want to read also. Very good but it’s taking me forever to read. The wife and I were running around on another island for a few days earlier this month, enjoying the pleasant weather while so much of the country was socked in with snow and storms (hehe), and I didn’t read a word while we were gone.
Finished Soonish: Ten Emerging Technnologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything, by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, which I enjoyed very much. Simultaneously scary and hilarious. Reminded me of What If? by Randall Munroe and also Cecil Adams’ Straight Dope column. Recommended.
Just started Winston S. Churchill: Youth 1874-1900, by Randolph S. Churchill. In his preface, the author reprints a letter he wrote his father in 1932 while still a boy, saying he’d been offered 450 pounds to write his father’s biography. His father wrote back that he should wait, write it when he became and adult, and make thousands of pounds instead.
I just finished A Seditious Affair a toe curling good m/m romance by KJ Charles. BEcause this book deals with a politician and a radical it has a lot of politics of the time period than most romance and the tone is a bit bleaker, but nevertheless it has a feel good ending and and is lovely, if slightly depressing, read. George IV’s government had a lot to answer for, but any reader of Dickens knows that…
I just finished re-reading Jules Verne’s Robur the Conqueror and Master of the World, bound as a single volume. Actually, it’s not exactly a re-read, as this is a different translation. One thing I hadn’t noticed the first time I read it is that Verne refers back to previous books he’d written – The Begum’s Millions and Meridiniana. But the first time I read these, I wasn’t familiar with those books.
I also finished Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins (I was on a business trip, and had a lot of time while traveling). I hadn’t read this one by him before.
Finally, I read Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics by Tom Rogers, adapted from his website. The math id watered down for a popular audience, but he does do a nice job of demolishing bad physics. My main complaint is that he restricts his targets to a relatively few then-recent movies. I understand that it was a website, but there’s a century of bad SF movies to pick apart, and no need to fixate on Speed and The Core the way he does. And, while I agree with him about the quality of the Star Wars prequels and the later Star Trek movies, a lot of his comments have little to do with Bad Physics. We all hate Jar Jar Binks already – there’ no need to spend so much time on him.
Now I’m going to read el Borak and other Desert Adventures by Robert E. Howard and Thongor of Lemuria by Lin Carter. I’ve probably read all of the Howard stories, but this is one of those completest editions, with variant texts and weird little tidbits. And I may only have read one or two as rewritten by decamp for the conan books. And although I’ve read a lot of Carter, I don’t think I’ve ever read any of his Thongor stories, which is why I picked it up.
On audio, I finished Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs’ Blue Labyrinth, starring their weird hero Agent Pendergast. I don’t know why I keep listening to these. I think I hope I’ll find a decent one, or something. I don’t like the character as written. Even worse, my mental picture of their pale hero with the sepulchral voice – especially when read and performed , as in two of the audio books, by Rene Auberjonois – makes me think of horror host John Zacherle. I’m pretty sure this isn’t the mental image they wanted to suggest, but it’s stuck there now in my mind. I’m going to five it another shot with Still Life with Crows, after I finish listening to the audiobook version of Jeff Deaver’s James Bond novel carte Blanche.
I kind of finished Eddie Izzard’s autobiography. I read the first third, then skipped to the last chapter. I hate to admit it, but the book was kinda boring.
Man, sometimes I go through phases where every book I pick seems to be a dud, but right now the opposite is happening – I’m on a streak of good books!
I finished Brene Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection earlier this week. It’s a great book about pushing past our shame, fear, and insecurities to live a whole-hearted life, and it changed the way I think about some things. It’s a very short book at 130 pages, and I love that the author kept it so short. When I think of all the books I’ve read that had right around 130 pages of actual depth and then 200 pages of filler, I’m glad that the author didn’t try to pad the book in order to make it a standard book length.
I’m almost done with What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty, about a woman who gets amnesia and forgets the last ten years of her life, and is trying to figure out why she and her husband are in the middle of a divorce. It’s a great book if you’re into stories that take place largely in the narrator’s head. In other words, the book is kind of slow on actual action, but I have a lot of fun getting inside the main character’s head and I enjoy the book and the slowly unfolding mystery.
Re-reading Life Without Limits by Nick Vujicic, this time on audio book. It’s one of my two favorite books I’ve read in my adult life, an inspirational book written by a man born without limbs. No matter what else is going on in my life, I listen to it and it makes me tear up, makes me grateful for what I have, fills me with joy, and encourages me to keep going and keep striving.
Finally, I’m reading The Upside of Stress: Why Stress is Good, and How to Get Good at It by Kelly McGonigal. Intriguing title, isn’t it? The content is intriguing as well. McGonigal is a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University, but she’s also a wonderful writer. Her writing is both accessible and revolutionary. It’s fascinating, definitely something that lingers in my thought and makes me reconsider my own behavior; not something to skim through and forget about. (Her other book that I’ve read, The Willpower Instinct, is the same way.)
A few days ago I finished Bad Things Happen, which I picked up because of Roderick Femm’s recommendation in the March thread. It was…OK. The writing was good and the mystery was interesting enough, but the main character seemed to have zero personality. He was willing to go along with any situation presented to him. Become a magazine editor? Sure. Start sleeping with your best friend’s wife? Sure. Help said best friend bury a body? Sure. yawn I get that he has some super-secret “bad guy” past (which we don’t learn about in this book), but does that mean he can’t have any motivation or opinions of his own? I certainly don’t regret reading it, but – unlike my esteemed fellow Doper – I feel no need to read anything else by this author.
I’ve returned to (somewhat) familiar territory, and am currently reading the new Tyler Dilts book: Mercy Dogs. I enjoy Dilts’s Long Beach Homicide series, but this is a slight departure: the main character *used *to be with the Long Beach PD. Ben is a former detective recovering from the TBI and PTSD associated with having been shot in the head, while caring for his father who has Alzheimer’s. His life is on the bleak side until his friendly tenant disappears, and he decides to look into it.
I just had two pleasant reading experiences with books recommended in the March version of this thread.
The Last To See Me by M. Dressler (recommended by Left Hand of Dorkness) and Even If It Kills Her by Kate White (recommended by wonky) were very different books, but both benefited greatly from a subtle authorial approach to what could have been pretty trashy subject matter.
The Last To See Me is a ghost story as told by the ghost, and it risks being guilty of taking a literary approach to a Ghostbusters plotline, but I felt Dressler handled the story beautifully. I found the ending very satisfying, although some reviewers thought it was confusing.
I got Even If It Kills Her at the library and almost didn’t read it after seeing the author’s blurb on the back cover (she’s the former editor of Cosmopolitan, and I was afraid the book would be all about trashy glamour and sleazy sex), but I’m glad I persevered because (as wonky said), White’s writing style is very unobtrusive and unsensational. And it’s a damn good murder mystery!
Thanks for the suggestions!
Also, to add some suggestions of my own, I just finished Beau Death by Peter Lovesey and enjoyed it very much, as I have most of Lovesey’s Peter Diamond series of murder mysteries. The plot hinges on the discovery what appears to be a 19th century skeleton in period dress, with the minor exception of a pair of modern tighty-whities. I am really enjoying the more humorous story lines Lovesey is taking in his recent writing; he seems to be rebelling against the seemingly mandatory grimness found in a lot of police procedurals of recent years.
I also finished Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile in March, and I would heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to try a Christie mystery but doesn’t know where to start.
Speaking of Agatha, I am currently reading The Seven Dials Mystery (one of her early efforts) and I’m surprised to find it’s laugh-out-loud hilarious. I love it!
Amazon is pleased that I’ve discovered their Kindle app…and am on Spring Break.
Regency Romance:
A Gentleman’s Position by KJ Charles. Nice, sexy, but not quite as interesting as some of her other stuff. I think she needed to tie up a couple loose ends from the previous books but there wasn’t quite enough to carry a novel so she had to hurry and manufacture a conflict.
Victorian New England:
Widdershins by Jordan L Hawk. Set in a fictional town called Widdershins, Mass, the book calls on Lovecraftian Mythos, Salem Witch Trials and Ancient Egypt to craft a fun, exciting story of murder and ancient gods. Nothing in it was particularly new or earthshattering, but it held my attention andI’ve grown to quite like the main characters.
Well, Rough Draft, I just finished The Last to See Me and I’m sorry to say I don’t know what the hell happened. I thought I did, then I read some reviews over at Goodreads, then I read the last few pages again and changed my mind. Honestly, I think M. Dressler let everybody down at the finish line.
Starting next on Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I thought I had already read this, now I’m not so sure. It’s… cute. Rather an abrupt change in tone from my last book.
I don’t want to post any plot spoilers (even wrong ones) here, but if you don’t mind me PMing you, I’ll tell you my take on the climax and what it meant.
Glad you liked it! There are earlier books in the series that I like a lot, too. Some are about more fashiony topics/settings, but as the context for solid mysteries. I like that White launched herself from what she knew.
I am currently on A Seditious Affair the 2nd Society of Gentlemen book by KJ Charles. She is wonderfull good at settin the mood of London in whatever time period she writes and as always her characters are immensely likeable (or not in the case of the rotters) and well rounded.
