Finished When I Am Through With You. In a word, ugh. If you’ve ever been hiking, or had a migraine, you’ll find it completely implausible. Also, the narrator tells us at the beginning that he killed someone he loved and he’s not sorry. Well, right away I know why he did it. So much for suspense. And furthermore, it was very frustrating that the characters had lots of stupid conversations about their stupid interpersonal relationships and didn’t have other very important conversations that normal people would have had.
Next up: After the End of the World by Jonathan L. Howard, second book in the Carter & Lovecraft series. It is inconceivable that I will not enjoy this book.
Last night I started The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be by Farley Mowatt. I had to order a used copy through Better World Books since no library in the system owns it. I remember reading it as a kid and being fascinated by Saskatchewan
I’m reading A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, about a member of the Russian aristocracy who is placed under house arrest in the Metropol Hotel in 1922. Currently I’m up to 1950, and at my current rate I’ll be through it by the end of the week.
It was a Christmas gift from my mother, who accidentally order the large-print version. As a result, it’s a pretty solid brick.
I’m finding the story enjoyable, but Towles’ writing style gets on my nerves. He keeps going off on little asides that begin with him being amazed at how something as unbelievable as this could possibly be happening. I’m reading a novel, I didn’t think there was anything unbelievable about it until you mentioned it!
Finished Medical Catastrophe: Confessions of an Anesthesiologist, by Ronald W. Dworkin. Now that’s a scary (non-fiction) book. I didn’t realize how dangerous anesthesia can be. Another anesthesiologist, whom the author calls “Dr. C”, is very good at a few, routine types of situations, but since he almost never performs the others, some horrifying situations take place when he has to, because he’s on call at a hospital.
Also finished The Spectacular Sisterhood of Superwomen: Awesome Female Characters from Comic Book History, by Hope Nicholson. Fewer superheroes than I expected (and hoped), but she had some interesting (often short-lived) characters to talk about I’d never heard of.
Just started The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara, which is excellent so far.
Finished Grant, by Ron Chernow. Excellent, although I would expect nothing less than that from this author. The life of Civil War hero and 18th President Ulysses Grant. He was actually born Hiram Ulysses Grant, and his initials, HUG, caused some unfortunate teasing as a child. This caused him to drop Hiram and start being known as Ulysses. This didn’t stop the teasing, as he was usually called Ulyss or Lyss, which was soon bastardized into Useless Grant by his tormentors. The name Ulysses S. Grant was a later bureaucratic error when applying to West Point – the congressman recommending him accidentally conflated him with his younger brother Simpson – and it stuck. I do have two minor quibbles though. One that leaps out at me personally is Chernow has Grant visiting “Thailand” in 1879, when what he visited was Siam, the name change still decades in the future at that time. The other is the small photo/picture section. It’s smaller than in other books of his I’ve read, and several times he makes mention of pertinent photographs from the period but does not include them in the section. But those are minor. This is a worthy volume.
Next up is Mornings on Horseback, by David McCullough, his biography of Theodore Roosevelt.
Oh, and a Side Note: My paternal grandfather was born during the Grant administration, in April 1876, two months before Custer’s Last Stand. He didn’t have my father until he was in his 50s.
Ummm let’s see I have zilch attention span these days soooooo…
I am 65% of the way through The Burglar in the Closet by Lawrence Block. Enjoying it, maybe not as much as the first one but still enough to want to read more.
63 pages into The Liberal Redneck Manifesto by Trae Crowder, Corey Forrester & Drew Morgan. Not sure what I expected, but am enjoying the humor and the straight talk.
8% into Some Kind of Magic by R. Cooper. It’s magic, cops, werewolves, fairies and m/m romance…
About 40 pages into God’s Demon by Wayne Barlowe, dude don’t quit the illustrating job.
Also about half way through volume 1 of Graineliers by Rihito Takarai, seeds as contraband, who knew?
Thanks for the review of Grant. I’m a big Chernow fan (his Hamilton and Washington bios are both masterpieces) and I’m sure I’ll get to it sometime.
McCullough’s book is also excellent. Enjoy!
You probably know that the movie Gettysburg is based on it. It’s OK but overlong, IMHO; Martin Sheen is a fair Lee, but Jeff Daniels is terrific as Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.
I’m reading American Wolf about the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone. Fascinating book.
Next up is The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani. Despite the Lifetime TV movie title, it looks really compelling and was a cause celebre in France. The original French title is Chanson Douce but for some reason (cough–money–cough) the US publisher decided to go with a sensational title.
But the other day, a couple of nice normal people asked me what I was reading. That hardly ever happens to me in real life and I was totally unprepared. I said something vague about it being a novel (duh). But what if I had said, “It’s a book about a detective and a bookstore owner descended from H.P. Lovecraft who are solving a mystery in an alternate world where the Nazis are in power.”
I can say that here. But from past experience, talking to real life people about what I’m actually reading just makes them look at me funny.
Reminds me of a very stupid fight I got into with my mother. I read on the Kindle, and I read a lot of books at a time. She asked me what I was reading right after I closed my Kindle and I looked at her blankly and said, “I don’t know.” She was INCENSED. I tried to explain that I often don’t know the title or author, since I pick almost at random. INCENSED. Ah, fun times.
Recently finished:
The Running Man, by Stephen King. The nastiness of the imagery pushed me away instead of making it feel more real and more urgent. I liked the first 2/3 of the book, but the last third did nothing for me.
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, by Bart Ehrman. I’m a big fan of Ehrman’s work. He’s very readable, explains things in a straightforward and easy to follow way, and usually (not always) explains his leaps in argument. The Bronze Bow, by Elizabeth George Speare. For the Newbery reads. Most was better than I was initially giving credit for. At the end, I felt like I was being proselytized. King of the Wind, by Marguerite Henry. Newbery re-read. One of my favorite books from childhood. It’s still very readable, but my list of quibbles is so big it’s more of a quabble at this point. Shadows at the Fair, by Lea Wait. Cozy mystery. It’s fine.
Finished How the Zebra Got Its Stripes: Darwinian Stories Told Through Evolutionary Biology, by Leo Grasset. Interesting stuff. It’s the kind of popular science I enjoy. Recommended. (By the way, he lists eight different theories for why zebras have stripes, and it may be a combination.)
Started How the Finch Stole Christmas, by Donna Andrews. It’s a cozy mystery.
I finished The Burglar in the Closet by Lawrence Block and it was great up until the end.
You canNOT stab yourself in the chest fatally, at least not without the luxury of being able to make multiple attempts. The angle is wrong, you have ribs in the way and the heart is protected by thick muscle. It would have been better to slit his throat.
I also started The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred the Vampire Accountant today. It’s a fun read and I’m enjoying it.
Someone just loaned that to me today, so it’s up next after the Teddy Roosevelt bio. I had a great-something grandfather who fought at Gettysburg with the New York regiment, so I’m looking forward to it.
