Fireworks! … and stressed out pets for those of us in the US.
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 honour.
June Thread
Since I am enjoying the TV adaptation, I picked up “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell” again. 800 pages of annotated magical fantasy goodness.
Very much enjoyed The Iron Ship by K. M. McKinley although it wasn’t structured as interestingly as the first 2 or 3 chapters led me to hope. It quickly settled into moving between the various protagonists scattered across a world with a ‘dark twin’ coming ever closer and threatening destruction. This last happened so long ago, though, that almost nobody realises their civilisation’s impending doom!
And now I’m reading The Seed Collectors by Scarlett Thomas. A woman who was related to a famous plant collector, and who started up a spiritual retreat in S.E. England in the 1960s, dies and her family and friends gather for the funeral.
I’ve not reached it yet, but I know her closest relatives each inherit very strange seed pods collected decades before…
I’m reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susana Clarke on my Ipad and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalad Hosseini on audiobook.
I’m watching the BBC show on JS & MN simultaneously. So far, I’ve managed to stay just ahead of the show. It’s been really fun so far. I love the alternate universe were magic really is part of history and is returning. I’d love to see prequels on what it was like to be human at the time when the Raven King ruled.
A Thousand Splendid Suns is the story of two women married to the same giant prick of a husband. It goes through about 30 years (so far) of their lives in Kabul. I love the friendship that develops between the two women and I’m dreading the outcome of this book if it continues on this dark path. It’s beautifully written but the lives they must lead in that culture is devastating to me. I’m extremely thankful to have never experienced that kind of oppression.
Finished all three versions of the Mysterious Stranger by Twain. I’m now reading The Lady and her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley’s Masterpiece by Roseanne Montillo, about the scientists and charlatans working on reviving the dead. Although I knew about a lot of these folk, I didn’t know their stories and lives, and I wasn’t aware of the direct connections they had to Mary Shelley and her family.
On audio, I’m reading Stephen King’s Full Dark, No Stars.
I just finished with The Devil You Know by Trish Doller. This is a YA novel about a stupid teenage girl who goes road-tripping with a couple of cute boys she just met. The plot was predictable, the romance was nauseating, and I wanted to kick the heroine in the ass on every page. However, the story was set in a town close to where I live, and they even meet a local celebrity who is a real person, so those details kept me reading. Not recommended, unless you are a teenage girl with the brains of a turnip.
I’ve finished my Slog Through Shakespeare and now I’ve started reading Sir Walter Scott. Just finished *Waverley *earlier this week and I all I can say is this guy was the poster child for “Never use one word when twenty will do.” Fifty pages of plot sprinkled through 300 pages of description, politics, and pointless nattering.
They were paid by the word back then, it was in his interests to use as many as possible 
A quarter of the way through Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy. I’ll be taking it and a couple other books up to the North with us in a few days. I’ll be offline for a couple of weeks.
Just started The Hypnotist’s Love Story by Liane Moriarty.
I just finished **The Lost City of Z(**No, it has nothing to do with zombies) by David Crann about the fabled lost expedition of David Fawcett into the jungles of darkest Brazil in 1925. I was stunned by revelations in the last chapter, which still leave me mind-boggled.
I finished A Sword from Red Ice, the third book in J.V. Jones’ Sword of Shadows trilogy.
I shall give you the summary in song form via this Youtube link.
The fourth and final book better be better or I’m going on a quest for vengeance.
I loved the book and hope to go back to it someday. Here’s a thread on the TV miniseries: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell on BBC America - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
I’m still listening to the unabridged audiobook of Salman Rushdie’s Joseph Anton, an autobiography with a particular focus on the Satanic Verses controversy and the years he spent in hiding, protected by the London Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch, after the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa. (The police asked Rushdie to pick a pseudonym for them to use and he chose one combining the first names of two of his favorite authors, Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov; his guards usually just called him “Joe”). Rushdie is unstinting in his gratitude to those who stood by him, and pours scorn on those who backed away or, even if they had never been his friends, didn’t at least stand up for free speech. He also discusses his childhood in India and Great Britain, his literary ambitions and his messy romantic life (two divorces so far in the book). More amusingly, he shamelessly namedrops all the celebrities and bigshot authors he knows.
I’m also making my way through The West Point History of the Civil War, ed. by Col. Ty Seidule, a big coffeetable book cowritten by West Point faculty and cadets, Wiki-style, lavishly illustrated and with great maps. The prose isn’t on a level with Catton or Foote, but it’s good.
Finally, I’m really enjoying my reread of The Cruel Sea, a 1951 novel by Nicholas Monsarrat, about British corvette sailors fighting Nazi U-boats. Just as good as I remember - brilliant characterization, an epic backdrop, and horrible situations offset by occasional humor. Monsarrat was a sailor himself and had a real eye for the sweep, danger and majesty of the ocean.
I finished The Lady and Her Monsters – a good read, with a surprising epilogue.
Now I’m reading the just-published anthology The Fall of Cthulhu, Volume II. It has one of my stories in it – *The Condo Over in Innsmouth * – and I wanted to see what the other contributors came up with.
Today I learned that Sir Walter Scott got reincarnated as David Weber.
Salman Rushdie wrote an autobiography? adds to Mt. ToBeRead
With a stop along the way as Henry James.
Continuing with my “death & corpses” nonfiction kick - I picked up Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found by Frances Larson thanks to **Dung Beetle’s **recco.
As you can tell from the subtitle - the book is all about the human head, primarily as separated from the body. Larson covers the material from a sociological perspective, and the scope of the book spans the globe – discussing South Seas headhunters (and how European fascination with these sacred objects spawned an cottage industry and dissipated their true meaning) as well as the modern day equivalent - how troops in WWII and the Korean/Vietnam conflicts often took heads of their enemies as trophies. I was less aware of this practice and found it rather disconcerting to think of men my father’s and grandfather’s age sending bits and pieces of their enemies back home. FYI - this section gets a bit gruesome; but Larson presents solid research and sociological/ psychological reasoning - she’s not just being sensational.
On the medical side, head transplants and cryopreservation are covered , and on a historical note, the book also discusses the phrenology craze of the first half 1800’s and how that (along with medical colleges and the need for dissection) drove a grave-robbing epidemic. Of course a book titled “Severed” has to cover decapitation as execution, and the guillotine (as well as alternate beheading techniques) are covered, with Madame Tussaud getting a nod (so to speak).
I enjoyed Larson’s writing and approach to the material; while she covered a wide range of topics, it didn’t feel scattershot. The overarching narrative - how the skull/head represents the person -carried through well. Her personal observations are well-placed and don’t feel intrusive. There was a bit of overlap with Mary Roach’s Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, but both writers put their own perspective on the topic.
I imagine I’ll run into similar overlaps with my current read The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery by Sam Kean. I’ve enjoyed his previous books - and both **Grrlbrarian **& **LavenderBlue **recommended this tome as well.
But Walter never blew up multiple starships or killed a hexapuma bare-handed, either… 
I just finished 1636: The Cardinal Virtues, part of Eric Flint’s “Ring of Fire” series, which starts with a small W. Virginia town being sent back in time and space from the year 2000 to Germany in June 1631 (smack in the middle of the 30 Year’s War) and what happens next. What has happened so far is about 14 novels, 10 short story collections, and a website that publishes short fiction every two months (it’s up to issue 58 now, IIRC). This book is a collaboration (Flint loves collaborative efforts) with Walter Hunt.
This one deals with Cardinal Richelieu, King Louis XIII, his brother (and other family), and his newly-born son (who might one day grow up to be Louis XIV). Intrigue, murder, and very modest contributions from the ‘up-timers’ (mostly via radio) makes it an interesting read.
My bathroom book is The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China by Julia Lovell. Very good history of the war, especially from the Chinese side (the Emperor was barely aware that there was a war going on until the British showed up on his doorstep). I’m not sure I agree with the author on the effects on modern China, but I haven’t read all of it yet, so we’ll see. Still, I’m impressed with what I have completed so far.