I have grabbed M. R James stories off of Gutenberg, I need to look for Raffles then… and stock up on ink cartridges to print them off.
I just finished “The Ingenious Mr. Pyke,” by Henry Hemming. Fascinating and intriguing.
Started The Whispering Skull by Jonathan Sroud yesterday. I found a half dozen plot points lifted from other things but nothing so obvious that it ruined the story. Amusingly, the character of Saunders sounds like Vincent Price and Joplin sounds like a Disney sidekick from one of the old ones (old being pre 80s) Can’t decide if I’m amused or scared…
Michael P. Ghiglieri and Charles R. “Butch” Farabee, Jr. I bought my copy in the ranger station gift shop at Tuolumne Meadows, of all places. The book is not in my active queue right now but I read the first chapter (Waterfalls) and it was entertaining in a not-entirely-wholesome way.
I just started The Martian by Andy Weir. It’s about an Astronaut believed dead who is stranded on Mars. Very early on I am enjoying it so far. I had heard good things about it and saw a trailer for the upcoming movie which interested me so I went to go buy it only to realize I had bought it months ago and it was sitting on my Kindle. Embarrassing how often that happens.
I’ve done that with print books digging through a stack of unread books “Now why on EARTH do I have THREE copies of XYZ?”
Currently reading Eugenie Grandet by Balzac.
I’m overdue for something far more lowbrow.
I was on vacation on the beach last week and read quite a bit. I just finished David Herbert Donald’s We Are Lincoln Men, about Abraham Lincoln’s close friends (political and otherwise). It was all right but not nearly as good (or as big) as his excellent one-volume biography, Lincoln.
I’m now returning to Frank Norris’s 1899 lowlifes-of-San-Francisco novel McTeague, and The West Point History of the Civil War.
Oh, and still enjoying the audiobook of Salman Rushdie’s Joseph Anton. It’s the summer of 1997 - he just remarried, has a newborn son, and already his marriage looks like it might be in trouble.
Back home after traveling around northern Thailand. While up there, I finished reading Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy. Very good. Set in Texas and the Southwest in the aftermath of the Mexican War. Strange ending. Will have to think about that for a while. I noted with some amusement one minor character who had served in that war and returned to Mexico to find the local girl he left behind. Geez, that seems to be an American tradition – saw lots of those guys over here long after the Vietnam War ended.
Then I read A World of Trouble, by local American writer Jake Needham. The third in his Jack Shepherd series. In this one, former high-powered Washington lawyer Shepherd, who has lived in Bangkok and Hong Kong since leaving the US, gets caught up in the politics of one of his financial clients, a former Thai prime minister who is the world’s 98th-richest man and not a million miles removed from the real-life Thaksin Shinawatra. A good read.
I’ve enjoyed all of Needham’s books I’ve read to varying degrees. He also does the Inspector Tay of Singapore series. A former screenwriter, his first mystery, The Big Mango (not part of a series), set in Bangkok, was set for the silver screen with James Gandolfini tapped for the lead. But that project seems to have fallen apart since Gandolfini’s death. (In the book, the protagonist is repeatedly told he looks just like Clint Eastwood, but I think Eastwood is too old for that now.) Needham is one of Bangkok’s colorful local farangs (Westerners). I don’t know him personally but have seen him and his family around town. His Thai wife is a talented musician who sometimes plays with the San Francisco Philharmonic.
And now I am about halfway through Mr Mercedes, by Stephen King, and am enjoying it immensely. I noticed it mentioned upthread but did not read the comment in case there was a spoiler.
Or a volcano crevice on the Big Island of Hawaii. Some people do that for the steam-bath effect, but I recall from my time in Hawaii one young lady tourist who got stuck tight and was essentially scalded to death while her boyfriend looked on, helpless to do anything about it.
Now reading Frederick Pohl’s The Way the Future Was, his memoir of his life and the Golden Age of science fiction. I’d wanted to read it for years, but never got to it. It came out a little before he was the Guest of Honor at a Con I attended. Our interaction was limited to shaking hands and him autographing a copy of The Space Merchants.
Well, I told you I needed something more lowbrow.
Balzac is on hold, and I’m now 60% through the first of Edgar Wallace’s old crime novels in the Four Just Men series.
I finished The Whispering Skulll by Jonathan Stroud this morning. The book was a wonder page turner from beginning to end. I wasn’t particularly surprised to find out who the thief was, but it was enjoyable getting to that point. I’m also pleased to see a book written for the early to mid teen crowd, full of adventure, danger and ghosts, that features a strong female in a central role.
And a nice cliffhanger! I’m looking forward to September…
Oh yes, very much so!
After watching the Longmire series, I decided to give the mystery novel series by Craig Johnson a try, and so am reading #1 in the series, The Cold Dish. It’s a good story with engaging characters and a healthy dose of humor mixed in with the drama, and is set in modern fictional Absaroka County, WY. Walt Longmire is the local sheriff. The book (and series) has a ring of authenticity, probably because the author is actually from Buffalo, WY (been there, nice town), where the series is also filmed.
I finished up Go Set A Watchman last night. Technically, I should go back to Don Quixote, but I was getting pretty bored with it. I think I have What Alice Forgot and The Paying Guests up next. I’ll probably start one of those and maybe throw in a chapter or two of DQ once a week or so for the next couple of years until I get through it. I hate to give up on it.
I finally got to the head of the queue for Go Set a Watchman in my library’s hold system. And cancelled my hold. I realized that I’ve been dreading it more than looking forward to it.
It fulfilled what I thought it would be (and expressed in one of the threads around here (or GB) before the book came out) and is basically what’s been said in the current “I read it” thread. It’s essentially a first draft.
Since this isn’t a spoiler thread, I’ll just say that if you hold TKaM near and dear to your heart, you should skip this, you’re not missing much. Even ignoring the whole “Atticus is a racist” thing, the book has an entirely different tone, Atticus isn’t quite the same person, Scout is grown up, Jem and Dill have (sort of) been replaced by another character and the thing that really got me is that if you only read this book, or read it first, Cal wouldn’t be the person we knew and loved. Even with the flashbacks, her character isn’t anywhere near as developed as it is in Mockingbird. That really bothered me, not only was she an important part of Scout’s life growing up, an important part of TKaM but she really is an important part of Jean Louise realizing what’s going on in Maycomb at that point. But you have to know TKaM to know really understand who she is, what she’s about and how important she is.
Having said all that, it’s a quick read and it’s not terribly deep, I knocked it out in a week. A re-read or even rewatching Mockingbird will probably make you feel better if you don’t like it.
Years and years from now, I think that Mockingbird will still stand the test of time and Watchman will just be a footnote. People will read it for fun, to read more about Scout and some of her extended family and friends and how she grew up, but it’ll hardly be ‘required reading’. In another 50+ years (after people don’t know/remember/care about that drama and the time between the two books being published), it wouldn’t surprise me if Watchman was mostly forgotten.
Thanks for that, Joey P. Good to know.