I need to revisit it as well, it’s really the only one of his books that’s stuck with me for nearly 40 years. It was quite educational at age 13 or 14. 
I finished Curt Siodmak’s Donovan’s Brain and am now on Howard Carter’s the Discovery of King Tut’s Tomb.
On audio, I finished The Omnivore’s Dilemma and am starting Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear. I’ve read a LOT of books on L. Ron and Scientology over the years. This one made a big splash, and I’m curious about why. Is there anything in this book that wasn’t in all the others (besides Wright’s personal experiences)? I picked up Russell Miller’s The Bare Faced Messiah when I saw the first copy, because I was sure it would get killed by a Scientologist lawsuit, and I was right. It disappeared for years, until Project Clambake put it up on their website, and is only back in print in the US recently. I suspect one reason Wright’s book made it big* was because the Church’s power had waned to the point where they couldn’t clobber a new book the way they killed Miller’s, and Paulette Cooper’s, and minimized the impact of several others. But Wright got his book excerpted and turned into an HBO special, and it looks to me that it’s the fading power and influence of the Chu8rch that let that happen.
*Not to detract from Wright’s efforts. The jacket says he researched this heavily and performed a huge number of interviews. But it’s not as if earlier writers on the escapades of L. Ron didn’t do their homework.
We’ve been passing Jacob Tomsky’s Heads in Beds around the office. It is hilarious, heart-rending in a few places (especially concerning a certain 1960s pop star) and absolutely true.
I’ve noticed an interesting divide among the Goodreads reviews. People who’ve worked in the service industry have the same reaction I and my co-workers do, and those who haven’t are popping their monocles as they exclaim “Well I never!” Who was it that said we never like to see ourselves as others do? (Was it Burns? I think it was.) Trust me when I say that these are just the stories he can publish. Based on my own experience in the same profession, there are at least four times that many he can’t publish that are even more bizarre.
Just finished Salman Rushdie’s Joseph Anton, about his whole life but with a focus on the fatwa years. All in all, I liked it. Interesting, detailed, sometimes navel-gazing and shamelessly name-dropping (Carrie Fisher once tried to fix him up with Meg Ryan!) - but more often, and commendably, concerned with literature, free speech and the life of the mind.
Back to Frank Norris’s McTeague next, which I can’t say has grabbed me yet.
Finished up Dan Wells’ The Devil’s Only Friend, (decent), and started in on Ernest Cline’s Armada. I don’t think it’s classified as YA but it certainly reads that way. Anyway, I liked Ready Player One and the 80s, so should be fine.
Well, thankx, DungBeetle!
I listened to most of Ancillary Justice while driving 800 miles and it made the drive so much more tolerable. The book is set in the distant future when humans live on worlds spread across the galaxy. The protagonist is the remains of a battleship’s AI in a human body. Interesting world-building and character development. I’m looking forward to the sequel!
Gave up on McTeague after my obligatory 50 pages. Blah writing, dumb and unsympathetic protagonist, uninteresting plot. Returning to John Scalzi’s The Ghost Brigades, which is much, much, much better. It’s so much better it might almost be in a different star system entirely.
Oh, wait - it is.
Jo Nesbo Police. I’ve read only about 10 pages so far, so not sure whether I’m liking it or not.
I just finished The Well at the World’s End by William Morris (the famous wallpaper designer). Nowadays, I think it’s mostly notable for inspiring some bits of The Lord of the Rings, but I didn’t think there were too many similarities. I thought it was more like a cross between Ivanhoe and Le Morte d’Arthur or something like that. I was surprised by how prominently sex figured into the story, though.
All in all, I thought it was interesting to read. For better or for worse, it’s written in “Yea verily, he waxed sore wroth blah blah blah” old-timey language. For the most part, that didn’t bother me, but there were a handful of words he used over and over again that just rubbed me the wrong way, like:
[ul][li]himseemed[/li][li]yeasaid[/li][li]garth[/li][li]want-ways[/ul][/li]
If I never see the word “himseemed” again, it’ll be too soon.
Could you use those in comprehensible sentences for us?
“Himseemed the doughty carle was nothing loth, so the prince yeasaid his invitation to visit the garth by the want-ways.”
I repeat my question.
Um, “Even though Carl was a bit doughy, he wasn’t that loathsome, so the Prince sent him an invite on Tinder to come listen to some Garth Brooks”?
“The caramel doughnut was nothing to loathe, in fact the prince found it inviting. Party on, want-ways! Party on, garth.”
himseemed = it seemed to him
yeasaid = said “yes”
garth = a fenced-in yard or garden
want-ways = crossroads
Better - thanks.
Thanks to those in this thread who recommended The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud, I had a really good time with it and will be looking for the other books in the series. One fun thing was trying to suss out when it takes place (or how closely the alternate reality would match up to our timeline) because computer technology seemed completely absent, but the kids wore puffy coats and sneakers. Car alarms seemed like the only specific example of current technology that was mentioned.
Once it really got rolling, I too had fun with the time frame. I quite enoyed the feel of Victoriana mixed with a kind of modern world.
I just finished **The Big Burn **by Timothy Egan, an excellent book. In the summer of 1910 the explosively dry forests of eastern Washington, northern Idaho and western Montana were ravaged by a once-in-a-century forest fire which claimed the lives of over 80 people, mostly forest service firefighters and destroyed timberland equal to the size of New Jersey.