Summer time! I remember being all excited as a kid for the Summer Reading Program at the little library around the corner from our house. Games, prizes and time to read! So here we are, starting our summer reading.
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.
May Thread: It rained 20 out of 31 days out here…
Reading a couple of things right now because I can’t commit to a single book.
The Buried Life, by Carrie Patel (roughly a third through?). To Green Angel Tower, by Tad Williams (think I’m about halfway through). The Devil’s Detective, by Simon Kurt Unsworth (I hope I’ve spelled his name correctly).
I’m about 100 pages into Valley Of The Dolls. It’s really only just beginning (no drugs etc) involved yet and it’s not at all like I remember the movie, but I haven’t seen the movie in probably 12 years.
It’ll be a while before I finish it, but I have a stack of books to pick from next, help me:
Doctor Sleep
Skinny Dip
Sharp Objects
and I just, right now, bought:
The Paying Guests and Everything I Never Told You
Gradually getting through Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. Just finished the 2nd section (out of three) this morning before work.
Having to avoid the thread about it because of the spoilers in it…
Also started reading Tibetan Marches by Andre Migot, a French doctor who made an epic overland journey from Vietnam through Tibet and China just after WW2. Good review here.
I passed some time last week working on The Undertaker’s Daughter, a memoir by Kate Mayfield, but didn’t finish it. It was a series of pointless anecdotes, and I was starting to dread going back to it.
Currently reading Cuckoo Song, by Frances Hardinge, and I see that the new Stephen King novel has shipped also! It will be the second in the series that began with Mr. Mercedes.
I liked IT when I read IT. (I hadn’t meant to be that punny). IT is long and there’s stuff I felt could have been left out, but overall it was quite a ride.
My fiction pick right now is The Bees by Laline Paull. The plot is basically that the main character is a bee. Unfortunately, there’s not too much of a plot beyond that, the bee is doing bee things in this hive that’s a weird mix of human-like and bee-like. It’s just strange enough that I keep reading it, but at this point, I wouldn’t recommend it to others.
My nonfiction pick is The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance by David Epstein. I would recommend this one. It talks about the role genetics play in athleticism, but I really admire the way the author avoids making any tidy conclusions. He talks about the complicated interplay between innate talent and dedicated training. He also talks about the heavy interplay between genes, and how even those athletic abilities which are influenced by genes are influenced by a complicated interplay of many genes working in conjunction with one another. He also talks about differences between sexes and races, and I was fascinated by the scientific explanation of precisely how men’s and women’s bodies are different.
ETA: Thanks for the recommendation, DZedNConfused. Or solicited opinion I suppose would be a more accurate term.
I may have to read Epstein’s book now. I’ve avoided it because of a lack of interest in sports and the worry that it would be too simplistic or badly represent genetics, but your description definitely makes it sound worth the read. (For the record, I’m a biology grad going into an Ecology and Evolution Ph.D program to specialize in genomics, so inaccurate representations of genetics/related fields tend to bother me.)
Stephen E. Ambrose - Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West
I recently realized that I know very little of American history pre-WWII, apart from a few things about the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. Thinking about it, I found that the first half of the 19th century in the US was completely unknown to me. That’s how I first read about the Lewis and Clark expedition and this book was the one that was the most often recommended when I started looking for references on that topic.
Another outstanding Michael Connelly book: The Fifth Witness. Mickey Haller takes on a rather unlikeable client facing a murder charge, and the word "fifth"in the title becomes clear only late in the book. Harry Bosch makes only a cameo appearance. Highly recommended, as usual.
Cannot wait to hear your review of this, Saro! I read it about a month ago.
Got a few books going: Lyonesse by Jack Vance, The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins, and Mythology by Edith Hamilton. I’m enjoying all three, though Ancestor’s Tale is a bit dated due to recent discoveries (as well as a bit abstruse; if I hadn’t finished my anthro class recently I might be in the weeds a little with this one).
Recently finished the first two books of Adrian McKinty’s The Troubles Trilogy: The Cold Cold Ground and I Hear the Sirens in the Street. Both are cracking good reads if you have any interest at all in police procedurals, northern Ireland in the 1980s, or brooding, screwed-up main characters (or all three). I bought the first one at Big Sleep Books in St. Louis and I’m glad I did. When are we doing our next book exchange so I can find a soul to whom I can pass it along?
