I finished reading The Debacle by Emil Zola, about the Franco-Prussian War, the Battle of Sedan and the Paris Commune as seen through the eyes of two soldiers. The first two thirds were pretty interesting, seeing how poorly organized the French army was and the hunger and misery after the surrender. I was less interested in the Paris Commune part which seemed kind of tacked on, and the main characters were brought together by a rather doubtful coincidence.
I hadn’t read La Terre, the novel directly preceding the events of The Debacle, but I read the Wikipedia synopsis and I probably could have skipped it altogether; there wasn’t much carry over, as far as I can tell.
Finished reading American Cornball. One of the interesting tidbits was that the song How Dry I Am is only a portion of the song The Near Future by Irving Berlin (!), written in 1919 on the eve of Prohibition. Like many other songs (such as Take Me Out to the Ball Game), this is a case where only a portion of the song has become famous. According to Wikipedia, it’s because the lines
Ho dry I am
How Dry I Am
Nobody Knows
How Dry I Am
was used as “shorthand” in Warner Brothers cartoons for inebriation, which, somewhat ironically, had all direct references to alcohol expunged from it (as it had to have in order to be used in the cartoon). It was this use of the song portion that made it familiar to me, and tons of other Baby Boomers.
According to the Wikipedia article neither the tune nor those particular lyrics were original with Berlin, although I don’t know if they had previously been used together.
You can find all this out via Wikipedia and other internet source, but I’m not sure I would ever have looked them up out of the blue, which is why I loved this book. The same entry also told how old the song “Sweet Adeline” is (written 1903) and why “Melancholy Baby” is the stock “drunk request” song (It was used this in the 1954 version of A Star is Born.
Now on to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Eternal Savage and the anthology Murder Ink
Finished my non-fiction cannibalism book (dryer than expected. But the spider stuff was interesting); now on to non-fiction celebrity junk: I Hate Everyone Except You by Clinton Kelly. I’ll probably like him a bit less after reading it (too bitchy) but it’s okay.
Finally finished both volumes of the Star Trek 50 Year mission retrospective. Great Oral History books about Trek. Volume one covers TOS and the TOS movies. Volume Two is everything else up to brief stuff about Beyond.
Also started to dig into the new DC Rebirth tiles. JLA was underwhelming a little (felt like a Superfriends episode) but the others I tried are pretty good so far.
jsgoddess and Elendil’s Heir - thank you for the recommendations! jsgoddess, I’ve read and enjoyed Uprooted and The Screaming Staircase, so I downloaded The Emperor’s Edge. The Kindle version has the added bonus of being free.
Elendil’s Heir, I’ve read a lot of Scalzi’s work. Lock In was on my recent menu of cheerful diversions. Bill Bryson is a good recommendation, too, although I think his Appalachain Trail book is the only one of his I’ve read. We have a UK vacation planned soon, so I’m going to add The Road to Little Dribbling to my list of things to read.
Two Necromancers, A Bureaucrat and an Elf by LG Estrella is a blast. It’s fairly short, fantasy and has a lot of humour. It’s pretty cheap at 1.99 on Kindle.
I stumbled across a paperback edition of American Cornball (described in two of my posts above) in a bookstore last night, and had a look through it. It’s disappointing. The edition I read was the hardcover edition, and in the hardcover a lot of the illustrations are in full color. In the paperback they’re all black and white, and lower resolution. Of course, the paperback edition is a lot cheaper, but I picked the hardcover edition up at a discount.
I finished The Lowbrow History Guide to World History by MIchael Powell. IfI get to the PO tomorrow, expect a package soon Dung Beetle! It was funny in places and annoying in others, I didn’t mind exaggerating, but repeating old chestnuts, like Nero fiddling while Rome burned, bugs me. I did laugh several time in his history of the vacuum.
I also finished Kill City Blues by Richard Kadrey. I like Stark and crew more with each book.
However Kadrey did fall into the cliche of the hero indirectly causing the death of an ex lover’s new squeeze… and of COURSE, my favorite character.
I am almost done with a one volume set of the first four novels by Edward St. Aubyn, which I picked up because there was a lot of buzz about the fifth one in this series coming out this year … man, these are not for me. People with too much money and too many drugs and too much whining.
I am also nearly through The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind, by Barbara Strauch, which I believe got on my radar when someone mentioned it here. General survey of current research on the brains of middle-aged people (like myself), and it’s pretty optimistic, how some functions slow down, but our brains actually hit their peak abilities in a lot of other ways. Which is nice because now I feel less like I’m in a rapid decline.
I picked up an old favorite, Josephine Tey’s Daughter of Time, which is, of course, a classic, and it was still very enjoyable on this current re-read, although as I have gotten older, I find myself less amused by Inspector Grant’s crankiness, and more like “can’t you just DEAL?”
I finished Clinton Kelly’s book. You know when you’re at work and somebody gives you some junky piece of candy so you eat it and then later you wish you hadn’t wasted calories on something you didn’t even want? That’s how this book made me feel. Not recommended.
I finished this today and had to come back to gush. Holy crap, what a great book! Completely absorbing, hilarious and wonderfully humane. I don’t think I’ve loved a book as much since Life After Life. Highly recommended!
I finished Ted Chaing’s short-story collection Arrival, which was, I’m sorry to say, kind of uneven. The best bits are “Story of Your Life” (which inspired the movie Arrival, although there are very significant differences) and “Understand.” I wasn’t as blown away by the whole book as the reviews led me to expect.
Just started Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence, 1774-1776 by Richard R. Beeman, which was recommended to me by an old friend. So far I like it. Beeman reminds me a little of David McCullough in his writing style.
Still enjoying the novels Dominion by C.J. Sansom, about Britain under Nazi German domination in 1950, and Conclave by Robert Harris, about a gathering of cardinals to elect a new Pope.
I just finished The Secret History of Twin Peaks, and on the whole, I’m disappointed. I was hoping for backstory on Agent Cooper, Windom Earle, or any of the spirits haunting the town. I was really hoping the book would shed light on what happened at the end of Season 2.
Instead, the book focuses on a minor character who seems like the Forrest Gump of paranormal activity. He chases UFO sightings and Satanic gatherings, and though he lives in Twin Peaks in his later years, most of the book doesn’t involve the town. Ah well.
Finished Beethoven’s Skull, a collection of anecdotes about famous composers which I found dull. Read Solomon and the Ants and Other Jewish Folktales, retold by Sheldon Oberman, which I enjoyed very much. Most were unfamiliar to me, to my surprise.
