Winter crashed this year and Spring keeps trying to reboot, apparently we’re supposed to get snow tomorrow. Yeah, stay inside and READ!!!
My attention span is grasshoppering as usual, I know I’ll finish SOMETHING SOMEDAY. So for now, I’ll just sigh at the 18 books on my “Currently” Reading List on Goodreads, shake my head and probably start a new one.
So whatch y’all 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 honor.
I’m a third of the way through The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, David McCullough’s history of US citizens in the French capital from 1830-1900, and enjoying it immensely. One aspect that strikes me particularly are the descriptions of feelings and sensations upon arriving and the impact of suddenly being immersed in such an alien culture for the very first time – the strange traditions, the unrecognizable money, the fact that every single conversation around you is not in English. His descriptions mesh with first experiences moving to a place like Thailand even today and are probably timeless for any such situation. Never having set foot in Paris myself, I feel a very strong sense of deja vu reading this.
Finished The Broken Girls by Simone St. James. I enjoyed it but wouldn’t say it was one of her best. The mystery part was solved a little too easily with coincidences that made me roll my eyes at times, while the supernatural part seemed tacked on unnecessarily. I’ll look forward to something else from this author nonetheless.
This morning I started on The Oracle Year by Charles Soule, about an ordinary guy who suddenly knows some of the events of the future. Pretty good so far and I like the cover art.
At long last I finished The Explorer’s Guild, Volume 1: A Passage to Shambhala, by Jon Baird et. al (I seem to recall my inspiration for reading it was a suggestion in the version of this thread from January or February).
It’s an old-fashioned adventure novel constructed with a combination of traditional text and graphic novel approaches, written in the style of H. Ryder Haggard (or Rudyard Kipling, or Robert Louis Stevenson, or someone like that). Overall, my main reaction was that the whole thing was just beyond exhausting (784 pages!), and that the ending was confused, incomplete, and barely worth the journey. Also, toward the end the plot went right off the rails into ridiculousness, with characters so fat they’re mistaken for small islands, and networks of secret underground rivers spanning the Mideast and Asia. The illustrations, however, are awesome, and by far the best I’ve seen in my extremely limited experience with graphic novels.
Now I’m reading A Surfeit of Lampreys by Ngaio Marsh, and loving it so far, as I do with most Marsh novels. Sometime I wish she and Agatha Christie could have co-authored a murder mystery. Combining Marsh’s literary abilities and character-building skills with Christie’s wildly clever plot twists might have delivered a novel for the ages.
I about a quarter into, ‘Nothing Holy About It’, by Tim Burkett
I am a Buddhist but not a Zen practitioner. But I like to read Zen focused stuff, which this is. It’s a book about one man’s interaction with some extraordinary teachers. Stories, koans, poems and memories. I’m really enjoying it.
I’m almost finished, ‘The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye’, by Sonny Liew.
This is a very interesting book. It’s a graphic/comic collection about the history of Singapore. Including the parts they like to leave out. The collection of a remarkable life’s work, spanning S’pore’s rise from colonial backwater to tiger economy, with a clearer, sometimes more critical eye. Definitely worth checking out if the subject interests.
I finished Necropolis by Jordan L Hawk today. I was feeling very disappointed with the ending until she whammied me less than 10 pages from the conclusion and knocked the ball out of the park. VERY satisfying conclusion after all
Rereading for the umpteenth time Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. It’s the only book that makes me laugh out loud. Last night I darn near choked on my popcorn. Next up but I’m in no rush is one of Ian Rankin’s Rebus mysteries.
After a several week wait, I finally got The Alienist by Caleb Carr. While I was waiting I re-read Little Women. Little Men and Jo’s Boys are in the queue.
I read and enjoyed Superforecasting. It has to do with making predictions that are specific enough to be measurable (i.e., assigning probabilities and specific time frames), and the techniques and personality traits you need to work on improving your ability to make predictions. Since I like statistics and probability and randomness and all that junk, I adored the book, particularly since the writing was lively and engaging as well. Only thing I didn’t like was the last few chapters, because they kind of felt cobbled on to make the book longer. There’s one chapter about leading an army in war, which only tangentially had to do with assigning probabilities and stuff like that. Then he essentially did some summarization of Daniel Kahnman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow and Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan, and since I’ve already read both of those books, I didn’t get a whole lot out of a chapter rehashing their points. Though honestly, I’m starting to run into that problem a lot overall. When you read a lot of books about probability and human behavior, you eventually reach the point where all the books you read are citing one another, and you feel like you’re starting to read the same thing over and over. So I might need to take a break from this genre of books for a while.
Tried my hand at Stephen King’s Carrie, but I was disappointed. The book seemed to jump around from perspective to perspective a ton, and even when you were in one person’s perspective, you’d get these parenthetical comments and tangential asides and sentences that didn’t seem to go anywhere.
I just started reading Catherynne Valente’s “Space Opera”. I’ve previously read “Deathless” which was dark and depressing but beautifully written. So far, “Space Opera” is light, flippant, and written in a style I can only describe as “trying too hard”. But we’ll see where it goes.
Also read “Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything” by Zach and Kelly Weinersmith. Zach creates the nerdy web comic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Really, the title says it all. They examine some possibly upcoming technologies and discuss (often humorously) the pros and cons. Worth reading. My only complaint would be that the book is aimed not so much for science nerds but for an audience who spent much of high school texting on cell phones, so they sometimes over-explain basic scientific concepts.
Just finished First They Killed My Father by Cambodian author Loung Ung. It’s a pretty grim memoir about surviving Pol Pot’s murderous regime. She has a very flat narrative style - I respect her survival skills but not her storytelling abilities. Not recommended.
I’m now re-reading, for the first time in 20-some years, Jeffrey Archer’s Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, a veddy British novel of light-hearted financial revenge, with five bilked investors teaming up to get their money back from a master con artist. I’m enjoying it all over again.
Also reading Report to JFK by Richard E. Neustadt, an expanded and annotated study of the 1962-63 Skybolt Crisis, when the U.S.'s abrupt cancellation of a missile system that the British were depending upon caused a (fortunately brief) rift in the Special Relationship.
You may have heard that there are recent TV adaptations of both books.
I read the short story “In the Year 2889” by Jules Verne (or probably his son Michel), which came preloaded on my ebook reader program. It was kind of interesting to see which of the predictions, like a proto-internet newsfeed involving reporters reading their stories to you over the telephone. I don’t think we’ll see a kitchen faucet that pumps out appetizers, main course and dessert any time soon, though.
I also re-read “Beasts and Super-Beasts” by Saki. I’m still not a big fan of Saki (I find his stories more snarky than funny), but at least I knew what to expect.
Yes, indeed. I read The Alienist years ago, enough to forget most of it, so when it came on TNT Ivylad and I both enjoyed it. I’m also looking forward to the PBS version of Little Women on Mother’s Day.
I finished Bloodline by Jordan L Hawk, the 5th Whyborne & Griffin book.The series is wonderfully well written, has more shoutouts to Lovecraft than a jar of salsa has tomatoes and has a strong romance between the two main characters, who happen to be men, in a tie when that couldget you put in jail…at the least.
I’m about midway through American Psycho and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to finish it. When I tell people that, they naturally assume it has to do with some disturbing content. It’t not, and that wouldn’t bother me anyways. It’s ungodly boring. Like, so boring that I’m surprised reviews don’t mention my issue with it.
The entire book (so far) reminds me of the clip from Fight Club where they list the brand and model of every stick of furniture in his apartment.
There’s (again, so far) very little violence but each page must mention 10 luxury brand names.
Here’s a random excerpt:
The entire book has been like this so far, not to mention the randomly italicized words which throw me off.
I keep telling myself I should just give it up and watch the movie (which I’ve seen in the past), but I have a hard time stopping a book midway through.
ETA, one entire chapter was nothing more that a review of a Genesis album.
The fact that no one else mentions this makes me wonder if I’m missing something.
