Reading The Push, by Tommy Caldwell, who is probably the best climber on the planet at this point. It’s autobiographical, and he writes pretty well for a hipster. If you haven’t heard of him, he’s the guy who climbed El Capitan’s Dawn Wall a short time ago and got a lot of news coverage.
Thanks. That was interesting.
One of the big trips we’d like to take in the future is doing the train from Chicago to New Orleans, and while in Chicago we would definitely do a day or so side trip In Springfield.
I just finished reading a piece of dreck and if I can save others from this fate, it will be my good deed for the day. It’s called Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough. The plot of this beast depends on two unfortunate things: one is that there is a supernatural/parapsychological element that is critical but feels just pasted onto the frame of the story in order to make the “wow” ending possible; the other is that it is critical that the, well, heroine, do exactly the most stupid thing at the worst possible time at every single turn of the plot, especially at the end. This is not a book for thinking readers.
I did manage to finish it, which is something. I was going to give up at about 2/3 of the way through but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to do it. By the time I got to the end, I scanned through it to figure out how the plot ended because I really didn’t care that much any more.
Welp, finished The Albigensian Crusade. Much more conventional than I’d expected. “so-and-so conquered such and such castle, put all to the sword, gained this territory”, &c.
Not exactly a criticism; I was hoping for more of a cultural/linguistic history than I actually got. (clearly have some more hunting to do on that subject)
I also thought the author went remarkably easy on the Crusaders themselves and the Inquisitors.He genuinely thought of the Cathars as a serious threat to civilization, an opinion I don’t really share.
Hope you will! The Old Statehouse, Lincoln Museum, home and tomb are all worth a look. Could fill a day easily.
Just finished the audiobook of Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key. I’ve long heard it’s a classic hardboiled detective story, but meh. Just never grabbed me. I was also annoyed by Hammett’s use of the lead character’s both first and last names every. single. time. “Ned Beaumont made some coffee. Ned Beaumont drank his coffee. Ned Beaumont said, ‘I should make more coffee.’ So Ned Beaumont made some more coffee. Then Ned Beaumont drank it, too.” Aiyee! On the plus side, the narrator made one character sound a bit like Sean Connery, another like Jimmy Stewart, and another like Christopher Walken.
Started this morning on Paperbacks from Hell: the twisted history of 70s and 80s horror fiction by Grady Hendrix. I’ve really liked Grady’s fiction and I can tell I’m going to like this one too. The very first thing I learned was that John Christopher, who wrote the YA Tripods series, also wrote a novel about Nazi leprechauns. :eek::eek::eek: Fascinating! The book is also full of color prints.
Keeping with the theme of books about presidents, I just noticed a new one is out. Some may claim that the title is deliberately provocative, or that the author is biased, but I’m going to read it anyway:
Trump is Fcking Crazy*, by Keith Olbermann.
I like Hammett but am going on just the written word. It could be the performances were not up to snuff. Maybe try reading some short stories to see how that goes. Hammett was a real detective back in the day including for Pinkerton.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever participated in one of these threads before.
I just finished Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold. It starts from the idea of communicating with a neighbor by using a flashlight, then to Morse code, encoding information with numbers, number systems and bases, telegraphs, relays, logic gates, electrical circuits, memory, machine language, operating systems, high-level languages, and graphical computing. It was all things I’ve studied before, but it’s been a while and I was interested to see it all put together and in coherent steps. I recommended it to my uncle, who’s a very smart and curious guy, but then told him he may want to hold off as it does get rather hairy about halfway through. I’m still a bit curious if a motivated novice could make heads or tails out of it.
Just started Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari. I expected it to be a light read and maybe good for a laugh, but so far it’s a bit more researched and practical than I expected. That’s not a bad thing, although now the attempts to be funny are rather distracting. Given my own struggles with the subject, I could find the book either informative or really depressing.
And I’ll throw in a quick mention of Uncle Bonsai’s Go to Sleep/The Monster in the Closet, a children’s book you buy for other people’s children. I have a friend with a very young niece who’ll be getting it. It’s signed and everything.
I’ve not heard of her, but checked on Wikipedia to see if that was a pen name. It is. I wonder if she was inspired by Ailsa Craig, an island off the coast of Scotland where curling stones are quarried.
If not, welcome to the nerdiness!
It might well have been, her detective is of Welsh descent. And the lady herself was quite well read and something of a character.
Yes, welcome aboard, Robot Arm! Glad to have you here.
Finished Split Heirs, by Lawrence Watt-Evans and Esther Friesner. Meh. Had some funny moments, but not enough of them, probably because the funniest characters weren’t focused on as much as I would’ve liked.
Just started 300 Arguments, by Sarah Manguso.
I finished reading Tono-Bungay by H. G. Wells. It was kind of an odd mix. Half of it was a sort of moody D. H. Lawrence-style semi-autobiographic story about the women in a man’s life (his distant mother, his vibrant young aunt, his unhappy marriage, an affair with a secretary and a more serious love affair with a nobleman’s mistress). The other half was a satire on capitalism, with the main character’s uncle going from rags to riches promoting a patent medicine/energy drink. Then there were a few perfunctory science elements thrown in with prospecting for radioactive elements and the invention of a dirigible.
I thought it was an interesting novel, but the shifts in tone meant it didn’t quite hang together smoothly. Also, the way the main character (and presumably Mr. Wells, by implication) leaned towards blaming his wife’s small-mindedness and conventionality for his infidelity was a little off-putting to me.
I’m currently just over half way through Paul McAuley’s latest,* Austral*.
I nearly abandoned it early on but persevered and now I’m really enjoying it. The protagonist is an ‘edited’ human designed to live in the Antarctic as it warms up and the ice melts. She’s on the run deep in the under developed regions, having kidnapped a distant relative and still hoping to somehow get somewhere where she’s not a second class citizen…
Also read Autonomous by Annalee Newitz, another post-climate change novel about robots/AI, 3D printing of designer drugs (and everything else) and copyright law! Modern cyberpunk, and it’ll be on my shortlist for my SF novel of the year.
Just read John Scalzi’s sf novel The Dispatcher. The concept: for some reason which no one can explain, all of a sudden, people who are purposefully killed or murdered begin appearing seconds later in their homes, even hundreds of miles away from where they died, naked but unhurt. In time, men and women known as “dispatchers” are licensed by the state and are hired by hospitals to kill people whose operations go awry, by movie studios to kill stuntmen badly injured in stunts, by MMA organizers to put messed-up fighters out of their misery, etc. The protagonist, a dispatcher, is asked by a Chicago police detective to help investigate the disappearance of another dispatcher who may be involved with an Irish crime family. Scalzi takes a weird “what if” starting point and, cleverly and entertainingly, explores its varying impact on society.
Finished* 300 Arguments* by Sarah Manguso and skimmed Talking with My Mouth Full: My Life as a Professional Eater by Gail Simmons. The first is designed as a bunch of barely related quotes, most of which would be interesting in a page a day calendar. I enjoyed it. The second is about a Top Chef judge. It was so so.
Just started How We Got to Now: Six Innovations that Made the Modern World, by Steven Johnson. (The six are glass, cold, sound, clean, time, and light.)