No offenseto anyone but seriously Mother Nature what was up with 65F Thursday and 3 inches of SNOW yesterday and 51F today?! Calm the heck down, lady! She needs better meds, better coffee and a vacation…or is that just me?
So what are we reading?
Taking a page from my Goodreads friend Christine’s playbook, I’m rereading a book I loved as a teen. Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers was something I reread a lot back in the 80s and i wondered how it would look to the soon-to-be-54 me. I have to say so far Bill/Dad has not aged well, the condescending prick…although that might have been her point too.
My bookclub is reading In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson. FINALLY a book I’ll finish and even enjoy (in spite of the subject matter).
Khadaji was one of the earlier members of 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, who started these threads way back in the Stone Age of 2005. Consequently when he suddenly and quite unexpectantly passed away, January of 2013 we decided to rename this thread in his honor and to keep his memory, if not his ghost, alive.
I just finished Bad Blood and recommend it. I have no doubt that a lot of tech companies operate the way Theranos did, but (of course) it’s a whole different thing when we’re talking medical devices instead of apps or phones. Good read!
Thinking I’m gonna pick up Circe, assuming I like the sample I just sent to my Kindle. It gets really good reviews so hoping I like it.
No idea what this “snow” business is in the OP, but I am close to two thirds of the way through Needful Things, by Stephan King. One of his better works, I would say so far.
Welp, before I made a decision on Circe, my library hold on There There came through, so that’s now the top of the list. Everyone says it’s great, so hoping I like it as much as everyone.
Oh, I loved that book! I bet I still have my copy, too. There were several things in it that I just didn’t “get” because of the story taking place in New York, or in a slightly different era, but I just blipped right over them. Unfortunately I can’t think of any examples right now. If I have time, I’ll try find mine and skim it again.
I just finished my Hap & Leonard novel, The Elephant of Surprise, and it was like the others (these are extremely formulaic), though Hap does something uncharacteristic towards the end and I’m interested to see how that is played out in future.
Starting today on The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, volume 2-B, edited by Ben Bova. Oddly, my book looks exactly like the one I linked to, but the contents must be a bit different…mine has no Ray Bradbury. The table of contents:
The Martian Way, Isaac Asimov
Earthman Come Home, James Blish
Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
The Spectre General, Theodore Cogswell
The Machine Stops, E.M. Forster
The Midas Plague, Frederik Pohl
The Witches of Karres, James H. Schmitz
E for Effort, T.L. Sherred
In Hiding, Wilmar H. Shiras
The Big Front Yard, Clifford D. Simak
The Moon Moth, Jack Vance
Still working on the second volume of Isaac Asimov’s bio.
On audio, I finished up Kenneth C. Davis’ Don’t Know Much About Anything. The title seems oddly accurate – Davis made a LOT of mistakes in his “facts” in this one, which is pretty disappointing, considering how he exposed some historical myths in his earlier books. In this one he perpetuates several such myths. It’s as if he did no fact-checking at all.
Having finished with Davis, I’ve started on the Penguin audio version of Dostoevski’s Crime and Punishment.
I love love *love *“The Moon Moth” - hope you will, too. It’s one of my all-time favorite sf short stories.
I’m just past the halfway mark of Consider Phlebas, the first Culture novel by Iain M. Banks, and am enjoying it. The antihero has his own starship now and seems to have convinced a ragtag band of mercenaries to come along and help him on a dangerous mission to a forbidden planet (not *that *forbidden planet).
Just finished Arthur C. Clarke’s 1958 sf short-story collection The Other Side of the Sky. It’s pretty good but, this many years later, now a bit quaint. His classic “The Nine Billion Names of God” is included, as well as two series of interrelated short stories - one about the first international mission to the Moon, and another about the building of a space station.
I also dug out of a basement box The Legend of Ulysses by Paul Hamlyn (1965, illustr. by Mario Logli and Gabriele Santini), a Greek mythology book I remember from my childhood. I just looked at the pictures (stylized and very cool) back then, and now I’m looking forward to actually reading it.
I don’t know where you live, but that describes Denver’s recent weather to a T!
Anyway, I’m currently in the middle of The Moving Toyshop (1946) by Edmund Crispin. I had often heard it mentioned as one of the best of the “Golden Age” British mysteries, so I thought it was time to see what the excitement was all about.
If you like wry British humor, it’s pretty funny. In fact, the humor is what’s keeping me going. The mystery plot is so complicated and legalistic that I’ve almost given up trying to understand it. Right now I’m just waiting to see how it all turns out before I decide what I think of the novel as a whole. One blow against it (from my personal point of view), is that it’s all about a will and who inherits what. I estimate it’s about the 100th British mystery I’ve read in the last couple of years that centers around a will, and I’m just sick to death of that plot device.
Another thing I do like about the story is that it’s set in Oxford, which seems like a fascinating and beautiful place. Between them, Crispin, Colin Dexter, and Dorothy L. Sayers have made really want to visit that city.
About a month ago I got Ian Rankin’s collection of Rebus short stories tilted “The Beat Goes On” at a great price. First time reading Ian Rankin plus I’m not much into short stories nor am I much into detective stories but I found the book hard to put down. Went and got a half dozen of his full length books and started with “Standing in Another Man’s Grave”. About 1/2 way through and enjoying it a lot.
I recommend the movie. It took me four months to finish the book, because not only is it 800 pages, but I also decided to read it on audio book, and I typically take a much longer time to finish audio books since I mainly only listen to them in the car.
The movie has a much tighter plot than the book. And after spending four months on the same book, I thoroughly appreciated the tight plot.
One of my Favorite Days Ever was in mid April a few years back in Salt Lake City. It involved snowshoeing in the Wasatch during the bulk of the day and then going to see the Bees play a minor league game in the evening. Elevation obviously played a role, but I couldn’t have done it without that weather.
Finished Empire Games, by Charles Stross. Not bad, but the POV kept switching between characters, and I would have enjoyed it more if it had stuck to the one I liked best.
Now I’m reading The Butler: A Witness to History, by Wil Haygood.
