I’ve been reading short stories aloud to my wife-to-be before bedtime as she sets up her dialysis machine (a boring process). I just finished In Cold Blood, a great bedtime read if you skip over some of the tedious bits like the long letter Dick’s father writes to the parole board about why his kid is not so bad.
Starting tonight: Lolita.
I zipped through Laura Marshall’s Three Little Lies. I didn’t like it as much as her debut, Friend Request, but it was still a solid offering. Marshall writes thrillers, and she has a talent for finding that balance where enough information is being revealed that you don’t get frustrated, but enough is being withheld that you’re curious and want to keep turning the pages to find out more.
I’m still trying to figure out what I thought of The Butterfly Garden. I didn’t realize going into the book how much I would have to suspend my disbelief in order to enjoy it, but once I adjusted for that fact, I liked it. There was a twist at the end that seemed completely unnecessary, but whatever.
With the 2020 primaries ramping up, I decided it was a good time to read Double Down, a book about the 2012 presidential election campaigns. The first 80 pages or so were all about Obama, which made for a slow beginning. But once the book introduced the different Republican candidates, followed their rises and falls and outbursts and scandals, and then tracked the competition between Obama and Romney, it got more interesting and I enjoyed it.
Into Benson’s Space Odyssey now. I visited an Author Expo over the weekend and picked up a lot of short small-press and self-published books that I’ll be reading next.
Almost finished with Cussler and Cussler’s Celtic Empire on audio. I picked up a copy of Stephen King’s Bazaar of Bad Dreams cheap, so that’s next.
Finished it this morning, and enjoyed it. Nesbo doesn’t entirely play fair, though, as sometimes the antihero protagonist is such an unreliable narrator that things he has told us as the absolute truth, scenes he has described as if they were actually happening, turn out not to have happened that way at all.
I’m now resuming my reading of Philbrick’s In the Hurricane’s Eye.
You may know (or the book might’ve mentioned) that the American Bar Association has a monument at Runnymede, and there’s a memorial to JFK there, too.
I just saw *Witness *in a local production that was very good - I even got to sit up on stage with a friend in the “jury box,” almost close enough to touch the judge. Now I want to see the movies!
The authors’ Game Change, about the 2008 campaign, is also very good. Unfortunately, coauthor Mark Halperin has had a pretty bad #MeToo moment and there will probably be no more books in the series.
Correction in case someone decides to pick this up, it is part of a two book duology. I thought it went to the “present” but it begins 300 years before and stops about 150 years before.
I saw this and was disappointed. The 2016 elections would have made for a great third book in the series!
Yay Spring Break, and I’ve finished a couple of books over the past few days:
Mary Robinette Kowal’s Hugo-nominated The Calculating Stars is an alt-history with a 1950s President Dewey killed, along with everyone else in a ~100 mile radius of DC, by an enormous meteorite that strikes off the coast of Maryland. The story is like a SF companion to Hidden Figures, following a brilliant mathematician who flew as a WASP during the war and who rises through the ranks of the newly-energized space program. It’s pretty fascinating and a very quick read.
Ann Leckie’s The Raven Tower is an odd, complicated political fantasy told in the second person by a giant boulder. Morality in the story is . . . complicated. I really enjoyed it, in no small part due to the weirdness. Leckie’s pretty amazing, if you’ve not read any of her stuff yet.
Tracks, by Robyn Davidson, an account of her traveling through desert in Australia with camels, from the 1970s. I’m really enjoying it so far.
Finished Rogue Protocol, by Martha Wells, which I enjoyed.
Now I’m reading Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik.
Sounds interesting - thanks!
My dog-walking audiobook is Space Prison by Tom Godwin. Hapless colonists are stranded on a killer planet with 1.5 Earth gravity and all the native species want to kill them. It has covered a couple of hundred years so far, and the colonists have adapted to the planet and are building a civilization up from the Stone Age. What is rather jarring is they were stranded there by the evil Gern empire, and their idea is to build a transmitter from leftover spare parts, send a radio signal to get the Gerns to come and attack them, and then spend the next 150 years getting ready to fight the Gerns’ space blasters with automatic-firing crossbows so they can take over the Gern ship and go to Athena, the planet they were originally heading for. A plan that strikes me as more than a little optimistic at best. Still, the novel moves along quickly, and the POV keeps changing as the central character dies. I am interested in how it all works out, if it does.
On paper I am working on The British in India: A Social History of the Raj by David Gilmour. Interesting, although kind of a slog - it’s primarily a collection of anecdotes and not as much over-arching analysis.
Next up is The Fox by Frederick Forsyth. I usually like him, so I have hopes.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m re-reading Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais, the Urquhart/\Motteux translation. II really wish I had the chops to read it in French. One of the funniest books of all time and also a humanist classic. The tricks of Panurge are hilarious. Book 3 is my favorite.
Finished! The first two or three stories were a slog. I particularly hated Rogue Moon, because it had potential to be something interesting. Unfortunately, a lot of time was spent telling us about the protagonist’s ball-cutting bitch of a girlfriend for no narrative reason, and the dialogue was cringe-worthy, I don’t care what year it was written.
After that, the tales lightened up, being more humorous or light, and I think the book overall had a sense of optimism which isn’t always to be expected in science fiction. I agree with Elendil’s Heir, The Moon Moth was the best of the bunch.
Tomorrow I plan to start on a non-fiction book, Maid: Hard work, low pay, and a mother’s will to survive, by Stephanie Land.
I’m glad! There was a graphic novel of it a few years back which isn’t very good, but you might want to check it out.
I started this morning on Maid: Hard work, low pay, and a mother’s will to survive. I was expecting to see behind the scenes of the job, but after 45 pages of reading about poverty and unplanned pregnancy and domestic abuse, I can’t go on. I’ve been there myself and don’t need to revisit it. Feeling anxious and sad now. Next!
I read The Fox a couple of months ago, as I’m a big Forsyth fan, too.
It involves computer hacking. as in a previous novel involving computer hacking, Forsyth avoids his usual in-depth research and description. Either he’s not comfortable with it, or he’s concluded that his audience isn’t comfortable with it, and it’s described in the vaguest of terms. The book mainly revolves around what you can do diplomatically and in espionage if you have access to a really top-notch hacker.
Oooh, I loved this one–my favorite Novik, and also my favorite retelling of a fairy tale. So so good.
Just started In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown, by Nathaniel Philbrick. It’s too early to give any comments, but if it’s like his other books, I look forward to a well-written and informative read.
I “read” it on audio, as I think I remarked in a previous thread. It’s very good, covering material not covered or inadequately covered in other histories of the Revolution I’ve read. In particular, it goes into the Southern campaigns quite a bit.
I’m listening to an audiobook of it right now, too. The Continental and French armies are just beginning their siege of Lord Cornwallis’s forces, but Adm. de Grasse is not being quite as helpful as Washington wishes. A few years ago I’d read and enjoyed Richard M. Ketchum’s Victory at Yorktown, which as I recall was more engagingly written, but Philbrick goes into greater depth on the naval aspects of the Yorktown campaign, which I appreciate.