I read it 1.5 times. Haven’t been able to finish it the second time even though the second translation was better than the first. Damn it, I hate it when my kids are right.
I’m reading a cheap trashy romance novel that will not be named, Gunslinger by Hugh Laurie, and Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan. I am not getting into Market Forces as much as I did the Takeshi Kovachs books. Gunslinger is ok but not great so far. And w00t, I know who is going to end up with who in the CTRN because I sneaked a peak at the back cover. Oh and I read the first chapter.
Pollux: You are soooo lucky, I love Moore. My favorites are Lamb (but it always makes me cry at the end, even though I know how it’s going to turn out) and Lust Lizard of Meloncholy Cove. Do not read The Stupidest Angel before reading LLoMC and Island of the Sequined Love Nun.
No no no no no! Never the Constance Garnett! :eek: Aughh, the linguistic nuance this woman has ruined! Everything she’s translated is hopelessly outdated. For the love of all that’s holy, and true, and right and golden and beautiful, please go with ANY OTHER TRANSLATOR!
You might like Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead, a scabrously funny memoir by a Marine sniper in Gulf War I. The movie’s not bad, either.
Eleanor of Aquitaine, are you enjoying Founding Brothers? Ellis has a new book out on the Constitutional Convention, but I haven’t had a chance to get to it yet.
As I mentioned in the March thread, I’m still reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Children of Hurin a little bit at a time, but have been enjoying it. It’s Tolkien’s take on the Oedipus myth, set in the very early days of Middle-earth. Spare and elegant.
My eight-year-old son and I are also reading Bertrand Brinley’s novel The Big Chunk of Ice, the long-delayed last adventure of the Mad Scientists’ Club. The MSC goes to Austria with a dotty university prof to study a glacier and get mixed up in a hunt for a giant diamond. It’s OK, but not as good as the short stories.
Yes, I really like it. I’m up to the chapter on The Collaborators.
Can you recommend a book on Jefferson? I’ve actually been a little shocked at the view of him offered by McCullough and Ellis in what I’ve read so far.
I bought Ron Chernow’s book on Hamilton the other day, mostly for my husband but I might read eventually read it.
I’m starting to think I want to read through a collection of John and Abigail’s letters, also.
Glad you’re diggin’ it. I can’t recommend any particular Jefferson book personally, although I’ve heard good things about Ellis’s American Sphinx, which was his best-known book before Founding Brothers. If you like one Ellis book, you may like the other. I share McCullough’s and Ellis’s generally-low opinion of Jefferson; don’t get me started.
The Chernow book on Hamilton is massive but wonderful.
A friend who read McCullough’s John Adams liked to say that the Adamses’ correspondence “reads like 18th century phone sex.”
I just finished Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, and it was incredibly good. It just pulled me through to the end – I could not stop reading it. I read it in about two sessions, and when I finished it, I realized I had just read over 300 pages without stopping, and then I looked at the clock and realized it 4:30 in the morning. I haven’t read a book like that in over a year.
Right now I’m reading Sick Puppy by Carl Hiaasen, and it’s all right. The beginning isn’t moving fast enough for me, but something exciting just happened, so I think it should pick up from here.
I also have exactly $12.84 on a Visa gift card that I’d like to spend on the internet. Does anyone have any books to recommend that will come in under that amount, including shipping?
ETA: I realized I should probably indicate my tastes. I like historical fiction, especially medieval and 19th century Great Britain. Middlesex is probably a good indication of my taste in contemporary fiction, though I don’t like Donna Tartt.
Eleanor of Aquitaine, John and Abigail Adams’s complete correspondence is available online from the Massachusetts Historical Society. There are scans of each letter, and the text is typed out next to it. It’s pretty neat resource; it’s searchable, and you can browse the letters by who wrote them or when they were written. I’ve been reading a few letters a week since the miniseries started on HBO.
Take a look at Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson. A bunch of people in my on-line book group have read it and so far everyone likes it. It’s way better than the review makes it sound. “Meditative” to me equals “nothing happens” – but there’s plenty going on in the book.
It’s not in that price range now but the paperback coming out later this month will be. I tell ya – book prices are almost as bad as gas prices. Remember when paperbacks were $3.99? It hasn’t been that long.
Missed the edit window (timed out!) – the book is better than the review makes it sound. If I’d read the review first, I wouldn’t have bought the book.
I have to correct you here. Anthony has never won a Hugo, Nebula, or World Fantasy Award. Some of his very early work was on the ballot for the Hugo and Nebula but none of the Xanth books.
I just wrapped up the novel version of Flowers for Algernon (as opposed to the short story) and Babel-17 is the next on my list. And while I typically don’t mention the comics I’m going through I’ve got to say the book on order that I’m looking forward to the most is the last volume of the Fourth World Omnibus. Kirby’s writing may have been weak but he was at his artistic peak in those…
Oh, my Og…I’ve believed that for years because the cover of the edition I owned had one of those little blurbs about “winner of the Hugo/Nebula/BigNameSF&F Award” on it.
Well, I just double checked The Encyclopedia of Fantasy for you and I do see that A Spell for Chameleon did win the 1978 British Fantasy Award. So you’re not going crazy when you remember the blurb.
