I just finished Garry Wills’ biography, Saint Augustine while continuing to read Augustine’s Confessions. Perhaps what I really need to find is a history of the early Christian church, which is the aspect of Augustine that interests me most.
I’ve also started Giorgio Bocca’s Grazie no - 7 Idee che non dobbiamo più accetare, (No thanks - seven ideas which we should no longer accept.) which has not yet been translated into English. I couldn’t read it without a dictionary, but it’s a very interesting and compelling treatise on current events. At my current rate of a couple of pages a day, I probably won’t finish until the end of March…
I just barely finished Anne Rivers Siddons’* Burnt Mountain*. It was awful, awful, stupid, and awful. I figured that out after the first couple of pages, but I kept reading it because I was too lazy to go to the library. Before that, I read Gap Creek (Robert Morgan) and I loved it- I’m on an Appalachian kick, preparing for my big move back there to the mountains.
I picked up Elizabeth the Queen by Sally Bedell Smith at the library on Sat. and am already about two-thirds of the way through it. Fortunately, it’s anything but awful, awful, stupid, and awful - actually very interesting and well-written. It covers Queen Elizabeth II’s public and personal lives with equal skill, just in time for the 60th anniversary of her taking the throne. Funniest line so far: One longtime Buckingham Palace observer said, “The Queen is as hardy as a yak.”
I got an ARC of that through Goodreads. My favorite bit of trivia was the description of the Queen’s protocol for formal dining: “The Queen doesn’t believe in general or even three-way conversation at meals, so everyone follows her lead. When she turns first to the left everyone follows suit, and all heads swivel suddenly when she turns to the right for the second half of the meal.” And she has to eat slowly, because when she stops eating, everyone must stop eating.
I’m reading The Family That Couldn’t Sleep now, thanks to the mentions earlier in the thread. It’s billed as a medical mystery, which is a bit misleading - it’s more of a general book about the discovery (well, recognition) of prion diseases. It’s good, though. I’ve been reading about Gajdusek, the American researcher who won a Nobel Prize for his investigation of prion disease among an isolated tribe in Papua New Guinea. He was also an “unrepentant pedophile”, to quote the LA Times obituary, and the author says he enjoyed working with “preteens who had not been exposed to the West’s paralyzing morality”. I’ve just now got to the part where the author explains how prion disease can be both inherited and infectious.
Finished *Chimera *from Rob Thurman, the first in the Korsak Brothers scifi series. Stefan Korsak sees his brother kidnapped at a young age. Spending years tracking him down, he finally discovers that he has been genetically altered and trained to be an assassin. Stefan breaks his brother out and they flee from the super-secret agency who created him.
It was OK, but I’m not yet sure that I will read the rest of the series.
Finished* unclean spirits Book One of the Black Sun’s Daughter* from M.L.N. Hanover. Jayné Heller inherits a fortune from her uncle only to find that he was a type of wizard fighting the Invisible College. Another mediocre urban fantasy and another series that I’m unsure I will continue reading.
I’m reading Darren Shan’s book The Thin Executioner and Divergent by Veronica Roth. Both are young adult fiction (more specifically fantasy and dystopian, which is pretty much all I’ve been reading since last year). I’m enjoying both.
I finished The Magician King, Lev Grossman’s follow-up to The Magicians. It was…OK. I’m not any more fond of the main character than I was in the first book, and the new character of Julia is also pretty unlikeable. (She has reasons to be, so there is that.) The book falls into the same problem that (I think) plagued the last two Harry Potter books: it reads rather like a video game where the characters quest to collect objects, and I’m not certain that works here. And then he adds some deux ex elements that also seem out of place. (It also doesn’t help that I’ve forgotten some of what happened in the previous book, too.) This is definitely a popcorn read.
I’m now working on Allison Weir’s The Lady in the Tower, about the last four months in Anne Boleyn’s life. This is impeccably researched and engrossing - one wonders how things would’ve turned out differently happened had Elizabeth been a boy. There’s some interesting and surprising ideas that she puts forth - I find Weir’s theory that Henry, while dallying with Jane Seymore, probably wasn’t so far down the path of getting rid of Anne as is commonly believed, novel and believeable.
I will have to check that out- I love to read about Henry VIII. I’m just about to start the fictional The Autobiography of Henry VIII With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers. Will look for your book at the library tomorrow.
just finished “world war z” and a non-zombie book “the wet desert” both very good.
world war z left you wanting to know a lot more. it was good but a dozen or so books could have been written from the stories within.
the wet desert was an interesting and well paced book on the colorado river and what could happen when a dam is blown up to let the river roll. better hope there have been a few years of drought!
Oooh! Is that the one by Margaret George? I read it yonks ago, and remember it to be good. Enormous, but good. I think I kind of petered out by Katherine Howard, though - maybe if I read it now, I’d have more staying power. Or I’d pace myself better. Something.
I finished “Sense & Sensibility” and will now be starting “Ape House” by Sara Gruen and something else…perhaps “Beau Geste”? I think I’ll start it and see if I like it.
I absolutely loved the first book. Loved it. Probably my favorite book. Yeah, I couldn’t really get into the “Magician King.” I didn’t care for the Julia character, either.
The entire thing seemed less magical. Hopefully the third, if there is a third, is better.
I ordered that from the UK so I wouldn’t have to wait for the US release. Hopefully it will arrive soon, as I’m very much looking forward to it.
In the meantime, I just finished 20th Century Ghosts, a book of short stories (mostly horror) by Joe Hill. A little uneven in spots, but overall quite good.
Yep, that’s her. I started it last night- it’s huuuuge. It’s going to be a challenge, as it’s almost like one ginormous history lesson and kind of dry, but hey, by the time I’m done, I’m going to be an expert on the Yorks, Plantagenets, etc. That Henry VIII was a card.
I’m close to the conclusion of Stephen King’s latest “11/22/63” and its a guilty pleasure read for sure. King fans will really like it. I do and am one, unashamedly.
I am also reading Terry Goodkind’s The Omen Machine which is pretty interesting retro-sci-fi, if you like that sort of thing.
Finally, I am also dabbling in* Pearl Jam Twenty*, a recounting, pictorial, quasi-biography of the bands roots, inception and inherent success. Its a good book for fans of the band.
I just finished** Leviathan Wakes** by James S.A. Corey.
Whoa, that was a cracking good read! It’s space opera set within the solar system. Some of it’s a little improbably, but it didn’t stretch my disbelief enough to throw me out of the story.
The sequel, Caliban’s War, doesn’t come out till June, dammit.
Finished Lightspeed: Year One, an anthology of science fiction stories. Very good, with standout stories by Adam-Troy Castro and Stephen King. I wasn’t going to re-read the King story (it’s Beachworld, from Skeleton Crew) but it sucked me in anyway, like a big ol’ sand dune.
More and more these days I find myself reading books shelved under sci-fi. I still don’t do well with the hard stuff, but these stories were not too difficult for me to get interested in.
I’m still listening to an audio book of James Dashner’s The Scorch Trials (second in the YA Maze Runner series). Although it isn’t particularly well-written, and there are things that actively annoy me about it, it’s got its hooks in me. I tell myself I just want to see how the author gets out of this hole he’s written himself into.
