The Lovers is part of the Charlie Parker series. You’ll want to read the other ones first or you’ll not enjoy as much.
I’m bracing myself to start Ulysses on Bloomsday – June 16. I forget it every year. A friend recommended a companion book to use with it that stresses its value to ordinary people.
I bought this particular copy at Shakespeare and Co. in Paris – the original publishers. I don’t know why I’ve left such a gap in my education all of these years.
No discouraging words, please. Even English teachers can be intimidated. My concentration is terrible.
I enjoyed Ulysses but was thankful I’d just happened to have read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man first, because some of the characters are first introduced there.
I thought I put this as a seperate thread! I don’t think it belongs here, in Khadaji’s thread.
Sorry
I have just started Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. So far, it’s surprisingly good.
I moved it for ya.
I just finished In An Evil Time, by Bill Pronzini. Can’t recommend it. I usually suck at solving mysteries or seeing the twist coming, but in this book I knew what was happening the whole time, and it annoyed me that the characters couldn’t see it.
Starting now on The Wicker Man, by Robin Hardy and Anthony Shaffer.
This sounds fascinating!
I am reading Dawn of the Dreadfuls a wonderful prequel, and better written IMHO, than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Mr. Bennett is a famous Zombie Slayer from back in the day.
Totally enjoying it.
All classics should have zombie issues.
The way things are going, within the next decade, they will.
I’m about halfway through my first Kage Baker book, In the Garden of Iden, and so far I really like it. It’s time travel science fiction, and it’s pretty funny. I had never heard of Baker until she died early this year and I saw the thread about her.
I finished The Sun King: Louis XIV at Versailles, which was first published in 1966. It was a fun book, a rather chaotic collection of anecdotes and gossip about Louis and his women, centered around their lives at Versailles. The author’s narrative is sarcastic and amusing with very little attempt at objectivity. It’s the size of a textbook with enough illustrations to make it a nice coffee table book.
I’ll give this fifteen more minutes (the length of my drive home) and then I quit. Gratuitous sex and the plot seems to have stalled.
Once the sex stalls, there’s nothing left.
Never mind, can’t have it all. I buy enough books without recommendation that I don’t like that I’ll gladly take the chance, and I do believe you’ve recommended stuff that I rather liked.
Incidentally, on the way home Friday I stumbled across the paperback of Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals, which I read instead of the stuff I suggested I might read. Very good book–I enjoyed the larger role for the Patrician in this, and the wizards, of course. Pratchett’s given himself a lot of very very interesting avenues to pursue, although I fear he won’t be able to.
Incidentally, has the geography of the disk changed? Apparently, Fourecks is now easy enough to reach that you can have something of a regular faculty exchange with it; I thought it was basically unreachable?
I also forgot that I had Jay Kantor’s Krazy Kat lying around, which I’ll give a shot next. Might not make it far, but anyway…
About two-thirds of the way through this and it is as good as any detective novel I’ve ever read, plus he was 21 when he wrote it. Unbelievable. People don’t write this good at 21. And I have three more from the library and he’ll be here on the 17th!
I wasn’t clear enough about House Rules. I said “meh,” but it is worse than “meh.” I waited through that whole book to find out who killed Jess – Was it Jacob after all? Theo? Mark? Another suspect we hadn’t thought of?
It was a fucking accident!
Finished Dawn of the Dreadfuls and I give it two big bloody thumbs up.
What a lovely romp!
Recently, I finished:
Fatherland, by Robert Harris. This seems to be a favorite around here. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The big reveal is obviously not surprising to anyone who has sat in on a world history class or turned on one of the History Channel’s bazillion documentaries about the Nazis. That doesn’t lessen the message of the book, but it does take the mystery out of the mystery.
The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan. This is the first in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. It’s a fun, exciting YA book but it’s lacking the rich, well-developed cast of characters that Harry Potter or Artemis Fowl have. It’s the Percy Show, All Percy All The Time!
Rage, by Richard Bachman. Meh.
I’ve enjoyed a lot of Stephen King’s stories, so I pre-ordered Under the Dome. I got a few chapters in and just never opened it again for a long time. I recently picked it up again, and once more didn’t get back to it. Is it me, or is this another of his not-so-great novels.
In other words, should I muscle on through to the good stuff, or just send it off to my daughter? She’s a rabid SK nut. 
I’m at about chapter three, iirc.
From what I’ve seen, most Doper SK fans’ reaction to the book matches yours.
Oh well, off to Bakersfield for the ultimate test. 