Currently, I’m reading Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, and laughing out loud regularly.
Becky Sharp is contemptible, of course, but the British elite is so stupid and so utterly useless, it’s hard to feel sorry for them.
Today at lunch I finally finished *Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets *by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh. It was interesting but somehow unsatisfying. I couldn’t put my finger on it or why, but it didn’t really move me. Maybe it was his wanting to stay detached throughout the narrative and he ended up being detached.
That book got distracted by the fact that I adopted a dog, so I loaded up the Kindle with some doggy books including How to Raise the Perfect Dog: Through Puppyhood and Beyond by Cesar Millan and Melissa Jo Peltier. Which, ugh. Maybe there was some words of wisdom in there but it was like an expert pronouncing themselves an expert on every page. It got a bit too indulgent in an annoying way.
I didn’t think that John Dies At the End was particularly scary at all. But I did find it entertaining, like a popcorn flick. If you’re not getting anything out of it, I’d say it doesn’t get much better.
I picked up Kenny Shopsin’s Eat Me at a closing Border’s store on Friday after seeing the movie “I Like Killing Flies”. It’s a bit cookbook/memoir/philosophy mixed into one. I’m excited to try his recipe for crepes which uses flour tortillas.
Five. Sometimes one. If you accept that the author is doing his/her best to hook you right away – either with their exceptional writing ability or the promise of a good story – it shouldn’t take long to know if you’re gonna like the book.
After West of Here which I liked very much, I’m back to re-reading – Time After Time by Jack Finney. It’s been 40 years, so it’s new to me.
Im about half way though Triumff: Her majesty’s hero by Dan Abnett, a alternative history novel. Pure fluff but enjoyable
Just finished David Grossman’s To the End of the Land - whew that was exhausting. There were a fair amount of cultural references I didn’t get, more than in some other recent Israeli novels I’ve read.
Despite the fact that I’m still not sure what I think about the ending, I think it was worth it.
Need something much lighter to read next - was going to read Cloud Atlas next, but I think I’ll put that off.
Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Geoff Emerick.
I’m a huge Beatles fan, and I’m a musician and occasional sound engineer myself, so it’s right up my street. I’m loving the fact that producers and engineers are writing books about their work now.
However, despite all the fascinating aspects of the recordings themselves, Emerick is not that good a writer, nor is his ghost, and he’s very bitchy about everyone except G Emerick and P McCartney. Worth a read though, if (like me) the subject matter is relevant to your interests.
I love that book and am glad I read it before seeing the 2004 film with Reese Witherspoon, although that was good too.
Started Quite Ugly One Morning, by Christopher Brookmyre.
I’m still slogging my way through Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. Its a lot drier than I was expecting it to be.
I took a short break from it to read On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan and Nemesis by Philip Roth, both of which I really enjoyed.
I’m about halfway through William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, my first Gibson novel. I like it okay so far. It’s calm and cerebral, which I needed after the carnage of Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold.
Hmm, I was intending to read Jane Eyre next, but Vanity Fair sounds tempting.
I just finished Side Jobs, which was a good taste of Harry Dresden to tide fans over between Changes and the next one… but it definitely wasn’t a full meal.
Started Cutting for Stone on audiobook. The narrator is excellent. I’m not usual a squeamish reader but the description of some scenes have me doing the aural equivalent of peeking through my fingers. I’m at the point where
Doctor Stone is trying to drill through one of the baby’s brains, in order to pull him out of Sister Mary Joseph Praise.
It’s fascinating and incredibly well written, just… uncomfortable.
I really liked Cutting for Stone. It’s a bit melodramatic (the author is a friend of John Irving, who I imagined coached him), but the writing is excellent.
Stephen Clarke’s 1000 Years of Annoying the French Fun read with some history involved!
Just finished The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century, by Ross E. Dunn. It is a sort of step-by-step commentary on the Ibn Battuta’s famous travels (and this guy went almost everywhere a person could go in the 14th century - from Mali to China), rather than a translation of his actual book - but very entertaining nonetheless.
Ibn Battuta comes across like a real-life “Flashman”, albeit as if Flashman was a 14th century Moroccan Islamic lawyer - if you can imagine such a thing.
He is constantly turning up when various empires are at their height - sponging off their rulers - “marrying” numerous women and/or buying slave-girls - intriguing - getting in various sorts of almost absurdly bad trouble - having to make a run for it … made all the more bizzare by the fact that he evidently considered himself (and was considered by others) the very model of religious and social propriety, and a learned scholar (though as the author makes clear, his “scolarship” was mostly a fraud - he was too busy to do much actual studying). When he leaves a place, it is sure to be in the process of political or social collapse …
If it were fiction, it would be hard to believe (and many did, in fact, accuse him of lying). It is certainly an amusing account.
I’m a history and wargame entusiast and recently picked up a copy of Fields of Fire a solo game covering WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Apparently the game does a fantastic job of mimicking the command and control decisions US Army Captains have to make in combat so I thought I should learn how to be one.
I’m half way through Fm 7-10 the Infantry Rifle Company-1990, the US Army’s manual at the company level.c
The Demon in the Freezer, which is about smallpox, anthrax, and all those things that will keep you awake at night once you know how lethal they are.
Star Trek: Myriad Universes: Echoes and Refractions, a collection of ST alternative universe stories. Right now I’m reading the novella “A Gutted World” by Keith R. A. DeCandido, which so far seems to be about the Cardassians finding the Bajoran Wormhole before anyone else does. It’s so-so.
Finished A Passage to India, by EM Forster. It was okay. Started out better than it ended. Eventually descended into a philosophical quagmire that may have seemed profound when it came out in 1924, dunno. Probably my least favorite Forster to date. But he did mention another future European war; was that was prescient for 1924?
Next up: Tender Is the Night, by F Scott Fitzgerald.
Finished Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know.
Psychology professor Alexandra Horowitz delivers an inaccessible treatise on the psychology of dogs. Based on hundreds of hours of observation of slowed-down tapes and studies, she mixes anecdotes of her own dog with dry text. She is overly fond of obscure words and rarely misses the chance to use them, when simpler ones will do. Take the title of chapter 1: Umwelt: From the dog’s point of nose. She keeps this word umwelt in her arsenal and brings it out every chance she gets. Another example: Anthropomorphisms are not inherently odious.
Ms. Horowitz takes every opportunity to warn us against the danger of Anthropomorphising, but often seemed to do it herself.
Worse though, I found her anecdotes were filled with poor doggy-ownership behavior. On page 33 she talks about how she feeds her dog a little bit of everything from the table - but her dog does not like raisins, nor tomatoes - she’ll suffer a grape.
What I fear is that, as she is a psychologist, an unknowing owner might think that this is good and recommended behavior. Forget for a minute my feelings about allowing a dog to eat at the table; Raisins? Grapes? These foods can be harmful to dogs.
Her last chapter ends: Go look at your dog. Go to him! Imagine his umwelt - and let him change your own.
Forget this book and read How Dogs Think: Understanding the Canine Mind which is better written, more accessible and in my mind, more scholarly.
Just finished a book that I’ll predict now is going to make it onto my top ten list this year: The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, by Benjamin Hale. Told in the first person by a chimp that starts out in the zoo but becomes part of a scientific experiment to teach him to speak and … who has various experiences. An amazing book – the author remains utterly true to the protagonist’s voice, the protagonist being a chimp who speaks fluent English.
Strong, strong recommendation. koeeoaddi – you particularly – it reminded me of Mark Helprin in some ways.
A first novel – I very much look forward to seeing what the author does next.
Oddly enough, it was the second book I’ve read in the last couple weeks narrated by an animal. The other was The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe by Andrew O’Hagan. It’s based on Marilyn Monroe’s real dog, a Maltese given to her by Frank Sinatra and named in his honor Mafia Honey. That dog does not actually speak English in a way understood by the humans around him, of course, but he has a fairly interesting mental life.
About to start a Louisa May Alcott bio – should be quite a change of pace.