Finished “The Magicians” by Lev Grossman. Called “Harry Potter for grown ups,” the comparison is unavoidable and unfair. Very flawed, but I still enjoyed it.
Finished “The Bullpen Gospels” by Dirk Hayhurst. I love baseball and I loved this book!
Finished “How We Decide” by Jonah Lehrer. Compared to Malcolm Gladwell, but I liked it better than “The Tipping Point” or “Blink.” Actually, I think of it as a cross of Gladwell and Stephen Pinker.
Starting “The Princess Bride.” I’ve read the movie a bazillion trillion times, but I’ve never watched the book.
Managed to decide what I should read next. I still have Shadow of Saganami by David Weber running on my brand-new (and lovely!) Kindle, as well as Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But I’ve also taken Perry Moore’s Hero off the shelf, a book about what it means to be a gay teenage superhero (or so the back cover says). Looking forward to it: it won some sort of YA prize, and I’m very much into the superhero novels right now!
I have, since I last posted, moved on to Douglas and Olshaker’s The Cases That Haunt Us. I didn’t know it existed until a few weeks ago. I am also reading Lowside of the Road an unauthorized, but none the less comprehensive, biography of Tom Waits. It is great reading.
My current commuting audio book is The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor. I will be recommending this to a lot of people.
I read this awhile back and found it really interesting. I keep meaning to pick up Douglas’s other works, dealing with profiling for the FBI.
I finished Ellison’s *Strange Wine *and was really, really impressed. Impressed both by how good the stories were and how big a bastard Ellison seems to be. I think I’ll pick up a copy of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream the next time I can.
I started* Three Men in a Boat*, by Jerome K. Jerome. This was on my shelf forever, I have no idea where it came from, but it’s a very enjoyable British comedy from the late 1800s.
I looked up *Aztec *and put it on my wishlist - it sounds like something I would like.
I really loved Three Men in a Boat. “I don’t know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me.”
Since I’ve read that, I’ve been meaning to re-read Connie Willis’s To Say Nothing of the Dog, in which I believe Jerome and company, in their boat, have a cameo.
I love love love it! Probably my favorite historical novel ever. I’ve recommended it many times over the years here on the Dope (so much that I’m afraid people may be sick of hearing about it). It’s got war, diplomacy, sex, social commentary, court intrigue, exploration, adventure, poetry, human sacrifice, politics, more sex, and even a heartbreaking romance. You really see the Aztec Empire in all its glory, sophisticated but more than a little gory, from its absolute pinnacle to its utter ruin. Fantastic book. I first read it in high school and seem to reread it every decade or so, always enjoying it all over again.
Started and finished Michael Caine’s autobiography, The Elephant to Hollywood over the weekend and now cracking open William Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel (saw the movie, never read the book until now. Wonder how different the source is from the adaptation).
DataZak; if you enjoy Falling Angel, you should check out Hjortsberg’s Alp if you can find it. Black humor, featuring cannibal dwarves at an Alpine ski resort.
After spending the past 6 months or so ready fiction books, I am currently reading the non-fiction book titled Physics and Technology for Future Presidents by Richard A. Muller (ISBN=9780691135045).
It has been 40 years since graduating college and I definitely was stuck way too much in my own technical realm. This book provides a very straightforward explanation of many current scientific topics. Chapter titles are:
Atoms and Heat
Gravity, Force and Space
Nuclei and Radioactivity
Chain Reactions, Nuclear Reactors, and Atomic Bombs
Electricity and Magnetism
Waves Including UFOs, Earthquakes and Music
Light
Invisible Light
Climate Change
Quantum Physics
Relativity
The Universe
The book offers more detailed mathematical explanations in optional subsections but these are not required to follow the text.
I finished The Lies of Locke Lamora on Saturday and told my Husband that I was divorcing him and marrying this book. I fell into it with *fangirl spasms *and loved every twist and turn. The dialogue was snappy, the world fully realized and developed. Character developement was pretty fleshed out for all involved. and I don’t like scifi or fantasy.
My 10 year old daughter asked me to read some of the book to her. I told her it was too involved at that point to catch her up on what was going on and the good guy, who is really a bad guy, who is a good guy was just put in a barrel filled with horse piss and thrown into a river and I didn’t have time to talk because I.had.to.find.out.what.happened.*now.
*I loved it so much that I ordered a copy off of eBay ( mine was a library copy).
I started reading the second of the series imediately, but decided I was ‘cheating’ on the first book and needed to savor the afterglow of a farking good read. And I decided to peak and read just the first chapter and FUCK, I’m hooked with a fucking great hook which actually must happen at the near end of that book and the retelling of the story is the the rest of the book.
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta; the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”
Wicked, hilarious, gorgeously written, deeply oogy. How did I miss this all these years?
I wasn’t *quite *in fangirl spasms over Lies, but it was a really good read. I bought the second book already but I haven’t dared to peek at it yet for fear of getting sucked in. I do want to wait a little while before starting it. Lately I don’t like to read an author’s books back-to-back, because I start to notice the inevitable word and phrase repetitions.
I finished Altered Carbon, and I thought it was quite good, especially for a first novel. It’s a sci-fi hard-boiled detective story, set a few hundred years in the future where a person can store his consciousness in a “stack” in his skull, which can be downloaded into a new body as need arises - and if he has the credit for it.
It was a fun read, but it’s not without significant flaws, such as suffering from James Bond syndrome (where the bad guys indulge in elaborate revenge scenarios instead of just shooting the hero). The book purports to have a gritty, cynical feel, yet there are actually quite a few… well, *nice *people in the story, and there are a couple of happy endings. I can’t decide if those elements make the book inconsistent or if they’re a nice change of pace from the unrelenting grimness of some of these kinds of books.
Amazon is shipping me Connie Willis’s All Clear and Lois McMaster Bujold’s *Cryoburn *this week!
How were the endnotes handled in the first Flashman audiobook? Did the reader interrupt the narrative to read the notes, or did he read them all at the end?
