Finished Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown. I liked it. There’s a lot of animosity toward Dan Brown, which I’m sure causes him to cry all the way to the bank, but this was a fun read. Some people take him too seriously. This one has Robert Langdon of The Da Vinci Code fame three years later in a plot involving a revived Illuminati bent on destroying Vatican City.
But now it’s back to Great Literature. Today, I begin Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson.
Oh my goodness, I got so many great books for Christmas! I am speeding through my current book because I can’t wait to pick one of them up.
I think I might just get a chance to crack open * The Story of Edgar Sawtelle* before the start of the new year.
I hope I’m not the final arbiter. These are our threads, I just like to start them. Having said that: I too often hold back from making negative comments, because I don’t want other posters to feel like I’m disparaging them, or their tastes in books. But I think my intent is for us to share our opinions, so that other dopers can figure out if they want to read a book.
Not to interrupt the discussion…
I’m in the middle of a business history of a now-defunct computer company: On the Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore by Brian Bagnall. Interesting stuff to anyone who was into computers in the 1980s; I’ve noticed a bit of revisionism going on over the last few years, excluding Tandy and Commodore (and to a lesser extent Atari) from US personal computing history in favor of Apple, despite Tandy and Commodore being more successful than Apple at the beginning, and the Commodore 64 being the most popular computer platform until the late 1980s (and the most popular single computer model of all time). It’s also interesting because Jack Tramiel, the force behind Commodore’s success, is the guy who ran Atari into the ground after buying it from Warner Bros, so getting a behind-the-scenes look at just how ruthless he was is fun.
I do get the sense that the author overstates the case for Commodore overall, but it’s nice to have something to balance the many books that assume Apple invented the industry.
Today I’m starting Child 44 by Rob Smith. It’s about a serial killer in Soviet Russia.
I’m reading my first book by Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas, and I’m entranced. Some people criticize his writing, but I’m loving how he sets the mood.
And guess what I got for Christmas ? Four Dresden books and the first book in his Furies series. I’m reading the Dresden ones right now.
I really enjoyed the first one. The last one was only OK, but I will probably continue reading the series. I’ll look forward to hearing what you thought.
I finished The Black Hand, the latest in the A Barker & Llewelyn Novel series. I have mentioned the series several times so I’ll just say that I enjoyed it.
Traitor to his Class; the Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of FDR by HW Brands.
I recommend it.
How does Wang factor into all that, in your opinion?
Wang was pretty big in the office/business minicomputer market, was a big part of the computerization of small business, and IMO was as important as WordStar in establishing word processors as a necessity. (I used to have a huge desk-sized Wang word processor/minicomputer with a crock-pot-sized hard drive; released around the same time, interestingly enough, as the TRS-80 Model I and Commodore PET 2001), but they made no splash at all in the home microcomputer market where Apple and Commodore thrived.
Overall impact about as much as Osborne, though much better run as a company.
I’m envious of those who got books, especially good books.
My husband always gets me a huge stack of books for Christmas. I count on it.
This year? None. I’m so disappointed.
Just started Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill. Joe Hill is the sun of Stephen King and this is every bit as creepy as anything I have ever read by King. I got it for Christmas a year ago, but I no longer read these kinds of books and it has sat here for quite a while. Today I decided I should give it a try, someone thought of me when they bought it.
I am only 53 pages into it, but it reminds me of King’s Thinner. Not in plot mind you; but in the creepy feel it has has.
I’m not sure I’m going to love it, I enjoy this genre much less than I did in my youth; but I will recommend it to fans of a good fright.
I’m rereading The English Novel by Walter Allen. It’s an interesting sort of book but when we get to the Victorians and he keeps nattering on about how much of a genius Thackeray was and then goes on to say what all critics say: Thackeray was a genius but he only wrote one really good book, which was Vanity Fair, I get annoyed because if Thackeray was so bloody superior to Anthony Trollope, why is it that the only Thackeray novel anyone ever reads any more is Vanity Fair but Trollope just rolls on and on? (I’m a Trollope fan and not a Thackeray fan, in case you couldn’t guess.)
Then we get to Thomas Hardy and here Mr. Allen and I agree, Thomas Hardy was a great novelist even though he did everything wrong.
This amity between Mr. Allen and me dies very fast when we get to Henry James, though. If a stupider girl ever existed than Isobel Archer I don’t know who she could have been. Generally a character upon whom a whole novel rests is a character who learns something, but I can’t see that Isobel Archer learned anything beyond disliking the man she chose to marry - and that was the stupidest thing she did out of a list of stupid things. I have toiled through Portrait of a Lady twice, searching for the reason this is called a Great Novel - and all it does is bore and annoy me even more than War and Peace annoyed me. I do not like Henry James and I confess that I do not like the Great Russians, either. This is a failing on my part, I know, but at my age I am not about to mend my ways.
For lighter reading, The Pickwick Papers, and the last volume of Kristin Lavransdattir.
I have not read Enders Game, but I guess I should since everyone recommends it so highly. Those people are the same people who like Stephen King and Dean Koontz, though, so I’m in no hurry.
I think negative comments are just as interesting as positive ones. It fascinates me that tastes vary so widely and inexplicably, and I’m not usually offended when someone disparages a book that I enjoyed. (I like Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead, which I first read when I was a kid, but I don’t care for most of Card’s books.)
I really liked the first Odd Thomas book, and was excited to discover a new author. But then the next one was not as appealing and I didn’t like the third one very much at all.
Such a lovely stack of books I got for Christmas! I’ve started Dissolution, by C.J. Sansom: historical fiction set during the reign of Henry VIII, centering around the dissolution of the monasteries. A couple of chapters in and I’m impressed with the writing.
I also got Lonesome Dove, Cloud Atlas, The Name of the Wind, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I’m off work all next week and my kids will be spending the week with their grandparents, so I expect to get a lot of reading done.
Since Wednesday I’ve read:
Dead until Dark
The Accidental Sorcerer
Snow Flower & the Secret Fan
The 2 John Bellairs books I listed upthread
and I am now on The Name of the Wind.
For the return flight to L.A. I have:
Living Dead in Dallas
The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters
and whatever is left of The Name of the Wind (thanks for the heads up on this one, Dopers)
This is all pretty light fare as I have a hard time concentrating on planes (fear of flying).
I don’t get the hype for Ender’s Game, either. It wasn’t awful or anything, it was just okay-maybe a B- for me.
But I have a deep and abiding love of most of Daphne DuMaurier’s work even though I know it’s all kind of trashy. I figure it’s the same for all the people who love Ender’s Game. It’s not like it’s super serious literature but they really dig the plot.
I finished The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Probably time to start on Collapse, I think…
It must have been some weird non-book Christmas. I always get books, and like you, I count on it.
This year? I got books. An art type book called ‘Women Who Read Are Dangerous’, a graphic novel version of the Bible, and the ‘Kung Fu Panda 2009 Annual’.
Go figure.
I sat up late Christmas night reading my BIL’s copy of Into Thin Air. I’m currently sitting atop an Appalachian and I can say with complete honesty that this is about as high up as I want to get. I’ll look at Mt. Everest and K2 and all those really tall mountains, but I think I’ll wait for erosion to bring the top of them to me. :eek:
I have a bag full of the current outcrop of Mt. ToBeRead (which is quite K2 like in proportion in its full incarnation) in my car. I’m also working on arranging my list of books read for the whole year so I don’t have to spend three hours cutting and pasting on the first. I’ll post a link here when I get it done.