What are you reading?

shivadyne

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A lot of older books, in my reading experience, come across as "babbly"/overwordy today. Still some nice stories and ideas in there, though they can be a bit of a chore to find for modern readers.

oh yeah, definitely. i loved that book, but it would have been a lot easier to sift through without all those unnecessary details thrown in.
 

Michael Wolfe

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Highways to a War, by Christopher Koch. Wonderfully crafted novel about a journalist who goes missing in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge period. Good stuff.
 

HarvesterOfSorrow

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Right now: She's Come Undone, by Wally Lamb.

Before that: A Night to Remember, by Walter Lord; Imperial Bedrooms, by Bret Easton Ellis; Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury; Firestarter, by Stephen King; Congo, by Michael Crichton
 

zmethos

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Just read The Lake House by Kate Morton, followed by The Gates of Evangeline by Hester Young. Both very good and they pair well together. Then picked up The Rejected Writers' Book Club for a change of pace.
 

TheJoker

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'Those across the river'. The story is quite A-B-C, but the prose is neat and the story arch is well-developed. I enjoyed most of it (though the MC never quite worked for me) and the resolution was round; it's a good read if you're into sci-fi lit.
 

blacbird

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Actually, at this immediate moment, I don't know. I need something new. I had a student today suggest The Haunted Mesa, by Louis L'Amour. I have a big library, but not this one. I'm a very eclectic reader, so I think I'll go in quest of it. Anybody else here read it? Or recommend it?

caw
 

kikazaru

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Apparently I've been living under a rock, because the whole Scandinavian mystery author phenomena passed me by, and I've just caught up. I've just recently come across Danish author, Jussi Adler-Olsen and his Dept Q series. I LOVE this series. The MC is Carl Morck, a police detective suffering from PTSD caused by being in an ambush which killed one of his comrades and left another paralyzed. Irascible and difficult at the best of times and on the verge of being let go before the incident, he was hailed a hero and couldn't be fired, so he was "promoted" to the basement to be in charge of Dept Q - where all the cold cases arrive. He is aided by Assad, a Syrian immigrant, ostensibly the janitor, but who surprises Carl with his astute detective skills and Rose, a woman with a phenomenal memory (and a personality disorder) who mans the phones. Carl's personal life is also a mess, with a soon to be ex-wife who lives on the property and his step son who lives with him. There are I think 6 in the series and while Carl is attempting to solve a cold case he is also grappling with his PTSD and trying to solve his own mystery - who ambushed his team and why. The writing is terrific with a rare combination of humour and simultaneously heart stopping suspense. Fun!
 

Brightdreamer

Just Another Lazy Perfectionist
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And another monthly procrastination update...

Recently Finished:
The Falconer (Book 1 of a trilogy, Elizabeth May, YA fantasy, on Kindle): Set in a gaslamp/steampunkish alt-history Edinburgh, it stars society girl Aileana, whose life was forever changed the night she witnessed a faerie woman murder her own mother. Since then, she's devoted herself to a secret nightly battle against the invisible fae stalking the countryside... but there's more to her battle than she knows, a secret destiny and a rising danger to all the mortal world. It starts fast and has some nice ideas and imagery, drawing on Scottish lore and an older, dangerous idea of the faerie races... but it becomes too repetitive as the MC constantly relives her Great Pain and reflects on Dark Secrets she reflected on not two chapters ago. There's a bit of a graphic novel feel to it, particularly in the many gadgets Aileana devises to help her with her fight and the flashy battles. It wasn't terrible, aside from some obvious "twists," but I got really miffed at the cliffhanger - quite literally, the last line is left hanging there, when she's right in the middle of the Big Climactic Battle. I knew it was part of a series, but come on!

All Creatures Great and Small
(James Herriot, nonfiction, on Kindle): The classic stories of a vet in the Yorkshire countryside, starting in the late 1930's as he emerges from veterinary school with visions of a nice, clean small animal practice in the city... only to find himself up apprenticed in a rural, rugged land. I've heard of these stories, of course (growing up in a house of animal-lovers, it was inevitable), and saw the TV series ages ago, but never actually read any of Herriot's books until I found a 3-in-1 collection discounted on Kindle. Touching, amusing, and occasionally heartbreaking, it holds up very well, capturing an era as well as the unexpected charms of the countryside and its peculiar inhabitants. I'll definitely be reading more of these in the future.

Currently Reading:
Childhood's End (Arthur C. Clarke, sci-fi, in paperback): In the 1980's, Mankind learns that he is not alone in the universe when gleaming UFOs descend from the heavens to usher in the next phase of humanity. It's a short book with an intriguing core concept, but I keep setting it aside for some reason. Many of its ideas are dated and more than a little reflective of the biases of the era in which it was written. Still, it's not bad.

Moby Dick (Herman Melville, literary, on Nook): The tale of the philosophical seagoing Ishmael as he becomes part of Captain Ahab's maniacal hunt for a notorious whale. It wasn't that bad to start with, if a little convoluted and burdened by the verbose style (not to mention the prejudices) of its era, but boy has it bogged down something fierce. It also seems to think that the audience is dirt stupid, the way it keeps repeating its Profound Metaphors - then breaking them down, in case readers weren't clever enough to analyze the symbolism on their own. Then repeating it all again for good measure, all while barely advancing the plot. But it's part of a reading challenge, so I'm pushing through.

On Kindle, I just started poking at Terry Jones' Barbarians, a nonfiction history setting the record straight on the many cultures who continue to suffer from Roman Empire propaganda smear tactics. I enjoyed the companion volume on medieval times, so I expect I'll read it in full once I get into it, but I've literally just got past the preface.

And I've had to set Wonderbook aside temporarily - writing's kinda fallen on the back burner due to Other Projects that I hope to clear ASAP. Once I get a chance to catch up on some of the exercises, I'll be finishing that one.
 
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KellyAssauer

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Zero K by Don Delillo. To be honest, I haven't quite started reading it yet. I took it out of it's box and it's standing here looking at me. I have run my clean hands across it (gently) a couple of times and taken a good wiff. I've even read the blurbs and back cover... but I haven't talked myself into opening it to that first page yet. It's just so difficult for me to do. He doesn't publish all that often. I know it won't last me a couple of years. To begin reading it, means I'll finish reading it, and I never want to do that, but it's right there... within reach...
 

Maze Runner

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The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis. Been sitting on my shelves for years.
 

Snowstorm

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Just finished Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock, a nonfiction tome about how mankind is much older than previously expected and a mind-blowing array of other theories. It's a fascinating and exciting book. Then my bedtime reading book that I finished last night was The Spirit Guide by Elizabeth Davies, a thoroughly enjoyable historical story. Now to figure which one to start!
 

oneblindmouse

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The ground beneath her feet" by Salman Rushdie
 
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Maze Runner

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I'm about 50 pages into the Natsuo Kirino novel, "Out". I really dig the disciplined, almost invisible style.
 

oneblindmouse

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A winter on the Nile by Anthony Sattin. Based on the letters of Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert who, unknown to each other, took the same boat up the Nile in winter 1849/50. Fascinating.
 

beckyhammer

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Just started Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. It doesn't seem quite as out-there as the other books of his that I've read, but we'll see...
 

Wyndsgal

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I'm currently reading Howl's Moving Castle. After that I may try the Mistborn series, as friends keep recommending it to me.
 

Iambriannak

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Just finished 'The Final Word' by Lisa Lutz. It's the last of the Spellman series and I'm just numb. I hate ending series that I love! It's a very funny series if anyone wants to check them out, which I highly recommend
 

blacbird

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Murder on the Thirty-First Floor, a mystery by Swedish author Per Wahlöö, published in the 1970s. An odd, but engaging, slightly dystopian novel set in a generic Scandinavian country in the near future, therefore a mix between mystery and Dickian SF. Wahlöö passed away young, forty years ago, but is best known via the now-classic ten-novel police procedural series co-authored with his wife, Maj Sjöwall, featuring Swedish detective Martin Beck. The English translations all seem good, including this one, which is a bleak but engaging tale.

caw
 

Gilroy Cullen

Handsome servant of a redhead
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"I'm Not a Cop" by Richard Belzar.

This is a book from the guy that played Detective Munch on Law and Order. Detailing a series of events where people treated an actor like a cop because he played one on TV. I'm only two chapters in, but so far... interesting. :)
 

oneblindmouse

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The Dreamer of the Calle de San Salvador: Visions of Sedition and Sacrilege in Sixteenth-Century Spain by Roger Osborne. A fascinating analysis of some of the prophetic dreams - thinly disguised political criticism - of Lucrecia de León, young Madrileña in 1587, at the end of King Philip II's long and impoverishing reign. Foretelling the destruction of the Spanish Armada, Phillip's death and the rise of a new Spain, her apocalyptic dreams were written down by two clerics and, after her trial by the Inquisition, preserved in Madrid's National Historical Archive. The book allows the reader to see historical events as they were perceived at the time by the people, rather than in retrospect by historians.
 

vicky271

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The Merchant of Death by D.J. MacHae. Problem is the layout of the novel is making it difficult to enjoy.