What are you reading?

HarvesterOfSorrow

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Did You Ever Have a Family, by Bill Clegg. Not liking it very much, so it's taking me awhile to finish it. If I don't have it done in another cupuple days, I just might say to hell with it and pick up something else. I've got a small collection of books I have to knock down, anyway.
 

ColdWintersNight

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Just finished Song of Achilles. Ugh, someone get me a wash basin, cause my face is just a MESS of tears and snot. I can't stop crying.
 

Brightdreamer

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Been over a month, so might as well update:

Last Read:
Power Up (Kate Leth, illustrations by Matt Cummings, graphic novel, Nook via Hoopla): In ancient times, a prophecy foretold that four individuals would receive great powers to combat evil. But they got the math a little wrong... Amie's a young woman working the counter at a pet shop. Construction worker Kevin used to be a great athlete. Sandy's just your average suburban mother, with two teenage kids and a decent husband and a minivan. And then there's Silas, the goldfish. One flash of light later, they all have special gifts - and no idea how to use them, which is unfortunate as the evils of a thousand worlds converge upon Earth...
It reads fast, and is kinda fun (gotta love the goldfish, who transforms into a miniature whale with laser beams when he "powers up"), but it feels a little thin, and the ending falls a bit flat. Not bad, though, especially as a Hoopla freebie.

Young Frankenstein: A Mel Brooks Book: The Story of the Making of the Film (Mel Brooks with Rebecca Keegan, nonfiction, Kindle): Director Mel Brooks reflects on his favorite film from its inception to its premiere and legacy, with many photographs and article clips.
Young Frankenstein fully deserves its status as a comedy classic, a brilliantly funny homage to old horror films with a top-rate cast. This books is reasonably interesting and entertaining, if not necessarily deep. The eBook formatting, though, wasn't what it could've been, trying too hard to replicate the print edition. As a result, there's lots of blank space, some captions are misplaced (and a few are cut off, leaving incomplete stubs), plus other issues that grew irritating even in a relatively short volume. It's worth a read if you enjoy the film, though.

The Hunt for Elsewhere (Beatrice Vine, fantasy, paperback): The young fox Saxton, separated from family and raised by a wise old crow, learns traits of compassion and kindness not normal to his kind. Thus he sets out on a cross-country adventure, encountering all manner of characters and predicaments... particularly the one-eyed wolf Dante, who - after trying to eat him - helps Saxton learn that family is what you make of it.
I wasn't aware that this was more an inspirational fable than an animal adventure when I bought it. Not my cup of cocoa, though it was an original tale and not as Fluffy-Bunny as one might expect from inspirational fiction; there's a fair bit of violence and even death, some of it feeling a bit forced to show Saxton how cruel the world could be. The animal characters also were a little too human for me to buy, even accepting that anthropomorphizing animal characters in fiction written by humans is pretty much unavoidable; it was inconsistent on top of overdone.

Currently Reading:
Wild Seed (Book 1 of the Patternist series, Octavia E. Butler, fantasy, Nook): Undying entity Doro, who lives by jumping bodies (killing the current "resident" in the process), discovers a woman with powers that may rival his own... only she uses her abilities to heal and help, not kill and destroy.
Considered a genre classic, also notable for being written by an African-American author with African characters, I figured I ought to try it. So far, it's not bad.

The Heart of What Was Lost (An Osten Ard novel, Tad Williams, fantasy, hardcover): After their defeat at the hands of mortals and their formerly-kin enemies, the Sithi, the Norns flee to their stronghold mountain Stormspike in the far north, pursued by an army determined to end the threat once and for all.
Tad Williams returns to the land of Osten Ard from his famed Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy soon with a new trilogy, The Last King of Osten Ard. In the meantime, this novel (and a second, due out in April) serve as "bridge" stories, spanning the gap between the end of the first trilogy and the start of the second. I jumped into this one without rereading the first trilogy. Only ten pages in, so it's rather soon to tell how it's going. So far, not bad, though it's taking me a bit to reorient myself, and I'm not sure how I'll care for the new characters.
 

SinisterMime

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I'm reading Zero History by William Gibson, finishing up my reread of the Blue Ant trilogy. It's been six years since I finished my first read of the series, and there's a lot more that I'm getting out of it since I started applying more focus to my reading.

I just finished reading Hey, Nostradamus by Douglas Coupland and Company Town by Madeline Ashby. I think I've hit a trend of one genre title for every literary title I've read in the past year. Not on purpose, but I'm amused it has worked out this way.
 

Michael Wolfe

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Beneath the Lion's Gaze.

A novel about the Ethiopian revolution, set in Addis Ababa. Excellent and recommended.
 

Rumelo

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Thanks for the suggestions! Sometimes I need a break from all my historical research reading!

Did You Ever Have A Family....finished it; but wasn't very satisfied.
 

Calla Lily

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Trying to get past the halfway point of duMaurier's Rebecca, one of the classics I hadn't read. I'm having trouble keeping myself from reaching into the pages and slapping this whiny, spineless, me-me-me narrator in 1960s Batman style: Bam! Pow! Whack!

My gosh, what an irritating, self-absorbed git. OTOH, all praise to duMaurier for creating a 100% believable character. I'm a whisker away from ditching it and resorting to Spark Notes. My blood pressure can't handle it.

I may reread her utterly brilliant short story "The Birds" as an antidote.
 

Jupie

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I just read 'Waiting for Sunrise' by William Boyd.

Wouldn't recommend. It's the only book by him I've read and he has some talent with writing but a very boring story in all.

Now reading 'Hogfather'. I haven't read much Terry Pratchett and wish I could fall in love with his humour but I don't seem to find it an easy read. He has the odd good one liner but it's quite underwhelming so far.
 

larocca

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The first Sir Terry Pratchett I ever read was Going Postal, and it remains one of my favorites. I seem to remember having the same opinion of Hogfather as you do, but about 90% are awesome, so don't give up yet. Witches Abroad or Mort might also be a good one to start with. I've read everything about Discworld, just in case you doubt I'm a total groupie for this guy.

Since I'm still reading Hag-Seed, I'll mention what I read before it. All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai. It's a winner. Big time. Early in the book, he reminded me of Vonnegut before I read the reviewers saying he reminded them of Vonnegut. Early Vonnegut, before he threw storytelling out the window and became one of my favorite aphorists.
 

Jupie

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Thanks Larocca I will keep reading him every so often. I had tried the Colour of Magic as well and wasn't too drawn to that, which is a shame. I want to like him because I love fantasy humour and I can see he's very passionate and has a very vivid imagination. I've also read 'Nation' by him and that is outside Discworld and that was disappointing as well. I did, however, enjoy Good Omens. So I will inevitably pick up another one of his books and I liked the man on a personal level. So sad about what happened to him.
 

Jade Rothwell

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Reading Handmaiden's Tale by Atwood (glad to be reading it finally!) and just bought The Magus by Fowles to read after (the sales guy gave me a strange look when I bought it, which I mostly found hilarious)
 

BoF

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I finished Blood and Thunder: Kit Carson and the Epic Story of the Conquest of the American West by Hampton Sides about a week ago. Carson we learn was illiterate, but spoke several languages plus some Indian tongues and dialects. His long career included extensive travel, as a guide for John C. Freemont, and as a army officer under Gen. Steven Watts Kearny and Gen. John H. Carleton. We learn that Carson was a man of principle. Sides describes him as an Indian fighter, but not an Indian hater. Yet when confronted with a choice between conscience and duty, he could err, sometimes brutally, on the side of duty.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000W969O0/?tag=absowrit-20
...............

I am currently reading The Red-Winged Blackbird, by friend and fellow FWISD educator Bob Reed. The novel is about the Ludlow Massacre in early Twentieth Century Colorado. I've finished about a third of the book. So far Reed has used fictional characters, Alan and his ailing brother (miner's cough) Sid, to explore mine safety and miner well being as preludes to the massacre.

With Trump hawking "clean" coal and putting miners back to work, Reed's novel, though parts were written decades ago, tells why we might not want to travel down that road.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J9VA7H2/?tag=absowrit-20
 
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Brightdreamer

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Another month, another procrastination update...

Last Finished:
Aliens in the Backyard: Plant and Animal Imports into America (John Leland, nature, paperback): The history of imported flora and fauna to America dates back thousands of years, raising questions as to what is "natural" and what constitutes a threat.
An interesting concept, it's a much broader subject than this book can adequately tackle; several imports and invasives get no mention, and other articles tend to ramble at inconsistent levels of depth. The author also seemed oddly reluctant to deal with the multiple migration notion of human colonization of the New World, dancing around the issue inexplicably. Overall, it's a decent introduction to the topic of imported species and their natural and cultural impacts, and how hard it is to draw a clear line between "good" species and "bad," between "native" and "import," when even experts disagree on where some things (particularly plants) originated.

Wild Seed (Book 1 of the Patternist series, Octavia E. Butler, sci-fi, on Nook): A predatory spirit, Doro has lived for thousands of years by stealing human bodies. He's styled himself as a god, gathering special humans - those gifted with mind-reading, telekinesis, and other abilities - in "seed villages" as part of his project to breed a superrace of ideal hosts. He thought he was past being surprised, until he encountered Anyanwu. Herself centuries old, the healer woman can reshape her own body, even taking on animal form. She's the closest thing he's found to an equal. Will they become allies or enemies?
A groundbreaking work of SF, written by a groundbreaking author (among the first "big name" African-American genre writers), it tackles issues of race, slavery, gender, abuse, and immortality, particularly the altered moral code one must, by necessity, live by when one's lifespan is measured in centuries and millennia. At several points, it was difficult to read, as it felt like it was rubbing the reader's face in the horrors of slavery and abuse (physical and psychological) while highlighting how monstrous Doro is to even those he considers most valuable (his concept of "love" having atrophied during his exceptionally long existence.) Even Anyanwu isn't the most pleasant person to be around all the time. Overall, I'm glad I read it, and it fully deserves its status as a classic, but I don't expect I'll read further in the series, and I'm not sure if any of Butler's other titles appeal to me enough to try.

Currently Reading:
Holy Cow (David Duchovny, fantasy/humor, paperback): A dairy cow lives a contented life until she sees a TV show about industrial farms and slaughterhouses, a disillusionment that sends her into a downward spiral of depression - until she learns of a place where cattle are worshipped, the distant land of India.
A fun concept, but I'm having trouble dealing with Duchovny's tangent-prone (if amusing) style to get into the story. I'm also having issues suspending my disbelief; IIRC, dairy cows must have at least been bred, and likely have given birth, before they're useful milkers, yet the MC talks like she's essentially a virgin - and, so far, no hints of artificial inseminaton or other reasons she'd be lactating. It's probably stupid to nitpick a book that's inherently and unabashedly silly like this, but it's still bugging me...

The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (edited by John Joseph Adams, anthology/mystery/sci-fi/horror, on Kindle): A collection of Holmes stories by popular authors, ranging from ordinary mysteries to Lovecraftian encounters.
I'd been under the impression that more of these stories would be "improbable," dealing in SF concepts, but a good chunk aren't even tangentially peculiar. So far, they've been readable, if of varied quality. Only read one thus far that I'd consider a true clunker, one that read more like an insult than an homage - indeed, I'm not even sure why it was included, save the author being a big enough name. (Not one I've read, though.)

Hasn't really been a great month for reading, overall... Partly, I've been trying to get my own writing efforts back on track, along with other projects. Partly I just haven't been feeling like reading lately, what with the National Nightmare becoming all too real with every day.
 
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DragonHeart

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Started Firebrand by Kristen Britan; book 6 in the Green Rider series.

I've been both excited and apprehensive about this book. I wasn't that fond of book 4, and outright disappointed by book 5. But that subplot is finally, thankfully over and we're back where (and when!) we're supposed to be. Lots of stuff going on even early on but man am I glad to see some familiar faces after nearly two books without them. I'm caught in a weird space where I want to rush and savor at the same time.