What are you reading?

Great Spiritual Stories

DC Trip by Sara Benincasa.

I wanted to read something light and fun, but this is a bit too juvenile (in the sense of no depth of story, no depth of characters, and shock for shock's sake) for my taste. I think she's going for a YA feel, without capturing the depth YA typically has.

Just finished Mr. Churchill's Secretary, A Maggie Hope Mystery and just opened up the sequel Princess Elizabeth's Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal. Great story about London during the Battle of Britain!

Bone by Jeff Smith.

I fun fantasy graphic novel about three cousins (a "small mammal" species known as bones) who get run out of Boneville when one of them runs a scam. They get lost in the dessert and wind up in the middle of a budding war for control of the valley.

I am so hooked on Susan Elia MacNeal's Maggie Hope Mystery series. I just finished book #2 in the series, Princess Elizabeth's Spy, and just downloaded #3, His Majesty's Hope. These novels are set in Britain during WWII. Gripping!

Over a month, though not much reading to show for it. Might as well post a procrastination update:

Recently Read:
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Book 1 in the Bobiverse series, Dennis E. Taylor, in paperback): Modern-day software designer and sci-fi nerd Bob thought he had plenty more time to enjoy his life when he signed up for cryogenic preservation in his thirties... but doesn't even last through the next weekend. Revived over a century in the future, he learns that a theocratic takeover of America stripped all human rights from "corpsicles"; his assets were stripped, his body chucked, his mind preserved as a computer-generated copy - which will be deactivated if he fails to cooperate with his new "owners." Assuming infighting within the theocracy doesn't render him an abomination to be terminated anyway. Oh, and apparently the transition to computer AI has driven many revived people insane. No pressure there... His planned assignment, AI for a self-replicating deep-space probe, is a sci-fi lover's dream come true - but, this, too, brings dangers, as international saboteurs constantly attack the project HQ even before he's uploaded to his ship, and other nations are likely already launching probes to the most likely interstellar candidates for habitable worlds... probes probably armed with missiles, an option he hasn't been equipped with. (But he has been equipped with numerous hidden kill-switches and "imperatives" designed to compel obedience, even in deep space.) To survive and retain some semblance of freedom, Bob will need all his wits about him - or, at the very least, a few more Bobs.

This book evokes both a sense of fun and a sense of wonder. It has a sort of throwback feel reminiscent of the best of the Star Trek universe and similar franchises, without the cynical grit and grimdark tone that seems to permeate the genre these days. (To be sure, it's not all gee-whiz wonders; humans are still doing their level best to exterminate themselves and the planet, and there may be dangers out in space humanity has never conceived. And the concept of a theocracy overthrowing America is disturbingly plausible these days...) The Bobs are decent characters, each copy with a distinct personality and different mission. Their adventures are rooted in science, but even a nontechnical person like myself could enjoy the story. My only complaint is that the book felt a little incomplete, as though it was never intended to stand alone, but that's a minor issue (especially with Book 2 already winging its way here via B&N.com.) Enjoyable and recommended.

Currently Reading:
The Dragon With a Chocolate Heart (Stephanie Burgis, MG fantasy, in hardcover): Young dragon Aventurine chafes under her family's restraints. They insist her scales are still too soft to leave the caves and explore the world on her own. Every other young dragon spends their youth pursuing their passions - philosophy, like her brother Jasper, or arts and poetry, like her sister Citrine - but Aventurine has never found hers, and sees only three decades of boredom stretching out before her. She sneaks out of the cave to prove herself - and, unexpectedly, discovers her passion: chocolate. Unfortunately, this chocolate has been cursed by a food mage; it turns her into a soft, scaleless human girl. Determined as she is to regain her true form, she cannot shake her passion so easily. And thus she sets off to the nearby town, to apprentice herself at a chocolate house.

A fun concept, so far it's a decent, if not especially deep or unexpected, story. I'm enjoying it, at least.

The Rights of Man (Thomas Paine, nonfiction history/politics, on Kindle): Written to rebut an attack on the French Revolution and the country's new constitution, Thomas Paine examines the revolution's history and the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of different governments.

Some parts of this are eerily reminiscent of modern politics, down to the fake news angle. Others are simply depressing; Paine's optimism in the rational basis of democracies and constitutional governments never anticipated how they might be manipulated and co-opted by the very forces he claimed they were proof against, the corruption and opacity and chiseling away of education and civil discourse. (He also, oddly enough, seems so far not to even engage the power of religion and the church, which was behind a great deal of the injustices and authoritarian forms of government, such as monarchies - but, then, the concept of evolution was still foreign, and he seems to take it for granted that there must have been a Creator of some sort, if one that cannot be exclusively claimed by any one human religious tradition.) A bit thick reading, and some of the relevance is lost due to my lack of in-depth knowledge of the French Revolution and its major figures, but I'm making headway nonetheless. (I'm trying to edjumacate myself on politics and the like these days.)

I will repay by Baroness Orczy, the first sequel to her classic The Scarlet Pimpernel. I found it among the books I inherited from my parents, and presume it belonged to my father. On the first page it's marked in pencil 3/6d. Three shillings and sixpence.

I just finished Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I enjoyed it. Great foreshadowing.
The framing device seemed simple at the beginning, but got increasingly deeper: Captain Walton > Franky > the unnamed creature > Felix and Safie. At one point I was wondering if the story was, at the core, about Felix and Safie.

A bit slow in parts, but hey, it's still a quick read. And in places you could just spot Mary Shelley poking fun at Byron, and possibly a whole collection of people I don't know about.

Most characters were *detestable*. And compelling. I really enjoyed yelling at Walton and Frankenstein, the blithering idiots.

Also, someone get Victor Frankenstein a fainting couch for his birthday, the poor dear! (I like to think this is another example of Mary having fun while writing.)

I'm now reading Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. I've only just started, but so far, I'm loving it.

Lakey said:

I just reread Mary Renault’s Fire From Heaven, the first Alexander the Great novel, and then began the second, The Persian Boy. What a shift in tone. Fire From Heaven is fairly gently paced, often almost contemplative. The Persian Boy is absolutely brutal — opens right up with a brutal murder, suicide, and rape all witnessed by a child, proceeds to the castration and rape of the same child, and hasn’t let up yet. Mary Renault is a very effective and economical writer; she says very little and yet it’s blisteringly clear exactly what’s going on. I have a feeling the going will get tough with this one.

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I almost love Mary Renault's books about Alexander, and reread The Persian Boy once or twice a year. She'd be one of my favorite authors if she weren't so relentlessly misogynistic.

I'm reading Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, and I think he's making a lot of interesting points about the psychological effects of colonialism and imperialism. It's an old book, but it feels fresh and relevant. It's also very compressed and intense, and difficult to read when people keep trying to talk to you, aka during the day

Middlemarch- George Eliot

Chris Bohjalian's THE SLEEPWLKER. So far, it's terrific.

Really naughty stuff Thanks to Kindle Unlimited

I finished Code Name Verity last night, and today my eyes are still puffy from reading the last 25% of the book while bawling. Can't remember the last time a book has made me ugly-cry quite like that. T_T

Lakey said:

I haven’t read this since eighth grade and I remember it not at all. I have been thinking of reading it again.

I just reread Mary Renault’s Fire From Heaven, the first Alexander the Great novel, and then began the second, The Persian Boy. What a shift in tone. Fire From Heaven is fairly gently paced, often almost contemplative. The Persian Boy is absolutely brutal — opens right up with a brutal murder, suicide, and rape all witnessed by a child, proceeds to the castration and rape of the same child, and hasn’t let up yet. Mary Renault is a very effective and economical writer; she says very little and yet it’s blisteringly clear exactly what’s going on. I have a feeling the going will get tough with this one.

But it’s been enjoyable to read with Wikipedia to hand, to fix all the names and places in my brain, and to think about traveling to Greece to see some of the remnants that archaeology has preserved, like Pella.

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Is that the modern-day series about Alexander the Great? The one that the first book won an award? I've been meaning to read it. I didn't know there was a sequel...

Also, Frankenstein is definitely worth it.

Middlemarch, for me, is much preferable to most novels set around the time. Mary Anne Evans certainly knew how to write a better novel, IMO, than Tom Jones and the like.

Putputt said:

I finished Code Name Verity last night, and today my eyes are still puffy from reading the last 25% of the book while bawling. Can't remember the last time a book has made me ugly-cry quite like that. T_T

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I love sad stories. I'll check this out!

Still working through Byron.

Just finished:

Invitation to a Beheading- Vladimir Nabokov
Housekeeping- Marilynne Robinson

DanielSTJ said:

Still working through Byron.

Just finished:

Invitation to a Beheading- Vladimir Nabokov
Housekeeping- Marilynne Robinson

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I loved Housekeeping. Try her Gilead.

Swedish police procedural mystery by Arne Dahl, titled (appropriately) Misterioso. About halfway through, and it's pretty good. Not quite up to the classic standard set by Sjöwall and Wahlöö, but obvious influenced by their work, and definitely worth the read.

caw

Burial rites by Hannah Kent, her debut novel based on the true story of the last person executed in Iceland: Agnes Magnúsdottír, convicted of murder and arson in 1829.

I just started The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson. It's nonfiction about the power of networks. Ferguson's premise is that although it's easier for historians to study hierarchies, history is actually shaped by the poorly documented networks the members of the hierarchies maintain. You can never figure out the wheeling and dealing it takes to pass a law by reading the US Constitution, for example. What he hasn't discussed yet, howver, is how the hierarchies and networks interact. As we all know, within a network some people are more influential than others partly because of their place in the hierarchy.

ETA: I was going to decry bad editing following the second instance of a typo within 14 pages: "Just deserts"! Lol! Everyone knows a fitting reward is a "just dessert," you know, the sweet reward for finishing a meal, or no dessert for not finishing one. Or is it? Turns out I've been wrong all these years. I guess that's my just deserts.

Angry Candy by Harlan Ellison and Peter Freuchen's ​Book of the Seven Seas.