I just finished Elmer Gantry by Upton Sinclair - a bit of a slog at times, but overall, an amazing read. He nails the brutish hypocrite and does a great job exposing the undeniable fallacies in certain religious ideals. Additionally, there are a lot of parallels between certain political figures and Gantry's nature. Great read 5/5.
What are you reading?
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By Blood We Live, the last book in the Last Werewolf trilogy by Glenn Duncan. Bingeing the series!
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I just read a bunch of Vogt's shorter stuff. Incredible. Like Lovecraft, also a writer who is a favorite target of the snooty patrol in the sense of "he can't write".
Sure, if you're prejudiced he can't
Vogt compresses more non-banal human condition stuff in abrupt, out of nowhere paragraphs, than most writers do in a trilogy.
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Just read and would highly recommend these:
Then She Was Gone - Lisa Jewell (Easy read, finished in one sitting, didn't like the varying POV's switching between 1st and 3rd person but otherwise plot was interesting and great tension. There is an interesting article on the ending the author wanted it to have but her editor talked her into what was published.)
Best Day Ever - Kaira Rouda (Narrator is the most interesting voice I've read all year, great tension, not crazy about the ending but the book was still worth the read)
Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng (beautiful characterizations, great writing, compelling plot)
Little Fires Everywhere - Celest Ng (beautiful characterizations, great writing, compelling plot)
Then She Was Gone - Lisa Jewell (Easy read, finished in one sitting, didn't like the varying POV's switching between 1st and 3rd person but otherwise plot was interesting and great tension. There is an interesting article on the ending the author wanted it to have but her editor talked her into what was published.)
Best Day Ever - Kaira Rouda (Narrator is the most interesting voice I've read all year, great tension, not crazy about the ending but the book was still worth the read)
Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng (beautiful characterizations, great writing, compelling plot)
Little Fires Everywhere - Celest Ng (beautiful characterizations, great writing, compelling plot)
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I just started Gibbon's Decline and Fall by Sheri S. Tepper. I'm having a really hard time getting into it. It's for my book club, and we're meeting a week from today, so I feel like I have to get through it, but I sure hope we choose something a bit more lighthearted next month.
I just finished A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence M. Kraus about the big bang and why we have the universe we do. This one I had no trouble getting into. I had already read Michio Kaku's book Parallel Worlds which went into much of the same material from a different perspective and between them I think Dark Matter and Dark Energy are actually starting to make a little sense. (A little)
I just finished A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence M. Kraus about the big bang and why we have the universe we do. This one I had no trouble getting into. I had already read Michio Kaku's book Parallel Worlds which went into much of the same material from a different perspective and between them I think Dark Matter and Dark Energy are actually starting to make a little sense. (A little)
I've been on a time travel / reliving life kick. I recently read The First Fifteen Lives of HARRY august, and Replay. I read Replay first and really loved it, but I have to say I liked the Harry August one more. Replay was very open ended from a story telling standpoint. I think it was very emotionally fulfilling and was meant to leave the reader kind of feeling that openness at the end, but I think I preferred Harry August.
Been over a month, and procrastinating again...
Recent Reads:
Art & Fear (David Bayles and Ted Orlando, nonfiction/art, paperback): An examination of the many fears that hold people back from creating to their potential, and how to tackle them.
This is something of a classic, often recommended on art boards. It's not bad, actually addressing that some fears are valid (not falling for the common "just pretend the obstacle isn't there, and it won't be" approach that sounds so good on paper but leads to many proverbial broken limbs and bloody noses when that wall turns out to be all too real). Each artist ultimately has to find their own answers, and some questions keep recurring, but the book offers assurances that answers can usually be found if one wants to... even if it involves taking a few steps back or to the side of one's dream, and even if it involves realizing that making money off one's creativity can create more stress than some artists care to deal with. The writing gets a bit circular at times, but overall it's a decent read.
Gods of Risk (an Expanse novella, James S. A. Corey, SF, Kindle): David Draper, a studious Martian teen on his way to a bright career, knew it was risky cooking up drugs on the side for a sketchy schoolmate Hutch, but when Hutch's girlfriend calls for help just before vanishing - just as anti-Earth sentiments lead to terrorist attacks and increased scrutiny and security across Mars - might cost him everything... especially if he's found out by his aunt, the ex-marine Bobbie Draper, who left service under circumstances nobody will talk about.
This side adventure, chronologically occurring between Books 2 and 3, works reasonably well as a standalone, filling in some details of Martian culture on the side. David isn't a bad kid, just feeling some teenage rebellion against the straight-arrow life he's expected to lead... not to mention the pangs of puppy love and hormones leading to some bad decisions concerning Hutch's girlfriend, who isn't what she presents herself to be. It might've used a slight bit of trimming here and there, but overall moves well and comes to a decent, if abrupt, conclusion.
Sparrow Hill Road (Book 1 of the Ghost Roads series, Seanan McGuire, collection/fantasy/horror, paperback): In ghost tales and urban legends, she has many names: The Phantom Prom Date, the Girl in the Green Silk Gown, the Spirit of Sparrow Road. But she's really just Rose Marshall, a small-town Michigan teen whose life ended tragically at sixteen, in the 1950's... run off the road by Bobby Cross, a man whose bargain for immortality came at the cost of harvesting souls like hers. Only she managed to slip away before he could collect his due. She's been running from him ever since, a hitcher ghost crossing America and doing her best to avoid the many dangers of the twilight ghostroads. But Rose is getting tired of running - it's about time she faced down her fear and won her freedom.
McGuire mixes urban legends, ghost tales, and age-old traveler's stories of crossroads bargains and forgotten gods to create a modern American roadside mythology, replete with routewitches and ambulomancers and spirits of varying stripes and powers and humanities, where vehicles and roadways themselves have power... and, sometimes, potentially-malevolent lives of their own. The rules are both simple and inexplicable, befitting the shifting, spectral nature of the "twilight" Americas of the ghostroads. It's steeped in a certain nostalgia for lost road trip culture, wound round with dark shadows and the unquiet dead. Rose is a gutsy heroine, perpetually sixteen but hardened by decades of ghostly existence... yet not so hardened that she no longer tries to help those she can, when she can. This book is actually a collection of short stories about Rose, all of which (especially the later ones) build toward her confrontation with Bobby Cross in her attempts to be free of his stalking specter. Highly recommended if you're looking for a modern ghost story that balances horror and beauty, sadness and humor.
Currently Reading:
The Girl with No Name (Marina Chapman et al., nonfiction/autobiography, Kindle): In a nearly-lawless age in Columbia, a four year old girl was kidnapped and dumped deep in the jungle... where her only "family" was a troop of capuchin monkeys. Here, she had to learn to survive - and, eventually, find her way back to her own species, even as she forgets her own name and everything about where she came from.
So far, it's a decent, if almost unbelievable, story. The authors (the tales are pieced together from Chapman's recollections by her children, who helped her write this) do not overly anthropomorphize; even when she's allowed to stay among them and interact with them, the monkeys do not seem to see her as "one of them." It's reading fast.
Recent Reads:
Art & Fear (David Bayles and Ted Orlando, nonfiction/art, paperback): An examination of the many fears that hold people back from creating to their potential, and how to tackle them.
This is something of a classic, often recommended on art boards. It's not bad, actually addressing that some fears are valid (not falling for the common "just pretend the obstacle isn't there, and it won't be" approach that sounds so good on paper but leads to many proverbial broken limbs and bloody noses when that wall turns out to be all too real). Each artist ultimately has to find their own answers, and some questions keep recurring, but the book offers assurances that answers can usually be found if one wants to... even if it involves taking a few steps back or to the side of one's dream, and even if it involves realizing that making money off one's creativity can create more stress than some artists care to deal with. The writing gets a bit circular at times, but overall it's a decent read.
Gods of Risk (an Expanse novella, James S. A. Corey, SF, Kindle): David Draper, a studious Martian teen on his way to a bright career, knew it was risky cooking up drugs on the side for a sketchy schoolmate Hutch, but when Hutch's girlfriend calls for help just before vanishing - just as anti-Earth sentiments lead to terrorist attacks and increased scrutiny and security across Mars - might cost him everything... especially if he's found out by his aunt, the ex-marine Bobbie Draper, who left service under circumstances nobody will talk about.
This side adventure, chronologically occurring between Books 2 and 3, works reasonably well as a standalone, filling in some details of Martian culture on the side. David isn't a bad kid, just feeling some teenage rebellion against the straight-arrow life he's expected to lead... not to mention the pangs of puppy love and hormones leading to some bad decisions concerning Hutch's girlfriend, who isn't what she presents herself to be. It might've used a slight bit of trimming here and there, but overall moves well and comes to a decent, if abrupt, conclusion.
Sparrow Hill Road (Book 1 of the Ghost Roads series, Seanan McGuire, collection/fantasy/horror, paperback): In ghost tales and urban legends, she has many names: The Phantom Prom Date, the Girl in the Green Silk Gown, the Spirit of Sparrow Road. But she's really just Rose Marshall, a small-town Michigan teen whose life ended tragically at sixteen, in the 1950's... run off the road by Bobby Cross, a man whose bargain for immortality came at the cost of harvesting souls like hers. Only she managed to slip away before he could collect his due. She's been running from him ever since, a hitcher ghost crossing America and doing her best to avoid the many dangers of the twilight ghostroads. But Rose is getting tired of running - it's about time she faced down her fear and won her freedom.
McGuire mixes urban legends, ghost tales, and age-old traveler's stories of crossroads bargains and forgotten gods to create a modern American roadside mythology, replete with routewitches and ambulomancers and spirits of varying stripes and powers and humanities, where vehicles and roadways themselves have power... and, sometimes, potentially-malevolent lives of their own. The rules are both simple and inexplicable, befitting the shifting, spectral nature of the "twilight" Americas of the ghostroads. It's steeped in a certain nostalgia for lost road trip culture, wound round with dark shadows and the unquiet dead. Rose is a gutsy heroine, perpetually sixteen but hardened by decades of ghostly existence... yet not so hardened that she no longer tries to help those she can, when she can. This book is actually a collection of short stories about Rose, all of which (especially the later ones) build toward her confrontation with Bobby Cross in her attempts to be free of his stalking specter. Highly recommended if you're looking for a modern ghost story that balances horror and beauty, sadness and humor.
Currently Reading:
The Girl with No Name (Marina Chapman et al., nonfiction/autobiography, Kindle): In a nearly-lawless age in Columbia, a four year old girl was kidnapped and dumped deep in the jungle... where her only "family" was a troop of capuchin monkeys. Here, she had to learn to survive - and, eventually, find her way back to her own species, even as she forgets her own name and everything about where she came from.
So far, it's a decent, if almost unbelievable, story. The authors (the tales are pieced together from Chapman's recollections by her children, who helped her write this) do not overly anthropomorphize; even when she's allowed to stay among them and interact with them, the monkeys do not seem to see her as "one of them." It's reading fast.
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The 2018 Pushcart Prize collection. This is one I get every year,and this year's is mid-range.
Farewell, My Lovely, by Raymond Chandler. Reading it for the third time to learn from the master.
O. Faulkner
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Currently I'm on Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler on my kindle and I'm listening to The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck on audiobook. I'm binging Octavia Butler and trying to also delve back into classic literature at the same time.
Spartacus Ryan Zander and the Secrets of the Incredible by Molly Elwood. A really fun, quick read about a boy searching for his mother who may or may not have been kidnapped by a traveling circus. It's both hilarious and heartbreaking. Really, really clever writing.
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Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski - As you may have guessed, it's a non-fiction book about the economics of soccer. It's pretty interesting, especially if you're a huge soccer fan like I am. It's written in plain English, so you don't have to be an economist or statistician to understand it. The authors do a pretty good job of pointing out different (and sometimes obscure) aspects of soccer that affect a team's finances. They cover everthing from sportswear marketing to racial discrimination. Overall, it's a good, light read. My only issue with it is that the authors begin sentences with adverbs way too often. Nearly every other sentence starts with "Happily,...," "Clearly,...," "Fortunately,...," etc.
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Finally finished The Brazilians by Joseph A. Page. Tons of interesting information but much of it is so hopelessly outdated. I knew that going in of course; I wouldn't have read it at all if I hadn't found it at the thrift store and picked it up on a whim. However, it did also lead me to another book by this author that may prove much more worthwhile, once I get around to reading it.
With that one finished, I am finally free to move on to the first nonfiction title I've ever preordered. Brazil: A Biography by Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling. Read the introduction and wow, this is a densely packed book. I don't know if it's the translation or just the writing style but it's not something I'll be reading casually, that's for sure.
It also started off by referencing a work I've never read: Madame Bovary. In the interest of being thorough to maximize my understanding, I decided I'll read that first, then go on to chapter 1. So I'm technically reading two books now. I'm not usually one for classic literature so we'll see how this goes.
If we want to get really technical I'm actually reading 3 books, including O Mundo Perdido, which is the Portuguese translation of my favorite novel The Lost World by Michael Crichton. But that one is mainly for language learning purposes, as I've read the original so many times I know practically the entire thing by heart.
With that one finished, I am finally free to move on to the first nonfiction title I've ever preordered. Brazil: A Biography by Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling. Read the introduction and wow, this is a densely packed book. I don't know if it's the translation or just the writing style but it's not something I'll be reading casually, that's for sure.
It also started off by referencing a work I've never read: Madame Bovary. In the interest of being thorough to maximize my understanding, I decided I'll read that first, then go on to chapter 1. So I'm technically reading two books now. I'm not usually one for classic literature so we'll see how this goes.
If we want to get really technical I'm actually reading 3 books, including O Mundo Perdido, which is the Portuguese translation of my favorite novel The Lost World by Michael Crichton. But that one is mainly for language learning purposes, as I've read the original so many times I know practically the entire thing by heart.
I'm reading the first book in the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. I was recommended by a friend to read it, though only a few pages in and I'm already liking it.