I'm starting on Nietzsche's The Will to Power today.
I already ADORE his work, so we'll see....
I already ADORE his work, so we'll see....
What are you reading?
- Thread starter jennifer75
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Just finished “Twisted” by Steve Cavanagh. Hooked me from the first page. The story is well written and the layered intricate twists are delivered in an impactful manner. Excellent read.
The Cooking Gene - Michael W. Twitty
Twitty explores the African and African American origins of Southern US food while he explores his own family history as his enslaved, free Black, white, and Native American ancestors adapted to the changing world around them. LOTS of history I'd never encountered before, particularly the wide diversity of Africans being brought over, each group preserving as best they can their own cultural, linguistic, and culinary variety that can be traced today.
Twitty explores the African and African American origins of Southern US food while he explores his own family history as his enslaved, free Black, white, and Native American ancestors adapted to the changing world around them. LOTS of history I'd never encountered before, particularly the wide diversity of Africans being brought over, each group preserving as best they can their own cultural, linguistic, and culinary variety that can be traced today.
Not quite a month but I'm procrastinating again...
Recently Read:
The Voyage of the Basilisk (Book 3 of The Natural History of Dragons/Memoirs of Lady Trent series, Marie Brennan, fantasy, paperback): The intrepid Lady Trent, Isabella Camherst, sets forth on a two-year voyage to continue her study of dragons around the world, this time bringing her growing son along in an attempt to connect with the boy.
Like the previous two volumes, this follows a strong, if not flawless, heroine around a Victorianesque world, where she encounters various interesting characters and conundrums and innumerable political and personal pitfalls. It reads fast and is quite enjoyable, with an air of adventure and a love of science and characters worth caring about.
The Wendy (Book 1 of the Tales of the Wendy series, Erin Michelle Sky and Steven Brown, YA fantasy, Kindle): All through her childhood as an orphan at a London almshouse, Wendy knew what she wanted to be: a captain of her own ship, exploring the world and having grand adventures... but almost everyone around her tells her that girls are good for nothing but marrying and mothering. As a teenager, she takes the bold step of joining England's Home Office, hoping to prove her worth - only to discover that the Office's job has nothing to do with ordinary matters at all. England, it seems, is under attack from the everlost, strange flying beasts in the shape of human boys, who steal and kidnap and hunt children, presumably to drink their blood. (The general public, of course, is kept blissfully unaware.) She was only hired because women and dogs are the only ones who can smell the magic that precedes their arrival... neither being seen as quite human by the Home Office's head, one Captain Hook. But when Wendy finally encounters one of the everlost, she finds she has more questions than answers. They don't seem anything like Hook told her - particularly one, their leader, who calls himself Peter Pan.
This riff on Peter Pan tries to make "the Wendy" into an independent and strong heroine, but misses the mark by a Neverland mile. One of the big problems is right there in the name: try as the book might to make it sound like a title, "the Wendy" is persistently reduced to a somewhat silly object even by the authors. Not one male - and the rest of the cast, save one shallow stereotype of a household cook, is male - can look on her without falling in love (though she seems strangely oblivious to it.) She's a thing to win, an animal to coddle and pat on the head and never take seriously or listen to or treat as an actual human being. (She also has body parts and facial features prone to acting on their own; I swear her eyebrows were angling for a spinoff, so often did they react without apparently consulting her beforehand.) As for the "everlost," by the end of the book I still had no real clue what their deal was. They're a weird, ill-defined mixture of traits, from "lost boys" playing at swords (who actually slaughter Home Office soldiers regularly, with no evident concept of pain or death) to animal-toothed inhuman creatures who materialize feathered wings to fly with. They have no clear agenda, no purpose, no reason to be so fascinated by "the Wendy" or to visit London at all for that matter. The bits and pieces of Barrie's story are strangely and unevenly applied, as when they overuse the "secret kiss at the corner of her mouth" descriptor without really tying it into the plot like it was in the original. And there's something just weird about a story that tries to be a young adult romance/adventure that tells itself with a whimsical children's book style... Overall, disappointing.
Currently Reading:
Space Opera (Catherynne M. Valente, humor/SF, paperback): Humans always envisioned first contact to be luminous beings bringing the secrets of world peace or carnivorous monsters in need of a machine gun massage or little gray men indulging a bizarre probe fetish. They didn't expect a brilliant blue fish-flamingo to appear simultaneously to every man, woman, and child to simultaneously welcome them to the galaxy and inform them that their one chance to avoid annihilation as a threat to the other sentient species of the great black lies in the galactic equivalent of Eurovision... and, of all the list of best musicians on Earth (as judged by aliens, and with significant leeway owing to our species being so young and primitive and lacking in appropriate sensory organs), only one is up to the job by still being alive: the washed-up, heartbroken, perpetually hung over flash-in-the-pan former star of the Absolute Zeros, one Danesh "Decibel" Jones.
About halfway through, and it's reading like Douglas Adams on steroids laced with mild hallucinogenics. Instead of a mild-mannered unflappable white middle-class "everyman", Valente presents a vividly multicultural and sexually diverse cast, presented in prose where every sentence contains both humor and deeper concepts and emotions. It takes a little more focus to get through than Adams, but is at least as rewarding. The tangents can be distracting, but at least they're entertaining.
Recently Read:
The Voyage of the Basilisk (Book 3 of The Natural History of Dragons/Memoirs of Lady Trent series, Marie Brennan, fantasy, paperback): The intrepid Lady Trent, Isabella Camherst, sets forth on a two-year voyage to continue her study of dragons around the world, this time bringing her growing son along in an attempt to connect with the boy.
Like the previous two volumes, this follows a strong, if not flawless, heroine around a Victorianesque world, where she encounters various interesting characters and conundrums and innumerable political and personal pitfalls. It reads fast and is quite enjoyable, with an air of adventure and a love of science and characters worth caring about.
The Wendy (Book 1 of the Tales of the Wendy series, Erin Michelle Sky and Steven Brown, YA fantasy, Kindle): All through her childhood as an orphan at a London almshouse, Wendy knew what she wanted to be: a captain of her own ship, exploring the world and having grand adventures... but almost everyone around her tells her that girls are good for nothing but marrying and mothering. As a teenager, she takes the bold step of joining England's Home Office, hoping to prove her worth - only to discover that the Office's job has nothing to do with ordinary matters at all. England, it seems, is under attack from the everlost, strange flying beasts in the shape of human boys, who steal and kidnap and hunt children, presumably to drink their blood. (The general public, of course, is kept blissfully unaware.) She was only hired because women and dogs are the only ones who can smell the magic that precedes their arrival... neither being seen as quite human by the Home Office's head, one Captain Hook. But when Wendy finally encounters one of the everlost, she finds she has more questions than answers. They don't seem anything like Hook told her - particularly one, their leader, who calls himself Peter Pan.
This riff on Peter Pan tries to make "the Wendy" into an independent and strong heroine, but misses the mark by a Neverland mile. One of the big problems is right there in the name: try as the book might to make it sound like a title, "the Wendy" is persistently reduced to a somewhat silly object even by the authors. Not one male - and the rest of the cast, save one shallow stereotype of a household cook, is male - can look on her without falling in love (though she seems strangely oblivious to it.) She's a thing to win, an animal to coddle and pat on the head and never take seriously or listen to or treat as an actual human being. (She also has body parts and facial features prone to acting on their own; I swear her eyebrows were angling for a spinoff, so often did they react without apparently consulting her beforehand.) As for the "everlost," by the end of the book I still had no real clue what their deal was. They're a weird, ill-defined mixture of traits, from "lost boys" playing at swords (who actually slaughter Home Office soldiers regularly, with no evident concept of pain or death) to animal-toothed inhuman creatures who materialize feathered wings to fly with. They have no clear agenda, no purpose, no reason to be so fascinated by "the Wendy" or to visit London at all for that matter. The bits and pieces of Barrie's story are strangely and unevenly applied, as when they overuse the "secret kiss at the corner of her mouth" descriptor without really tying it into the plot like it was in the original. And there's something just weird about a story that tries to be a young adult romance/adventure that tells itself with a whimsical children's book style... Overall, disappointing.
Currently Reading:
Space Opera (Catherynne M. Valente, humor/SF, paperback): Humans always envisioned first contact to be luminous beings bringing the secrets of world peace or carnivorous monsters in need of a machine gun massage or little gray men indulging a bizarre probe fetish. They didn't expect a brilliant blue fish-flamingo to appear simultaneously to every man, woman, and child to simultaneously welcome them to the galaxy and inform them that their one chance to avoid annihilation as a threat to the other sentient species of the great black lies in the galactic equivalent of Eurovision... and, of all the list of best musicians on Earth (as judged by aliens, and with significant leeway owing to our species being so young and primitive and lacking in appropriate sensory organs), only one is up to the job by still being alive: the washed-up, heartbroken, perpetually hung over flash-in-the-pan former star of the Absolute Zeros, one Danesh "Decibel" Jones.
About halfway through, and it's reading like Douglas Adams on steroids laced with mild hallucinogenics. Instead of a mild-mannered unflappable white middle-class "everyman", Valente presents a vividly multicultural and sexually diverse cast, presented in prose where every sentence contains both humor and deeper concepts and emotions. It takes a little more focus to get through than Adams, but is at least as rewarding. The tangents can be distracting, but at least they're entertaining.
I’ve read some good stuff since my last post.
Paul Beatty, The Sellout. You guys, this was a hell of a book. It’s one of many novels I’ve read recently about the varied experiences of being Black in America — and one of the most original, fascinating, weird, and hilarious books I’ve ever read. There’s so much richness here — I wrote a lengthy review on Goodreads and only scratched the surface. Seriously one of the best and most thought-provoking novels I have ever read.
Liza Mundy, Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Codebreakers Who Helped Win World War II. I’ve read a bunch of books in this vein — Hidden Figures, The Girls of Atomic City, a book about WASP pilots, etc. This one was pretty good. Again, here’s what I wrote on Goodreads.
John Williams, Stoner. Ugh; this story of a passive, put-upon man’s life in academia started very strong but wore thin and ultimately didn’t work for me at all; I was in full-on hate-read mode by the time I finished it. My comments on Goodreads.
And I have recently started:
Anonymous, The Plum in the Golden Vase, Vol. 1. A hugely important work of Chinese literature, written in the sixteenth century by an unknown author. I started it because it is very near to the heart of a very dear friend of mine, but I am not far enough into it yet to have got the lay of the land or really say much about it. There are five volumes all told — it’s quite an expansive work! I’m excited to get deeper into it.
Paul Beatty, The Sellout. You guys, this was a hell of a book. It’s one of many novels I’ve read recently about the varied experiences of being Black in America — and one of the most original, fascinating, weird, and hilarious books I’ve ever read. There’s so much richness here — I wrote a lengthy review on Goodreads and only scratched the surface. Seriously one of the best and most thought-provoking novels I have ever read.
Liza Mundy, Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Codebreakers Who Helped Win World War II. I’ve read a bunch of books in this vein — Hidden Figures, The Girls of Atomic City, a book about WASP pilots, etc. This one was pretty good. Again, here’s what I wrote on Goodreads.
John Williams, Stoner. Ugh; this story of a passive, put-upon man’s life in academia started very strong but wore thin and ultimately didn’t work for me at all; I was in full-on hate-read mode by the time I finished it. My comments on Goodreads.
And I have recently started:
Anonymous, The Plum in the Golden Vase, Vol. 1. A hugely important work of Chinese literature, written in the sixteenth century by an unknown author. I started it because it is very near to the heart of a very dear friend of mine, but I am not far enough into it yet to have got the lay of the land or really say much about it. There are five volumes all told — it’s quite an expansive work! I’m excited to get deeper into it.
MEANWHILE there are LETTERS: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and Ross McDonald. Two authors: one a celebrated writer of what was deemed "serious fiction" and one a celebrated writer of detective fiction. Each recognized a kindred spirit in the other in their commitment to writing and, somehow, found a deeper connection they had each given up on finding. They discussed the writing process, dealing with writer's block, and the ups and downs of the writing life. They commiserated with each other over bad reviews and celebrated each other's successes. They discussed and shared books back and forth across the continent—she in Mississippi and he in California. Their correspondence of almost thirteen years is often wry and witty and just as often deeply romantic—albeit restrained and circumspect—even though she was single and he was married and they were rarely in the same city at the same time, sometimes only learning after the fact that the other had been there as well. They shared personal losses (family members & friends), their love of birds and birding, and their views of life in the 1970s. This book of their letters to each other is fascinating; it is at times joyful and sometimes sad but always profound.
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Just finished The Mirror & the Light, which was as beautifully written as the first two in the series (Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies), but it really dragged for me in the middle. I read it in less than two months but it felt like I'd been reading it forever.
Also just finished Piranesi, which... was interesting. It started out a bit confusing (on purpose), and I almost wasn't sure I'd stick with it, but it's a fast read, and I was intrigued despite myself. I did like it overall, though I'd say the plot itself was a bit thin.
Also just finished Piranesi, which... was interesting. It started out a bit confusing (on purpose), and I almost wasn't sure I'd stick with it, but it's a fast read, and I was intrigued despite myself. I did like it overall, though I'd say the plot itself was a bit thin.
The Memory of Old Jack by Wendell Berry
Jack Beecham's memory begins to fail him as he ages into his 80s. As his dementia progresses, he takes comfort in those memories he retains of his younger days, as recounted by the narrator.
Jack Beecham's memory begins to fail him as he ages into his 80s. As his dementia progresses, he takes comfort in those memories he retains of his younger days, as recounted by the narrator.
Me: "I'm reading The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco"
My wife: "I'm watching a moose play in a lawn sprinkler."
To each their own post-election escapism....
My wife: "I'm watching a moose play in a lawn sprinkler."
To each their own post-election escapism....
I wish I was watching this too, it sounds amazing.
I'm currently rereading my favorite bits and pieces of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, partly for inspiration, and mostly because it just makes me smile, and that's something we could all use.
Enjoy! https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/animals/amused-baby-moose-in-alaska-joyfully-plays-with-water-sprinkler/vi-BB15QdjY
Hitchiker's Guide is amazing, btw. One of the best out there.
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Just finished the first Enola Holmes book. I made the mistake of watching the movie first, which was very different and I liked much more. But I've gone ahead and started the second book, which is already off to a better start than the first.
In January, I set a goodreads goal of reading twenty books--and then spent the first six months reading... all of 2. So since July I've really been trying hard to meet the goal.
In October, I made the mistake of picking up a 400,000 word novel. It's 1,000 pages and the print is tiny. Poor strategizing. I started casting about for short novels.
We had Go Set a Watchman on the shelf, and it's short-ish. I'm reading that now, and about halfway through. It's fun to see the characters, especially Scout (Jean Louise), again and it's great to see 'betrayal' used so powerfully. I'm not sure what I think of Jean Louise as a character. Some passages are stilted. Others feel exactly right, based on what I remember from To Kill a Mockingbird.
Has anyone here read the novel?
Next shortish book on the list: Passing by Nella Larson. I started it in May and enjoyed the open but got distracted.
In October, I made the mistake of picking up a 400,000 word novel. It's 1,000 pages and the print is tiny. Poor strategizing. I started casting about for short novels.
We had Go Set a Watchman on the shelf, and it's short-ish. I'm reading that now, and about halfway through. It's fun to see the characters, especially Scout (Jean Louise), again and it's great to see 'betrayal' used so powerfully. I'm not sure what I think of Jean Louise as a character. Some passages are stilted. Others feel exactly right, based on what I remember from To Kill a Mockingbird.
Has anyone here read the novel?
Next shortish book on the list: Passing by Nella Larson. I started it in May and enjoyed the open but got distracted.
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I'm currently reading Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles Verry different from anything I've read before. But it's a GREAT book!
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A little light reading...The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle. Ugh. It's very intense material and difficult to digest in large doses. So I have read and reread the first four chapters several times. Think I may crack open Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal for a complete one hundred and eighty degree turn. It always makes me smile.
Power of Now is indeed quite a tough way of thinking, particularly for those unfamiliar with a spiritual way of living (and even for those who are!). There's a lot of good stuff in there, but I couldn't swallow it whole because it requires everyone else in your life to adopt the same spiritual way of thinking. It doesn't prepare you to respond in real time (irony aside) to those who are not following the same approach. It's amazing for dealing with inner demons, insecurities, and anxieties, though. It was life-changing in that way.
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Agreed, it's such a departure from 'normal' thought (whatever the heck that is) and habitual patterns. Some of the ideas have an almost physical impact, like the author's hand comes off the page to slap you. But small doses do work best, and the author even wrote it that way and points out that it shouldn't be read as a novel and left nice little resting places for reflection. For some reason, I can't seem to make it passed the fourth chapter though (I suspect it's because I haven't really understood what I've read). So, I'll start it again and maybe make it further next time. Of course, everything I've written here is either past or future tripping so I seem to have missed the point entirely.
Sacred Games - Vikram Chandra
Gangster Ganesh Gaitonde returns to his native Mumbai after his self-imposed exile in Indonesia, until an anonymous tip to Inspector Sartaj Singh leads Sartaj and the police to Gaitonde's hide-out. Gaitonde takes his own life rather than surrender, but this only adds the mystery: why was Gaitonde in India in the first place? Federal investigators claiming "national security concerns" approach Sartaj with the charge of finding out more about Gaitonde, and the mysterious dead woman found with him.
Clearly and engagingly written in thriller style with literary aspirations, the characters are relatable even when larger than life; even Gaitonde is likeable while still clearly being a Very Bad Guy. Every page is masterly done, it's just there . . . are . . . so . . . many of them: this book is nearly 1000 pages. Chandra provides a glossary of certain Hindi words, but the meaning of those he doesn't define are apparent from the context. Each diversion of the rotating POV (including first-person flashbacks from Gaitonde) supports the whole, although it could be done a bit more quickly. This book could easily be half the length it is.
Gangster Ganesh Gaitonde returns to his native Mumbai after his self-imposed exile in Indonesia, until an anonymous tip to Inspector Sartaj Singh leads Sartaj and the police to Gaitonde's hide-out. Gaitonde takes his own life rather than surrender, but this only adds the mystery: why was Gaitonde in India in the first place? Federal investigators claiming "national security concerns" approach Sartaj with the charge of finding out more about Gaitonde, and the mysterious dead woman found with him.
Clearly and engagingly written in thriller style with literary aspirations, the characters are relatable even when larger than life; even Gaitonde is likeable while still clearly being a Very Bad Guy. Every page is masterly done, it's just there . . . are . . . so . . . many of them: this book is nearly 1000 pages. Chandra provides a glossary of certain Hindi words, but the meaning of those he doesn't define are apparent from the context. Each diversion of the rotating POV (including first-person flashbacks from Gaitonde) supports the whole, although it could be done a bit more quickly. This book could easily be half the length it is.
The Souls of Black Folk - W.E.B. DuBois
Elegantly written and packs a punch today--despite improvements in living conditions and employment access we've fallen disappointingly short on advances in attitudes and equitable social systems in 120 years. This short book is highly accessible but beautifully written, and provides great historical details of a part of history I've not seen covered in other books; Blacks are more or less ignored from the end of Reconstruction to the beginning of the Great Migration and Civil Rights Movement.
Elegantly written and packs a punch today--despite improvements in living conditions and employment access we've fallen disappointingly short on advances in attitudes and equitable social systems in 120 years. This short book is highly accessible but beautifully written, and provides great historical details of a part of history I've not seen covered in other books; Blacks are more or less ignored from the end of Reconstruction to the beginning of the Great Migration and Civil Rights Movement.
Two Years Before the Mast - Richard Henry Dana
Dana recounts a two-year trade voyage from Boston, around Cape Horn, and up to California in the late 1830s. It's a great example of the travel writing of the time, and an insight into the common worker life rather than of conquest (like Discovery of the Source of the Nile by John Hanning Speke) or tourism (Mark Twain's satirical The Innocents Abroad). Not the life I'd want! Give me my central heat, air conditioning, and ready meals in a house that doesn't need the skysails to be "furled" or "trimmed" or "battened" with "oakum." Dana apologizes in the intro for not defining nautical terms, saying we'll get the point even if he doesn't define them, and whoa lordy are there a lot of nautical terms I'd never heard! Fortunately, we have Google today for any terms I'm really interested in having defined. Reading about San Diego and Los Angeles as sleepy little 1830s Mexican villages is mind-blowing.
Dana recounts a two-year trade voyage from Boston, around Cape Horn, and up to California in the late 1830s. It's a great example of the travel writing of the time, and an insight into the common worker life rather than of conquest (like Discovery of the Source of the Nile by John Hanning Speke) or tourism (Mark Twain's satirical The Innocents Abroad). Not the life I'd want! Give me my central heat, air conditioning, and ready meals in a house that doesn't need the skysails to be "furled" or "trimmed" or "battened" with "oakum." Dana apologizes in the intro for not defining nautical terms, saying we'll get the point even if he doesn't define them, and whoa lordy are there a lot of nautical terms I'd never heard! Fortunately, we have Google today for any terms I'm really interested in having defined. Reading about San Diego and Los Angeles as sleepy little 1830s Mexican villages is mind-blowing.
I love this thread but I’ve been remiss in participating — I haven’t posted since the end of October, what’s that? Rather than a whirlwind catch-up on the last 10 weeks of the year (in which I crammed in rather a lot of reading), I’ll start fresh with the new year.
Yesterday, I started:
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By.
I read this book many years ago and it’s remarkable how much has stuck with me (I generally have a terrible memory). It is a linguistic analysis, not a literary one, and thus not particularly aimed at writers. Yet I am finding that it opens interesting lines of thought for me as a writer, about why certain metaphors seem to work so evocatively and others feel strained or forced. I mentioned in a recent crit discussion in SYW that there are certain metaphors that are so deeply woven into our everyday language that we don’t even fully realize they are metaphors, and that carelessness with them can lead to inadvertently mixing metaphors, and thence to awkward writing. This book is all about those metaphors, and all about why they work as well as they do to have become as much a part of our thought as they have.
James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce.
I knew nothing about this book going on other than that it was published in the 40s and adapted into a Joan Crawford movie. Because I write a lot of stories set in midcentury America, I read a lot of popular literature from that time, for general background research and immersion in the period. So what I knew was enough to make me pick this one up. I will say this so far: The first chapter jumps right in to a hell of a conflict. There’s really something to learn here about setting up conflict quickly and explosively.
Yesterday, I started:
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By.
I read this book many years ago and it’s remarkable how much has stuck with me (I generally have a terrible memory). It is a linguistic analysis, not a literary one, and thus not particularly aimed at writers. Yet I am finding that it opens interesting lines of thought for me as a writer, about why certain metaphors seem to work so evocatively and others feel strained or forced. I mentioned in a recent crit discussion in SYW that there are certain metaphors that are so deeply woven into our everyday language that we don’t even fully realize they are metaphors, and that carelessness with them can lead to inadvertently mixing metaphors, and thence to awkward writing. This book is all about those metaphors, and all about why they work as well as they do to have become as much a part of our thought as they have.
James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce.
I knew nothing about this book going on other than that it was published in the 40s and adapted into a Joan Crawford movie. Because I write a lot of stories set in midcentury America, I read a lot of popular literature from that time, for general background research and immersion in the period. So what I knew was enough to make me pick this one up. I will say this so far: The first chapter jumps right in to a hell of a conflict. There’s really something to learn here about setting up conflict quickly and explosively.
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I just finished Sanderson's Mistborn yesterday, which I was reading at my wife's suggestion. I did not read fantasy novels much, and ended up really loving them. My wife happens to have the next two books in the series, so I can't wait to read them
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Just started Christopher Moore's Noir. It's billed as a parody of the detective genre (hence the name) and so far, so good. I've read most of his books and he rarely disappoints so I'm looking forward to some fun