What are you reading?

Chris P

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I'm a couple chapters into The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.

I knew this was not a light read, but, wow, this is tough, heavy subject matter. Well written, but ooof.
 

Chris P

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I'm a couple chapters into The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.

I knew this was not a light read, but, wow, this is tough, heavy subject matter. Well written, but ooof.

Let me update this to say this is gorgeously written, not just well written. Ellison has mastered pace, speeding things up, slowing things down and throwing us in just the right amount of chaos before pulling us out again with nifty wording. I'd read the first chapter (the most intense so far) as a short story a couple years ago, and things smooth out (a little) after that. This book is still relevant post-Jim Crow, and I now better understand the environment and therefore the formative experiences of the older Black folks I knew in Mississippi when I lived there.
 

Chris P

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The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans)

Not sure I'll stick with this after 50 pages or so in. I'm finding Maggie an insufferable, whiny airhead and Tom an overbearing, self-important jerk. I already don't care what happens to them, let alone about their bucolic, saccharine adventures when they are being tolerable characters. Yeah, yeah, the style of storytelling at the time and Evans intended them to be this way, but . . . not working for me.
 

Lakey

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Hello all! Since my last post, I finished:

James M Cain, Mildred Pierce — More nuanced and complex than I expected. Here are my thoughts on Goodreads.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By — On the border between linguistics and philosophy, analyzing not just how metaphors become a part of our language but also how they inform our understanding of truth. Reading this as an aspiring writer of fiction gave it a new dimension compared to the last time I read it. More about that on Goodreads.

I also read:

Bernice L McFadden, Nowhere is a Place — A solidly written and compelling family saga which traces several generations of a Black (and Native American) family from slavery through to more or less the present.

And now I’m working on:

Yevgeny Zamyatin, We — This 1924 dystopian novel is an obvious inspiration for George Orwell’s 1984; it’s also really enjoyable in its own right. Funny thing; I was peeking at some Goodreads reviews today and saw some people saying “this is obviously the superior novel to Orwell’s” and others saying “while Orwell’s book is obviously better....” When I write a review of this, I don’t think I will compare the two, as others have thoroughly trod that ground. Rather I want to compare it to another dystopian novel, a childhood favorite of mine that clearly owes it a great debt, Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day.

Lauren Jae Gutterman, Her Neighbor’s Wife: A History of Lesbian Desire Within Marriage — Who can resist a book with a title like that? Okay, well, maybe it’s just my particular buttons that it pushes, but if you know the first or second thing about me (or have read the story I have up in historical SYW at this moment) you would see that title and think “yep, that one’s for Lakey.” Anyway it’s a straightforwardly written but rigorously researched text that draws on oral histories, interviews, archived letters and diaries, and the like to explore and analyze what it says on the tin.

Happy reading, all!

:e2coffee:
 
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ldlago

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I'm just about finished reading "The Clinic" by Jonathan Kellerman. I have a friend who reads many more books than I do. She usually donates them after reading. I told her she could pass some my way, and I would donate them when I finished.
 

Chris P

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Remembering - Wendell Berry.

Former journalist and back-to-the-land influencer Andy Cattlett attends an agricultural conference in San Francisco, where he is the only farmer. Since losing his right hand in a farming accident some years earlier, Andy's bitterness and rage at the industrialization of agriculture and commoditization of food boils over at the conference. The rest of the book see-saws through Andy's childhood life on the farm, journalism in Chicago, and rediscovery of the way of life left behind after World War II.

This book is much more literary and atypical than Berry's usual Port William fare, and his talents as a poet shine through. It's also refreshing not to have the rehashing of the same old characters and timeline he usually focuses on. One of his best novels.
 
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Diana Hignutt

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Since Christmas I have read several Christie Poirot novels:

-Death on the Nile
-The ABC Murders
-The Mysterious Affair at Styles
-Evil Under the Sun

She is so clever, the books are such a delight.
 

Chris P

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Since Christmas I have read several Christie Poirot novels:

-Death on the Nile
-The ABC Murders
-The Mysterious Affair at Styles
-Evil Under the Sun

She is so clever, the books are such a delight.

The Poirot books were the first adult books I ever got into after watching the Death on the Nile movie. Delightful indeed! I was convinced she wrote the books as if nobody did it, then went back and added clues once she decided on the culprit. I'm not sure if that's what she did, though. I never figured out a single case!

Evil Under the Sun was one of my favorites, and unfortunately isn't as well known.
 

oneblindmouse

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I've just finished We Were All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. Brilliant! Unforgettable! A dysfunctional family struggling with loss and guilt, with a twist that I did NOT see coming. Fowler discusses a controversial issue (I won't spoil it by saying what) from a very original angle.
 

Chris P

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I am re-reading Tolstoy's War and Peace. I read it about 25 years ago, and always said I would read it again. The story is as amazing as I remember it, and I'm looking forward to seeing how much I remember accurately and how much will strike me new. However, now that I know more about writing, I'm seeing all the head hopping, telling-not-showing ("Pierre did this because he wanted to impress Prince Andrey") and other things that I didn't know to look for the first read-around. They probably weren't really things people worried about in the 1860s when it was published. Some of that too might be a function of the translation, but it's not bothering me as much as it might in other books.

Now bring on the borzois!
 

mccardey

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I've just finished Walter Isaacson's The Code Breaker which is all about gene-editing and the people who invented and developed it. Fascinating stuff, while we're all heading out for our covaxes...
 
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Chris P

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I've just finished Walter Isaacson's The Code Breaker which is all about gene-editing and the people who invented and developed it. Fascinating stuff, while we're all heading out for our covaxes...
I've not read that one, but I did read Jennifer Doudna's A Crack in Creation. It's as good of a science for the educated lay public as you're going to find. (Is that the right term? Specialized lay public? You would need to know something about genetics, so it's not just for anyone, unlike some of Bill Bryson's popular science books)
 
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ULTRAGOTHA

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I'm reading The House in the Cerulean Sea. It's going slowly because it's an actual paper book. So far, so good.
 

Brightdreamer

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The Murderbot series and House in the Cerulean Sea are both excellent.

And it's been a while (obviously), so an update:

Recently Read:
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (Book 2 of the Singing Hills Cycle, Nghi Vo, Fantasy, Kindle): A cleric charged with gathering tales and histories must stall three hungry tiger sisters from devouring them and their companions over a long, cold night, telling them a story of a long-ago tigress and a young woman... but the tigers insist on correcting the cleric's version. Second in a series, it works fine as a standalone. The world's imaginative, the tale-with-a-tale has a nice folktale feel, and the frame story is more than just a gimmick, with real tension and terror as the tiger sisters grow ever hungrier and impatient as the cleric tells the story "wrong". A fast and enjoyable read.

Deadline (Book 2 of the Newsflesh trilogy, "Mira Grant", Horror/SF, Nook): The last surviving founder of a popular news team is at the end of his sanity, carrying the voice of his dead sister in his head as he works to bring justice to the hidden conspiracy that weaponized the zombie apocalypse. A fugitive scientist from the CDC brings the unwelcome news of an even bigger and deeper rot than he anticipated, and a news story that needs to be broken... if he and his surviving crew live long enough. Once again, I was blown away by this remarkable prescient story of life under a pandemic, with plausible-sounding science beneath the zombie phenomenon (and people exploiting the virus and the fear of it for personal gain.) The characters continue to go through Hell, and it ends with a dark twist setting up the final trilogy installment. Recommended, if harrowing, reading, an adrenaline rush that doesn't sacrifice character growth.

Nine Perfect Strangers (Liane Moriarty, suspense, audiobook): Nine strangers, each facing their own crises, come to a remote Australian health spa for a promised 10-day "transformative" treatment... only to find that the spa's owner is on the edge of a mental breakdown. I chose this to move beyond my genre comfort zone, but felt let down; there wasn't that much suspense until well over halfway through, and it's then shortchanged by a bait-and-switch copout. It's more a character study, with repetitive themes across the characters (and a strange emphasis on children, either bearing them or raising them, being ultimately what everyone should aspire to and what everyone really wants.) Some decent scenes and moments, but ultimately a letdown.

Currently Reading:
The Forever War (Book 1 of the Forever War series, Joseph Haldeman, SF, Kindle): The human cost of eternal warfare, as experienced by a soldier in humanity's interstellar wars. A classic I've been meaning to get to, considered a foundational SF work.
 
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williemeikle

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Just finished a reread of Stephen King's REVIVAL. It's definitely a top-five King for me. lovely shoutbacks to classics of the genre and a genuinely disturbing ending. Wonderful stuff.
 

Lakey

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I started Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun. It might have been a mistake — it’s going to be a very tough read. It is about a young man maimed in World War I. He wakes up in a hospital, and over the course of the book he comes to realize just how badly maimed he is (spoiler: it’s very, very bad). The narrative (thus far) alternates between the horror of the present moment as he comes to understand that yet another body part or ability that he thought he still had is actually gone, and delirious flashbacks to times before he was wounded. Not surprisingly this powerful anti-war narrative, written in the late 30s, was very popular during WWII and had a bit of a renaissance during the Vietnam era.

:e2coffee:
 

Vincent

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Yesterday I finished Pratchett's "Hogfather" and today started on Clive Barker's "The Great and Secret Show."

I'm doing a lot of my fiction "reading" via audiobook lately, while I work. It's working out well.
 

williemeikle

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The Tailor of Panama by John Le Carre. A deeply cynical companion piece to Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana. Hugely entertaining so far.