What are you reading?

The Lady from the Black Lagoon, a biography about Milicent Patrick, the woman who designed the iconic Creature from the Black Lagoon and was screwed out of all credit by jealous rivals (she later went on to become one of Disney's first female animators).

I've got several books going right now.

Bookclub #1: 21 Truths About Love by Matthew Dicks -- a book of lists about a man who quit his job to run a book store and is rapidly running out of money, but he doesn't want to tell his pregnant wife about their financial dire straits.

Bookclub #2: Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee -- I have no idea what this is about, I didn't read the summary, just picked it up from the library. I'm about 3 pages in.

Audio: David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell -- Gladwell examines how perceived weaknesses in the "underdog" can actually be an advantage.

Chris P said:

Best American Science and Nature Writing 2019.

I've always loved science and non-fic, and over the holidays I had the inspiration that it might be time to reconsider maybe focusing my writing efforts on creative non-fic. Shoot, a long-abandoned non-fic project was partof what brought me here. If anything,it could be a fun diversion or provide retirement activities (and maybe modest mad money income) when the day comes. I've been taking online trainings to see what I think before I start thinking about things like coursework or MFA or anything.

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Ooof. I gotta take a break from this one. The climate is circling the drain, and we've known that for 40 years and despite individual improvements the aggregrate outlook is grim. We're well into the Sixth Extinction as a result. I need to know that and take action, but I can't live there 24/7.

Time for some Calvin and Hobbes.

Alas Babylon - Pat Frank

I'm reading Swing That Music by Louis Armstrong, The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt, The Atheist in the Attic by Samuel R. Delaney, and I recently finished Permanent Record by Edward Snowden, which was the richest horror story I've read in years.

Redemption by Leon Uris, having just finished his Trinity, which I found awesome. I'd forgotten how well he writes.

Just finished Stephen King's THE INSTITUTE. Another 'children in peril' tale, and another winner.

I've been one of his 'constant readers' ever since the first UK paperback edition of CARRIE way back when and the old guy has still got the ability to draw me into his world and take me away with him for the duration.

Court of the Lion by Eleonor Cooney and Daniel Altieri. 930 pages of teensy weensy script is just perfect for Coronovirus lockdown! The book is a well-researched historical novel about the fall of China's Tang Dynasty in the 8th Century. After the deaths of his beloved Empress and his favourite son, Emperor Minghuang goes into a deep depression. But later falls for a beautiful young Taoist nun, formerly in his son's harem. Loyal eunuchs, double-dealing ministers, banished poets, superstitious courtiers, rebelling subjects. It's exciting stuff! Just wish the print was bigger.

Ballad of the White Horse by GK Chesterton.

Chesterton is like a beloved older relative that I admire for every pearl of his wisdom, but the moment he starts talking I want to stand up and pick an argument with.

Beautiful poem, perhaps the best thing he ever wrote. But part of my can't love it as much as his novels (or even his Father Brown stories), where his apologetics are slightly more mitigated by his wryness and ability to concoct impressively trippy set-pieces. Ballad​ is simply not the vehicle for that.

Nathan Coulter, by Wendell Berry.

After Berry's short stories, I was disappointed by this short novel. I expected the gentle worldplays, juxtapositions and cleverness of the stories. However, this book was a fairly straightforward string of recollections of the title character during the 1930s. The theme of the book is loss and death, and was notable to me that characters kept leaving (dying, running away, or irreparable splits) and nkbody new arrives. Good in its way, and I guess Berry's short story style would be hard to sustain for a wholenovel, even a short one.

The Nickel Boys by Coulton Whitehead. It was okay; decent story but not without its problems. In the early 1960s, Elwood Curtis, college bound but accepting a hitched ride from a car thief, gets sent to the racially segregated Nickel Academy reform school. Brutal to all, the school is especially harsh on the black students, with a secret graveyard "out back" for those students who "go missing." I found the writing disjointed in places, the narration uneven, with mixed metaphors and non-sequiturs. Parts seemed to be attempts at nostalgia, even though it seemed he was trying to place these events amid an idyllic happy time in collective memory. Not Whitehead's fault, but I have recently read a short story taking place along almost identical lines, only the school was for Native American re-education and taking place 100 years earlier, that made this story line seem old hat.

I was also troubled by how many such writings and convos with people in my community seem to say that civil rights activism ended in 1968, and nothing has happened since. Don't get me wrong; it's important to understand the events of the 1960s and the people who risked it all to do the right thing, but events since then (tail end of Great Migration to northern cities, ghettoization, gentrification) are only hinted at, if that, in the portions of Elwood's life taking place after he leaves Nickel. There's so much going on now, and fiction and non-fiction being written, that eclipse this book in relevance and literary merit.

I've just read "The Last Assault 1944 - The Battle of the Bulge" by Charles Whiting. It's a history book.

Lordy me, I've seen some howlers but this is a classic. Near the end he baldly states that the M36 tank destroyer with its 90mm gun was the only allied tank that could destroy a German Tiger. Did he never hear of the Sherman Firefly armed with the 17 pounder? Duh.

Apart from that he expresses an interesting theory that the battle was some sort of elaborate plan by Eisenhower to get the Germans to leave their defense lines and attack so that they could be beaten more quickly/easily. Well, that plan depended on the Germans taking the bait... some plan! Nah I don't buy it. For one thing, this masterful plan actually delayed the western allies. Duh.

The Hidden Hand, by E.D.E.N. Southworth.

On a dark and stormy night (no, really) in 1843 a local rural Virginia magistrate is called to the hovel of the local witchdoctor to take the deposition of a dying woman, Nancy Grewell, a long-missing midwife herbalist from the area. Grewell relates how ten years prior she was kidnapped and forced to attend a mysteriously masked woman giving birth. She delivers twins, the boy born dead but the girl living. The mother begs Grewell to hide the girl and give their captors the stillborn boy to fulfill some unspoken dark bargain. Grewell passes the girl off as one she's caring for, but both are turned over to slave traders to be sent south. Grewell, the girl, and two others escape. Now, Grewell, with her last breaths, has returned and begs the magistrate to punish her captors and find the girl's mother. The only clue is a ring stamped with two names the mother had given Grewell at the birth.

Southworth was the best selling female American writer of the last half of the 1800s. She is a product of her time, and once I got past the jarring way she wrote the slave dialect and other perspectives of her time, the story is shaping up to be quite good. This is Southworth's best selling novel.

I cracked The Vampire Lestat last night. Second in the series that Rice wrote about Lestat. I first read it in the 90s, devoured all things Anne Rice back then, up to the religious stuff, but have not re-read any of her things so was curious to look at this, sitting on the bookshelf, in light of 'craft' analysis.

What an great writer. She really, really uses specific detail to color a scene and bring a character alive. I'm making notes as I go.

Lakey said:

Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens. Best not say much. I can see why it was hugely popular, but for me the poorly crafted elements -- and there are so many of them -- smother its better qualities.

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Rarely does a book make me angry by its execution. This one did. Actually angry. I need to get over it but I am left speechless by the rave reviews. I just don't get it.


Patty: Anne Rice was so incredibly popular in the 90s it's sad how she's almost forgotten already today. I never read much of hers, but what I did was engaging and solid.

Hopscotch- Julio Cortázar

Done the first "recommended" read through and now I'm reading it the "Hopscotch Order"and way! :O

Chris P said:

The Hidden Hand, by E.D.E.N. Southworth.

On a dark and stormy night (no, really) in 1843 a local rural Virginia magistrate is called to the hovel of the local witchdoctor to take the deposition of a dying woman, Nancy Grewell, a long-missing midwife herbalist from the area. Grewell relates how ten years prior she was kidnapped and forced to attend a mysteriously masked woman giving birth. She delivers twins, the boy born dead but the girl living. The mother begs Grewell to hide the girl and give their captors the stillborn boy to fulfill some unspoken dark bargain. Grewell passes the girl off as one she's caring for, but both are turned over to slave traders to be sent south. Grewell, the girl, and two others escape. Now, Grewell, with her last breaths, has returned and begs the magistrate to punish her captors and find the girl's mother. The only clue is a ring stamped with two names the mother had given Grewell at the birth.

Southworth was the best selling female American writer of the last half of the 1800s. She is a product of her time, and once I got past the jarring way she wrote the slave dialect and other perspectives of her time, the story is shaping up to be quite good. This is Southworth's best selling novel.

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I wrote this right just before getting to the parts where the story line that drew me in a big way went off the rails to other story lines of other characters I couldn't bring myself to care about. To boot, the dark and gritty flavor gets diluted by the curmudegeonly character of Major Warfield and the impetuous and younger-than-her-thirteen-years and conveniently streetwise only at convenience Capitola. By the time we get to the good story line, the momentum is gone. Now, I find that The Hidden Hand ends abruptly with bad guys waiting in a cave and another bad guy making moves on an unsuspecting good guy, and that the story continues in another book Capitola's Peril. I honestly only skimmed the non-Capitola parts of Hidden Hand, slowing only when the main conflict resumed, and I'll probably do so as well with Capitola's Peril. I do want to see how Southworth handles the final resolution to Capitola's situation.

Gotta love public domain ebooks: FREE! I don't fret about downloading a book knowing I'm only going to read 30% of it.

Been a bit since I updated here... am procrastinating again.

Last Read:
Artificial Condition (Book 2 of the Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells, SF, Kindle): Freed from its former owner/employer, the artificial security unit that called itself Murderbot could've gone with its new "guardians" and lived where its kind are not enslaved... but questions about its half-erased past still haunt it. Murderbot sets out across the galaxy to the scene of its greatest crime, that one that led to its moniker (and the incident that led to it hacking its own governor module to acquire free will, so it would never have to commit mass murder again.) With some unexpected - and unwanted - assistance from a bored university transport ship, ART, Murderbot must pass for human if it's going to get down to the surface of the moon and investigate. Getting itself hired as a "security consultant" was easy... but, once again, the humans around it have a remarkable penchant for wandering into trouble, and it's up to Murderbot to keep them from getting killed.

The second novel retains the humor (and occasional violence) of the first, and Murderbot continues to develop as it explores its first taste of freedom. Its greatest desire is still to sit around watching media shows and be left alone by annoying humans, but it can't rest until it knows just what happened on that mining moon in the memories that were wiped... and old habits of protecting people from themselves die hard. The transport ship ART makes for an interesting (if often arrogant and nosy) sidekick of sorts, providing another glimpse into nonhuman intelligence in this world; Wells doesn't have her AIs aspire to humanity - they find humans puzzling at best and repulsive or terrifying at worst - but the freedom to determine their own destinies... and the freedom from having to clean up after humans' messes all the time. The greater arc of Murderbot's history advances a little while the in-book arc resolves itself. So far it's an enjoyable series.

Feed (Book 1 of the Newsflesh trilogy, Mira Grant, horror/SF, Nook): Twenty years ago, two medical miracles - a cure for the common cold and a panacea against cancer - were released into the world... but nobody foresaw what would happen when the bioengineered viruses met and mingled. Now ubiquitous in mammals over forty pounds, the combined infection does indeed prevent colds and cancer, but also turns corpses into the living dead, driven to bite and turn anything it comes into contact with. In this near-future, large gatherings are a memory, blood tests and secured compounds are routine, and everyone grows up knowing that putting a bullet in the head of a loved one on the verge of turning zombie may be the greatest act of love. Now bloggers are the new trusted sources of news (traditional media lingering on, but having been too slow to adapt to the new world); ratings are everything, whether from the facts reported by Newsies, thrill-seeking videos made by Irwins, or poetry and escapist stories penned by Fictionals. The After the End Times site - brother and sister Shaun and Georgie "George", and friend Buffy - just got their big break when invited to cover the presidential campaign of Senator Ryman. But what they find on the campaign trail is something far worse than ordinary political dirt: a plot that could destroy post-Rising America.

I didn't expect to be sucked into a zombie-based story with politics at its core like I was here, but then the author (Seanan McGuire under her horror pseudonym) has never let me down yet. The action rarely slackens, the characters are never dumb (even if they sometimes make mistakes), and it pulls off some real gut punches and twists along the way. The vision of a pandemic world of social isolation and fear of infection (and those who would weaponize both the infection and the fear, as well as those reading religion into everything) feels eerily timely, though the book was published ten years ago; the author did solid research and put serious thought into a viral pandemic and how society would react and adapt, and it shows now more than ever. I have the trilogy on my Nook, but have to take a break before starting the next installment.

Currently Reading:
House of Dragons (Jessica Cluess, YA fantasy, paperback): After the Emperor's death, the eldest child of each of the five noble Houses of the realm are summoned to compete for the empty crown. This time, however, the Great Dragon seems to have made a mistake or changed the rules - the five summoned are outcasts, bastards, the overlooked and untrained. One among them will rise to the throne, while the rest will die.

This is an ARC I got with a mystery box from Penguin Random House's one-day "VirtualCon." So far, it has magic, dragons, great Houses, mysterious histories and worldlore... all the good stuff. It's pulling me in so far.

Loved Thinner.

Running the Rift - by Naomi Benaron

Just finished 'Normal People, by Sally Rooney and highly recommend.

The promise by R L Matthewson. A little disappointing so far, which is a shame because I usually love her stuff.

Just finished: Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse Book #1) by Charlaine Harris. I keep hearing about this series so I thought I'd give it a shot; I haven't yet found anything set in South Louisiana I can relate to but Ms. Harris does a decent job with a North Louisiana setting. (Note: I capitalized North & South Louisiana because they're almost like different countries.) I don't know yet what I think of the book; I guess I'll have to let it settle for a while.

Just begun:

Time to Be in Earnest. P.D. James' memoir. As you'd expect, her writing is engaging and meticulous.

All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones. A collection of short stories that "turns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them further north, people who in Jones's masterful hands, emerge as fully human and morally complex, whether they are country folk used to getting up with the chickens or people with centuries of education behind them."

The Wisdom of the Myths: How Greek Mythology Can Change Your Life by Luc Ferry. This is part of his "Learning to Live" series—which is not the type of thing that normally draws me—but the description was engaging enough to pick it up for the price: "The Greek myths are the founding narratives of Western civilization: to understand them is to know the origins of philosophy, literature, art, science, law, and more." It's an interesting perspective but I'm unsure how I feel about or whether I agree with the connections Mr. Ferry makes.

I'm currently reading Cibola Burn by James Corey. I love this series!

The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, by Wendell Berry. Pretty dated (published 1977 and updated 1986) and not well argued, but a good time capsule of the effects of disastrous Nixon-era ag policies and the 1980s farm crisis.