What are you reading?

Elle.

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 10, 2018
Messages
1,272
Reaction score
734
Location
United Kingdom
Just finished Ali Smith's Girl Meets Boy — really enjoyed it. Nice novella on genders, expectations, gender roles, etc... The only criticism is that every line of dialogue is tagged with "I/You/He/She said" I started skipping reading them.

Now onto Nell Zink's The Wallcreeper.
 

writergirl1994

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 7, 2018
Messages
72
Reaction score
6
Location
Virginia, U.S.
Wow, that book's a chunkster! I got it at a used book store in North Carolina some years back but I've never read it, it and "She's Come Undone" are just sitting on my shelf. Is it good? :)
 

Verboten

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 25, 2018
Messages
151
Reaction score
82
Location
Midwest
Recently finished "The Alice Network" by Kate Quinn and "Creature of the Baradoons" by Jeremy Lee Riley(local author). Next will be "Hillbilly Elegy" by J.D. Vance and "Cabinet of Curiosity" by Lincoln & Child.
 

writergirl1994

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 7, 2018
Messages
72
Reaction score
6
Location
Virginia, U.S.
I'm reading "A Virtuous Woman" by Kaye Gibbons. I think it's better than "Ellen Foster," the writing runs a lot smoother, but so far I haven't really gotten into the story or either of the main characters. There is some beautiful prose, though.
 

DanielSTJ

The Wandering Bard
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 3, 2017
Messages
5,410
Reaction score
368
Age
34
Location
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
The Naked and the Dead- Norman Mailer
The Satanic Verses- Salman Rushdie
This Nervous Breakdown is Driving Me Crazy- Annie Reiner
50 Essays- Various
Complete Poems- Longfellow

And a Kindle e-book about a WW2 village. It isn't great, so I didn't bother to list it. Still, I'm getting better at picking ones I like. This one is a slight improvement over the last free one I encountered.

Also read Persians, Prometheus Bound and The Seven Against Thebes-- all plays by Aeschylus. I thought they were all really good besides the latter.
 

mourningdoves

Registered
Joined
May 12, 2018
Messages
4
Reaction score
0
The Gene: an intimate history, by Siddhartha Mukherjee. So far, it has been as much a scientific history as an exposition of how genes work (true to its subtitle, I guess). I'm about halfway through - into the 1970s and 1980s - and the discoveries are getting just advanced enough to make my head hurt a little. But Mukherjee is a wonderful writer; the book is truly an object lesson in how this type of thing can be written.
 

Chris P

Likes metaphors mixed, not stirred
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 4, 2009
Messages
22,617
Reaction score
7,297
Location
Wash., D.C. area
Cane by Jean Toomer. A collection of loosely connected stories, poems and songs about . . . Not sure yet. Brilliantly written and lyrical.
 

DanielSTJ

The Wandering Bard
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 3, 2017
Messages
5,410
Reaction score
368
Age
34
Location
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
I'm going to be reading Satanic Verses pretty soon. How is it?

I actually quite like it! It's very whimsical and poetic, I find. I read Midnight's Children and thought it was meh, but this one is a GRAND IMPROVEMENT.

Go for it! : D
 

Verboten

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 25, 2018
Messages
151
Reaction score
82
Location
Midwest
I actually quite like it! It's very whimsical and poetic, I find. I read Midnight's Children and thought it was meh, but this one is a GRAND IMPROVEMENT.

Go for it! : D

Excellent! Looking forward to it. Currently reading Hillbilly Elegy. Just past the intro though.
 

Syrup

Real Life Magical Girl
Registered
Joined
Jan 22, 2015
Messages
24
Reaction score
2
Currently reading a few things:

Picking back up on my Uncanny Magazine subscription backlog. I'm on issue 5 I think?

Girl in Pieces
by Kathleen Glasgow. I guess this one should go in the "things I thought I'd like but didn't" thread. About 60% of the way in and it's just...eh. The first third of the book really caught me and the remainder just isn't following through.
 

Lakey

professional dilettante
Staff member
Super Moderator
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 20, 2017
Messages
2,714
Reaction score
3,965
Location
New England
The Pearl Thief, by Elizabeth Wein. I loved Code Name Verity so much I had to see what else Wein had written.
Code Name Verity is a freaking masterpiece, and it would be hard for anyone to replicate that level of awesome. But Wein certainly has excellent chops. I quite enjoyed The Pearl Thief. To my reading it was as much a book about sexuality as anything else - a young girl trying to make sense out of intense feelings fireworking out of her in all directions. The mystery was fun but entirely secondary to that. Rose Under Fire has a lot to recommend it as well.

I haven't posted to this thread in an age! Since my last post, I've read:

Hidden Figures, Margot Lee Shetterly -- The material she's working with is so fascinating and wonderful that it's easy to overlook the workmanlike but not-super-fantastic writing.

Laura, Very Caspary -- Everyone remembers Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett from that era, but they ought to read Caspary too. Laura takes the hard-boiled detective story in a somewhat different direction. It's really interesting stuff.

The Awakening and Selected Stories, Kate Chopin -- Interesting for its proto-modernism and proto-feminism, and the unexpected ethnography of fin-de-siècle Louisiana.

Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner -- Really cool in some ways, really dated and repugnantly misogynist in others.

Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley -- Still trying to gather my thoughts on this one. It's incredibly provocative, extremely Enlightenment, and thoroughly Romantic.

The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton -- Meh all around. Meh suspense, meh science, meh writing, meh book.

I'm currently reading The Voyage Out, Virginia Woolf. It's enjoyable, in a floaty, insubstantial sort of way. Most of the characters lack depth, but I think it's intentional, a sort of commentary on the superficiality of the society it's portraying. It's rather a lampooning, I think.
 

RobertLCollins

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 22, 2018
Messages
128
Reaction score
4
Yesterday evening I finished Michael Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kliest. It's an influential German novella published around 1810. Among the works inspired by it are the novel Ragtime and the film based on it. I came across the story at TV Tropes. The plot has inspired a fantasy story I'm planning on writing, so I decided to real the novella.

It's quite the read. It's very much a story of how corruption among the nobility causes rebellion among common folk. There are also instances of mistakes made that end up complicating the story further. Yet there's also this mysterious fortune teller, who may actually be able to see the future, and how that complicates the plot towards the end, which gives a fantasy twist to an otherwise realistic work. I found the ebook in a collection of German classics at Project Gutenberg.

I've read through all the books I acquired last year. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to take another run at a classic I paused in my reading, or if I'm going to buy some new ebooks. I have writing to do, so I'll take some time to think about it...
 

DanielSTJ

The Wandering Bard
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 3, 2017
Messages
5,410
Reaction score
368
Age
34
Location
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Absalom, Absalom!- William Faulkner
The Orenda- Joseph Boyden
Inland Passage- Ann Rule
The Hobbit- J.R.R Tolkien
Four Years- William Butler Yeats
The Rook: A Novel- Daniel O'Malley

Yup.

Added to list:

Against the Day- Thomas Pynchon
Debits and Credits- Rudyard Kipling
De Profundis and Other Writings- Oscar Wilde
Poetical Works- Robert Brooke
Into the Black: Odyssey One- Evan Currie
 
Last edited:

mselephant2015

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 19, 2018
Messages
124
Reaction score
7
Location
UK
Am currently reading Cujo by Stephen King, Killer Diamonds by Rebecca Chance aaand The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillippa Gregory, which I have already read but it's one I read during my break at work (cause I don't talk to people, ha xD).
 

Cobalt Jade

Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 21, 2015
Messages
3,289
Reaction score
1,441
Location
Seattle
Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer. To see what all the fuss was about. Never saw the movies, which helps. But it's still very dull. This was a bestseller?
 

Kjbartolotta

Potentially has/is dog
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 15, 2014
Messages
4,197
Reaction score
1,049
Location
Los Angeles
Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer. To see what all the fuss was about. Never saw the movies, which helps. But it's still very dull. This was a bestseller?

I never read it, but DID read In Life and Death, the gender-flipped reimagining where Girl!Edward starts freaking out over the delicious smell of Boy!Bella. Because there's nothing more enticing than the smell of a 16 year old boy. 14/10 Sparkles.
 

Lakey

professional dilettante
Staff member
Super Moderator
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 20, 2017
Messages
2,714
Reaction score
3,965
Location
New England
I'm currently reading The Voyage Out, Virginia Woolf. It's enjoyable, in a floaty, insubstantial sort of way. Most of the characters lack depth, but I think it's intentional, a sort of commentary on the superficiality of the society it's portraying. It's rather a lampooning, I think.

I finished this, and, uh, let's just say it took a turn. I'm not sure why I was so blindsided by it, really. Lovely book, anyway.

I also reread The Warden, Anthony Trollope. It's quite good, with a more provincial focus that is not as broad in scope as The Way We Live Now, so if you wanted to give Trollope a chance without committing to too much, it's a good place to start. It does have a lot of good satire aimed at institutions like the Church and the Newspapers; he takes a swipe at novelists and readers of novels as well, which is a fine thing for a novelist to do.

I started The Sot-Weed Factor, John Barth. It seems thus far a solid and enjoyable romp, in the tradition of Tom Jones (except it's a historical novel written in the 20th century, where Tom Jones was of its own time). But kind of annoyingly male, so far, too full of bawdy humor that just isn't that funny if you're not a pubescent boy. I might have to offset it with something that has a less overwhelmingly male sensibility.

Gore Vidal's Julian is not that (did Gore Vidal even know that there was such a thing as women?), but I'm starting it anyway, because a friend of mine is reading it and I thought it would be fun to read together.

And a virtual book group of mine is starting The Girls of Atomic City, Denise Kiernan, which is on my research list anyway, so I'm going to go ahead and read that with them. (This is a nonfiction book, not to be confused with Atomic City Girls, a fiction about the same women, those who worked at Oak Ridge labs during WWII.)
 
Last edited:

Taylor Harbin

Power to the pen!
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 8, 2013
Messages
3,078
Reaction score
1,499
Location
Arkansas
Just finished “Hemingway: The Final Years” by Michael Reynolds. Excellent biography. Now to get the other four volumes.

Now working through “Who Censored Roger Rabbit?” By Gary K Wolf.
 

Brightdreamer

Just Another Lazy Perfectionist
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 22, 2012
Messages
12,975
Reaction score
4,510
Location
USA
Website
brightdreamersbookreviews.blogspot.com
Been about a month, so another procrastination update...

Recently Read:
The Book Jumper (Mechthild Glaser, YA fantasy, paperback): 17-year-old Amy and her free spirit mother return to the ancestral home, the Scottish isle Stormsay... where Amy discovers the family legacy of "book jumping," the ability to enter stories and interact with the characters and their worlds. Her arrival coincides with a new threat that reaches from the literary world to the real one.

At heart, I firmly believe that this was supposed to be a middle grade story, not one aimed at teens. Though Amy has a few make-out sessions and some teen body issues, the whole story and concept just did not feel... sophisticated enough, is the best word I can think of. The in-book characters and worlds felt too flat and simplistic, the logic just not quite strong enough to withstand much scrutiny (book jumpers are supposed to "protect" stories from interference, but the only major threat to in-book worlds is... book jumpers, of which there are only two dwindling lineages, all of whom age out before thirty. So, protect them from themselves...?) Amy's also not much more than a teen girl cliche: she's clumsy, has body issues, and needs male characters to lead her to clues and conclusions far more often than not, and her reactions tend to be more in line with a preteen than a seventeen year old, even an immature seventeen year old. Despite itself, it delivers a decent finale, with a fairly emotional finale that reveals a true love of reading (details would constitute spoilers, but the imagery of characters in a favorite book paying respects to a favorite reader was well done and touching.) Barely squeaking out at an Okay rating, I contend that it would've done better had it been tweaked and the MC aged down to middle grade... and given a little more agency.

The Warrior Within (Angus McIntyre, sci-fi, Kindle): Karsman and the artificial personas in his brain - specialist personalities such as Strategist, Diplomat, and Warrior, among others - have been mayor of their small town along the planet-encircling Road for years, but hold little actual power, and he prefers to stay out of trouble if he can help it. The real power, everyone knows, rests with the Muljaddy in the town's Temple. When three offworld soldiers show up, Karsman finds hims drawn into the sort of trouble he left the capital city to avoid.

A novella offered by Tor's ebook-of-the-month club, it's a well-paced, fast-reading tale, with some mind-bending concepts around the edges. Karsman's a decent MC, and his world has all manner of oddities about it, though the plot keeps things at a human enough level not to leave readers behind. Entertaining.

Beneath the Sugar Sky (Book 3 in the Wayward Children series, Seanan McGuire, YA? fantasy, hardcover): At Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children, a boarding school for kids and teens who have traveled beyond doorways to other worlds and been returned to Earth, a strange girl splashing down in the turtle pond is hardly unexpected... though her story is amazing even by the school's standards. Rini claims to be the teenaged daughter of Sumi - only Sumi was still a girl when she was murdered at the school. With that murder, time in the candy Nonsense realm of Confection is unraveling, allowing the wicked Queen of Cakes to return, and Rini's slowly vanishing from existence. A handful of students undertake a quest to restore Sumi to life and save Rini and Confection... but how, even in the impossible realms beyond the invisible doors, can one possibly cheat Death?

Another superb entry in a wonderful series. Ideas that look silly or superficial take on greater depth and nuance, making for a memorable, thought-provoking tale that challenges its characters in many ways. Highly recommended book in a highly recommended series.

Currently Reading:
All These Worlds (Book 3 in the Bobiverse series, Dennis E. Taylor, sci-fi, paperback): The Bobs, formerly human AIs at the heart of self-replicating space probes, work to preserve humanity and fend off an alien threat, even as newer generations of Bobs grow disinterested in their greater mission.

I literally just started this, so I have no impressions yet, but given the track record I'm expecting Good Things.

I'm also poking at a nonfiction book about dirigibles on my Kindle (Dirigible Dreams: The Age of the Airship by C. Michael Hiam); too soon to tell if I'll stick with it yet, but I have a sort-of-but-not-steampunk tale with airships I need to clean up, so I thought this would make for good research. Nothing outright turning me off, at least, so I'll likely end up finishing it.