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Spoilers What Book Are You Reading?
- Thread starter Huntn
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I recently had occasion to buy copies (with large, generously sized fonts) of both trilogies (His Dark Materials and Abhorsen) for a friend whose eyes are troubling him, yet who longed for fresh reading material, and the assistant in the shop where I bought them - a woman well versed in good fantasy writing - enthused: "These are two of my favourite fantasy series' - ever!"
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Just finishing up "Castaway Odyssey" by Eric Flint and Ryk E. Spoor. It's book 5 of their Boundary series. Very well done series and all good SF reads.
Pondering on what to read. In the middle of that Templars book but I need something lighthearted. And I can't find my damn Flashman novels.
Yep. That's the one. I knew the covers, not so much the author or its series name. The Marcus Didius Falco series is good, too.
Started "Iraq +100". Fiction from Iraqi authors looking to see what their country will look like 100 years in the future after the American invasion.
You might like the works of Naguib Mahfouz, a famed Egyptian author who passed away several years ago. Incredibly famous, as well.
Have barely begun this, but already having fun with it. A biography of Catherine the Great. For all the intrigue and assorted tragedies, misplaced trust, lost (and found) loves, etc., etc, the author manages to convey some of the drama in fairly amusing ways. An example:
Nevertheless, the empress eventually had her way. On November 18, 1742, in the court chapel of the Kremlin, Peter Charles Ulrich was solemnly baptized and received into the Orthodox Church under the Russian name of Peter Fedorovich—a Romanov name intended to wipe away the taint of his Lutheran beginnings. Empress Elizabeth then formally proclaimed him heir to the Russian throne, raised him to the rank of Imperial Highness, and granted him the title of grand duke. Peter, speaking in memorized Russian, promised to reject all doctrines contrary to the teaching of the Orthodox Church, whereupon, at the end of the service, the assembled court took the oath of allegiance to him. Throughout the ceremony and at the public audience afterward, he displayed an unmistakable sullenness; foreign ambassadors, noting his mood, said that “as he spoke with his customary petulance, one may conclude he will not be a fanatical believer.”
Massie, Robert K.. Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (pp. 47-48). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Massie, Robert K.. Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (pp. 47-48). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
I've got some historical fiction novels revolving around the period in which she ruled. I've also got one book for the Tsardom somewhere. Though, if memory serves me correctly, the latter wasn't too well researched. Good to see you posting, Liz. I was wondering if something happened, but recalled you wanting to take a break to get to your books.
I was looking forward to finishing another third of my Templars book I posted a page or two ago. However, my energy has dropped like a rock in recent days. With the year coming to a close soon (eight weeks left!), I went over my reading journal and counted 3 abandoned books, not counting the one from summer, out of 49. Not bad. I fully intend to restart those four books, and finish the Templars book.
I was looking forward to finishing another third of my Templars book I posted a page or two ago. However, my energy has dropped like a rock in recent days. With the year coming to a close soon (eight weeks left!), I went over my reading journal and counted 3 abandoned books, not counting the one from summer, out of 49. Not bad. I fully intend to restart those four books, and finish the Templars book.
On the matter of historical novels, did you ever get around to finishing the "Regeneration" trilogy?
Things That Matter.
I read constantly, but not many novels. I have a low attention span so I tend to read quick hit things such as news, short stories, magazines, columns, opinions, and lots of history, law, and poetry...things I can put down and pick up again later and continue where I left off.
I read constantly, but not many novels. I have a low attention span so I tend to read quick hit things such as news, short stories, magazines, columns, opinions, and lots of history, law, and poetry...things I can put down and pick up again later and continue where I left off.
LOL I keep meaning to read that Krauthammer collection and now perhaps I will. I started reading the Dana Perino interview w/ him about the book and laughed out loud (ruefully, of course) when I got to this part of their Q&A:
DP: Do you think that your training as a psychiatrist has given you an advantage when observing people in politics?
CK: Actually, no. Psychiatry has everything to say about mental illness, very little to say about ordinary life. It offers no magical formulas for understanding human behavior beyond what any lay person can see. Although I do like to joke that there's not much difference in what I do today as a political analyst in Washington from what I used to do as a psychiatrist in Boston—in both lines of work, I deal every day with people who suffer from paranoia and delusions of grandeur. The only difference is that the paranoids in Washington have access to nuclear weapons.
Of course I bookmarked the link meaning to get an ebook version whenever one of those ebook pricing lawsuit settlements hit my Apple account. Thanks for reminding me... another credit did just show up the other day.CK: Actually, no. Psychiatry has everything to say about mental illness, very little to say about ordinary life. It offers no magical formulas for understanding human behavior beyond what any lay person can see. Although I do like to joke that there's not much difference in what I do today as a political analyst in Washington from what I used to do as a psychiatrist in Boston—in both lines of work, I deal every day with people who suffer from paranoia and delusions of grandeur. The only difference is that the paranoids in Washington have access to nuclear weapons.
I marvel at his logic and verbal expression...and his dry humor...and his fight with adversity...and my marvelous run on sentence.
Have you heard/read Herb Caen? He and his SF Chronicle articles were a real piece of Americana.
I read a few papers all the way through and skim articles for the rest. Don't read poetry. I was never a fan of the stuff. I stick to standalone novels. I don't like series much because sometimes they author writes prequels way down the line and then reveal the true chronological order of their works.
Something I’ve increasingly noticed about myself is that I read and don’t remember much of anything. It’s like I mentally check out. It’s troubling because I’m genuinely interested in certain topics and look to reading as learning and honing my outlook on things. I might as well have taken a nap but I’m not sleepy.
Age? Lack of sleep quality and not time can contribute to that. Not reading something that grabs your interest. It's fine to abandon a book if it doesn't interest you. I've used the method of Loci most of my life to remember things in literature, even full passages word by word. Memory can be affected by medication, too.
Well, you did lead a stressful job in your earlier years. On the other hand, it could be up to the person. One of my later grandfathers remembered everything crystal clear when he was in his 90s. Was dancing too as if he was 30. Can't say he lead a stress free life.
My strongest memories are associated with certain smells. Sometimes I'll catch a whiff of something and be transported back to when I was a little boy and walking the hallways of some building thousands of miles away.
I lived out in San Francisco for awhile, a couple years after Caen had returned to the SF Chronicle following his relatively brief stint at the Examiner. Missed his stuff after I came back east, but I didn't miss what the locals called "tremors" that used to rattle the dish cupboards on a fairly regular basis. I considered those tremors to be "earthquakes" and preferred reading newspaper columns without percussive accompaniment...
I recommend spending one day a week away from the internet. Your brain is really only interested in keeping you physically alive and could not care less if you read War and Peace or "C U L8TR" in a text message, they're all the same, i.e. fake news, unless they amount to informing you that your house is on fire. The shorter whatever it is to read, the less energy the brain has to spend deciphering the message
(is this in my native language? yes? do I recognize that word? yes? does it mean the same as DANGER DANGER? no? tl;dr)
so the more the brain learns that short reads are usually simple to decode, the more it learns to to steer you away from longer reads. After all if you're reading Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke and you served in Vietnam, then all manner of inquiries could be forced upon your poor tired brain by time you've read the first chapter. The brain's goal is basically for you to quit bothering it with complicated queries and cut to the chase, which is that everything is tl;dr unless it fits in a tweet or feels like you just touched a hot stove with bare hand.
... and speaking of war and peace... yes, and I cannot recommend the Regeneration triology more highly than you have done. It's not an easy read even if eminently readable regarding the spare language as elegant scaffold on which she layers complex considerations of war and war and war and war.... wars of bodies and minds and the clash of them inside any given human being thrust into what must be our ultimate insanity, i.e. physical destruction with intent to salvage ideals and a life worth living. Whose ideals and what is a life worth living? At what price? Who pays? It makes you think really hard about what it is we do when we let our politicians ship us off to wars, even a war that "both sides" have deemed justifiable. I followed my reading of the Regeneration novels by listening to the audiobook version of James Bamford's A Pretext for War and that left me more than ever a skeptic of wars that today seem to require outright fabrication in order to justify. Whatever happened to diplomacy? Can we not just argue endlessly over conference tables instead of coming to blows out of impatience to "settle things for once and for all"? So far, apparently not. We need to learn how to get back to arguments since settling things for once and for all on the battlefield in the age of nuclear armaments would seem a little too permanent for the taste of most people. Meanwhile I return to my read of the bio of Catherine the Great, hoping I did not politicize too much a thread that doesn't deserve to land in PRSI.
I've read Fahrenheit 451 but had never truly realized what a great writer Mr.Bradbury was.
This passage right here really got me.
@LizKat: I am delighted - genuinely delighted - that you enjoyed - well, savoured, or appreciated, or thrilled to, or immersed yourself in - the Regeneration trilogy, and that you came to hold it in the extraordinarily high esteem that I do.
As you know, I have long thought it brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and I'm really pleased and gratified that you - recognised what an outstanding work it is. I'm really happy that you "liked" the books, while accepting that they are not - and nor are they meant to be - 'easy'.
I'd say most people can understand advanced literature if given the time and effort to lookup things they don't understand. A second pass of the literature should solidify the teachings of the printed words. On the other hand, anyone making such a claim after having read Finnegan's Wake is... well, I'll leave it up to you all to fill in the blanks.
Finnegan's Wake was required reading when I was 8 or 9 in a school I attended outside of the US. Bloody book was torture. When my nephews were of that age, I think the toughest book they were asked to read was some Wilson Rowls novel. I'm not sure if the American school system is weaker than what I grew up with when I was that age or I went to a school full of sadistic adults.
Finnegan's Wake was required reading when I was 8 or 9 in a school I attended outside of the US. Bloody book was torture. When my nephews were of that age, I think the toughest book they were asked to read was some Wilson Rowls novel. I'm not sure if the American school system is weaker than what I grew up with when I was that age or I went to a school full of sadistic adults.
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Okay, @Zenithal: I'm with you on Finnegan's Wake.
Dubliners is brilliant; Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is extremely good; Ulysses is worth the work - excellent in parts, challenging in parts, a bit self-indulgent in part.
But, as for Finnegan's Wake, yes, on this, I concur with you.