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Spoilers What Book Are You Reading?
- Thread starter Huntn
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Reading The Caves of Steel (The Robot Series Book 1). I am about a third of the way through it and I am digging it.
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It is always that some where......
Just finished this last night, took a little longer than I wanted due to other items on my plate. But I thoroughly enjoyed it and now I am looking for a new book!
I do have a couple graphic novels I am going to read before I jump into another book, but I am always looking!! Thanks to @yaxomoxay for the recommendation! Enjoyed and it was pretty darn entertaining. Had me guessing a good way through the book!
I love Eco! I used to meet him quite often as we were living in the same neighborhood in Milan. Very nice person.
Many don’t like Pendulum, I find it his best work.
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Glad you liked it!
Weirdbook #36 is a true gem of weird, surreal fiction.
About 20 between short stories and poetry, with a very enjoyable Cthulhu Mythos story. If anyone is interesed in this type of fiction, I strongly suggest to buy this issue.
Weirdbook #37 is already available but I haven’t read it yet.
Just looked this up for my Kindle and at three dollars and some change, I couldn't pass it up. Looks like I have my next book!
That didn't take long...
Hope you like it. If you’re into weird fiction it’s a safe bet. Definitely worth $3.
I received #37 but I haven’t read it yet... its cover is amazing!
Right my alley!!!! Thanks again, I will post back once I am done with!
Operation Paperclip is one of the most controversial US operations. On the one hand, it helped the US achieve great goals such as the Moon Landing, and it helped saving the West from Soviet supremacy. On the other hand... it was highly immoral. Hundreds of Nazi murderers were not only spared from jail or a death sentence, but were given good contracts and in some cases (von Braun, anyone?) even historical glory. In some cases, the former Nazis were even allowed to continue the work they began under Hitler’s rule.
In this book, Jacobsen unveils incredible sources and stories, and brings to light the many complex plots that created and managed Operation Paperclip. This is truly an excellent book; history buffs as @Scepticalscribe will certainly love it. The only negative comment I have for this book is something the author could not do anything about: at times it’s difficult to follow due to the fast-paced events and the amount of people involved.
In this book, Jacobsen unveils incredible sources and stories, and brings to light the many complex plots that created and managed Operation Paperclip. This is truly an excellent book; history buffs as @Scepticalscribe will certainly love it. The only negative comment I have for this book is something the author could not do anything about: at times it’s difficult to follow due to the fast-paced events and the amount of people involved.
I've just started The Prodigal God. My daughter gave it to me for Christmas.
https://www.amazon.com/Prodigal-God...d=1516383879&sr=8-1&keywords=the+prodigal+god
https://www.amazon.com/Prodigal-God...d=1516383879&sr=8-1&keywords=the+prodigal+god
Currently reading Perfect Murder, Perfect Town by Lawrence Schiller.
It's about the murder of JonBenét Ramsey.
When this murder happened, I was too young to care. I knew that she was a little girl that participated in beauty pageants, but it seemed like the vast majority of superficial adults that I overheard discussing it were more concerned with "the travesty of a child her age being 'forced' into pageantry", as opposed to the fact that someone killed her.
At any rate, all of that (combined with my age at the time) made me not care too much about it, but now....
Now I'm a woman obsessed with the topic!
Not so much with the murder itself, but by how badly the entire thing was handled by the police, and how its 20+ years later and still nothing!
Another interesting thing to me is that a Pittsburgh (where I'm from) coroner, Cyril Wecht, weighed in on the case to help them try to peice together some of the puzzle.
To a very small degree, I think it also really intrigues me because a girl that I went to school with and played softball with was murdered while we were young and it, too, is still unsolved, 20 years later.
Her case was actually featured on NBC's Cold Case:
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/cold-case-spotlight/cold-case-spotlight-kimberlie-krimm-n302536
Completely unrelated to the above mentioned,
I also LOVE anything and everything written by Chuck Palahniuk. That guy is a twisty genius!
It's about the murder of JonBenét Ramsey.
When this murder happened, I was too young to care. I knew that she was a little girl that participated in beauty pageants, but it seemed like the vast majority of superficial adults that I overheard discussing it were more concerned with "the travesty of a child her age being 'forced' into pageantry", as opposed to the fact that someone killed her.
At any rate, all of that (combined with my age at the time) made me not care too much about it, but now....
Now I'm a woman obsessed with the topic!
Not so much with the murder itself, but by how badly the entire thing was handled by the police, and how its 20+ years later and still nothing!
Another interesting thing to me is that a Pittsburgh (where I'm from) coroner, Cyril Wecht, weighed in on the case to help them try to peice together some of the puzzle.
To a very small degree, I think it also really intrigues me because a girl that I went to school with and played softball with was murdered while we were young and it, too, is still unsolved, 20 years later.
Her case was actually featured on NBC's Cold Case:
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/cold-case-spotlight/cold-case-spotlight-kimberlie-krimm-n302536
Completely unrelated to the above mentioned,
I also LOVE anything and everything written by Chuck Palahniuk. That guy is a twisty genius!
Just finished “Brain on Fire” by Susannah Cahalan. A charming biographical book about the author’s short trip into (literal) madness. A first hand account of what a mental illness patient feels and goes through. Well written and quite interesting.
Just started Penn Jillette's "Presto! How I made 100 Pounds Disappear and other magical tales." It's pretty good so far, written as most of Penn's books are in an easy to read style and with a good flow. Thoroughly entertaining so far.
Finished “Joyland” by Stephen King. It’s published as part of the Hard Core Crime collection, therefore this is an homage to the pulp hard-boiled detective story. I really loved it.
Anything science fiction about it? I generally don't hold King in good light, but I do have some exceptions to his... work.Finished “Joyland” by Stephen King. It’s published as part of the Hard Core Crime collection, therefore this is an homage to the pulp hard-boiled detective story. I really loved it.
Finished “Joyland” by Stephen King. It’s published as part of the Hard Core Crime collection, therefore this is an homage to the pulp hard-boiled detective story. I really loved it.
I also really loved this book.
I have to tell you that I grew up reading every single thing that R. L. Stine wrote, and I picked up this book to check out the back cover because the FRONT cover reminded me of one of RLS's books.
At any rate, I really liked it!
If by science fiction you mean weird technology, spaceships, lasers etc, then definitely no.
If you mean some sort of supernatural experience, there is some but very minimal compared to the other King books I’ve read (not many to be honest).
It’s truly a hard boiled mystery with a couple of weird events. Most of it is introspective narration, with hints of nostalgia.
Thanks for the recommendation
I've never heard of this, and I have looked into it a little now
Buying the first book on iBooks now and I'm looking forward to it
Not a bad series. I read it back when it originally hit the market and remember it as a good read. Not your usual vampire stories, though.
Sounds good. I really love the throwback to 30s and 40s mystery pulp books.
I'm reading a novel by Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing.
I was completely drawn in by a review in the NYT, a good bit of which I've put below. I can't put the book down now that I've finally got around to reading it. Ms. Thien has another book out recently, Dogs at the Perimeter, set in Cambodia at the time of the Khmer Rouge and in present day Canada. Looking forward to reading that one as well.
I was completely drawn in by a review in the NYT, a good bit of which I've put below. I can't put the book down now that I've finally got around to reading it. Ms. Thien has another book out recently, Dogs at the Perimeter, set in Cambodia at the time of the Khmer Rouge and in present day Canada. Looking forward to reading that one as well.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/24/...-nothing-a-portrait-of-souls-snuffed-out.html
The background of “Do Not Say We Have Nothing” pulses with music. Ms. Thien has that rare, instinctive sense of what it’s like for a person’s brain to be a hostage to its inner score — the call inside these characters’ heads is always louder than the call of the outside world, most fatally that of the Communist Party — and her observations about Bach and Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Debussy are some of the book’s sweetest pleasures, as are her ruthless critiques of musicians. (Zhuli’s assessment of a gorgeous-but-bloodless fellow violinist: “She played Beethoven as if he had never been alive.”)
But slowly, sentiment begins to shift at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Students began writing essays asking, “What good is this music, these empty enchantments, that only entrench the bourgeoisie and isolate the poor?”
Zhuli, Kai and Sparrow each make different choices about how to survive the violent assault on their identities, not one of them happy, all of them worthy of a dirge.
Ms. Thien captures painfully well the depersonalization and numbness of living through the Cultural Revolution, particularly the “day-to-day insincerity” of casual conversation, larded with perfunctory praise for the party and Chairman Mao. (It sounds as if it’s coming from a Communist Twitter bot.) Her depictions of the Red Guard’s brutality are graphic and difficult to read: Zhuli’s parents, property owners, are trussed like chickens, beaten and sent to re-education camps.
The novel culminates, perhaps inevitably, with the protests in Tiananmen Square. It’s a virtuoso stretch of writing, rendered with a blue-flame intensity, blazing and tactile and full of life. Noodle sellers, exhilarated, are giving away food. (Ms. Thien pulled this from the historical record; her novel has endnotes.) A burning mattress “flew in slow motion onto an army truck.” Sparrow crumples under the weight of a heavyset worker who has been pierced by a bullet.
Even before the tanks roll in, the reader is left to wonder if history is simply destined to repeat itself. One father of a student complains to Sparrow: “These kids think it’s all up to them. They have no understanding of fate.”
It’s a possibility Ms. Thien examines throughout the novel: “How time is bent and elastic and repeated. ” But the Book of Records, with its constant emendations, suggests another possibility. “I have this idea that ... maybe, a long time ago, the Book of Records was set in a future that hadn’t yet arrived,” Zhuli says.
The implication is that China is still an unfinished work — just like Sparrow’s Symphony No. 3, a thing of true beauty, which he was forced to hide in the roof of his house. There it got lost, as did the man he was supposed to become. Yet years later, he found himself able to compose again. But he couldn’t complete that particular piece. The notes he sought were buried in the past.
The background of “Do Not Say We Have Nothing” pulses with music. Ms. Thien has that rare, instinctive sense of what it’s like for a person’s brain to be a hostage to its inner score — the call inside these characters’ heads is always louder than the call of the outside world, most fatally that of the Communist Party — and her observations about Bach and Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Debussy are some of the book’s sweetest pleasures, as are her ruthless critiques of musicians. (Zhuli’s assessment of a gorgeous-but-bloodless fellow violinist: “She played Beethoven as if he had never been alive.”)
But slowly, sentiment begins to shift at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Students began writing essays asking, “What good is this music, these empty enchantments, that only entrench the bourgeoisie and isolate the poor?”
Zhuli, Kai and Sparrow each make different choices about how to survive the violent assault on their identities, not one of them happy, all of them worthy of a dirge.
Ms. Thien captures painfully well the depersonalization and numbness of living through the Cultural Revolution, particularly the “day-to-day insincerity” of casual conversation, larded with perfunctory praise for the party and Chairman Mao. (It sounds as if it’s coming from a Communist Twitter bot.) Her depictions of the Red Guard’s brutality are graphic and difficult to read: Zhuli’s parents, property owners, are trussed like chickens, beaten and sent to re-education camps.
The novel culminates, perhaps inevitably, with the protests in Tiananmen Square. It’s a virtuoso stretch of writing, rendered with a blue-flame intensity, blazing and tactile and full of life. Noodle sellers, exhilarated, are giving away food. (Ms. Thien pulled this from the historical record; her novel has endnotes.) A burning mattress “flew in slow motion onto an army truck.” Sparrow crumples under the weight of a heavyset worker who has been pierced by a bullet.
Even before the tanks roll in, the reader is left to wonder if history is simply destined to repeat itself. One father of a student complains to Sparrow: “These kids think it’s all up to them. They have no understanding of fate.”
It’s a possibility Ms. Thien examines throughout the novel: “How time is bent and elastic and repeated. ” But the Book of Records, with its constant emendations, suggests another possibility. “I have this idea that ... maybe, a long time ago, the Book of Records was set in a future that hadn’t yet arrived,” Zhuli says.
The implication is that China is still an unfinished work — just like Sparrow’s Symphony No. 3, a thing of true beauty, which he was forced to hide in the roof of his house. There it got lost, as did the man he was supposed to become. Yet years later, he found himself able to compose again. But he couldn’t complete that particular piece. The notes he sought were buried in the past.
That sounds brilliant. Actually, fascinating - I must make a note of it.
I've spent a lot of time in countries that were once communist, and some friends explained the culture of the 'two faces' one had to cultivate in order to survive; everyone knew that there was 'one face' for home, the dinner table, and close friends of the tried and tested true sort - this is one of the reasons that (good) family ties and close friendships were so intense (and treasured) in those worlds, they were tested by time and trust. Things might be said at home that could not be repeated anywhere else, at any time.
The other face was the 'public face' and even small children were carefully taught not to confuse the two; one slip-up could prove quite costly.
And yes, I knew some of the members of a small chamber orchestra, most of whose members had trained in the conservatory in Moscow; I knew the conductor and lead violinist; some their stories were absolutely amazing, and what you have written rings all too true.
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