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What are you reading?

 
 
 
Went to hear Luis Urrea, the author of the last book I posted in this thread, Into the Beautiful North speak last weekend. Very articulate speaker. Impressed me enough to buy two more of his books. Am now reading The Devil's Highway, his account of the Yuma 14, Mexican workers brought across the border by an unscrupulous coyote and left to die in the desert.

Also reading The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis. Scandinavian noir fiction. Page turner. Lots of implausibilities, but keeps you reading anyway.
 
I still think Heinlein's best book was Job: A Comedy of Justice.

I just finished Atwood's Oryx and Crake, After the Flood, and Maddadam. She should have stopped with Oryx and Crake, it was a damn fine book with a good ending. The other two were meh.

I did not enjoy the Ministry of Guidance invites you to Not Stay.
 
bradw said:
Stranger in a Strange Land (the original uncut version) by Heinlein.

I read the "cut" version in high school about 40 years ago. I didn't recall too much about it except grok, sex and cannibalism.

I'm about 360 pages into this 500 page work, and I've spent much of that time mentally screaming "Get on with it!"

There's too much dialogue before that juicy stuff even begins, and too much talking in between brief periods of good reading. And I'm not finding Heinlein's views of the world, if they are accurately expressed here, very enlightening.
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That about sums up all of his output from "Stranger" on. Prolix. The last one of his that was actually fun to read was "Glory Road". Looking back on his stuff, I find him too Libertarian, (Jubal Harshaw is ridiculous, the contortions he goes through), and too pro-gun. Not to mention sexist. I read it in High School too, about the same time. Apparently it was very popular amongst the Hippies and Acid-heads out west, but brain damage is not required before reading it.

Bradbury, great magic realism.

Vonnegut, a little too tied to the Second World War (but I can't blame him, after being a POW in Dresden during the bombings).

Asimov, great at 'nuts and bolts' SF as is Larry Niven. Although I don't care for the stuff co-authored with Jerry Pournelle, another libertarian type.
 
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah.

Now reading A Wise Man's Fear, the second book of the Kingkiller Chronicles.

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"Rapture of the Nerds" by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross. It's completely insane.

I've been reading sci-fi my whole life and this is the first book that's made me think, "Huh. This is way too futuristic for comfort."
 
"The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939" by Antony Beevor. My favorite 20th century history author by far.
 
Charlatan by Pope Brock.

Non-fiction.

Story of John R. Brinkley, a man who made millions implanting goat gonads, selling sham medicines and running a million-watt radio station in Mexico.


Good read.
 
Re-reading Raymond E. Feists book Magician and hopefully this time I will actually read the sequels to it as well (I realised that I never actually read any of the other books with the exception of the Empire Trilogy which I have re-read 3-4 times)
 
Shogun by James Clavell

Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin

The Virtues of Captain America by Mark D. White

Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan

The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich

Enough by John C. Bogle

Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen

Copperhead by Bernard Cornwell


A bit eclectic.
 
I have been reading through the books of Seanan McGuire recently
Read the Incryptid series (Discount Armageddon, Midnight-Blue Light Special, and Half Off Ragnarok) and loved them
Then decided to move onto her other big series the October Daye novels and loved them as well going through Rosemary and Rue and A Local habitation very quickly and am a long way through the third book An Artificial Night
 
Current reading includes:

This Hallowed Ground, by Bruce Catton, a one volume history of the Civil War from the Union perspective. Read it previously over 20 years ago; still pretty good.
Looking for Rachel Wallace, by Robert B. Parker, from the Spenser series.
The Signal and the Noise, by Nate Silver.
 
Peter Rushforth A Dead Language.

Roddy Doyle Two Pints

Elizabeth Finkel Stem Cells

A Cadfael novel (The 15th, I think)
 
Travels through France and Italy. Tobias Smollett, published in 1766.

Interesting study of the attitudes of the time. Tobias gives an account of a priest in France who committed murder and was sentenced to being broken on the wheel, but was pardoned. A citizen was so outraged by the pardon that he stabbed the priest. It was not a mortal wound but he was convicted and sentenced to being broken on the wheel for the stabbing. Upon the sentence being carried out he cried out at the injustice of he himself being executed for stabbing a worthless priest, while the priest, who murdered two people, walks freely around the town.

Broken on the wheel!
 
The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelmann. A literary thriller set in 18th century Sweden. Fun.

Lovers at the Chameleon Club:Paris, 1932 by Francine Prose. A novel based on the life of Violette Morris, French athlete, race-car driver, and Nazi collaborator.
 
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore.

I read if before, years ago, and decided to reread it recently. Great stuff. Forgot how good it was. I think I'll reread Watchmen.
 
The New Testament. Will work on The Old Testament eventually. I haven't been able to get past Genesis yet.
 
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