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What are you reading?

I just finished The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit. I can see why it's a classic, with its quaint turn of the century language and innocence. While reading about children playing and planning things, through them you get the story of their father falsely accused of espionage, and about the family helping an exiled political dissident.
 
Monstrous Regiment by Terry Prattchet

Calling that man a genius is an understatement. All his books are amazingly clever. As is this one. This one pokes fun at retarded religious commandments and cherry picking. It also brings forward the argument that religious prohibitions are nothing but the fears, jealousy and hate of people bubbling forth. But it of course pretends this only applies to the books invented religion.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34511.Monstrous_Regiment
 
Just read The Blood Countess by Tara Moss and while it wasn't brilliant it at least was an entertaining yarn
 
Just finished Fade out by Patrick Tilley. Published in 1975, it was lovely to read something in the old style.

Currently reading a kid's book. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. I would recommend this to anyone of any age.
 
Two weeks ago I was reading 'The Mind of the South', which is a classic work on the people of the Southern US during the early twentieth century. Before I got too far into that one I found Barbara Tuchman's 'Practising History' at a local book store. That one took precedent and I spent about three days reading it.

Then I saw Hamlet at the Shakespeare festival in Stratford, and now Shakespeare is trumping it all. So far I've finished 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and 'Julius Caesar'.
 
Just finished Blood of Olympus, the final book in the Percy Jackson / Heroes of Olympus book series. I enjoyed them all.

For those not familiar with them, the Greek gods exist and are still having demi-god children that have to fight legendary monsters and go on quests, but with adaptions for the modern world. Like the three blind witches driving a cab while fighting over the magic eye that lets them see. The writer also had a trilogy of the Egyptian gods, and later this year he will get to the Norse gods.
 
I enjoyed the show of Call the Midwife but am glad I saw it before I read the book. The book fleshes out characters, tells stories that aren't suitable for the kiddies and is an amazing document of life in 50s East London.

A really good read.
 
We're rereading Witches Abroad. Probably my favorite Pratchett book. So funny.
 
Just finished Homeport by Nora Roberts. I think I read that book when I was 17 or 18, but remembered nothing of the story line. Vintage Roberts, still good.

Current reads:
Dynamic Stillness, Part II by Swami Chetanananda
The Three Pilliars of Zen by Philip Kapleau
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Also ticked because I forgot I owe the library $8.50. Otherwise I'd have several more listed. lol
 
Just finished the first three books in the Emergence series by John Birmingham. (Resistance and Ascendance are the next two, and presumably there are more to come).

Birmingham has a real way with words, an eye for the absurd, and a talent for imagining a realistic outcome for an impossible event; and the Dave Hooper novels, of which this is the first, are no exception.

Dave Hooper, safety officer for a deep water, deep drilling oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico is called back from leave due to a problem on the rig - which turns out to be an attack by demons from the underworld who have been imprisoned since Palaeolithic times. Neither the humans nor the demons are prepared for the encounter, nor its consequences.

8/10 - well worth a read.
 
Welcome to the Monkeyhouse, Kurt Vonnegut

I felt a mix of elation and horror that I found a book by my favourite author that I hadn´t read yet. Elation that I get a new read by him and horror that I may have missed more.

This is a collection of short stories he wrote when he had trouble paying his bills. But they´re just as brilliant as his more famous and longer works. Pure gold. Kurt Vonnegut never fails to deliver. The story Harrison Bergeron is very very timely. It should be required reading for todays kids IMHO.
 
City Of Ruins by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
It's a bit slow at the moment but I'm still interested enough to keep reading

Also read Sealed With A Curse by Cecy Robson
Ok it's not exactly Lord of the Rings, but she at least has some good ideas for the whole Vampire/Werewolves dynamic and her characters are all likebale so I may pick up book two at some point
 
I just picked up Kissinger's book on Diplomacy . It's quite fascinating. I at the part where he talks about Cardinal Richelieu and the 30 years war.
 
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