What book is everyone reading at the moment? Part 2.

Lennart Hyland said:
Finished this and contentwise it was a hard read from time to time, really gut wrenching. But some how I decided to continue reading WW2 non-fiction books and this time it is: After Stalingrad, Seven Years as a Soviet Prisoner of War by Adelbert Holl.
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Done with Holl. Seen alot of praise for Stoner by John Williams so thats my next read.
 
Finished Soucery. Just began Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong's Hat by Michael Kinsella. Looks interesting, though the author's unorthodox use of language ("people presence their experiences"; "the Internet opportunes the sharing of stories") offputs me a little, and even ebooking it is expensive. ;)
 
Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong's Hat by Michael Kinsella. Very puzzling book. I wish authors would EWTH acronyms and initialisms mean before STOUR. Anyway, this is partly about ghosts and how they become real if enough people believe in them, or something, but mostly about Ong's Hat and the Incunabula documents. You too can dimension-hop! Except it was all a hoax! But lots of people legend-tripped it online, so it's true. In a way. To prove it, the author quotes interminable unedited internet posts from Concerned Readers and Neo-Kantist true believers*. The author's stance about all this isn't clear. Rather than re-read this work, I will instead muck out the cow shed.
*C.R.A.N.K.s
 
Gideon the Ninth

A fast-paced, tightly-wound story of love and duty. A closely personal story, against a vast backdrop distantly glimpsed. Lighthearted most of the time, spiced with moments of exquisite gravitas. The author puts a number of YA tropes to work, and lets them speak for themselves so she can focus on the deeper themes and arcs. The combination works suprisingly well.

A note on the cover blurb about "lesbian space nuns":
If you're put off by it, the good news is, there's not actually any lesbian space nunnery in the book. Zero.

On the other hand, if that blurb is what piqued your interest, then rest assured that the story is very lesbian space nun adjacent, and also you will probably enjoy the author's sense of humor.
 
Lennart Hyland said:
Done with Holl. Seen alot of praise for Stoner by John Williams so thats my next read.
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Stoner was really really good. The story by itself isnt that intriguing and depressing but his writing style, the prose, was absolutely beautiful. Found a snippet of it online and I wanted to share it with you:

‘He buried her beside her husband. After the services were over and the few mourners had gone, he stood alone in a cold November wind and looked at the two graves, one open to its burden and the other mounded and covered by a thin fuzz of grass. He turned on the bare, treeless little plot that held others like his mother and father and looked across the flat land in the direction of the farm where he had been born, where his mother and father had spent their years. He thought of the cost exacted, year after year, by the soil; and it remained as it had been - a little more barren, perhaps, a little more frugal of increase. Nothing had changed. Their lives had been expended in cheerless labor, their wills broken, their intelligences numbed. Now they were in the earth to which they had given their lives; and slowly, year by year, the earth would take them. Slowly the damp and rot would infest the pine boxes which held their bodies, and slowly it would consume the last vestiges of their substances. And they would become a meaningless part of that stubborn earth to which they had long ago given themselves.’

My next book is a quite short swedish one about the capture of Adolf Eichmann, Operation Eichmann by Erik Åsard.
 
I am reading a Dorling Kindersley (DK) book called 'wonders of the world' .To be accurate I am mostly looking at the pictures. It is of past history brought to life in illustrations that are very realistic and look almost like photos. DK books are fabulously illustrated picture books with boxes containing explanatory text. I also have DK' Knowledge encyclopedia'.
I recommend DK books, the illustrations are fabulous.
 
I'm on a kick right now to read (in the following order) the 17 books I read when I was in high school (plus 4 new ones):

I started with 1984, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Dracula, Lord of the Flies (I just finished this one), A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (I'm reading this one now, and I also watched the Netflix series that was based on it), Frankenstein (this is the one I'm reading next), The House of the Seven Gables (I actually toured the house--including the secret passage--that the novel was based on), The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Moby Dick, Oliver Twist, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Study in Scarlet, The Swiss family Robinson, Treasure Island, War and Peace, ending with Murders in the Rue Morgue.

Plus, the following books as I get them from the library: To Kill A Mockingbird, Fahrenheit 451, Spy School, and finally James.

James (written by Percival Everett) is an interesting one, because it's a complementary novel that gives Jim (the runaway slave in Huckleberry Finn) a voice, and I immediately went to put it on hold at my local library.

Percival Everett wrote it like the Far Side joke where the cows are all cool, while the one watching for cars, sees one, gives the warning, and then all the cows get down and start eating grass. Well, in the book, the slaves all act dumb and gullible while white folks are around, but as soon as they're all alone, they have intelligent conversations. It sounds really good.


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Back on the mystery kick: various E. C. R. Lorac ebooks. Mixed with some time travel fiction and BDSM erotica, both for review.
ETA, there is some cross-over between the latter groups of literature.
 
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Finished the first Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective book (again) (from the free kiosk, couldn't resist!) It would have been nice if my school library had had more in the series (I think there were a few out at the time) because I reread that many times back in the day. The solutions ranged from very obvious to not-quite-fair. (My other choice was a single Two-Minute Mysteries book, which was far worse in that regard.) Eventually I found the less kid-oriented Asimov dinner mystery series which mostly weren't very satisfying.
 
alfaniner said:
Finished the first Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective book (again) (from the free kiosk, couldn't resist!) It would have been nice if my school library had had more in the series (I think there were a few out at the time) because I reread that many times back in the day. The solutions ranged from very obvious to not-quite-fair. (My other choice was a single Two-Minute Mysteries book, which was far worse in that regard.) Eventually I found the less kid-oriented Asimov dinner mystery series which mostly weren't very satisfying.
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I read those when I was a kid too, but I also liked the Brains Benton series, especially because of his cool lab.


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Roboramma said:
I've read and enjoyed a few of his novels, but not this one. Anything specific that makes it stand out to you as your favorite? (Potentially if that resonates I might like to check it out).
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It has a gorgeous magic system, quite unlike Stormlight or Mistborn (in that in theory everyone can do it), cool characters and a really interesting Religion.
And it has a number of twists that will make you see the entire World in different ways.
Unlike the other series, it's nicely contained: the whole story plays in one City, over about a year or so, and it's only a single book.


Warbreaker characters have now been popping up in the Stormlight Archive series.

Hope this helps!
 
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Back to Pratchett: re-read Eric (Rincewind in hell), now returning to the Watch with Jingo, in which war is impending in a surrogate Middle Eastern country.
 
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