Are they all set in the 50s/60s? I'll take a look at these next week.
What book is everyone reading at the moment? Part 2.
- Thread starter alex04
- Start date
catsmate
No longer the 1
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2007
- Messages
- 34,767
Late fifties to the eighties. There are a few audios on YouTube and many of Knox's books are in the IA.
ETA: Actually the last book was '99.
Last edited:
Lennart Hyland
Muse
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs - A New History of Their Lost World by Steve Brusatte should also be a good book on dinosaurs. Havent read it but seen it on some top-lists.
I will add this to my reading list. Likewise for me, Jack The Ripper always creeps me out.
Currently finishing The Gambler by Fyodor D. after having recently read Note from Underground. Note was great, a masterclass in narcissism.
Haven't decided my next book yet...
alfaniner
Penultimate Amazing
When I finished this thing I was so irritated at the writing style that I threw it across the lawn. I've only done that once or twice before in my life. I had intended to pick it up but forgot and it got rained on. Once it dried out it was useless to put back in the kiosk, so I tossed it in my fire pit. Yes, the book will be burned -- an act which goes against every fiber of my being. But in this case I might have a small flicker of revenge.
alfaniner
Penultimate Amazing
The Doom Machine by Mark Teague.
A strange edition labeled "Uncorrected Proof". Inside was a paper saying many more drawings were anticipated. The ones already in there were pretty good, done by the author, and almost exactly as I had pictured before I turned the page.
It's a Young Adult novel but very thick at 350+ pages. A couple kids and other characters get captured by aliens and traverse all over the galaxy. Kind of like Goonies meets Skeleton Crew (the Disney Star Wars kids show). An interesting and fun read, although it gets graphic sometimes. And there's lots of alien gobbledegook with names and objects and such, but it didn't detract. A nice summer read.
The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold (1973)
It says "The Classic Time-Travel Novel" right on the cover, and I can second that. Had heard about it but never read it. The author is the one who did The Trouble With Tribbles episode of ST:TOS (among many other things.) Very easy read, I finished it in a couple days. A young man gets a time-travel belt and chronicles his adventures in a sort of autobiography. I had a fleeting thought of something happening early in the book and later on it goes there, and then it really goes there.
I was amazed that though it was written in 1973 and the only copyright said so, the description of the belt controls is very much like a smart watch, and there is an allusion to buying Apple stock, and to a blockbuster movie coming out in 1977. Now, this was before Star Wars and Apple was even getting started. Did the author have a time-travel belt himself? (I did find out that he did revise it in 2003 to incorporate some more recent events, although that is not noted anywhere in the book. Just as well, I thought for a minute there...)
It goes a lot into time-travel paradoxes and possibilities, but is mostly easy to keep track of. This is the book I have most enjoyed reading for quite a while, and it's staying on my bookshelf rather than being returned to the free kiosk.
A strange edition labeled "Uncorrected Proof". Inside was a paper saying many more drawings were anticipated. The ones already in there were pretty good, done by the author, and almost exactly as I had pictured before I turned the page.
It's a Young Adult novel but very thick at 350+ pages. A couple kids and other characters get captured by aliens and traverse all over the galaxy. Kind of like Goonies meets Skeleton Crew (the Disney Star Wars kids show). An interesting and fun read, although it gets graphic sometimes. And there's lots of alien gobbledegook with names and objects and such, but it didn't detract. A nice summer read.
The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold (1973)
It says "The Classic Time-Travel Novel" right on the cover, and I can second that. Had heard about it but never read it. The author is the one who did The Trouble With Tribbles episode of ST:TOS (among many other things.) Very easy read, I finished it in a couple days. A young man gets a time-travel belt and chronicles his adventures in a sort of autobiography. I had a fleeting thought of something happening early in the book and later on it goes there, and then it really goes there.
I was amazed that though it was written in 1973 and the only copyright said so, the description of the belt controls is very much like a smart watch, and there is an allusion to buying Apple stock, and to a blockbuster movie coming out in 1977. Now, this was before Star Wars and Apple was even getting started. Did the author have a time-travel belt himself? (I did find out that he did revise it in 2003 to incorporate some more recent events, although that is not noted anywhere in the book. Just as well, I thought for a minute there...)
It goes a lot into time-travel paradoxes and possibilities, but is mostly easy to keep track of. This is the book I have most enjoyed reading for quite a while, and it's staying on my bookshelf rather than being returned to the free kiosk.
I'll keep an eye out for that, I like time travel books (as evidenced by my fondness for the St Mary's series and the Time Police series).
I finished two more E R Punshon books; The Secret Search and The Attending Truth. Written in 1951 and 1952 respectively, the plots in both cases revolve around post-war austerity, rationing and changing mores. The first one got a little convoluted and rushed towards the end (and once again, the murderer escaped the gallows), but the second stayed tightly plotted with a Hercule Poirot-like denouement as Bobby gathered his suspects together to solve the mystery.
The cast of characters in this one was particularly well done; a bluff colonel with a vicious dog, a fanatical vicar suspected of peeping tom activities under the cover of rooting out sin, an authoritarian business woman shaping her model village into her pre-war vision but failing to take account of human nature, her artist daughter, her politically ambitious son, a chief constable who takes to his bed at the first sign of trouble (not the same one as in the early books but clearly a nod to that former regular character), his son, an amiable grocer and his Hollywood-obsessed wife, and a village family noted for violence and secrets. Working out how all these people are connected to the murder in a lonely copse of a stranger to the village takes all of Bobby's flair. The book ends with a short additional chapter explaining how Bobby, directionless after graduating from Oxford, found his way into the police.
I also read Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad. Part allegory as the underground railroad of the title becomes literally subterranean, part historical fiction, part examination of man's inhumanity, this is a very powerful book. The northern states aren't portrayed as abolitionist havens nor are the southern states portrayed as entirely brutal; instead the racism is simply seen as better hidden by some.
Every escape that Cora makes in her effort to become free lands her into a new nightmare as each state in which she arrives turns from the promised hope to despair, with references to other historical events - medical experimentation under the guise of benevolence, hiding Anne Frank-like in an attic and being similarly betrayed, a vista of corpses hanging in trees as far as the eye can see, germ-ridden swamps, quarantined towns and burning forests. The book ends with an allusion to the massacres of Native Americans, as a character observes that America was built on theft (of land and people) and murder.
I finished two more E R Punshon books; The Secret Search and The Attending Truth. Written in 1951 and 1952 respectively, the plots in both cases revolve around post-war austerity, rationing and changing mores. The first one got a little convoluted and rushed towards the end (and once again, the murderer escaped the gallows), but the second stayed tightly plotted with a Hercule Poirot-like denouement as Bobby gathered his suspects together to solve the mystery.
The cast of characters in this one was particularly well done; a bluff colonel with a vicious dog, a fanatical vicar suspected of peeping tom activities under the cover of rooting out sin, an authoritarian business woman shaping her model village into her pre-war vision but failing to take account of human nature, her artist daughter, her politically ambitious son, a chief constable who takes to his bed at the first sign of trouble (not the same one as in the early books but clearly a nod to that former regular character), his son, an amiable grocer and his Hollywood-obsessed wife, and a village family noted for violence and secrets. Working out how all these people are connected to the murder in a lonely copse of a stranger to the village takes all of Bobby's flair. The book ends with a short additional chapter explaining how Bobby, directionless after graduating from Oxford, found his way into the police.
I also read Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad. Part allegory as the underground railroad of the title becomes literally subterranean, part historical fiction, part examination of man's inhumanity, this is a very powerful book. The northern states aren't portrayed as abolitionist havens nor are the southern states portrayed as entirely brutal; instead the racism is simply seen as better hidden by some.
Every escape that Cora makes in her effort to become free lands her into a new nightmare as each state in which she arrives turns from the promised hope to despair, with references to other historical events - medical experimentation under the guise of benevolence, hiding Anne Frank-like in an attic and being similarly betrayed, a vista of corpses hanging in trees as far as the eye can see, germ-ridden swamps, quarantined towns and burning forests. The book ends with an allusion to the massacres of Native Americans, as a character observes that America was built on theft (of land and people) and murder.
I got sidetracked from this, but have just now finished it, and what a piece of history transition magazine was. A flash of brilliance too bright to be appreciated fully in its day.
Here's a quote from the editors of the magazine I thought appropriate to today:
The general laws of the United States are framed by crooks, if money is involved, and by bigots, if it is a case of morals. They are voted into effect by nincompoops in exchange for local bridges, post offices, or even Fourth of July seats upon reviewing stands. They are enforced by the delinquent relatives and friends of the men who passed them, except in cases where they might inconvenience the men who drafted them.
Spektator
Is that right?
Hell on Wheels: Wicked Towns along the Union Pacific Railroad, Dick Kreck
A few years ago I saw the miniseries based on this book, featuring Colm Meaney as Gene Hackman as Thomas Durant. Really, for most of the run I thought Meaney was Hackman. Anyway, it was an entertaining series, so I picked up the book.
What the book offers is mostly backstory, confined to the Eastern side of the long campaign to build a railroad starting in Omaha and ending in Utah. The TV series alternates between that and the West Coast effort by the Union Pacific. Eventually the two railways met at Promontory Point, Utah, to form the first Transcontinental Railroad. The book has not very much to say about the Union Pacific side. Also the film concentrates on a few key personalities, many of them fictional though based on historical figures.
However, though the book is informative, it is necessarily repetitive. See, at each stage westward, when the Union Pacific reached a destination point, an enormous crowd of followers would construct an instant and tempoarary town. When the railroad workers went ahead from each town to the next node, the entrepreneurs woluld load their goods and buildings (or tents) on flatcars and head on out to create a new tempoarary town. The creeping town became known as "Hell on Wheels," because in addition to farriers, gunsmiths, general-store proprietors, and dry-goods men, the settlers included um, gamblers, prostitutes, robbers, and gunslingers. In fact the rowdy crowd outnumbered the peaceable folk. Each new town became a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Trouble is, North Platte, Julesburg, Cheyenne, Laramie, Bear River City, Corinne, and points in between were more or less identical in their scummery and villains. Without the anchors of interesting, individual characters, the narrative of frontier town after nearly identical frontier town blurs and seems run-of-the-mill. There are some neat photos of the towns and settlers in the book, however.
It's an OK read, with too few details about the actual building of the railroad.
A few years ago I saw the miniseries based on this book, featuring Colm Meaney as Gene Hackman as Thomas Durant. Really, for most of the run I thought Meaney was Hackman. Anyway, it was an entertaining series, so I picked up the book.
What the book offers is mostly backstory, confined to the Eastern side of the long campaign to build a railroad starting in Omaha and ending in Utah. The TV series alternates between that and the West Coast effort by the Union Pacific. Eventually the two railways met at Promontory Point, Utah, to form the first Transcontinental Railroad. The book has not very much to say about the Union Pacific side. Also the film concentrates on a few key personalities, many of them fictional though based on historical figures.
However, though the book is informative, it is necessarily repetitive. See, at each stage westward, when the Union Pacific reached a destination point, an enormous crowd of followers would construct an instant and tempoarary town. When the railroad workers went ahead from each town to the next node, the entrepreneurs woluld load their goods and buildings (or tents) on flatcars and head on out to create a new tempoarary town. The creeping town became known as "Hell on Wheels," because in addition to farriers, gunsmiths, general-store proprietors, and dry-goods men, the settlers included um, gamblers, prostitutes, robbers, and gunslingers. In fact the rowdy crowd outnumbered the peaceable folk. Each new town became a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Trouble is, North Platte, Julesburg, Cheyenne, Laramie, Bear River City, Corinne, and points in between were more or less identical in their scummery and villains. Without the anchors of interesting, individual characters, the narrative of frontier town after nearly identical frontier town blurs and seems run-of-the-mill. There are some neat photos of the towns and settlers in the book, however.
It's an OK read, with too few details about the actual building of the railroad.
Last edited:
Lennart Hyland
Muse
Ended up with As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. About 30% in, fairly short book but its difficult. Have to read a lot of sections two times to get a grasp of whats going on. Also I'm using a chapter summary after each chapter.. maybe its cheating. Damn good book though.
Spektator
Is that right?
My favorite line: "My mother is a fish."
On to book 31 in the Bobby Owen series, Strange Ending. A man who was in the process of cooking a gourmet meal is found dead in a flat with his mouth filled with feathers, and with no clues as to the killer or the man's identity, the police investigation winds down. At the same time, a war hero with a reputation of being a talented chef goes missing, but it appears from photographs that they are two separate individuals.
The flat is re-rented to a comically fussy civil servant (who talks in circumlocutary footnoted paragraphs) and his wife and daughter, and the flat is broken into several times and ransacked but everything taken is anonymously returned.
Add an ex-boxer who runs yachting cruises to people wishing to avoid food rationing, his secretive secretary, a self-styled anarchic "enemy of the people", an angry estranged wife, and a cookery teacher with an invalid mother. Bobby begins to suspect that the cruises were a cover for jewel smuggling, and the complicated plot veers from London to the coast and back again, culminating in a showdown where one character is rescued from a wardrobe that has been converted to a torture chamber. In the previous book it is implied that the murderer goes to the gallows, but this one returns to the more usual practice of having the murderer escape hanging but not justice.
Then I had a notification from the library that an ebook I was in the queue for was ready to borrow. I have no memory of ordering this book but I'll read it anyway - The Keeper of Secrets by Judith Cutler. It's set in 1810 and is historical crime fiction.
The flat is re-rented to a comically fussy civil servant (who talks in circumlocutary footnoted paragraphs) and his wife and daughter, and the flat is broken into several times and ransacked but everything taken is anonymously returned.
Add an ex-boxer who runs yachting cruises to people wishing to avoid food rationing, his secretive secretary, a self-styled anarchic "enemy of the people", an angry estranged wife, and a cookery teacher with an invalid mother. Bobby begins to suspect that the cruises were a cover for jewel smuggling, and the complicated plot veers from London to the coast and back again, culminating in a showdown where one character is rescued from a wardrobe that has been converted to a torture chamber. In the previous book it is implied that the murderer goes to the gallows, but this one returns to the more usual practice of having the murderer escape hanging but not justice.
Then I had a notification from the library that an ebook I was in the queue for was ready to borrow. I have no memory of ordering this book but I'll read it anyway - The Keeper of Secrets by Judith Cutler. It's set in 1810 and is historical crime fiction.
Helen
Implicitly explicit
Jane Harper, Exiles, a crime novel full of nuance and depth, and about all the important facets of being human - its also very well-written. Thank you, Oz!
Now if someone could invent a way for me to read while bobbing around in the sea, my summer would be perfect...
Now if someone could invent a way for me to read while bobbing around in the sea, my summer would be perfect...
p0lka
Illuminator
Neal Stephenson's termination shock, right near the beginning.
Lennart Hyland
Muse
One chapter with just that line, hilarious! Instant classic.
Spektator
Is that right?
Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
This is one that I missed in high school and college, so I just caught up on it. It’s not a novel, but a novella, and a quick read.
It’s set in a bleakly-sketched New England and, like Wuthering Heights, has a wraparound narrator who dives into the past to learn the history of the title character, his wife, and the young woman who turns Ethan’s head. In the flashback, we meet Ethan and his wife Zeena (short for Zenobia) who have been married for seven years. He’s a farmer who has a side hustle as a sawmill operator, she’s a whiny, short-tempered hypochondriac. Into their household comes Zeena’s young, attractive cousin Mattie.
It's difficult to like any of the main characters. Ethan is a poor farmer on poor land, Zeena is a complaining, demanding woman, and Mattie has upon the death of her father just learned that she has no money, no legacy. She puts herself out to be agreeable and useful, gaining Ethan’s interest and pity and Zeena’s growing resentment.
No spoiler here, the ending isn’t a very happy one. The characters are well delineated, and the descriptions of New England are striking, but overall, the plot is more dreary than tragic.
I’m glad I read it, but I have to admit that more than once I thought “What this needs is one or two of Lovecraft’s eldritch horrors.” You know, just to spice things up.
This is one that I missed in high school and college, so I just caught up on it. It’s not a novel, but a novella, and a quick read.
It’s set in a bleakly-sketched New England and, like Wuthering Heights, has a wraparound narrator who dives into the past to learn the history of the title character, his wife, and the young woman who turns Ethan’s head. In the flashback, we meet Ethan and his wife Zeena (short for Zenobia) who have been married for seven years. He’s a farmer who has a side hustle as a sawmill operator, she’s a whiny, short-tempered hypochondriac. Into their household comes Zeena’s young, attractive cousin Mattie.
It's difficult to like any of the main characters. Ethan is a poor farmer on poor land, Zeena is a complaining, demanding woman, and Mattie has upon the death of her father just learned that she has no money, no legacy. She puts herself out to be agreeable and useful, gaining Ethan’s interest and pity and Zeena’s growing resentment.
No spoiler here, the ending isn’t a very happy one. The characters are well delineated, and the descriptions of New England are striking, but overall, the plot is more dreary than tragic.
I’m glad I read it, but I have to admit that more than once I thought “What this needs is one or two of Lovecraft’s eldritch horrors.” You know, just to spice things up.
I joined a book club this morning that meets once a month at my local library, and the next meeting is the day after tomorrow. I had better get reading this month's book, which is Miss Benson's Beetle, by Rachel Joyce, so the next Bobby Owen and the Judith Cutler book are on hold for a couple of days.
The Great Zaganza
Maledictorian
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2016
- Messages
- 29,812
The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger.
Not my area of biology, so it's a nice, undemanding way to catch up with recent developments in plant intelligence research.
Not my area of biology, so it's a nice, undemanding way to catch up with recent developments in plant intelligence research.
alfaniner
Penultimate Amazing
Hollywood Tough by Stephen J. Cannell.
This is from the TV cop show writer and producer and it shows. Reads like an elaborate TV episode. About halfway through. The cop jargon is sometimes thick and not always explained -- not really a complaint. It's a serviceable book with distinct characters, and moves along nicely. It's like a classic "summer beach read", not too taxing, but a decent way to pass the time.
This is from the TV cop show writer and producer and it shows. Reads like an elaborate TV episode. About halfway through. The cop jargon is sometimes thick and not always explained -- not really a complaint. It's a serviceable book with distinct characters, and moves along nicely. It's like a classic "summer beach read", not too taxing, but a decent way to pass the time.
The Formula: How Rogues, Geniuses, and Speed Freaks Made F1 the World's Fastest-Growing Sport
by Joshua Robinson & Jonathan Clegg, 2024
A fascinating history of Formula One with a focus on the business and management side. It's a page-turner for me, as it describes the characters of the past and present.
Loving reading about Enzo Ferrari's quirks, the big business shenanigans of Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley, Spygate, Crashgate, and am currently up to the creation and rise of Red Bull Racing and the success of its Team Principal Christian Horner (who's actually just been deposed after 20+ years). Looking forward to hopefully reading the more recent business developments in relation to the TV rights.
by Joshua Robinson & Jonathan Clegg, 2024
A fascinating history of Formula One with a focus on the business and management side. It's a page-turner for me, as it describes the characters of the past and present.
Loving reading about Enzo Ferrari's quirks, the big business shenanigans of Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley, Spygate, Crashgate, and am currently up to the creation and rise of Red Bull Racing and the success of its Team Principal Christian Horner (who's actually just been deposed after 20+ years). Looking forward to hopefully reading the more recent business developments in relation to the TV rights.
Miss Benson's Beetle (by Rachel Joyce, who also wrote The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry) is not at all the sort of book I would usually read but I enjoyed it.
Set mainly in the 1950s, the quirky plot revolves around Margery Benson, a frumpy and discontented British school teacher who dreams of finding a possibly mythical golden beetle in New Caledonia, and Enid Pretty, a brash, beautiful (and very talkative) woman whom Margery reluctantly employs as her assistant on a madcap expedition to the other side of the world in search of the beetle.
With no experience, very little research other than some chapters of an outdated guide book, only one passport between them, a stalker with severe PTSD, and with both keeping a multiplicity of secrets, their journey is beset by challenges. But an unlikely friendship develops, and gives both women an insight into the benefits (and heavy costs) of following your dream - or as Enid calls it - your vocation.
The climax of the novel was not at all what I expected - it was sudden, violent and shocking. But it worked well to lift the story from a mundane fluffy story to something more. And now I know more about the anatomy and life-cycles of beetles than I ever expected (or really wanted) to learn.
The book club pick for next month is Anthony Horowitz's The Twist of A Knife, fourth in the Hawthorne series. I read the first two The Word is Murder and The Sentence is Death a couple of years ago, so I might seek out the third one A Line to Kill before I start this one.
While I was at the library for book club I took out Richard Osman's We Solve Murders and Lucy Worsley's Jane Austen at Home. It's just a little village library which mostly stocks crime fiction and chicklit, but they can order books if I want a specific title.
Set mainly in the 1950s, the quirky plot revolves around Margery Benson, a frumpy and discontented British school teacher who dreams of finding a possibly mythical golden beetle in New Caledonia, and Enid Pretty, a brash, beautiful (and very talkative) woman whom Margery reluctantly employs as her assistant on a madcap expedition to the other side of the world in search of the beetle.
With no experience, very little research other than some chapters of an outdated guide book, only one passport between them, a stalker with severe PTSD, and with both keeping a multiplicity of secrets, their journey is beset by challenges. But an unlikely friendship develops, and gives both women an insight into the benefits (and heavy costs) of following your dream - or as Enid calls it - your vocation.
The climax of the novel was not at all what I expected - it was sudden, violent and shocking. But it worked well to lift the story from a mundane fluffy story to something more. And now I know more about the anatomy and life-cycles of beetles than I ever expected (or really wanted) to learn.
The book club pick for next month is Anthony Horowitz's The Twist of A Knife, fourth in the Hawthorne series. I read the first two The Word is Murder and The Sentence is Death a couple of years ago, so I might seek out the third one A Line to Kill before I start this one.
While I was at the library for book club I took out Richard Osman's We Solve Murders and Lucy Worsley's Jane Austen at Home. It's just a little village library which mostly stocks crime fiction and chicklit, but they can order books if I want a specific title.