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

alfaniner said:
Finished Four Past Midnight, a collection of Stephen King novellas. Two of them are rather similar, but he does have a lot of repetition over his oeuvre, sometimes even in the same story.
One thing I came across is the phrase "acting out didos", which means something like "playing pranks". He used it at least six times in the different stories. Perhaps it's a regional thing (local to writers living in Maine, perhaps) but I'd never heard it before.
I have liked some of his books for their length but a couple of these stories could have used some editing. Many times I'd be thinking "Just get on with it!!!". Lots of exposition late in the stories which might have served better up front, of by being cut out completely.
He does have a frustrating way of generating "tension" by not revealing things that should be in the narrative. "He called the proprietor and asked two simple questions." It didn't say what they were. If it was done in a reveal later in the story I didn't associate it.
I have one more of his I got as a freebie - a big hardback over two inches thick. (Rose Madder) But I think I'll be reading something else before tackling that one.
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Rose Madder is the only book that's ever given me a nightmare. It's one of those King books where whatever the weird ◊◊◊◊ going on the biggest threat is human beings. It's a bit similar to the short story "Danny Coughlan's Bad Dream" in some ways.
 
But I'm currently listening to the audio book of "Four Chancellors and a Funeral" by Russell Jones, a second listen through actually. I the first edition hardback of it too because I was one of the crowdfunders after loving "A Decade in Tory" and I'm listed in the back as such.
 
Jaws, Peter Benchley
The first time I read this, I thought it was a fast-paced thrill ride. Then the movie came out, my older sister and I saw it, and I bought the paperback. As did 12,000,000 other people. Only while rereading the story did I realize that my first read had been a condensed book.

Movie is still better than the novel. No explicit adulterous sex, no Mafia in the movie. A fast-paced thrill ride. In fact the condensed book was closer than the uncut novel to the movie.

That said, this time I read the expanded, not condensed version, with Benchley's essay about how the book came to be written, how on the day the presses were due to roll it finally got s title (Shadow in the Water didn't have the bite). To assuage the author's pain from the changes the movie script wrought, Spielberg gave Benchley a small speaking role. These parts were fun.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
Rose Madder is the only book that's ever given me a nightmare. It's one of those King books where whatever the weird ◊◊◊◊ going on the biggest threat is human beings. It's a bit similar to the short story "Danny Coughlan's Bad Dream" in some ways.
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Finding it another Stephen King slog. In the first five chapters, the main character takes a bus somewhere. (OK, skipping some of the details but that's about all that "happens".) I realize with this one that it's probably the last SK book I'll ever read. Almost every one of his has detailed descriptions of some kind of ongoing abuse, and that is not entertaining to me. Yeah, "The real monsters were the humans all along"... That's ok, I read too much about that ◊◊◊◊ in real life.
 
Blue Poles: Jackson Pollock, Gough Whitlam, and the painting that changed a nation, by Tom McIlroy, 2025

Part biography of Pollock, part examination of the controversy over the Blue Poles acquisition and its role in Whitlam losing power. 4 stars, perhaps it needed better structuring in the latter half, as it seemed to jump back and forwards a little. Still an engrossing and enjoyable read.
 
Rose Madder (final post regarding it):
Yeah, I gave it another chapter, and, realizing there were 350+ pages left to go, decided to "Nope!" out. I did read the last few pages and they were what I expected, so I got to skip all the angst in between. I'd decided I didn't want to spent these pleasant summer days reading something that was decidedly unpleasant. One of maybe four times or less in my entire (rather long) life that I've DNFd a book.
Oddly enough, my previous DNF was only a few months ago. Perhaps at this stage of life I'm not as willing to spend time on things I'm not really enjoying.
 
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Spektator said:
Jaws, Peter Benchley
The first time I read this, I thought it was a fast-paced thrill ride. Then the movie came out, my older sister and I saw it, and I bought the paperback. As did 12,000,000 other people. Only while rereading the story did I realize that my first read had been a condensed book.

Movie is still better than the novel. No explicit adulterous sex, no Mafia in the movie. A fast-paced thrill ride. In fact the condensed book was closer than the uncut novel to the movie.

That said, this time I read the expanded, not condensed version, with Benchley's essay about how the book came to be written, how on the day the presses were due to roll it finally got s title (Shadow in the Water didn't have the bite). To assuage the author's pain from the changes the movie script wrought, Spielberg gave Benchley a small speaking role. These parts were fun.
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I love both the book and the film, somewhere in the spare room I have my original copy from the 1970s. If you haven't read it his book 'The Deep' is pretty good too, it's been filmed a couple of times, there was a version with the original title in the '80s hoping to capitalise on the success of Jaws, then a second version titled 'Deep Blue Sea' more recently with Jessica Alba and Paul Walker.
 
Master Harper of Pern, one of the Pern novels.

Very extensive documentation of a Terran colonial world that appears to have been abandoned.

AI Overview




Review of the First Pern Book: Dragonflight by Anne ...
In science fiction author Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series, the planet Pern is located in the Rukbat system (also known as Alpha Sagittarius), orbiting a golden G-type star in the Sagittarian sector. It is the third planet out from its sun. [1, 2]
The system contains at least five planets and an Oort Cloud. Pern itself was named by its original explorers (an acronym for Parallel Earth, Resources Negligible). The setting of the books—a world battling the deadly spores called Thread—is caused by another planet in the system, the Red Star. The Red Star has a wildly erratic, highly elliptical orbit that travels from Rukbat's Oort Cloud inward to Pern's gravity well every 250 "Turns". [1, 2, 3, 4]

Would you like to know more about how the Red Star's orbit triggers the Dragonriders' "Passes," or are you looking for a guide to the different Holds and Weyrs on Pern?
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Orphia Nay said:
Blue Poles: Jackson Pollock, Gough Whitlam, and the painting that changed a nation, by Tom McIlroy, 2025

Part biography of Pollock, part examination of the controversy over the Blue Poles acquisition and its role in Whitlam losing power. 4 stars, perhaps it needed better structuring in the latter half, as it seemed to jump back and forwards a little. Still an engrossing and enjoyable read.
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It's worth seeing at the National Gallery. It's not what a lot of people expect.
 
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.

Someone said that the magic system in the Mistborn universe seems like it was written for a tabletop roleplaying game. In a way, it is. But it's also a novel of great scope and vision. It adheres to Rule 1 of the "Everything I Know About Storytelling I Learned From Babylon 5" school of storytelling: start the story in the middle. It's got enough to really draw me in - I want to find out more about the world and its history.

I'll probably be picking up others in this series.
 
Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics
by Elle Reeve

I don't know why I do this to myself.

Sometimes I feel like the drive to be well-informed about political hazards in our society overrides my yearning for mental tranquility.

Great book though, if you want to learn about some of the worst people in the USA
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Gawdzilla Sama said:
Niven and Pournelle, "Known Universe", worth a read. (Dozen or so books relevant to that Universe.
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I have been rereading a lot of Niven's Known Universe stuff myself.
And I always felt queasy about eating a Yam ever since I read 'Protector"
At a sci fi con whne we were young, my future wife went as Teela Brown.
Although Pournell co authored some novels with Niven, they took place outside Known Space.
Though Pournell did write a couple of the Human Kzin war stories; that was one area of Known Space that Niven threw open to other writers.
 
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John Albert said:
Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics
by Elle Reeve

I don't know why I do this to myself.

Sometimes I feel like the drive to be well-informed about political hazards in our society overrides my yearning for mental tranquility.

Great book though, if you want to learn about some of the worst people in the USA
.
.
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Problem is there is no sollution. The Internet and Social Media are not going away. Out only hope is the upcoming generation, having been raised with them, can handle them better then we had.
And one media from caputing American politics is nothing new. Radio and Television had their day.
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
Master Harper of Pern, one of the Pern novels.

Very extensive documentation of a Terran colonial world that appears to have been abandoned.
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I've been a huge fan of the Pern series since the early days. I started in a rather odd place - my dad bought me one of the early books, but one that was part 2 of a trilogy of linked stories (Dragonsinger) so various bits of it were slightly confusing because not only did I not really know the backstory of the Dragons, but I didn't know the back story of the main character. Still, I enjoyed it enough to look out the other books in the series.

I particularly liked the way it started out as basically fantasy, then very slowly transformed to sci-fi, and then back to a nice amalgam of the two.
 
The first book, in chronological order, is the original landing book, "Dragon's Dawn". I suspect Mac needed a bit of help with the transformative science in Dragon's Dawn. There was a active Pern Fandom at Purdue when I first got there. Nerds with a capital NERDS. :j2: :love: :j2:

My favorite re-read is Leesa's trilogy, starting with Dragon's Song. I re-read those once a year or so, depending on how much I'm "in the shop" and pinned down for a time.
 
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I basically grew up with the Pern books, starting from when I found a copy of Dragonflight in a second-hand bookstore and liked the cover. I still maintain that there are really only seven of them.
 
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