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

AmyStrange said:
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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I liked James; I had to go back to Huckleberry Finn first to remind myself of the story given it must be fifty years since I had read it.

The idea of giving other characters from classic novels a voice, like Geraldine Brooks' March or Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea is a difficult line to walk without retelling the original story but I think Percival Everett succeeds.

Currently I'm reading L'Invention de Nos Vies (The Age of Reinvention) by Karine Tuil; it's a story of a man who on a whim steals a friend's identity, moves to the USA and becomes incredibly successful while his friend is stuck in a miserable life in France. Then the lie comes crashing down.
 
Agatha said:
I liked James; I had to go back to Huckleberry Finn first to remind myself of the story given it must be fifty years since I had read it.
The idea of giving other characters from classic novels a voice, like Geraldine Brooks' March or Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea is a difficult line to walk without retelling the original story but I think Percival Everett succeeds.

Currently I'm reading L'Invention de Nos Vies (The Age of Reinvention) by Karine Tuil; it's a story of a man who on a whim steals a friend's identity, moves to the USA and becomes incredibly successful while his friend is stuck in a miserable life in France. Then the lie comes crashing down.
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I know what you mean, I read Huckleberry Finn in high school, and when I reread it again, I didn't realize how much of it I'd forgotten.

The last hundred pages of Huckleberry were simply outrageously hilarious for me as Tom and Huck make plans to break Jim out of the prison he's in because he's a runaway slave, but they have to do it a certain way, because of the way they did it in the books Tom read about prisoners escaping.

He has to have pets (rats and snakes), and they also have to dig into his prison from the outside (even though they had access to the inside every day), while Jim had to carve some weird s**** onto a grindstone, like a calendar and a coat of arms. He also had to write a diary on an old shirt in some kind of secret code, and after they spring him, they also had to leave behind a straw man in a women's dress and all kinds of crazy stuff like that.

They also had to leave anonymous notes around saying someone was going to spring Jim soon, and the folks keeping him locked up needed to keep watch etc, etc. It was simply insane, and the funniest part was the very end, but I won't spoil it for anyone else who hasn't read it yet.

When I googled the date it was published is when I found the book James.

Also, thanks for the book suggestion, L'Invention de Nos Vies. I'll have to add it to my list of books.

I'll also leave you with a couple of book series suggestions:

Each one is about a woman in law enforcement (the first one is with the FBI, and the second is a LE officer in Canada) that somehow end up going back in time (from the 2000s to the 1800s), and once there, they're confronted with having to solve some serial killer murders, but during those old times, women weren't permitted to do anything that would sully their sensibilities, especially solving murders.

The second one is my favorite, especially since she's forced to prove she's from the future, and she did it by telling the truth and talking the way we do today (slang and all) compared to the way women talked back then. It was simply hilarious.

Kendra Donovan from Julie McElwain's A Murder in Time, and Mallory Atkinson from Kelley Armstrong's Rip Through Time series.

Anyway, thanks again.


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I'm just starting The Warmth of Other Suns about the great migration. I have high expectations as it has been highly rec'd by many friends, plus the whole Pulitzer thing!
 
chrispy said:
I'm just starting The Warmth of Other Suns about the great migration. I have high expectations as it has been highly rec'd by many friends, plus the whole Pulitzer thing!
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I looked it up on Goodreads and yes, that does sound good! I'll be interested to hear what you think.
 
I am just getting around to reading David Weber's 14th book in the Honor Harrington series, Uncompromising Honor, published in 2018. After reading about 65% of it, I am considering not bothering with the rest of it.

First, and most annoying, he has added many new characters with names that require various non-English letter combinations or diacritics. I suspect Weber was amusing himself with these, having gotten bored with more-usual names. Every time I saw one, I had to stop reading to figure out its pronunciation; I was not amused.

Second, I am tired of reading about how many hundreds of thousands of missiles are launched, how many are destroyed by anti-missile defenses, and how many hit any given ship. The answer is "lots, and lots, and not very many," to vaguely paraphrase Tolkien.

Third, and not unusual for Weber's writing, there were long explanations either as narration or as monologues by various characters. Background information is necessary, of course, but a novel whose blurb on fantasticfiction.com includes

[Harrington's] is the voice of caution and compromise no longer, and the galaxy is about to see something it has never imagined. "The Salamander is coming for the Solarian League, and Hell is coming in her wake.
​
has so far not delivered.

I would be interested in knowing what others think of this book.
 
Spektator said:
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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Jingo, and the wider Watch series are peak Pratchett for me. Far from perfect, but the interplay of motivations and characters is always interesting, and PTerry has a lot to say about the human condition.

Plus, they're just very funny :)
 
One of the books I just got done reading (right now I'm reading Robinson Crusoe) is Frankenstein (or The Modern Prometheus) by Mary Shelley. The book is nothing like all the movies I've ever seen to date. I'm glad because some of it is really heartbreaking (for me anyway), and a couple of the more interesting differences are explained by the following poster that I found:

AA1iTjxG.jpg



IMO, the ending sucked too.

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I'm shortly off on a long plane flight so I've loaded my Kindle up with a few books. I've got both Skeptics Guide to the Universe and Skeptics Guide to the Future, which I've been meaning to get around to for some time, and I've also got the 2005 version of Harry Frankfurt's On ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ which I'm sure will be fascinating.
 
AmyStrange said:
One of the books I just got done reading (right now I'm reading Robinson Crusoe) is Frankenstein (or The Modern Prometheus) by Mary Shelley. The book is nothing like all the movies I've ever seen to date. I'm glad because some of it is really heartbreaking (for me anyway), and a couple of the more interesting differences are explained by the following poster that I found:




IMO, the ending sucked too.

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Wasn't Frankenstein told like a letter in a flashback in a tale regaled by a third person? I seem to remember it being far removed from "present time". I may be conflating it with Dracula, which I think was mostly letters being sent back & forth. But considering they were written over 100 years ago, book presentations were probably generally different from what the evolved to.
 
alfaniner said:
Wasn't Frankenstein told like a letter in a flashback in a tale regaled by a third person? I seem to remember it being far removed from "present time". I may be conflating it with Dracula, which I think was mostly letters being sent back & forth. But considering they were written over 100 years ago, book presentations were probably generally different from what the evolved to.
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Dracula (I just read that one last week) was written in the form of Journal and Diary entries (on paper and on a phonograph recording device), letters, newspaper clippings, and (if I remember correctly) sent telegrams, but Frankenstein starts out with four letters from a brother to his sister.

In the letters, the brother is in Russia and explaining to his sister how he came to accomplish a lifelong dream of captaining a ship to find the Northwest Passage. By the fourth letter, he is actually in the middle of this adventure. Back then you couldn't just put letters in a mailbox, especially if you're up in the arctic trapped in ice waiting for a change in the weather so the ship can move forward.

In his fourth letter, he is explaining how he saw these two apparitions.

The first apparition is the monster, and the second apparition is Dr. Frankenstein who is chasing the monster. The captain picks up the Dr., who is in bad shape, and then nurses him back to health.

The rest of the book is in the form of a manuscript (or a Journal) detailing the Doctor's tale of who he is and why he is chasing the monster. The following quote is from the book itself (at the end of the fourth letter):

This manuscript will doubtless afford you the greatest pleasure; but to me, who know him, and who hear it from his lips--with what interest and sympathy shall I read it in some future day!

ETA: It also contains the monster's explanation to the Doctor as to what happened to him, why he was seeking vengeance, and what he could do to stop him from continuing his vengeance. The monster is huge and can actually move around fast and climb buildings like Spiderman (that was my impression anyway). It's kind of like the difference (in movies) between slow moving and fast-moving zombies.


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Lennart Hyland said:
My next book is a quite short swedish one about the capture of Adolf Eichmann, Operation Eichmann by Erik Åsard.
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Finished with Eichmann a while ago. Due to family issues I had a involuntarily break from reading.
But the issues has been resolved and I've just started with Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
 
Mayhem and Madness: Chronicles of a Teenaged Supervillain

Young-adult novel of a high-schooler that finds an Iron Man-like suit, and the chaos that ensues. Told in the first person (I used to hate those as a kid -- "Geez... another 'I' book???") and mostly in flashback, which kind of takes away from the immediacy of the events. Nevertheless it's a fun, fairly fast read, although it does get a little exposition-y at the end. It wraps up nicely. I thought there might be a sequel out there even though it wasn't "set up" for one, but I find nothing else in that line by the author.
 
alfaniner said:
Mayhem and Madness: Chronicles of a Teenaged Supervillain

Young-adult novel of a high-schooler that finds an Iron Man-like suit, and the chaos that ensues. Told in the first person (I used to hate those as a kid -- "Geez... another 'I' book???") and mostly in flashback, which kind of takes away from the immediacy of the events.
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I used to think the same thing, (not picking on you, alfaniner) but do you know how many great works of literature (IMO of course) that are written that way, Dracula, Frankenstein, Flowers for Algernon, all the Sherlock Holme's stories, and so on and so on.

Anyway, Chronicles of a Teenaged Supervillain sounds good. A little like the Spy School series, which I found hilarious. I'll have to check it out and thanks.


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alfaniner said:
Mayhem and Madness: Chronicles of a Teenaged Supervillain

Young-adult novel of a high-schooler that finds an Iron Man-like suit, and the chaos that ensues. Told in the first person (I used to hate those as a kid -- "Geez... another 'I' book???") and mostly in flashback, which kind of takes away from the immediacy of the events. Nevertheless it's a fun, fairly fast read, although it does get a little exposition-y at the end. It wraps up nicely. I thought there might be a sequel out there even though it wasn't "set up" for one, but I find nothing else in that line by the author.
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That reminds me of Richard Roberts' Please Don't Tell My Parents.... series
 
xterra said:
I am just getting around to reading David Weber's 14th book in the Honor Harrington series, Uncompromising Honor, published in 2018. After reading about 65% of it, I am considering not bothering with the rest of it.

First, and most annoying, he has added many new characters with names that require various non-English letter combinations or diacritics. I suspect Weber was amusing himself with these, having gotten bored with more-usual names. Every time I saw one, I had to stop reading to figure out its pronunciation; I was not amused.

Second, I am tired of reading about how many hundreds of thousands of missiles are launched, how many are destroyed by anti-missile defenses, and how many hit any given ship. The answer is "lots, and lots, and not very many," to vaguely paraphrase Tolkien.

Third, and not unusual for Weber's writing, there were long explanations either as narration or as monologues by various characters. Background information is necessary, of course, but a novel whose blurb on fantasticfiction.com includes

[Harrington's] is the voice of caution and compromise no longer, and the galaxy is about to see something it has never imagined. "The Salamander is coming for the Solarian League, and Hell is coming in her wake.​
​
has so far not delivered.

I would be interested in knowing what others think of this book.
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I used to read a lot of fantasy novels and would often just read names as the first and last letters. S@#$@#$Y drew his sword!
 
AmyStrange said:
Dracula (I just read that one last week) was written in the form of Journal and Diary entries (on paper and on a phonograph recording device), letters, newspaper clippings, and (if I remember correctly) sent telegrams, but Frankenstein starts out with four letters from a brother to his sister.

In the letters, the brother is in Russia and explaining to his sister how he came to accomplish a lifelong dream of captaining a ship to find the Northwest Passage. By the fourth letter, he is actually in the middle of this adventure. Back then you couldn't just put letters in a mailbox, especially if you're up in the arctic trapped in ice waiting for a change in the weather so the ship can move forward.

In his fourth letter, he is explaining how he saw these two apparitions.

The first apparition is the monster, and the second apparition is Dr. Frankenstein who is chasing the monster. The captain picks up the Dr., who is in bad shape, and then nurses him back to health.

The rest of the book is in the form of a manuscript (or a Journal) detailing the Doctor's tale of who he is and why he is chasing the monster. The following quote is from the book itself (at the end of the fourth letter):

This manuscript will doubtless afford you the greatest pleasure; but to me, who know him, and who hear it from his lips--with what interest and sympathy shall I read it in some future day!

ETA: It also contains the monster's explanation to the Doctor as to what happened to him, why he was seeking vengeance, and what he could do to stop him from continuing his vengeance. The monster is huge and can actually move around fast and climb buildings like Spiderman (that was my impression anyway). It's kind of like the difference (in movies) between slow moving and fast-moving zombies.


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The monster is also very intelligent, taught himself to read while hiding out from humanity and such. I don't know that I've ever seen a movie version that comes near to the book regarding the monster. About the only thing most of the movies have in common with the source material is that Frankenstein creates the monster. IIRC, it's also much more sympathetic to the monster than most of the movie versions. Its been years since I read it though.
 
ahhell said:
The monster is also very intelligent, taught himself to read while hiding out from humanity and such. I don't know that I've ever seen a movie version that comes near to the book regarding the monster. About the only thing most of the movies have in common with the source material is that Frankenstein creates the monster. IIRC, it's also much more sympathetic to the monster than most of the movie versions. Its been years since I read it though.
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Weirdly enough, the one movie that comes closest (IMO anyway) is Young Frankenstein.


ETA: In the end of YF, the monster is very articulate and even has a girlfriend, and if you read the book, you'd know why that was very important, although, the Bride of Frankenstein does explore that a little.

SPOILER ALERT:

After killing his little brother and setting up his young cousin for the crime (that she was convicted of and hanged), it's what the monster asked for as a blackmail payment in exchange for leaving Dr. Frankenstein's family and friends alone. Thank God (IMO), the underlined part wasn't in any movie that I've ever seen.


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Halfway through Words of Radiance, book 2 of The Stormlight Archive by Sanderson. I am enjoying it so far, as he always has interesting (to me, anyway) magic systems.
 
I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, by Jason Pargin. A socially inept Lift driver, whose life seems to revolve around his Lift job, his edgelord Twitch channel, and his ex-Marine father, who is predictably infinitely disappointed with him, is offered $200 000 by a mysterious cool chick for taking her and her road case from his hometown in California to Washington DC, no questions asked. They must leave at once and leave all trackable electronic devices behind. Through a series of bizarre incidents and coincidences, the two misfits' journey soon becomes the object of a major conspiracy theory amidst Redditors, and soon millions of people are obsessing over the duo, their box, what its its purpose can be, and where it's headed.

I've read half of it so far (if you've read more, please don't post spoilers!), and it's been part dramatic road trip with heavy Stephen King vibes, part commentary about conspiracy theorists, incel culture, insane redditors, and how stories can grow and spiral out of control online. Oh, and how dependent we are on the cell phones and social media that are also destroying our society.

There's some pretty heavy tirades by our incel antihero that were genuenely hard to listen to, especially the ones on sexual assault, so be warned about that. At least Mystery Chick does a good jo at shutting them down, so I don't interpret the book as an alt-right/incel soap box, it reads more like the author wishes to call it out, along with the more... Bizarre posters on Reddit.

Either way, fantastic and ever-engaging read so far. I'm finding myself listening to it in chunks over time because I don't want to consume it all at once.
Oh, and the front cover gave me my new profile picture.
 
Finished Maskerade, then got Sam the Sudden (P.G. Wodehouse), a zany farce with a large cast and a complex plot. It is short, though, and I finished it in a few hours. It's not in the Jeeves/Wooster league, but amusing enough.
 
I recently discovered channel 64 (Blaze) on British freeview TV. I am quite taken with it and there are a lot of very interesting programs about UFO's and the like. One series is called 'ancient aliens' and there is a book called, Ancient aliens the official companion book, which I purchased and have begun reading.
I also purchased a book mentioned on the channel called, 'technology of the Gods' by David Hatcher Childress, and will read that next.
 
Reading Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë) for the first time and enjoying it. I took a graduate course on British novels of the Gothic sort, and honestly this one is a much better read than Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, the first on the reading list and a dreadful slog.
 
arthwollipot said:
I'm shortly off on a long plane flight so I've loaded my Kindle up with a few books. I've got both Skeptics Guide to the Universe and Skeptics Guide to the Future, which I've been meaning to get around to for some time, and I've also got the 2005 version of Harry Frankfurt's On ******** which I'm sure will be fascinating.
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I also went and got the Kindle version of Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion since I can't imagine life without them.
 
ahhell said:
I used to read a lot of fantasy novels and would often just read names as the first and last letters. S@#$@#$Y drew his sword!
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I recognise the word shape, haven't a clue of the pronunciation and it means I never (well very rarely) remember the name of characters in a book, even though I've an excellent memory for plot and story.
 
Two thirds of the way through "I'm starting to worry about...". Still a great read. All in all, it isn't a road trip story or thriller as much as it is a life lesson, and a message that despite how easy it is to get the feeling the world is ending, we're still doing better than any humans in the history of humanity, and despite our catastrophising (both on a personal and societal level), things are probably going to go way better than we think. It's my first book by Jason Pargin but I get the impression he really understands both human beings and human society. It gets almost a tiny bit conspiratorial at times with the "this is the way you've been conditioned to think" jargon, but overall, there's so much optimism and wisdom here. The main character has extreme anxiety which makes it easier for the author to use him as an example of overthinking and assuming the worst, but at the same time, I think he is all of us. The book helped me put my own issues and worries into perspective, in fact. I also think I forgot to mention that it's funny. Like, really, cleverly funny.

Oh, and the worms. At some point I probably have to tell you about the worms.
 
Orphia Nay said:
"Unruly: A History of England's Kings and Queens", by David Mitchell, 2023.

Maybe because it's by a comedian (who studied History at Cambridge), it's not dry, and yes, it's laugh out loud funny.
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I've been reading Unruly for two and a half months, on and mostly off. Halfway through, and can't really recall much about the rulers so far, the info hasn't sunk in. It's fun to read, with witty observations, but still rather academic or theoretical.

Oh, well, I don't think anyone's going to be testing me on King Stephen or Edward II.
 
AmyStrange said:
Weirdly enough, the one movie that comes closest (IMO anyway) is Young Frankenstein.
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Hopefully, I'm not overdoing the Frankenstein novel to movie tripe, but there is a new one being release next year. Plus, you can go here to read how someone ranked the five best Frankenstein movies.

The movies are also compared to the novel, which I found interesting, because of my comments about that very thing.


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AmyStrange said:
Hopefully, I'm not overdoing the Frankenstein novel to movie tripe, but there is a new one being release next year. Plus, you can go here to read how someone ranked the five best Frankenstein movies.

The movies are also compared to the novel, which I found interesting, because of my comments about that very thing.


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There was a TV mini-series at the start of the 21st century that if my memory serves me well was quite faithful to the book, certainly thematically.

ETA:

www.imdb.com

Frankenstein (TV Mini Series 2004) ⭐ 6.2 | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi

2h 57m | TV-14
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com

 
Darat said:
There was a TV mini-series at the start of the 21st century that if my memory serves me well was quite faithful to the book, certainly thematically.
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Thanks Darat. If I can find it, I'll have to check it out, but there is one part, I don't want to see.

IMO, that part (in the book) was bad enough.


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Worm said:
do tell ;)
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Oh, I can't do that. It's promised in the first pages and you only have them revealed until well into the book. If I just tell you I'd spoil it for you in case you decide to read the book :P .
 
Safe-Keeper said:
Oh, I can't do that. It's promised in the first pages and you only have them revealed until well into the book. If I just tell you I'd spoil it for you in case you decide to read the book :P .
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Thanks, Safe-Keeper. I plan on reading it in the next week or two, and I don't want the surprise ruined.


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