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

I'm reading The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K Le Guin, written in 1971.

Here's a sample, from Chapter 2, that shouldn't spoil anything:
Dr Haber gazed again at the mural and wondered when such a photograph had been taken. Blue sky, snow from foothills to peak. Years ago, in the sixties or seventies, no doubt. The Greenhouse Effect had been quite gradual, and Haber, born in 1962, could clearly remember the blue skies of his childhood. Nowadays the eternal snows were gone from all the world's mountains, even Everest, even Erebus, fiery-throated on the waste Antarctic shore. But of course they might have colored a modern photograph, faked the blue sky and white peak; no telling.
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Fifth Sun by Camilla Townsend, 2019. "Native Americans were more intrigued by the Roman alphabet than the Spaniards ever knew. Unbeknownst to the newcomers, the Aztecs took it home and used it to write detailed histories in their own language of Nahuatl. Until recently, these sources remained obscure, only partially translated, and almost never consulted by scholars. For the first time, in Fifth Sun, the history of the Aztecs is offered in all its complexity, in an account based solely on the texts written by the people themselves."


Supernavigators by David Barrie, 2019. "As Supernavigators makes clear, a stunning array of species command senses and skills -- and arguably, types of intelligence -- beyond our own. Weaving together interviews with leading animal behaviorists and the groundbreaking discoveries of Nobel Prize-winning scientists, David Barrie reveals these wonders in a whole new light."
 
Soon finished with East of Eden and its have been delightful! I suspect the ending will be very special.. Definitely gonna check out some more Steinbeck books.

A colleague gave me The Last Train to London by Meg Waite Clayton so gonna squeeze that one in between first.
 
I haven't been Reading books lately too involved in studying Family history,
My Great Great great great great GrandMother was born before the war of 1812, and lived past the Civil War, Stories of the Wars and Abraham Lincoln were passed down in my Family from her. Real life going back generations.
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"Nasty Brutish and Short". It's named sort of for the author's two sons. It's an exploration of philosophy as curated by the author's kids who are, nasty, brutish and short (and also, loving, kind, funny as hell and revealed to be pretty great kids). There's one chapter that's a critique of Hobbes discussed while figuring out when a nine-year-old can and can't say the f-word (summer camp yes, synagogue no). It's a great read.
 
I am reading Children of Time, and enjoying it, although it started slowly and I wondered what all the fuss was about.

I'll put the rest of the series on my reading list.


(Pet peeve: Is it so hard to list authors' names along with book titles?)
 
Foster Zygote said:
Finished both books and thoroughly enjoyed them. Thanks for the recommendation.
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I just read Bear Head (Amazon), also by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I only bought it because it was so cheap that I thought, 'Well, what the hell. At that price, why not?' It was something to have on my Kindle for a rainy day with nothing else to do, but I started reading it just to see if the price was so low because it wasn't any good, like a popular author's first couple of books before learning the tricks of the trade. But as early as at the beginning of the second chapter (so I don't think a spoiler alert is necessary), I thought, 'Wait a minute! Is this character based on Trump?!', which it very obviously was.

Now I wonder if the price was political! I only later found out that Bear Head is a sequel to Dogs of War, which I have downloaded but not yet started reading. Sometimes the first book in a series is priced lower than the following volumes, which is not the case here, which supports my suspicion that the price of Bear Head may be political. :)

I am currently reading Cage of Souls, also by Tchaikovsky and also great.

I considered making a thread about works of fiction with characters or plots satirizing Trump and/or the MAGA movement. The Supergirl TV series is an obvious example. There was a season of American Horror Story and of The Good Fight (as was to be expected). Gibson's Agency, as mentioned earlier in this thread. There is one recent novel by Harlan Coben, The Boy from the Woods.
Based on what I had heard, I knew about American Horror Story and The Good Fight in advance, but the others took me by surprise.

Any others?

ETA: I just noticed this one. Thanks, Armitage72. :)
 
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dann said:
Any others?
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Although there's no mention of Trump, Neal Stephenson's Fall; or, Dodge in Hell is set in the United States (mostly) in the near future, and has a couple of chapters about travel through "Ameristan", which encompasses large swaths of rural America. These are largely autonomous regions where there is no formal government, and a feudal religious oligarchy rules. Particularly frightening are the "Leviticans", who follow a strict code of law based on the Old Testament, and practice "stoning", which is actually done with guns because "bullets are basically little to rocks". Actual crucifixion is also common. Education (outside of religious indoctrination) is virtually nonexistent, and most Ameristanis are at least functionally illiterate. Professional medical care is also absent, and they are reliant on the pockets of civilization around cities scattered throughout, but independent of, Ameristan in the event that anyone needs real medical care. Most Ameristanis spend a great deal of time on the internet watching videos that consist of little more than emotionally charged sounds and images. The number one cause of premature death is firearms accidents, because they spent decades stockpiling guns and ammo for a government attack that never came, and now they have little to do for entertainment but shoot off their horde of billions of cartridges.
 
An old sci-fi (loosely speaking)* classic, Jack Finney's Time And Again. A commercial artist living in late-1960's New York City joins a government project for time travel and ends up in 1882 NYC. The Gilded Age city is exhaustively evoked, complemented by drawings and photographs, something I don't remember seeing in other time-travel stories. This is actually a re-read- I recall reading this novel once before, probably in the 70's, but it's been long enough that it's effectively a new and fresh one for me. (And I understand that Finney wrote a sequel, From Time To Time, shortly before his death in 1995, which I will get to after I finish this)

*I say "loosely speaking" because there's very little sci in the fi, at least in the normally understood sense, where time travel is usually explained in Einsteinian terms. Here, the mechanism is
self-hypnosis combined with the protagonist's immersion in a painstakingly detailed physical recreation of the target era in a building that straddles both past and present (the Dakota apartment building).
(Shrug) What the hell, it gets him back there and moves the story along.
 
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Spektator said:
By Dava Sobel, Longitude.

Short, nontechnical, but informative, this account of the struggle to find a means of determining, well longitude, this is worth a read. The race was to aid the British Navy and merchant shipping, but also to win a £20,000 prize. The two sides in the competition were the Astronomers Royal, who sought an astronomical method, and John and William Harrison, father and son, who were self-taught clock makers working on perfecting a chronometer.

Not a treatise by any means, but with the decades-long efforts of the Harrisons undercut by two Astronomers Royal, their competitors who were rather unfairly on the judging committee, there is an element of suspense.

Short, fast read for anyone not demanding a detailed history of the science and engineering.
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A good book.
 
turingtest said:
An old sci-fi (loosely speaking)* classic, Jack Finney's Time And Again. A commercial artist living in late-1960's New York City joins a government project for time travel and ends up in 1882 NYC. The Gilded Age city is exhaustively evoked, complemented by drawings and photographs, something I don't remember seeing in other time-travel stories. This is actually a re-read- I recall reading this novel once before, probably in the 70's, but it's been long enough that it's effectively a new and fresh one for me. (And I understand that Finney wrote a sequel, From Time To Time, shortly before his death in 1995, which I will get to after I finish this)

*I say "loosely speaking" because there's very little sci in the fi, at least in the normally understood sense, where time travel is usually explained in Einsteinian terms. Here, the mechanism is
self-hypnosis combined with the protagonist's immersion in a painstakingly detailed physical recreation of the target era in a building that straddles both past and present (the Dakota apartment building).
(Shrug) What the hell, it gets him back there and moves the story along.
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I remember a Carl Sagan quote about Time And Again being such a well told story that he wasn't bothered by the dodgy science.
 
I'm working my way through "It". I saw the Tim Curry TV movie, but I haven't seen the new movies. It's been sitting on my shelf for decades with other books always taking priority. The same thing happened with "The Stand".
For some reason it just drags for me. Normally I pull out three novels each month, scheduling to read at least 1/10th of one every day. Due to the length (1090 pages), I'm just reading this one this month, usually during lunch at work. I'm eight days behind schedule because every weekend I think "I need to do today's reading ... eh, maybe tomorrow." It just doesn't grab me and I'm not enthusiastic to finish it. I'm aware of the eventual sex scene that both movies leave out for obvious reasons. That knowledge, combined with King's frequent references to the 11 year old girl's breasts, keep giving me Piers Anthony vibes.
The 1950s section could probably be considered an example of the "kids on bikes" genre, and maybe that just doesn't appeal to me. I've never watched "Stranger Things" and I don't feel any particular desire to.
 
dann said:
Adam Tchaikovsky's Children of Ruin, a sequel to Children of Time, which was amazing, the best sci-fi I've read this decade.
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I read both books last month. I liked Children of Time, but never really got into Children of Ruin. I finished it and it wasn't bad, but there were no characters I really cared about one way or another. It seemed somehow, I don't know, too chaotic for me.
 
I'm now reading the Odd Thomas series of books by Dean Koontz. There are eight books:
Odd Thomas
Forever Odd
Brother Odd
Odd Hours
Odd Apocalypse
Odd Interlude
Deeply Odd
Saint Odd

These were written over 10 years or so beginning in 2003. I'm told there is one more shorter novel, but it wasn't in the collection I bought.

I've read the first two, and I enjoyed them and am looking forward to the rest.

The main character is Odd Thomas, which he says is his actual name. He is (not surprisingly) a bit strange. His main strangeness is that he sees dead people, and feels like it's his lot in life to help them out as he can. This gets him into lots of strange and often dangerous situations.

I've read several of Koontz's books in the past and have usually liked them. So far I'm liking these, we'll see how that holds up as the series goes on.
 
Done with The Last Train to London, quite remarkable story about Truus Wijsmuller whom saved the lives of more than 10.000 jewish children before and during WW2.

Not really sure what to read next.. maybe the new book from Antony Beevor Russia but I will probably only get angry reading it.
 
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