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

[Safe-Keeper]

Dipping my toes into White Tears, Brown Scars, which critiques white feminism from a minority race point of view. Really interesting so far.
Also just received YouTube adventurer's Eva Zu Beck autobiographical book, The Wilder Way. Curious to see what I think of it.

 

[alfaniner]

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Vol 10.
It's not related to the SNW version of the franchise. This one has four or five short stories each that take place in iterations of the show up to Enterprise. It reads as some of the worst fan fiction anywhere. Most of them are about one-off, guest characters in who appeared in one show, which wouldn't even amount to a B-story on a regular episode. It's also difficult to place right away where the story occurs in the timeline of each series, because of the long arcs used especially later in the series.
It's also poorly edited. A couple egregious typos and I just read one mention of a "double-yoked egg". No, it wasn't an alien that needed to be harnessed...

 

[theprestige]

A Canticle for Liebowitz

One of the science fiction novels of all time, I guess. It has big ideas, well-executed, but all overshadowed by that 50s-era nuclear war malaise.

The most interesting part wasn't the post-apocalyptic future history, nor the weird supernatural riffs. No, the most important part was the carefully-drawn contrast between religion and science. The final act turns on the question of the sanctity of human life, even in suffering. The priest's love for the human being results in suffering that some might consider a moral horror. The atheistic scientist, by contrast comes across like Walter in The Big Lebowski: Not wrong, just an ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊.

If you've been told it's a comedic narrative, know that's only true for the first act. After that, it gets pretty dry and grim.

 

[Orphia Nay]

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)

Again, continuing my mission to read from the gaps in my classics knowledge, I'm reading Woolf for the first time (shut up, I know I should have before now!).

Quarter of the way through, and loving the stream-of-consciousness, one-day-in-London thing. It's refreshing and was probably revolutionary to see the strange thoughts of mental illness put into words, and just odd thoughts in general.

I can see where this book is heading for me - It was published 3 years after Ulysses, so there are sure to be vast treatises on the similarities and differences. I've never tackled Ulysses, and I may just have to.

 

[Helen]

Mrs Dalloway is a masterpiece - do read the rest of her books as well, there's too few, but they're all well worth it (not least Orlando). If you read Ulysses, do it without getting caught up in the idea that it is difficult, and I think you may like it; it's funny and moving, quite apart from being intensly interesting and engaging as a literary experiment. If you have the time, maybe read Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man first, you'll be familiar with Joyce's universe, which will make it easier.

 

[Orphia Nay]

Haha, great minds... I bought Orlando on Friday after I'd started Mrs Dalloway...

and my plan is already to read Ulysses without commentaries - a friend and I were discussing reading it like that at the same time.

 

[xterra]

Try this one, available as a pdf on Project Gutenberg.

The Yellow Wallpaper - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[SteveAitch]

Rene Magritte: Selected Writings.

Translated by Jo Levy, edited by Kathleen Rooney and Eric Plattner.

Interesting, if at times deliberately obscure - well, he was a Surrealist.

 

[Orphia Nay]

Question 7 by Richard Flanagan (2023)

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2024, this edition has "Masterpiece" quoted by famed reviewers all over it. It's pretty good, yeah.

"Experience is but a moment. Making sense of that moment is a life."

 

[alfaniner]

I had bought two versions of this, planning to reread it this summer. I couldn't find the original paperback-sized one I read a couple years ago (and put back in the Free Little Library kiosk -- maybe it'll turn up again!). They're about 5x7 inches, larger than a standard paperback.
The left one is a thick, annotated one with all the original text and lots of footnotes and whatnot, about 575 pages (of story), in small print. The one on the right is a highly abridged, illustrated version, about 250 pages. But each illustration fills up a full page and there is one on every overleaf (every other page), so the story is only about 125 pages total, in large type.
I opted for #2 this time around. Read it in about two days. I loved having the visuals to go along with it! Much easier than the long (but not unpleasant) slog of my first reading of the original. There were events and characters I'd forgotten or that got lost in the massive text of the first one. Oh, I'll read the bigger volume next time -- I did want to read about the whale processing again (really!).

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Reading a book written by the OIC of the boat squadron I served with "back in the day". His wife found it in his "Navy Days" foot locker. "To be opened in the event of my death." Mrs. sent the book to me. I immediately copied it and sent the original back. I was freaking a bit by page five. Didn't know he could write at all. Tonight we'll all get together again in my dreams. Should be interesting.

 

[Lennart Hyland]

Currently reading Waterloo by Bernard Cornwell. Not the Sharp series one but the non-fiction book.
Very early in but it seems to be an easy read and unlike the previous books I´ve read about the battle I get the feeling that I'll understand the battle itself more clearly with this book... but we will see

 

[Vixen]

London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth

by Patrick Radden Keefe

I can recommend this as "a good read". As a Sunday Times 'Best Seller', it is hardly high literature, but a page turner nonetheless. It tells the story of the fate of nineteen-year-old, Zac Brettler, from a moderately wealthy north London Jewish family, who tried to jump into the Thames from the fifth floor of an exclusive riverside property. A true story, it is the quest of the bereaved parents to find out what happened to their son and how he got involved in his fantasy world of being the son of a Russian oligarch. What's interesting is the background of City money, the historical transformation of London docks into Canary Wharf international banking centre and the development of the multimillion pound foreign-owned 'investment' apartments overlooking the river. There is even the involvement of the Brinks-Mat robbery from a couple of generations upstream rearing up its head again.

It is very hard to put down!

 

[Spektator]

To Catch a Thief, David Dodge

This is a crime thriller, told mostly from the point of view of a somewhat reformed jewel theft. In the two years leading up to World War II, young John Robie taught himself to be a meticulous and well-informed appraiser of jewelry, as well as a daring thief who chose unpredictable means of ingress to where the loot was lying. His experience as a circus acrobat helps him accomplish miraculous break-ins. Within those two years, Robie had gained the nickname “le Chat” and had laid up a fortune of 500,000 francs before a lucky policeman caught him, Convicted and sent to serve 20 years in La Maison Centrale, a highly secure prison.

Then came the war. The occupying Nazis had no wish to maintain the prison, so they had the convicts loaded onto trucks and sent to the border with Vichy France, where the Germans dropped off the prisoners like unwanted pups. Aha, but with two other inmates, the clever Robie organized a unit of Resistance fighters, who distinguished themselves. By the end of the war, Robie found himself free (the prison had been bombed and all records lost.) Postwar inflation reduced his great fortune to a mere 50,000 francs, but he kept his luxurious mansion and from 1945 to 1951 lived a placid and happy, if reclusive, life.

Then a new burglar, operating with all the tell-tale skills of le Chat, reappears in the south of France, the one policeman who remembers Robie as a jewel thief shows up, and Robie is on the run, trying to hold onto the money he still has, find out who has decided to re-Chat the crime scene, and if possible, persuade the gendarmes to dismiss the old charges. It’s a fairly fast read, but with strange slow parts where we read descriptions of people, places, and things. The characters have memorable quirks, but their characters remain thin. Oh, and as a complete afterthought, Robie meets the love of his life.

It’s fun, though the Alfred Hitchcock movie (which cuts some minor characters and subplots) is more entertaining. I can see how Hitch thought the book’s skeleton would be a good framework for a movie. His choice of Cary Grant to play Robie gives the character more wit and glamor than he has in the book, and Grace Kelly is tons more alluring and interesting than the corresponding novel character.

 

[Spektator]

Stan Lee Lied, Chaz Gower

What the title says. Gower gives us 360 pages of scrapbooked quotations from Lee and from Marvel's stellar stable of grand graphics artists (Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Wallace Wood et alia) who brought forth such superb heroes as the Fantastic Four, the thunderous Thor, the ironic Iron Man, Millie the Model, and the stupendous Spider-Man.

The book's intention is to demonstrate how Lee played a negligible role in the creation of these figures and their comics, claiming the heroes were conceived by his brain, the plots constructed from his summaries, the dialogue provided by his deft pen. Gower argues that Lee (who hired on at Marvel because kept nepotism) lied about his role. The artists created characters, wrote the continuities and dialogue. Then Lee claimed payment as writer and editor, enriching himself and building his persona as a comics superstar while killing the morale of the real creators.

And Lee lied about everything. Problem is that Gower gets tiresome, telling the same stories over and over. He Falls into Puzzling Patterns of ODD capitalization and aggravating alliteration. I'm not sure the accusations aren't watered down by sheer repetitiion.

I found it tedious, but then I have never read a Marvel comic book and don't care for Marvel visual media. YMMV.

 

[Orphia Nay]

Ulysses by James Joyce, 1922

Yep, thought I'd tackle it. Taking Helen's advice (which mirrored a friend's similar idea and my own inclination):

do it without getting caught up in the idea that it is difficult, and I think you may like it; it's funny and moving, quite apart from being intensly interesting and engaging as a literary experiment.

I'm about a third of the way through, and yes, it's funny, creative, interesting, and moving. But the inherent sexism is kind of making me feel sick. Sure, sure, a product of its times, but I much prefer Mrs Dalloway at this stage. Virginia Woolf gave voice to both male and female thoughts, words, and actions. Ulysses is a sausage fest so far.

 

[Trebuchet]

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.

Seven? I'd probably have said six, but it's been a long time. The series really did not improve after that.
Meanwhile, I just finished Project Hail Mary.
It's probably not a re-read, which is not a great review for me.

 

[Helen]

Ulysses by James Joyce, 1922

Yep, thought I'd tackle it. Taking Helen's advice (which mirrored a friend's similar idea and my own inclination):



I'm about a third of the way through, and yes, it's funny, creative, interesting, and moving. But the inherent sexism is kind of making me feel sick. Sure, sure, a product of its times, but I much prefer Mrs Dalloway at this stage. Virginia Woolf gave voice to both male and female thoughts, words, and actions. Ulysses is a sausage fest so far.

It is indeed the stream of consciousness of a man of his time (not necessarily the thoughts of Joyce himself). Towards the end, you'll get a female perspective as well.

 

[Orphia Nay]

It is indeed the stream of consciousness of a man of his time (not necessarily the thoughts of Joyce himself). Towards the end, you'll get a female perspective as well.

Good! Since writing that post, I've read bits that show promise in that regard.

 

[Spektator]

Roughing It, Mark Twain
In 1861, Orion Clemens, having been appointed Secretary of the Nevada Territory, set out from Hannibal, Missouri, to take up his position in Nevada's boom town, Virginia City. His younger brother Sam, who had just deserted from the Confederate army, went along as the unofficial secretary of the Secretary.

Over the next six years Sam gained experiences and made a living by various means. He endured an uncomfortable weeks-long journey by stagecoach, performed his duties as sub-secretary until he got bored, prospected for gold and silver, speculated, took up a position as newspaper editor, visited the Mormons in Salt Lake City, relocated to San Francisco, became a newspaper correspondent, voyaged to Hawaii, and in 1867 returned to California to give humorous lectures on his travels. Oh, yes, one of his comic newspaper columns regarding a jumping frog had been picked up and republished in magazines and newspapers all across the nation, making him a celebrity under his pen name Mark Twain.

Roughing It (1872), Twain's memoirs of his rambling years, cemented his literary reputation. It remains hilarious and sentitious by turns. Twain reveals his humanity by expressing sympathy for the often maligned Mormons and native Hawaiians, yet exposes prejudice against Native Americans. A great deal of the humor is pointed satire, puncturing pretentiousness in others, but most keenly in himself. The book is still readable and still funny, a portrait of a young author roughing out his persona.