Well, allow me to make a very happy recommendation... J.-H. Rosny aine, one of the least accessible science fiction authors (he's French and rarely translated) has a new translation: Thee Science Fiction Novellas: From Prehistory to the End of Mankind Rosny aine wrote the story that the early 80s movie A Quest for Fire was based on and for years he has been on my radar as someone I'd love to read more of. Here's a review from the Washington Post's Michael Dirda, who if you are not familiar with, is good enough to warrant a thread of his own.... .....OK, Dirda is worth a thread of his own, but not apparently to the Wash Post, which has not even bothered to put his review on-line yet.
OK, here's the review... http://www.washingtonpost.com/enter...d-of-mankind/2012/04/04/gIQA2YuNxS_story.html
Not too long ago I read a Mozart biography, I followed that with a Beethoven biography and now I am moving on to another of my favorite musicians.
Most Saturdays, I drive my wife to her acupuncturist appointment and sit and read while she gets stuck. This is where I've been continuing my Guy Gavriel Kay revisit, which sadly will come to and when I finish Under Heaven.
Currently reading: another YA novel that I had never heard of until this year... apparently this series has like 7 or 8 books already... basically it's Red Dawn, set in Australia... entertaining so far... I like finding books at all different reading levels, and this may work for that senior boy who claims to have never read a book all the way through before...
Stay Close by Harlan Coben I dont read many of those best selling authors like Patterson but I have been a Harlan Coben fan because of the Myron Bolitar series so I check out anything he has read. It is a good read but not anything amazing. If you have read any of Coben's standalone books, it follows the same formula. What the Dog Saw by Malcom Gladwell I have only read the first story out of this collection of Gladwell's articles from the New Yorker but I liked Outliers and The Tipping Point so I will read what he puts out.
This was fun. In a dystopian future, the creator and sole purveyor of a massive virtual environment called The OASIS dies, and leaves an Easter Egg of sorts somewhere in his infinite creation. All folks have to go on is a quatrain, that leads to a trio of keys and gates, each requiring completion of a quest or two, and all tied to the trivia, games, foods, television, movies, and computers the creator loved in the 1980s. A soulless corporation, alliances of individuals, and the odd lone wolf look for it, and years pass before the culmination of the hunt. Like I said, a fun meld of 80s nostalgia and sci-fi. Now on to something completely different: Dorothy Wickenden's Nothing Daunted. I have no idea when or why I put this on rserve at the library, but here it is, and I am enjoying it so far.
I picked up "The Missing of the Somme" from the library yesterday. I can't read WWWI books more than perhaps once or twice a year. Too depressing. I started this last night, a little hard to get into, it's dry as a bone. Got into rythm with the author now and liking the fact the fact that it's a well researched book.
Stephen King -- The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon I'm finishing this up and have quite enjoyed this rather short King novel.
I'm teaching five composition classes, all requiring 15 page research papers. I don't even want to count how many pages that means. But I'm also getting in some actual reading each day. Picked this up at the library. It was a lot funnier than I thought it would be: The Geography of Bliss, by Eric Weiner. I remember him when he was a foreign correspondant for NPR. Pretty good book on happiness and why it seems to collect in some places but not others. I might start his newer one, Man Seeks God this weekend.
Went from "How many men died between 1914-18. "Missing of the Somme" (Governments who'd have 'em!) To a change up in another Lee Child book "Tripwire." Another in his Reacher series. Fun to read larger than life action hero with his own set of what is right or wrong with the world. A little like old Travis McGee of the John D. McDonald days. Interesting the way some of his ideas come out. I recognised two passages that could have come from a book I'd read some years ago written by a hellicopter pilot from Nam. Then his forensic anthropologist's quotes sound an awful lot like Dr Temperence Brennan from "Bones". He did, in one of his books attribute a quote to Bernard Cornwell, used in a couple of the "Sharpe" books. Still he writes thrillers that keep you reading when you should be sleeping, because you want to know how the next chapter, or the one after....ends..
Took my last book back to the library and grabbed a book off the shelf that looked interesting to me as a 'old' military guy. "American Sniper" Got though his early training a early deployment in the middle east, not sure if I'll get through the rest of the book though. He should have had someone 'ghost' write it for him. So far he's an annoying, blow hard, redneck, who can shoot. Not that there's any thing wrong with that!
I did in fact start Man Seeks God[/img] by Eric Weiner. Another interesting book. He basically hangs out with various religious groups ranging from Sufis and Franciscan monks to Raelians (the UFO cult), not to mention western Taoists and a few Kabbalists along the way.
Picked this up for Mrs as she's a Titanic nut but she won't read it so I gave it a blast. The plot has more holes than the Titanic front hull, but it's enjoyable all the same. Written in a similar style to Matt Reilly's books which you can just breeze through.
finished two so far on vacation Falconer and the Death of Kings, by Ian Morson King Arthur: Dragon's Child, by M.K. Hume
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51lzSEmUD6L._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg 1491 - Charles Mann It was a great read and acknowledges that it was a book created from other books. I don't know how much stock I put into the actual numbers but it makes a strong case with some facts on pottery. In fact it sems a lot of archeology is based around pottery. Damn you Indiana Jones!! I wish the author spent more time in the Southern tip of the Americas and North America. But if you don't have the info, you don't have the info.
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe - by Charles Yu - Very interesting and unique journey along with a time traveler... Exploration of the emotions that the reader can identify with... really looking forward to the ending to see if my hypothesis is correct...
Just finished reading this. It's light, easy, fun and quick. I found the Dresden Files through these forums. People who liked those may like this as well.
The Complete Works of O Henry Yeah, I was familiar, of course, with Gift of the Magi and After Twenty Years, and had read over the years maybe a dozen of his short stories. But the man was far more prolific than that. In my Doubleday (1953) edition, I have 312 short stories and one wikipedia entry claims over 600 stories. A lot of fun....
I finally read the first Harry Potter book. Also finished another of B.M. Bower's Flying U books. Both were enjoyable light reads.