still working on my 2018 project so I can be woke . . . I had to take a break after 200 pages, so I read a good spy novel The Looking Glass War - John le Carré
I still have the last of the "impulse borrows" from my trip to the library, and I've finished these: Daniel Cole's Ragdoll is, I found, completely fine. I haven't read anything from this genre for several years, so the fact that much of it is formulaic didn't bother me (if you only read one serial killer/detective book every couple of years, it can be as formulaic as it likes). Cole is a first-time author and one whose prose will hopefully improve. (Something I checked reviews to see if I was wrong, or if anyone noticed it: the only people of color in this did bad things. Or, in the case of the Indian supervisor, are incompetent.) Whereas I though I checked out all three of the books in Elizabeth Bear's Eternal Sky Trilogy, I only have the first two - and the library doesn't have the third. I enjoyed the first two, but I will need to visit the used book store in hopes of finishing the series off. I decided to try the series because, while I don't read much Fantasy (except in short story form), I liked the premise of a story set in a Mongol-like (and surrounding peoples) era in Central Asia. The female characters are terrific too.
The Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats and Drugs, an interesting, so far, history of mid-20th to contemporary American culture, the focus of which is pretty clearly laid out in the subtitle, by Martin Torgoff. Was on the road this past week and I almost bought it new in a bookstore. I held off, which was lucky because I picked it up on the remainder table outside another store the next day for $5.
That reminds me of a book I read in college: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/all-shook-up-glenn-c-altschuler/1122990911?ean=9780195177497
James Wright: A Life in Poetry, a biography of the poet James Wright that does an absolutely terrific job with the life and work of the poet, born poor AF in Martins Ferry, OH with a mind pretty much perfect for writing poetry, in spite of the other aspect of his mind (prone to depression, an apparent genetic disposition to alcoholism, etc.) by Jonathan Blink
Maybe the week we're cooking with chicken three times isn't the one to start this: Maryn McKenna's Big Chicken came out last fall; it tracks the evolution of antibiotics and the use thereof on poultry production. And, hence, on the obsolescence of antibiotics. It's an informative and engaging throughout.
The Sword of Shannara -- Terry Brooks So netflix is streaming a ScyFy production called the Chronicles of Shannara and I found it pleasing. So I thought I should go back and read the book, which I had first read in 9th grade. I didn't like this the first time I read it, fully in the thrall of Lord of the Rings, for it seemed derivative. And I remember that word, derivative, sticking with me. I think it was the first time I understood what that word meant. LotR has a company of 9 lead by a long-lived magician. SoS has party of 9 lead by a long-lived magician. LotR has four rather naive hobbits who have been yanked from their dreamy, bucolic Shire. SoS has a pair of naive humans who have been yanked from their dreamy, bucolic Shady Vale. Oh wait, LotR's company has a single elf. SoS' company comprises two elves. So there are some differences at least.... I also remember that this book is long (720 pages) and tedious. Very tedious. Maybe 5% of the book is dialogue. The rest is long passages of description, exposition, narration.... If the writer's dictum is "Show, don't tell", well, Brooks fails horribly here. Brooks does not know how to handle his world. If you look at the map of the world, all divided into four realms and pretty much dissected by a mountain range east - west and a huge forest north to south, you inevitably think of the scope of LotR. And yet, this world is tiny. The party crosses the plains covering 20% of the land in a day. Similarly, they cross under the mountain range through a tunnel in a day. It seemed very amateurish to me in 9th grade, and it still does now. And yet, there's an interesting story here. When this company inevitably disbands, because the fellowship does in LotR, Brooks does a great job telling all the adventures in parallel narratives. There's a lot going on, and in the best tradition, each cast member plays a heroic role as befits his station. Oh heck, I'll probably read the complete trilogy. I just sure as heck won't pay for them. This series is rated ILL.
Good luck. As I may have mentioned in the authors-obit thread, I can't really get into fantasy, including Brooks. He's a nice guy, according to my wife, who was treated to dinner by him after his daughter's graduation (my wife advised her undergraduate thesis). IIRC, I didn't even dig his book on writing, called Sometimes the Magic Works. But obviously enough people disagree with me that he could quit his day job after publishing his first novel.
Philip K. Dick -- The Divine Invasion More interesting religious/SF weirdness from Dick here. This is my 3rd of the 4 novels in my 2nd of the 3 LOA Dick collections.
Reading this, recognizing that lots of folks like Brooks (I think I started one of his and never finished it, maybe because of the above) and I wonder who likes it. Who likes tons of exposition and narration and not a lot of characterization through dialog and action.. Then, I light upon an idea. I play role playing games some and read about them a lot. I notice that there are a lot of gamers who love, more than anything, world-building. They love building all the history, physical layouts, political systems, races, religions, etc. Others are very much into characters and story arcs. There are doubtless readers who are not so much into the arc of the people's lives but the way their actions fit into this big machine of a world. Just a thought... I could be completely missing the mark here.
I read books, so I shall contribute! Found this monster in December at a used book store for a couple of bucks, and finally finished it: God's War: A New History of the Crusades by Christopher Tyerman I learned stuff. Like, that Kingdom of Heaven is not a particularly historically accurate movie (shocking, I know). And that Brits like to add -r to the end of words ending in the letter -a, and that their editors don't tend to correct this consistently for some reason. Seriously, can "peninsular" be used as a noun? Also, did you know that, during the first crusade, the European forces managed to take Jerusalem with ONE siege tower? One. It wasn't a focal point of the book, but as someone with almost no actual knowledge of the development of military technology, I was fascinated to see how things changed over time. Anyway, recommended if you are interested in the build-up/social/political/financial context of the Crusades. Probably not as good a source if you are interested in the minutia of battles. After that slog, I decided I needed some fluffy fantasy, so now I'm reading this: The Ambassador's Mission by Trudi Canavan It's hot garbage. The magic system is poorly developed, and the prose in my high school Sailor Moon fan fiction is better than this. Would not recommend.
Richard II -- William Shakespeare Richard II, who ascended to the throne as a 10 year old, and had a regent acting in his stead for 10 years, has firmly taken control of the crown and is the divinely-appointed King of England. Problem is, he's useless. In the opening scene two nobles come before him to lay charges of treason against each other, end up challenging each other to a duel, and Richard commands them to stop bickering. They don't listen to him, end up dueling, and Richard, who cannot bear his nobles to be fighting, ends the fight and banishes them. Richard expects to be in charge, as he was bred for nothing less, but he's not fit to rule. In the end, Richard goes to Ireland to put down a rebellion, one of the banished comes back in his absence, and quickly deposes Richard. Richard is stunned at how fast the rebellion in his own backyard happens (as am I) and spends the last two acts trying to determine his place in the cosmos, if it is not to be on the throne.... This was my first exposure to this work, and the critics all call Richard a "poet king" which I find interesting because he's not very poetic. The only lines I knew beforehand from this play: This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this Englandcomes from John Gaunt, and NOT the poet king. Richard is, well, fey. I've never before had someone I could ascribe the appellation "fey" to, but I do now. The usurper goes on to become Henry IV, who is succeeded by Henry V. I am now, for the first time, anxious to read parts 1 and 2 of Henry IV to see the transition from Shakespeare's fey, divinely ordered Richard II to the perfect, idealized warrior king of Henry V.
For the introductory literature class, I'm busy grading exams covering Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics and this one ... Three novellas by French experimental writer and holder of the record for longest palindrome (over 5000 letters and 1100 words),Georges Perec. The stories in here are of varying degree of interest: the middle one is called "The Exeter Text" which is noteworthy for using no vowel besides the letter "E," (significant because he also wrote a pretty readable novel of around three hundred pages that did not use the letter E once). Though I totally forgot about the orgy that breaks out in an Exexter church. Starting tomorrow, the poetry anthology .... News of the Universe: Poems of a Twofold Consciousness edited, and with extensive commentary by Robert Bly.
I am a Pats fan, but I do not get to follow them or the sport in my part of the world. I watched less than 5 games of American football per year when Aaron Hernandes was playing.. I only knew the basic details of the case as the newspaper outside the United States did not care about a murder case committed by an athletic playing in a sport unknown to them. I do find the book enjoyable and "informative", but I have a feeling that most American football fans would disagree with my assessment of the book. It was basically an expanded version of a wikipedia profile of the case. I found it "informative" because I knew very little about the background of the case.
We recently took a quick weekend trip to celebrate my mother-in-law's 75th birthday, so light reading was in order. I checked out a couple of Carl Hiassen books for the occasion - titles and covers and plots I did not recognize in Bad Monkey and Razor Girl. It became clear over the course of reading the former that I read it before but only because of small things, otherwise it was completely unfamiliar to me. And that's an oddly beautiful thing, to have an enjoyable book that is virtually completely forgettable that I can read it again five or six years later and enjoy it again as if it was the first time.
I've been interested in the Modoc ever since spending a week in and around their homelands on a Scout trip in the early 1980s. It's a remarkable place, and the lava beds intrigued me from then on - as did the story of the defense of the lava beds by Captain Jack and the Modocs during the 1872-73 war. Author Jim Compton does a good job with the context of the war, the challenges of the peace, and what happened afterwards. This book is Spirit in the Rock: The Fierce Battle for the Modoc Homelands.
Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing, ed. Jill Radford and Diana E. H. Russell Exactly as depressing as it sounds. A collection of essays, some statistical analyses, some case studies, on misogynist murders of women in the United States, England, and India (depressingly prevalent), media coverage of the murders (shitty), and the criminal justice/political response (also shitty). The book was originally published in 1992, so I'd love to read something similar with updated research. PS: If my husband ever kills me in a murder-suicide, please don't bury me next to him. Geezus f*ck.
Link to Google Scholar's list of citations for that book. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=4445080535891019084&as_sdt=20000005&sciodt=0,21&hl=en It could lead to newer research, since it would probably cite it.
The Spiritual Imagination of the Beats, the general topic on which I have probably 500 pages if notes and maybe 100 pages of drafts, by David Stephen Calonne. Based on a few emails we've exchanged, he seems to be a nice guy, willing to overlook the veiled and not so veiled death threats in my initial overtures.
I guess people do do this (bury the wife next to their killer). I'm trying to imagine how they can morally justify this. The best I can think is that family members are distraught and were some what twisted before the murder.
Husband and wife plots already purchased. Nobody wants to pony up the money for a separate plot, so....
Finished Smiley's People. The last chapter is the best LeCarre wrote for the trilogy, I think. Smiley's ambivalence about the resolution along more than one dimension and the bleakness of the time and place were richly captured.
The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Form, volume One, by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. Remember when Donald Trump dissed John McCain for getting captured? When Russian POWs returned after WWII, they were given ten or twenty year sentences for getting captured. Turns out that that may have been Trump's earliest Russian moment.
"Hild" by Nicola Griffith. Often compared to GRRM's "A Song of Ice and Fire" but I think that does her a slight disservice. It's a historical fiction of the life of Hilda of Whitby. It's about a girl who from an early age was prophesied to be the seer that would lead the way of her King and uncle Edwin. The comparisons to GRRM's epic are mostly due to the political machinations and trickery that are required to survive at King Edwin's court. Her mother is a Littlefinger-like character and one of Hild's early struggles is to find trustworthy people to surround herself with.