Books: What are you reading tonight?
We have ongoing threads on t.v. and movies we're watching lately; it's time for one for books. daveT's thread on favori
Almost done the new Horowitz & Hawthorne mystery.
Eight stories in, it's about as good as I reasonably could've hoped for. No shock that Bev Vincent's reads like a lost chapter from the original, and that Joe R. Lansdale perfectly melds Captain Trips into a story you could see him writing anyway.
How you liking Keyhole
That’s disappointing- it’s enjoyable. It’s moving much faster than Wizard, which I struggled with a lot until the last 20%.
I’m moving a bit slow due to nba playoffs catching my free time instead.
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Eight stories in, it's about as good as I reasonably could've hoped for. No shock that Bev Vincent's reads like a lost chapter from the original, and that Joe R. Lansdale perfectly melds Captain Trips into a story you could see him writing anyway.How you liking Keyhole
That’s disappointing- it’s enjoyable. It’s moving much faster than Wizard, which I struggled with a lot until t
Sorry if I implied I’m disappointed in End Of The World, exact opposite!
In The Plot Against America there are presidential elections in 1940 & 1942?
Also, LOL Roth being considered so much a better writer than say, Lawrence Block.
To anyone who's a D&D fan, I highly recommend the first book of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Cr...
I just finished book 1 of this series and it’s a pretty good bet I’ll read the next 7 books. The author clearly loves D&D and all of its creative spawns.
Pretty hilarious in several parts too - some of the humor is crude but up my alley - e.g. there’s an AI that has a foot fetish and takes a strong liking to the protagonist’s feet.
Dungeon Crawler Carl is fantastic. Probably need a bit of D+D knowledge to fully appreciate #.
Biggest Game In Town was great but felt it could’ve been better. Of the two similar books I preferred Positively Fifth Street.
For the time I think it was perfect. It was the book that made me wanna learn poker. Positively Fifth Street is definitely on the short list along with The Professer, The Banker and the Suicide King, Shut Up and Deal, The Theory of Poker and a
TBGIT was absolutely perfect for its time & place imo, and remains an almost preserved in amber time capsule.
One tiny ‘mystery’ solved. When Alvarez is interviewing AJ Meyers, he mentions “his wife & daughter, a California Matisse odalisque, who recently completed a grand tour of Europe.”
Well, it’s a thing, most of the paintings are noodz.
Companion to the Cosmos by John Gribbin.
When I picked this up, I thought it might be one of those /story of how cosmology came to be' books that I like to read.
Turns out, it's more like a glossary of terms and people important to cosmology. Many topics, in alphabetical order, does not make for a compelling read--though, of course, some of the individual topics were quite interesting.
Then, the last section was a three parallel timelines. First column was birth of people important to cosmology, going back to the ancient days. Second was when discoveries happened within the cosmological world. Third was more of world events--when the Sistine Chapel was painted, when wars happened, etc, etc.
That part was kinda interesting, though somewhat repetitive--in the birth year column, it would mention why this person was known. Then, in the year of the discovery, it would pretty much repeat that text.
But anyway, not really that compelling overall.
David Mitchell, anyone? I’ve walked past this hundreds of times and never noticed it before.
I've have trouble reading new fiction -- I think because I'm old -- but I can still re-read old fiction.
I just re-read two slapstick SF novels, Galactic Pot-Healer by P. K. Dick, and Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin. They are both still hilarious. I loved stuff like this when I was younger.
There was a rumor long ago that Le Guin tried to interest Mel Brooks in filming Lathe of Heaven, but he demurred.
Public libraries remain GOAT. I did not know Last Orders was based on a novel.
My Effin' Life by Geddy Lee.
I'd say I'm a fan of Rush, but on the more casual side. Of course, there are some tales from the years of recording and touring (but nothing too salacious), but it's also quite a lot about his personal life as well.
Some interesting things:
Went to grade school with Rick Moranis. They knew each other, but weren't close friends.
Went to high school with NHL HOFer Steve Shutt. They were actually pretty good friends.
Both his parents were Holocaust survivors. In fact, they met in a camp, then were split up. Managed to find each other after the war and reconnected. The chapter covering this part of his family history was quite intense--both hard and interesting to read.
Met his wife at age 17, and they've essentially been together since.
Anyway, a good read. Not sure if it will resonate with people who don't know or enjoy Rush's music.
Oddly enough, I just did a transaction at the bank the other day which put my balance at 2112.
The Emerson Circle: The Concord Radicals Who Reinvented the World by Bruce Nichol.
These lefto pioneers were elitist moral imbeciles for the most part, although they did get abolition right. How I hate them all. But I'm gonna loan it to my secular humanist lefto mom now and she's gonna eat it up.
The book you say, what about the book. It's ok, a little scattered but with a group biography like this that's inevitable. The author isn't a scholar by trade; I think he's a prominent book publisher. I'd go find good biographies of Thoreau and Emerson, the two giants here, and take a pass on this.
About halfway thru Rasputin: The Downfall of the Romanovs. This is really good, written by Anthony Beevor, a British historian I hadn't heard of but is evidently to be trusted on all things Russian. Rasputin has always seemed like a hazy mythical figure to me, turns out he was a human being walking the earth just like us. And crazy weird obv, but the ladies loved them some Grigori for sure!
My Effin' Life by Geddy Lee.I'd say I'm a fan of Rush, but on the more casual side. Of course, there are some tales from the years of recording and touring (but nothing too salacious), but it's also quite a lot about his personal life as well.Some interesting things:Went to grade school with Rick Moranis. They knew each other, but weren't close friends.Went to high school wit
Bruce Dickinson’s book was very much in that vein.
The Devil All The Time
Wow, fantastic
Great book! Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy is kind of like that book on bath salts.
The Mammoth Book of Polar Journeys, edited by Jon E. Lewis.
A book of excerpts from polar explorations, near both poles. All the way back from the explorer days up to some more modern adventures (Ranulph Fiennes and Bear Grylls make appearances), but more weighted toward the Peary/Shackleton/Scott days.
I normally don't like adventure-type books, as they often either end in tragedy or are really tough reads. But, I think the editor did a good job of selection. Some successes and some failures.
The cover photo is of Ranulph Fiennes. Hair tousled, unshaven, snow and ice all on him and his jacket. When I first picked up the book, I thought, "what is Jeremy Clarkson doing on a book like this?"
Though he did have an arctic adventure in the TopGear days, it was nothing like these.
Oh, also, "Mammoth" in the title is not descriptive of the book. Apparently there's a series of Mammoth Books on various topics.
Aaron Brown has a new book that (so far) is pretty great:
Wrong Number: How to Extract Truth From a Blizzard of Quantitative Disinformation
[URL="https://www.amazon.com/Wrong-Number-Blizzard-Quantitative-Disinformation/dp/1394379781"]https://www.amazon.com/Wrong-Number-Blizzard-Quantitative-Disinformation/dp/1394379781
[/URL]The book is ~30 short chapters, each telling a story about some group (e.g. journalists, academics, politicians, arm-chair gamblers, arm-chair sports analysts) misusing numbers & statistics either due to incompetence, fraud/conspiracy, or both.
I'm reading the chapters out of order and don't think I'm losing anything by doing so.
Cormac McCarthy is the Eric Clapton of authors.
If I ever get a cat I’m naming it Cornelius Suttree.
