WHAT ARE YOU READING?

[J.H.]

Pretty much right after I finished The Poppy War I ordered it's follow-up The Dragon Republic. Where the former felt like Kuang was trying develop her voice for half the book (it was her first after all) the latter is her in full command now. Nothing, as yet feels old hat or cliched. I just finished part 1 of TDR this evening (chapters 1-10) and am just enjoying it so much.

I will press onward tomorrow. I get the feeling the 3rd book (The Burning God) will be in my hands by end of the week.

James

Edited February 14 by J.H.

[Contentious C]

After having speed-read the entire main-line Dresden Files again, I moved back to Julian May's Galactic Milieu books, which I haven't read in probably 10 years or more, at least since I picked up the Pliocene Exiles books that complete the 6-million-year storytelling loop she was going for.  I'm a little surprised no one has made a real attempt to turn this into a TV show, except that A) the books were never that popular; B) they might struggle with where to start it - I personally would have the entire show run in 3 parallel timelines sort of like how Witcher S1 went, except the whole series would run that way; and/or perhaps C) the philosopher she based some of her ideas on turned out to be a hardcore eugenicist (and even the books themselves get a little weird about screwing around with human evolution). 

There are some characters I really love, and some who should have been a lot more interesting than they were but felt like they got short shrift in terms of really digging into them.  The Intervention book, where telepathic aliens visit Earth and save humanity from itself, tackles a little of that, but it still feels like more of those characters should have been relevant into the Milieu series, since so many were still alive.  Then again, I'm probably the only person here who's read them (and I've only ever met one person IRL who has, too).

[JLSigman]

Read 20th Century Men by Deniz Camp. It was pretty good for 4 issues. Then it went off the rails and tried to do too much at once and suddenly did weird things with time and completely shit the bed.

[J.H.]

With The Dragon Republic completed it us on to The Burning God. The end of TDR was really a gut punch, even if years of pro-wrestling fandom has mase me able to spot a heel turn a mile away.

Some very unexpected turns in the second book, especially as far as Chaughan goes. If he doesntappear in book 3 then I expect RF Kuang to bring him back somehow.

Onward to book 3!

James

[Curt McGirt]

I'm within 100 pages of finishing Sonic Life, the autobio of Thurston Moore, guitarist in Sonic Youth. Was about to pick up a GIANT bio of Stanley Kubrick (just titled Kubrick) but saw the Moore book and immediately decided against it -- "I will finish this way faster and maybe not have another library warning". And lo and behold I got through 200 pages within a day or two. It's pretty cool. He was there almost at the beginning of punk and saw all the first-wave bands. FFS he actually saw Crass in some crappy club in NYC in 1979 somehow. So it's interesting going down the timeline from punk to post-punk to hardcore to now grunge and alt-rock; I'm right at the Nevermind era so some bad shit is obviously about to happen, considering they were big fans and friends of/with Nirvana. 

And I am STILL slogging through Blood and Thunder Vol. 2 when I eat at the dinner table (yes, I read while I eat, and have since I was a kid). The Michinoku Pro section was a monolith. It's amazing that they're still running, and that Sasuke is actually still wrestling. Right now on SPWF and next is Go-Gundan, then I'm done! So, within 200 pages of the finish line. Whew. 

Edited February 19 by Curt McGirt

[Cobra Commander]

Just finished reading Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss.

To sum up various things about Jim Thorpe from the book (Some of which you likely knew about): Born in Oklahoma pre-Sooners (by about 2 years). Ended up having his twin brother die young. His parents die. Goes to Carlisle where he plays Football and runs Track. Goes off to North Carolina to play Minor League Baseball under his own name. Which takes him out of Carlisle for a few years. Eventually he returns to play football and then go off to the Olympics where he smashes the competition and wins multiple Golds.

And then things seemingly unraveled a tad. A newspaper in Western Massachusetts heard that Thorpe played Minor League Baseball in North Carolina and printed it. Which resulted in the gold medals being taken and the trophies taken away.

Also it led to Thorpe signing with the New York Giants, where he barely played (He played 6 seasons with the Giants and totaled 314 PAs). He also played for the Reds (269 PAs) and the Boston Braves (168 PA). His final baseball season was a 327/360/429 line over 168 PAs, most of it coming against left-handed pitching. So his MLB career was over before the lively ball. His OPS+ was 99 but people didn't know that at the time. Also they had a world's tour with Thorpe and the Giants and the White Sox over one offseason.

Then he would play football over the baseball offseasons, building to the formation of the NFL. But he was 33 by the time the NFL formed and he playing for teams like the Oorang Indians when he was 35/36. Then he bounced around a bit, playing a few games a year at 38/39. And playing one game at age 41.

So about this time, we enter a near 25 year phase of Jim Thorpe trying to find anything to do to make money. Acting in bit roles. Digging ditches during the Depression. Making speeches to various functions. Trying to get a movie about his life made.

He also had 3 wives. The first he met at Carlisle who eventually divorced him due to the combination of his alcoholism and being away from home. The second was to a woman 18 years younger and ended in divorce 15 years later. Then the 3rd marriage was to the wife who would be responsible for the fact that Jim Thorpe is buried in a place that Jim Thorpe never lived in or visited.

That being a place known to ECW fans. Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.

Now to be fair, the Governor of Oklahoma did veto a memorial that probably could have gotten her to bury Jim in Oklahoma. Then she saw a segment on the news about boroughs in Pennsylvania in need of money and fell in love with the place. Which is why Jim Thorpe is buried in Jim Thorpe, PA. Despite the wishes of his sons, who would very much prefer to bury him in Oklahoma.

They did end up making a Jim Thorpe movie (starring Burt Lancaster) with the obligatory amount of mythology. Also, Pop Warner basically used his creative control to shape the movie.

So there were some other recurring things in the book.

The whole concept of the Carlisle school, which ended up closed quickly post-Thorpe due to leadership struggles and a student revolt against the administration and the whole extravagance of the football program.

Pop Warner left and landed on his feet and is a figure with a lot of name recognition because of what his name is on.

Avery Brundage would show up in the story to oppose changing the decision on Thorpe (a decision that ignored the statute of limitations for a protest). Eventually the IOC gave Thorpe's children commemorative medals. And it took until 2022 for the IOC to reinstate Thorpe as the sole winner of the events he won.

It's very possible for a book account of post-football Jim Thorpe to speed-run through those years. This book doesn't do that. This book also doesn't get boring running through the latest idea that has Jim Thorpe naming something Thunderbird before folding it up and moving on. Also there's a period of time when Jim Thorpe is managing a Pro Wrestler (Suni War Cloud) deep into the era where Jim Thorpe is pretty much hustling for the next bit of money.

I think the book was pretty good and it includes interesting information. Along with writing quite a bit about the societal angles of Thorpe in the context of when he lived. Where he was almost a pop culture mascot in the best of times.

David Maraniss isn't exactly obscure, so some of you probably read his book about Bill Clinton, or Vince Lombardi, or Roberto Clemente, or the 1960 Olympics. The book is 568 pages to the end with a few 10 page chapters, but mostly around 15-20 pages a chapter with a few longer chapters.

I'll resort one of my bookcases soon enough to put this Jim Thorpe book next to the Bo Jackson book. Which feels like a good pairing.

You know... they might want to make another attempt at a Jim Thorpe movie one of these days. They might not get it right, but they can probably get it better than they did in 1951. I don't think they've gotten the ultimate resolution since Jim Thorpe PA isn't giving up Thorpe's skeleton. But it's possible getting Thorpe reinstated as the sole winner of the Olympic events could suffice.

[Brian Fowler]

Although I had read an abridged version that was probably ~400-500 pages as a kid, for the first time I read the unabridged The Count of Monte Cristo. Going out on a limb and saying it was "very good."

[JLSigman]

2/5 t o W0rldtr33 vol 1

It's OK. The gratuitous nudity is eye-roll inducing - every body, even the woman who has had 4 kids in 20 years, is high and tight with no stretch marks and shaved pubes, even in the dystopian future. There's also the bog standard "He doesn't tell anyone anything until he dies". I will probably not bother with the rest.

 

[J.H.]

The Burning God 

Halfway theough and now the "this kid is Mao Zedong" parallels are in full effect. At least Rin extracted her revenge for getting double crossed in The Dragon Republic but the current plan she has is a tad bit coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs.

Still a book that has me engrossed and my best friend got me Babel for my birthday so I get to see what all the fuss is about!

Edited February 23 by J.H.

[J.H.]

Finished The Burning God and man... it has a gut-wrencing ending. I think my complaint in the end is that the protagonists paranoia just feels like it came on too rapidly and perhaps should have been woven a bit more fluidly through the whole book as opposed to it rushing at you in theast 5-6 chapters.

In the end The Poppy War trilogy is worth reading but the rush to it's climax kind of causes to stumble a step or two at the end.

James

Edited February 23 by J.H.

[Curt McGirt]

Sonic Life is finished. The goofy-ass Urbana Free Library (still better than the neighboring Champaign one, funded by Coach Tony K's dad, which is a giant modernist monument to empty shelving) renewed my copy even though it isn't due until tomorrow -- and I wanted to finally finish SOMEthing before they did that and took a credit off, dammit. Ah well. It was a nice memoir, unchallenging, basically a music and art nerd cornucopia of "and then I met"s from Glenn Branca and Lydia Lunch to Patti Smith and Ron Asheton to Paul McCartney and Kurt Cobain. He mentions starting alongside Basquiat and Keith Haring and then makes no mention of their passing. Somehow after 30 years together (and apparently after only having one prior girlfriend, that he speaks of at least) he leaves his wife for someone else but is properly tight-lipped about why. Seems like a nice guy. Might as well have been called it Diary of a Scenester, though. 

[JLSigman]

Finished my re-read of The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson. These books are incredible. Please read them.

I'm also mostly finished reading They Called Us Enemy by George Takai, and damn I should have read this years ago.

[Curt McGirt]

Reading Odie Henderson's blaxploitation book and I'll be damned, I've hit yet a second chapter that ends with pages cut off of it. Not literally; they just weren't printed. You ever see that before? If I was him I would be furious.

[RazorbladeKiss87]

Are you reading a hard copy or an e-book? I was looking at grabbing that the other day. 

[Curt McGirt]

Hard copy. You may have better luck with the e-book; I imagine a fucked-up press is just a plain fucked-up press that did not get fixed until the pressing was finished.

This is from the library anyway. You can check a hard copy by looking at the end of the chapters "What's Happening in the Clean World?" and "Jim Kelly's Too Busy Lookin' Good", which are right at the end of the '72 and '73 sections. (Man I need to knock this out in a hurry and get it back to the library...)

Edited March 23 by Curt McGirt

[JLSigman]

Read through a collection of Nella Larson prose. It's... OK? Quicksand annoyed me until the last chapter turned it into a horror show. Passing felt incomplete, like there was another chapter afterwards that didn't get written/published. The shorts were short. Still worth reading to see Harlem during the 20's through the eyes of those who lived there, but you may need to grit your teeth to get through it.

[Curt McGirt]

Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras: A History of Blaxploitation Cinema was alright. A little thin... a lot thin, actually. If he'd managed to squeeze in some actual interviews beyond a couple of short, frivolous chapter-cappers this would have been way thicker and more interesting. As it is it's primarily his individual opinions on the films and backstory of them, so what he doesn't like or doesn't feel should be covered gets cut. I'm kinda bummed that he gives really short shrift to the genre's reawakening in later years -- he doesn't even mention Black Dynamite! What about Bones and Tales from the Hood? What about Dead Presidents and Set It Off? I guess that's a book for someone else, unfortunately. The more I think about it the more disappointed I am, even though I enjoyed the read, and always liked his work on the Ebert site.

[JLSigman]

The first volume of White Sand, a previously unpublished novel by Brandon Sanderson that he's tried to turn into a graphic novel a couple of times, was OK. There's some interesting world building in there, but the art is absolutely doing it no favors.

[Contentious C]

On 2/23/2024 at 12:15 PM, Curt McGirt said:

he leaves his wife for someone else but is properly tight-lipped about why. Seems like a nice guy.

Considering the reality of how he behaved, these two sentences don't really belong together.  Read Gordon's bio.

Also telling that Sleater-Kinney, who had a song years ago with the lyrics, "I wanna be your Thurston Moore" now sing the song as "I wanna be your Kim Gordon".

[HarryArchieGus]

On 2/23/2024 at 12:15 PM, Curt McGirt said:

Sonic Life is finished. The goofy-ass Urbana Free Library (still better than the neighboring Champaign one, funded by Coach Tony K's dad, which is a giant modernist monument to empty shelving) renewed my copy even though it isn't due until tomorrow -- and I wanted to finally finish SOMEthing before they did that and took a credit off, dammit. Ah well. It was a nice memoir, unchallenging, basically a music and art nerd cornucopia of "and then I met"s from Glenn Branca and Lydia Lunch to Patti Smith and Ron Asheton to Paul McCartney and Kurt Cobain. He mentions starting alongside Basquiat and Keith Haring and then makes no mention of their passing. Somehow after 30 years together (and apparently after only having one prior girlfriend, that he speaks of at least) he leaves his wife for someone else but is properly tight-lipped about why. Seems like a nice guy. Might as well have been called it Diary of a Scenester, though. 

Very much looking forward to Sonic Life. Just listened to the excellent WTF interview with the always delightful Moore. Kinda glad to hear he doesn't get into the weeds of the Gordon break-up. I love Kim, but detailing the break-up in her book to push copies was completely unnecessary. Kinda shitty to their daughter too. I don't get the celebrity need to announce to strangers why your marriage broke-up. And yeah, I won't be cancelling Thurston for the dissolution of said marriage because I read his partner's side. Intimate details I never needed or wanted to know.

[JLSigman]

Jean Grey: Flames of Fear is just awful. Feels like it was written by someone who both didn't like the character AND hadn't kept up with her growth during the Krakoa era.

[Curt McGirt]

I'll read Kim's bio if I come across it. Wiki'd them both and I guess he was having an affair with the woman he married, who was also married at the time; Kim found out, they went to counseling, it continued, they divorced. Obviously he loved the other woman, obviously he shouldn't have cheated, obviously they tried to work it out, obviously he kept fucking up. My opinion leans to neutral, but Kim has a right to be pissed. They should have divorced earlier probably.

[Curt McGirt]

Also, I bought The Last Yakuza. It reads a lot faster second time around and is really a fun, sleazy read. There is almost none of the murder you find in Mafia books; apparently all the really bad stuff, like sex trafficking, is a newer domain and one the leading group of the Yamaguchi-gumi is proud to call their own. This is about the Inagawa-kai instead. Main theme is really the loss of whatever twisted form of honor the Yakuza had once upon a time, and their downfall/diminishing in the face of new laws. 

[JLSigman]

On 3/29/2024 at 8:44 AM, JLSigman said:

The first volume of White Sand, a previously unpublished novel by Brandon Sanderson that he's tried to turn into a graphic novel a couple of times, was OK. There's some interesting world building in there, but the art is absolutely doing it no favors.

Read the second volume. The art was still overly busy awful, then the artist changed and it was a different kind of flat awful. There's a lot of skipped steps here, things that would've been talked about, worked through, etc. in novel form that are just ignored here for brevity's sake. I still am interested in the setting, and it's another neat magic system he's created, but this format is not ideal for his kind of stuff.

[Cliff Hanger]

I've been bouncing between Perlstein's NIXONLAND (which i probably can't talk about without getting the mods' hackles up) and David Craddock's LONG LIVE MORTAL KOMBAT (which is fucking awesome. He got interviews not only with most of the MK1-4 staff but a lot of the martial artists too.) I've been stuck for a bit on the chapter about Dan Pesina's history with the franchise and his seemingly-ahistorical claims, though.

 

Once I finish one or both, my next nonfiction is Michael Molcher's I AM THE LAW, about the relationship between Judge Dredd and RL law enforcement issues. (Vast oversimplification, obviously.)

 

Fiction-wise, I'm getting ready to finally start A JUST DETERMINATION, the first in John Hemry's space-opera JAG legal thrillers, which I have been meaning to read for 9 years now.

Edited April 5 by Cliff Hanger
Autocowrecked "fixed" ahistorical to historic.