What are you reading?

[Brian Fowler]

On 5/4/2019 at 9:39 PM, Brian Fowler said:

I read the original trilogy years ago, but I've decided to re-read/read The Millennium Series (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo/Men Who Hurt Women and it's sequels) I'd forgotten how compellingly slow the story builds in the first book, and, surprisingly, most of the details. Although I guess it has been a long time.

I also forgot how detailed the sexual assaults are. For a book that is very explicitly feminist, it's also very clear written by a man.

[J.H.]

As much as I was enjoying Bleakwarrior I found myself more engrossed by Beastie Boys Book, possibly one of the most engrossing autobiographies/music history books I've ever read. Adrock and Mike D are so very great with describing the NYC club scene i nthe late 70s and early 80s that it almost has me flashbacking the dirtier days of Manhattan/ I've just gotten to the boys disappointment of commercial success with Paul's Boutique and their starting to form their battle plan for Check Your Head. Just a totally fun and immersive read

James

Edited May 11, 2019 by J.H.

[odessasteps]

When I looked at that first, I thought it said Beagle Boys Book. 

[Liam]

 

[Brian Fowler]

Well, I got through all three of the Larson novels, gonna start on Spider Web here soon.

[odessasteps]

I dont know if it counts as reading, but I am relistening to the audio book of Good Omens ahead of the TV debuting soon. 

[Curt McGirt]

A friend of mine stopped by on Mother's Day weekend and gave me an entire box of books. Right now I'm halfway through City of Quartz by Mike Davis, a history of the corrupt, panopticon-like development of Los Angeles. Dry and convoluted but pretty interesting. It was written right before the LA riots too, so pretty prescient.

The only other book I remember from the box is Bruce Campbell's autobiography, haha

[Curt McGirt]

UPDATE: City of Quartz is finished, finally. I dug through the box and picked out: 

Blood Relation - Eric Konigsberg. New Yorker writer Konigsberg finds out his great-uncle is an imprisoned mob hitman and loan shark, visits him in jail, details his family history in this book. I'm flying through this already; mob stuff is right up my alley. 

If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor - Bruce Campbell. Self-explanatory. 

Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb - Mike Davis. More Davis, hopefully a little less dry and economically focused than the last one. And judging from the subject, it'll probably be far from dry... rather wet, instead, if you get my drift. 

There's everything in that box from Blackwood, James, and Matheson to Seneca and Schopenhauer so quite a bit of variety. At the same time I'm also trying to finish up Seven Inches of Death, which details the early days of death metal EPs and has hipped me to a few bands even I didn't know existed, like the awesome Gorement. The text is pretty static (every story is mighty similar) but the old-school zine-style cut and paste art is worth the price of purchase alone. 

[cwoy2j]

Re-reading Punktown by Jeffrey Thomas. The author basically created this giant town on an alien planet where humans interact with other races from different planets. Some of the stories are Cthulhu themed. There are novels, novellas and short story anthologies that are set there and it's cool to see other authors put their own spin on the original. I highly recommend checking them out.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DP6B37Y/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Quote

Punktown is considered by many critics and readers to be one of the new classics of SF short story collections.

In the nightmarish city they call Punktown, on a planet where countless sentient species collide, you can become a creator of clones. You can become a piece of performance art. You might even become a library of sorrows...

 

[AxB]

Got Mark Hunt's autobiography from the library. I'm not very far in, just up to him (not) going to high school, but whilst I wad aware he had a less than great childhood, I didn't know it was horrific. His father was a real piece of shit, apparently.

[username]

I finished reading Peace by Gene Wolfe earlier today (took a bit to get my hands on it, thankfully found a library that had a copy eventually) and I feel like I read it wrong? I had multiple people tell me "you read it, then you re-read it and see what was really going on" and after re-reading the opening bit again I'm not getting that at all. I don't want to get into specifics but there were certain oddities I noticed along the way and picked up on rather early, but looking back while certain things are definitely odder after reading the whole thing they seemed rather odd the first time through.

 

IDK, my feeling after reading it is that I failed in doing so somehow or was just too dumb to pick up what was really going on, hence I walk away just feeling bad more than anything.

 

Spoiler

I had a deal where I woke up in the middle of the night and said "he's dead and all the room in his odd house are him visiting adjacent graves, hell the novel is called Peace because he's resting in it!", but as with most of the times I have had mid-night revelations they don't seem to hold up in the light of day.

 

[OSJ]

On 6/7/2019 at 6:20 PM, cwoy2j said:

Re-reading Punktown by Jeffrey Thomas. The author basically created this giant town on an alien planet where humans interact with other races from different planets. Some of the stories are Cthulhu themed. There are novels, novellas and short story anthologies that are set there and it's cool to see other authors put their own spin on the original. I highly recommend checking them out.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DP6B37Y/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

 

While I personally don't think that Jeffrey Thomas really invented anything new, (Robert Reed, China Mievelle, Jeff Vandermeer, Victor Lavalle and even yours truly have been playing in that particular sandbox for years.) One series that doesn't get nearly enough love 'round these parts is James White's amazing Sector General stories. Rather than just having a random spaceport or similar venue White's creation is a vast hospital spaceship set up to treat the most exotic illnesses.

[AxB]

Now reading War of the Wolf by Bernard Cornwell, the most recent in the Last Kingdom series. Uhtred points out that the situation has reversed; At one point the Danes had conquered Northumberland, Mercia and East Anglia, making Wessex the only part of (not yet) England still under English rule. But at this stage in history, Mercia and East Anglia are puppet states of Wessex and Northumberland is the last Kingdom under Pagan rule (a century later they were all under Norman rule, and technically still are). Fun little details about what a load of gits the Bishops used to be, and how Manchester got it's name (Chester (Caester) already existed; The Romans built a similar walled citadel atop a hill that was shaped like a ladies' bosom, so they called it Mamecaester - Mam as in Mammary).

I know most people think of Cornwell as the Sharpe guy (and the Sharpe novels are probably better than the TV series), but he definitely improved as a writer once he moved on from them. His Stonehenge and King Arthur books are good too.

To follow up in Mark Hunt's book, it's interesting that when he's talking about his K-1 and PRIDE days, he brushes off the steroid issue and says "my opponents were probably juicing, no big deal" , but in the UFC when they had testing, he's really pissed off that people dope anyway. Especially Bigfoot Silva, because they had that five round blood soaked epic war, and Silva was on the gas. Then they had a rematch when Silva was clean, and Hunt sparked him early in the first. He said the roids gave Bigfoot a hell of a chin, because he ate harder shots in the first fight than the killshot in the second. And Lesnar failing his pre-fight drugs tests, the company knowing about it, and him still being allowed to fight is fishy as hell. Especially with the UFC being sold right afterwards.

Looking at his life the way he tells it, seems like what Tank Abbott (and Roy Nelson) pretended to be, Mark Hunt actually is.

Edited June 22, 2019 by AxB

[Kuetsar]

Been reading mostly celeb bios and comedy books lately, with a couple of Elmore Leonard books and true crime ones mixed in. Read LaBrava, which I thought was good, but not great. Then I read Glitz, and its novels like that which remind you that Elmore Leonard was the fucking truth. Set in Atlantic City and Puerto Rico, it involves a cat and mouse game between a cop and a psycho. Since I've been reading Leonard in written order, I'm just now getting into the mid 80's novels. His westerns are awesome(coming from a guy that not big into westerns),  but his true crime stuff started off good, but quickly turns to GREAT  about the late 70's or so. 

I have a history itch that I should scratch, but I have a compressed summer class and have to write a literature review,  for my MAT program, so I might postpone my China run yet again.(two Mao biographies, then on to the races.) 

[OSJ]

17 hours ago, Kuetsar said:

Been reading mostly celeb bios and comedy books lately, with a couple of Elmore Leonard books and true crime ones mixed in. Read LaBrava, which I thought was good, but not great. Then I read Glitz, and its novels like that which remind you that Elmore Leonard was the fucking truth. Set in Atlantic City and Puerto Rico, it involves a cat and mouse game between a cop and a psycho. Since I've been reading Leonard in written order, I'm just now getting into the mid 80's novels. His westerns are awesome(coming from a guy that not big into westerns),  but his true crime stuff started off good, but quickly turns to GREAT  about the late 70's or so. 

I have a history itch that I should scratch, but I have a compressed summer class and have to write a literature review,  for my MAT program, so I might postpone my China run yet again.(two Mao biographies, then on to the races.) 

Let me just interject that Dutch Leonard was a hell of a good dude. Many years ago I got a chance to tell him how his chapter in a book called The Courage to Change helped me through some rough patches in early sobriety. Every year after that when he'd do a book signing in Seattle I'd go to get the new book signed and he'd ask me how the sober life was treating me, that he remembered me out of the thousands of fans that would turn out to see him made me feel pretty damn good.

[Contentious C]

Made it all the way back to Changes in the Dresden Files and have basically dreaded the whole book.  Partly because the next one (Ghost Story) is an unmitigated turd, partly because this book is so thoroughly depressing.  Ugh.  I had forgotten some of the really good one-liners, though.  Maybe the most negative thing I can say about the book is that it needed more of Harry thought-murdering Martin.

@supremebve How far along are you?

Edited June 26, 2019 by Contentious C

[supremebve]

6 minutes ago, Contentious C said:

Made it all the way back to Changes in the Dresden Files and have basically dreaded the whole book.  Partly because the next one (Ghost Story) is an unmitigated turd, partly because this book is so thoroughly depressing.  Ugh.  I had forgotten some of the really good one-liners, though.  Maybe the most negative thing I can say about the book is that it need more of Harry thought-murdering Martin.

@supremebve How far along are you?

I've fallen behind, because of my A Song of Ice and Fire reread, but I'll be starting Death Masks next.  I'm probably at least a month or so away from that though.

[The Unholy Dragon]

Unpopular opinion, I know, but I liked Ghost Story just fine when I read it. 

 

I really need a reread of my own though so that whenever Peace Talks drops I'll be ready.

[Contentious C]

I think what bugged me the worst was the pacing.  It felt like he wrote himself into a corner with that book, and the whole schtick of returning to the graveyard over and over, and making all the progress seem more teeth-grindingly incremental, became painful.  I mean, granted, even some of the ones I like, such as Death Masks and Fool Moon, are fairly rough for the first 100 pages due to the quality of the writing, but they get going.  Ghost Story just stands out in stark contrast to a lot of the books around it, which are 90s NJPW/Lucha levels of go-go-go, and that usually works (Changes, Small Favor, Turn Coat) with fewer less-good books (White Night as an example).

I think we're probably due for an Ivy book - and for that matter, an Elaine one.  Maybe Peace Talks will be both.

[JLSigman]

Been reading bits and bobs off of Hoopla or Tor's website or AO3. Finally realized I need to go to my library and renew my card so I can get the Thrawn books and the new Tad Williams book. ADHD has been keeping my brain too flutterpated to read much more than short stories or fanfiction chapters, but I really want to try to beat it back into submission. 

[Justin877]

My "pop culture" ADHD is all over the place.  But I am currently reading The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfus.  I like it and it came with a high recommendation from a coworker.  I just need to buckle down and read it.

[Matt D]

4 minutes ago, Justin877 said:

My "pop culture" ADHD is all over the place.  But I am currently reading The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfus.  I like it and it came with a high recommendation from a coworker.  I just need to buckle down and read it.

Then pretend it is a complete, wholly contained story and move on with your life.

[Beech27]

10 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Then pretend it is a complete, wholly contained story and move on with your life.

On different mornings, I could have clicked the laugh or cry emoji response to this. I would recommend The Slow Regard of Silent Things to anyone who, for some reason, wants to hang out in the universe a little longer, though. Rothfuss' strength is his prose, whimsy, and metaphor, and he gets to indulge all of those in a novella without stumbling over his plot troubles.

I'm finishing up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which is Murakami doing very Murakami things. You know how everyone dresses and the narrator makes pasta while listening to specific jazz or classical, and there are awkward descriptions of women and weird sex things, but it all comes together for me.

I have a few epic fantasies on the docket after that, but may instead opt for Woe to Live On or Cult X. I'm leaning Western (aside: I'd be happy for non-McMurty/McCarthy recommendations here), basically, or staying with weird and digressive in Japan.

[Justin877]

Oh my, so I shouldn't read the follow up. Yikes

[OSJ]

Currently reading everything that I can get my hands on by Victor Lavalle, he started off strong winning the Shirley Jackson Award for Big Machine then just missing out on the same award for The Devil in Silver (which I actually thought was better), then took the unusual step of having a novella published in book form (The Ballad of Black Tom 2016) before coming back with his best novel yet, The Changeling (2017). This last won the World Fantasy Award. There has never been anyone with such a high percentage of award wins before, Lavalle is truly an amazing writer and his stuff is still affordable, I don't expect that to last. Once the NY lit crowd sees what they have within their midst, his books are going to be hotly collected outside of the genre. Jump on now!