Author Topic: What books are we reading at the moment ?  (Read 835449 times)

Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5925 on: 26 February, 2020, 06:19:46 pm »
Currently reading, amongst other things, Moby Dick. Can't say I'm enthralled so far.
Miles cycled 2014 = 3551.5 (Target 7300 :()
Miles cycled 2013 = 6141.4
Miles cycled 2012 = 4038.1

ElyDave

  • Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society member 263583
Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5926 on: 26 February, 2020, 08:01:10 pm »
Currently reading, amongst other things, Moby Dick. Can't say I'm enthralled so far.

If you've ever read Tolstoy, War and Peace, it a bit like that in terms of passages of extreme excitement linked by passage of extreme turgidity
“Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.” –Charles Dickens

Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5927 on: 26 February, 2020, 08:49:44 pm »
I haven't, and suspect I might not
Miles cycled 2014 = 3551.5 (Target 7300 :()
Miles cycled 2013 = 6141.4
Miles cycled 2012 = 4038.1

Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5928 on: 26 February, 2020, 10:03:27 pm »
"The Monster, Baru Cormorant" by Seth Dickinson.  A sequel to "The Traitor"
Not fast & rarely furious

tweeting occasional in(s)anities as andrewxclark

Wowbagger

  • Former Sylph
    • Stuff mostly about weather
Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5929 on: 20 March, 2020, 09:28:19 pm »
"Where there's a Will" by That Emily Chappell. She writes beautifully. It's also a bit of a thrill when you are personal friends with the author.
Quote from: Dez
It doesn’t matter where you start. Just start.

ian

Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5930 on: 20 March, 2020, 09:40:57 pm »
Whatever the latest Expanse was (Tiamat's Wrath). Really rather good if you like that sort of thing.

Next up A Book of Bones, the latest but one in the epic Charlie Parker series. I hate John Connelly and not just because I have to Google the spelling of his name every time I write it, but because of his iridescent prose which frankly makes other writers seem more than a little inadequate. Also, despite being an Irishman, he conjures up a near-perfect sense of Nor'east Americana.

Mrs Pingu

  • Who ate all the pies? Me
    • Twitter
Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5931 on: 20 March, 2020, 10:42:46 pm »
I am reading Phillip Pullman's The Secret Commonwealth.

It's making me quite sad.
Pingu says: "it's only a book"
Still sad.

Still want a dæmon though.
Do not clench. It only makes it worse.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5932 on: 21 March, 2020, 11:00:18 am »
One of Harry Turtledove's potboilers, this one from a series tracing the course WW2 might have taken if Chamberlain & Dalladier had stood up to Hitler at Munich.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5933 on: 21 March, 2020, 04:45:14 pm »
Traveling (sic) The Lewis & Clark Trail.  Sadly I rather doubt I will be doing so this year :'(
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5934 on: 31 March, 2020, 10:50:17 am »
OK, I clicked on it thinking it might be a fascinating novel centred around coffee drinking, it isn't: God Shot

Having followed the link, I'm curious to hear if this blurb makes it interesting for anyone to read*:

Quote
Drought has settled on the town of Peaches, California. The area of the Central Valley where fourteen-year-old Lacey May and her alcoholic mother live was once an agricultural paradise. Now it’s an environmental disaster, a place of cracked earth and barren raisin farms. In their desperation, residents have turned to a cult leader named Pastor Vern for guidance. He promises, through secret “assignments,” to bring the rain everybody is praying for.

Lacey has no reason to doubt the pastor. But then her life explodes in a single unimaginable act of abandonment: her mother, exiled from the community for her sins, leaves Lacey and runs off with a man she barely knows. Abandoned and distraught, Lacey May moves in with her widowed grandma, Cherry, who is more concerned with her taxidermy mice collection than her own granddaughter. As Lacey May endures the increasingly appalling acts of men who want to write all the rules, and begins to uncover the full extent of Pastor Vern’s shocking plan to bring fertility back to the land, she decides she must go on a quest to find her mother, no matter what it takes. With her only guidance coming from the romance novels she reads and the unlikely companionship of the women who knew her mother, she must find her own way through unthinkable circumstances.

Possessed of an unstoppable plot and a brilliantly soulful voice, Godshot is a book of grit and humor and heart, a debut novel about female friendship and resilience, mother-loss and motherhood, and seeking salvation in unexpected places. It introduces a writer who gives Flannery O’Connor’s Gothic parables a Californian twist and who emerges with a miracle that is all her own.

*I suspect the target audience may not be old farts like me

ian

Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5935 on: 31 March, 2020, 12:09:58 pm »
God, that sounds awful. I died halfway through the blurb.

fuzzy

Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5936 on: 31 March, 2020, 02:51:08 pm »
Make Every Photon Count- Steve Richards.
A beginners guide to Deep Sky astrophotography.
Got to learn the proper way to do it as opposed to just attaching my camera to my scope and praying.....

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5937 on: 31 March, 2020, 03:15:20 pm »
God, that sounds awful. I died halfway through the blurb.

Glad it's not just me.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

ian

Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5938 on: 31 March, 2020, 03:53:18 pm »
God, that sounds awful. I died halfway through the blurb.

Glad it's not just me.

I think, to be honest, it was written by the publisher's Marketing Algorithm. They plug in the variables of the target market, hit 'generate book' and the let the machine cogitate up a suitable pile of words and accompanying cover blurb.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5939 on: 31 March, 2020, 04:12:58 pm »
Shades of Fritz Leiber's Silver Eggheads.  Wordwooze.

Meanwhile, here's a present for all.  For years, Nature ran a series of one-page SF stories on its last page, called Futures . When they rejigged their layout a few months back, Futures bit the dust.  Some of them were pure meh but some were bloody good. The missus has now found them on line, and this is the one I liked best:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06039-3
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5940 on: 31 March, 2020, 04:31:12 pm »
A book about how to read water by the guy who did a book about natural signs. Can't remember his name


Also keep getting my canoe camping book by Tim Gent and canoeing by Ray Goodwin and just looking wistfully at the pictures

Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5941 on: 31 March, 2020, 05:12:41 pm »
God, that sounds awful. I died halfway through the blurb.

Glad it's not just me.

I think, to be honest, it was written by the publisher's Marketing Algorithm. They plug in the variables of the target market, hit 'generate book' and the let the machine cogitate up a suitable pile of words and accompanying cover blurb.

So, on the whole, you wouldn't have appreciated my initial thought "A review that Ian might have wrote had he lost his sense of humour"?

I still think that there might be people who would have read that and thought "I'll enjoy reading that". If it comes up as Kindle Unlimited I may well be tempted to see if it is as godawful as the blurb makes it sound. At the moment it is pre-release for £21 hardcover on April 7.

ian

Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5942 on: 01 April, 2020, 12:22:43 pm »
God, that sounds awful. I died halfway through the blurb.

Glad it's not just me.

I think, to be honest, it was written by the publisher's Marketing Algorithm. They plug in the variables of the target market, hit 'generate book' and the let the machine cogitate up a suitable pile of words and accompanying cover blurb.

So, on the whole, you wouldn't have appreciated my initial thought "A review that Ian might have wrote had he lost his sense of humour"?

I still think that there might be people who would have read that and thought "I'll enjoy reading that". If it comes up as Kindle Unlimited I may well be tempted to see if it is as godawful as the blurb makes it sound. At the moment it is pre-release for £21 hardcover on April 7.

There may be people who aren't me (a fact I have yet to establish). It does seem algorithmic though in stacking up all the market focus touchpoints and ticking them off. I'm personally not so sure that anyone who has read Flannery O'Connor will have come back with the words 'humour and heart,' not really the themes explored in Southern Gothic. Though with a California twist, who knows, that's probably like grits with a side of smashed avocado. Chefs, just don't, m'kay?

I was left with an abiding impression of Pastor Vern frantically and futilely trying to release himself over his barren raisins. I'd be shocked to encounter that scene and I'm not a fourteen-year-girl.

Honestly, though, it grabs me on 'taxidermy mice collection.'

I hate Goodreads, it's full of vacant nitwits who seem to love everything. It's only palatable if you set the filter to two stars and below. Otherwise it's full of people in a perpetual state of astonishment (which pays, I'm sure). Words, Marcy, they used words!

Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5943 on: 01 April, 2020, 12:30:47 pm »
If it doesn't exist, there needs to be a book equivalent of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. :demon:
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche

Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5944 on: 01 April, 2020, 01:07:16 pm »
More on "What I learned today" front, Art Garfunkel has a list of every book he has read since 1968 on his website https://www.artgarfunkel.com/library.html, that list looks as if it might be an interesting source of inspiration if treated with caution


Mr Larrington

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Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5945 on: 05 April, 2020, 11:46:19 am »
Stranded as I am forty miles from the "To read" pile I am revisiting Neal Stephenson.  "Zodiac" was a lot better than I remember first time round.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
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    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5946 on: 29 April, 2020, 09:48:06 am »
What with Mr Stephenson having written a couple more sturdy boks since the last time I looked I am now a third of the way through Fall: or Dodge In Hell, wot is a sort of sequel to Reamde, unites the universes of that book with that of Cryptonomicon and has some pertinent observations on the malignant power of social media, which I think the author would like to uninvent.  Also it's got Enoch Root in it.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5947 on: 29 April, 2020, 11:14:57 am »
I'm rather surprised this thread hasn't been overflowing with entries of late.
Rust never sleeps

Redlight

  • Enjoying life in the slow lane
Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5948 on: 29 April, 2020, 12:24:54 pm »
I'm rather surprised this thread hasn't been overflowing with entries of late.

Maybe we're all embarrassed to admit what we are reading to keep us sane (although I've just finished The Prime Ministers by Steve Richards, which I heartily recommend. It dissects the leadership qualities of all the PMs from Wilson to May and, to my mind, is scrupulously fair to them all.  I'm hoping that by the time it comes out in paperback he will have added one more chapter.)
Why should anybody steal a watch when they can steal a bicycle?

Re: What books are we reading at the moment ?
« Reply #5949 on: 29 April, 2020, 12:41:42 pm »
I'm rather surprised this thread hasn't been overflowing with entries of late.

Maybe we're all embarrassed to admit what we are reading to keep us sane (although I've just finished The Prime Ministers by Steve Richards, which I heartily recommend. It dissects the leadership qualities of all the PMs from Wilson to May and, to my mind, is scrupulously fair to them all.  I'm hoping that by the time it comes out in paperback he will have added one more chapter.)
Or even two, with a bit of luck.
Rust never sleeps