What books are we reading at the moment ?

[Legs]

Just finished Stephen King's “Billy Summers”, in which the paranatural and supernormal are limited to a couple of oblique references to the Overlook Hotel and Hemingford Home.

I enjoyed that one, too.  Now reading Duma Key at a rate of about one page per night...

[Nuncio]

After a short break in Barcelona, I'm re-reading (after c40 years) Homage to Catalonia. I struggled with it the first time, not least because of the abbreviations of the numerous republican-sympathizing parties and militias, and the subtle differences in their aims and ideals. I must be more patient these days; and Wikipedia helps. And I must have missed the humour the first time round because some of it is funny - which is not something I associate with Orwell.

I've just finished the chapter where he's returned on leave from the front line in May 1937 to a seething Barcelona, when the civil-war-within-the-civil-war breaks out. The description of his personal experiences are fascinating, but he finishes the chapter with: "In the next chapter I must discuss as best I can the larger issues...if you are not interested in political controversy and the mob of parties and sub-parties with their confusing names (rather like the names of the generals in a Chinese war), please skip". I'm tempted. I wish he'd given a similar warning before the boring Goldstein manifesto bit in 1984.

[Mr Larrington]

Orwell by Mr Larrington, on Flickr

[pcolbeck]

The Earth Transformed: An Untold History by Peter Frankopan

Climate change from when the Earth first had a climate to now.

[fimm]

Good Omens, by Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman.
Is this where the character Death, WHO TALKS LIKE THIS, originates?

[spesh]

Good Omens, by Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman.
Is this where the character Death, WHO TALKS LIKE THIS, originates?

No, Death was already a well-established/loved character in the Discworld books when Good Omens was published.

[ravenbait]

I picked up The Fireman by Joe Hill after reading some of his short stories. I prefer less cerebral horror when the insomnia is bad, but I'm really struggling with this. Each element I can point to which of his dad's (Stephen King, if you didn't know) stories he took it from, and a third of the way through I've realised I don't have it in me to read yet another book from the King family in which Our Hero has to Protect Their Child against the Real Monsters Who Are Other Humans, especially Sadistic Religious Fanatics.

If I hadn't been reading it on a kindle, I'd have probably thrown it across the room at the part where a pregnant woman in the second trimester swung from a tree and was thankful when the "rubbery lump" of her pregnancy cushioned her from a rough landing in a partially-demolished house.

Sam

[fimm]

Good Omens, by Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman.
Is this where the character Death, WHO TALKS LIKE THIS, originates?

No, Death was already a well-established/loved character in the Discworld books when Good Omens was published.

Thank you. I was curious.

[spesh]

YOU'RE WELCOME.

[L CC]

If I hadn't been reading it on a kindle, I'd have probably thrown it across the room at the part where a pregnant woman in the second trimester swung from a tree and was thankful when the "rubbery lump" of her pregnancy cushioned her from a rough landing in a partially-demolished house.

Sam

Was she pregnant with a space hopper??
 

[ravenbait]

I don't know if I can continue reading long enough to find out. At this point in the books, she's still pregnant. She has just been assaulted by a group of teenage girls blissed out on a telepathic fungus that has colonised their brains, who cut off her hair and broke her teeth while forcing a stone into her mouth, which they then gaffer taped shut. So...

Men writing women, eh?

Sam

[fimm]

Finished "Good Omens". Whizzed through "Double Cross" by Ben Macintyre (about misinformation in WW2).
Now on "How to be a Footballer" by Peter Crouch, picked up very cheap in a 2nd hand book shop. It is quite amusing. Then spotted that his ghostwriter is Tom Fordyce, who is also Geraint Thomas' ghostwriter. That explains a similarity in structure and tone between the two books... Though also, I think both sportsmen have similar senses of humour about being professional sportsmen.

[Bluebottle]

How Music Works by David Byrne. Absolutley fascinating and there seems to be something new being brought up continually.

[Feanor]

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.

A fictional account of the history and mathematics of cryptography, told via two interleaved stories, one based around Bletchley Park and Alan Turing during the war, and another based around early Internet pioneers set in the 1990s.  The stories are not just interleaved, but also intertwined. Several of the characters in the modern story are descendants of the characters in the earlier one.

He's gone to some lengths to research and discuss the actual maths, and although it's not important to the understanding of the storyline, it does add a depth which is interesting to me.
(I did an evening class at Aberdeen Uni many years ago, on the subject of cryptography and cryptanalysis. We got homework! A short paragraph of cyphertext which we had to try to decode using the techniques discussed in class.)

[fd3]

I picked up The Fireman by Joe Hill

I did read the rest of your posts, but I spotted your mistake at this point.  I read "Horns" on Gaiman's recommendation, but it was bad enough that I wouldn't read anything else he writes.  Then again I am also not a fan of his dad's work.

[Mr Larrington]

Finally struggled through to the end of Sleep No More, in which Greg Iles takes aim at fellow Rock Bottom Remainder Stephen King, and misses by a country mile.  Also features prosecutor-turned-novelist Penn Cage, who is introduced as having written a novel featuring prosecutor-turned-novelist Penn Cage.  This is all a bit meta for this unlettered oaf.

[Nuncio]

I'm new to Irish writer Sebastian Barry having read Days Without End earlier in the year, and then picking up Old God's Time without realizing it was his latest. It's a hard book to read but superb, nevertheless, and it didn't finish for me after I put it down (IYKWIM) after a breathless denouement. The hardness comes not only from the subject matter - we're talking Irish priests and historic 'cases' here - but also the very slow coalescing of the truth as the novel progresses. Our central character's confusion regarding his own harrowing family history and a cold case two ex-colleagues come to ask him about (he's a 9-month-retired policeman, living alone in Dalkey) is also ours. But that gives it a foggy, ghostly, haunting feel until the fogginess disperses and the ghosts seem to be banished. A satisfying ending, if not a happy one.

[T42]

Just finished a thing called There Is No Antimemetics Division, something of an SF farce by a gent who signs himself qntm pronounced quantum.

An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it.

Antimemes are real. Think of any piece of information which you wouldn't share with anybody, like passwords, taboos and dirty secrets. Or any piece of information which would be difficult to share even if you tried: complex equations, very boring passages of text, large blocks of random numbers, and dreams...

But anomalous antimemes are another matter entirely. How do you contain something you can't record or remember? How do you fight a war against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you're at war?

Welcome to the Antimemetics Division.

No, this is not your first day.

https://www.amazon.com/There-No-Antimemetics-Division-qntm/dp/B0915M7T61

As you might gather, qntm is a computer guy. I found it helped to imagine the whole thing taking place in a computer. But it doesn't.

I wouldn't be surprised if qntm were OTP. He'd fit right in.

[Mr Larrington]

Has he seen the fnords?

[T42]

Indeed.  I once wrote a computer game in which you could accidentally trigger an attack by invisible fnords. A distant drone waxed into a roar the closer they got.

[andrewc]

"Season of Skulls" by that nice Mr Stross has just turned up.   

[T42]

I'll wait a year and get it half price.

Meanwhile, after The Antiemetics Doo-Dah I've nearly finished another slim volume by qntm, a rather funful frolic called Ed.  I wonder if he's going to do another called vi and a couple more called lex and yacc. (One of Ed's conjectures is that the universe runs on Linux.)

[Steph]

"Season of Skulls" by that nice Mr Stross has just turned up.   

Started it. I wonder who this early passage could refer to

(click to show/hide)

a particularly damning video shot at a boisterous underground dining club had surfaced when his name was put forward for a parliamentary seat. Bestiality was a crime, necrophilia was a crime... bestial necrophilia in white tie and tails fell into a Twilight Zone loophole

I am surprised at his writing this time, as he has so far moved from his normal present tense narrative to past tense.

[Mr Larrington]

The Footprints Of God.  Having previously done Stephen King, Greg Iles turns his attention to Dan Brown with a mashup of pseudo-religious claptrap and technobobbins.  While it is every bit as bad as it sounds it is still 4.726 times better than anything that ever escaped from Dan Brown's word processor.

[andrewc]

"Season of Skulls" by that nice Mr Stross has just turned up.   

Started it. I wonder who this early passage could refer to

(click to show/hide)

a particularly damning video shot at a boisterous underground dining club had surfaced when his name was put forward for a parliamentary seat. Bestiality was a crime, necrophilia was a crime... bestial necrophilia in white tie and tails fell into a Twilight Zone loophole

I am surprised at his writing this time, as he has so far moved from his normal present tense narrative to past tense.

Just finished this.  I can now return to trying to read “Pride And Prejudice “…….