OT: Watcha reading?

[eco's bones]

I, Tituba, black witch of Salem--Maryse Conde--a retelling of the Salem witchtrials through the eyes of a slave transplanted from Barbados. Not all that far into it but it's really good.

Say Nothing--Patrick Radden Keefe--revolves somewhat around the 1972 abduction, disappearance and murder of one Jean McConville by the IRA. There were somewhere around 10 people that the IRA disappeared during the troubles and she was one of them. She was a widow with 10 children and dragged out of her apartment in front of her kids and never seen again and there's always been some uncertainty as to why this happened. The book is about more than just that though--there's a long look at republican figures like Gerry Adams, Brendan Hughes and the Price sisters Dolours and Marian--Dolours went on to marry the actor Stephen Rea (The Crying Game). I like this a lot too...though I still have a ways to go. It's kind of a true crime book.

 

[Lua]

delet this

 

[SnowFort]

I’m reading The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson right now, almost halfway through. Really liking it so far.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

I, Tituba, black witch of Salem--Maryse Conde--a retelling of the Salem witchtrials through the eyes of a slave transplanted from Barbados. Not all that far into it but it's really good.

Say Nothing--Patrick Radden Keefe--revolves somewhat around the 1972 abduction, disappearance and murder of one Jean McConville by the IRA. There were somewhere around 10 people that the IRA disappeared during the troubles and she was one of them. She was a widow with 10 children and dragged out of her apartment in front of her kids and never seen again and there's always been some uncertainty as to why this happened. The book is about more than just that though--there's a long look at republican figures like Gerry Adams, Brendan Hughes and the Price sisters Dolours and Marian--Dolours went on to marry the actor Stephen Rea (The Crying Game). I like this a lot too...though I still have a ways to go. It's kind of a true crime book.

Both sound really interesting, but especially the second one.

 

[eco's bones]

Both sound really interesting, but especially the second one.

There was some buzz that Conde would win one of the two Nobel literature prizes given out this year but that didn't happened. I hadn't heard of her before....but I was like what the hell.

My ancestors on my father's side came from Ulster some time after the 1798 rebellion. They first settled in Canada in Prescott which is about 45 (or so) minutes southwest of Ottawa and then migrated again down to New York state. I read books on the troubles now and again. This look an intriguing one. McConville's husband had died months before--apparently there was some belief (rightly or wrongly) she was an informer. Maybe this book will finally clear that up. Whatever the case though it's a sad thing.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

In case anyone is keeping track, as par for the course I'm reading a business bio, Bob Iger's bio (Disney CEO). Very interesting, I wish it weren't so short. I really missed taking the subway places and having an excuse to read.

 

[Machinehead]

Recent reading

I like your toilet paper collection.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

I like your toilet paper collection.

You trying to impress us with how left-wing you are is as lame as him trying to impress us with how right-wing he is. Food for thought.

 

[Machinehead]

You trying to impress us with how left-wing you are is as lame as him trying to impress us with how right-wing he is. Food for thought.

Not trying to impress anyone, just giving my opinion on a website dedicated to opinions.

I like the poster.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

Not trying to impress anyone, just giving my opinion on a website dedicated to opinions.

I like the poster.

Yeah, but the opinion has some strong political undertones and so did his post. Although, at least all he did was basically answer the question. I don't think a thread about books should turn political. But I'm not a mod.

 

[Machinehead]

Yeah, but the opinion has some strong political undertones and so did his post. Although, at least all he did was basically answer the question. I don't think a thread about books should turn political. But I'm not a mod.

In that case, I'm reading this

 

[eco's bones]

Cyprus Avenue--David Ireland. This is a play by a Northern Irish playwright from a protestant background. The story revolves around this guy who thinks his 5 week old granddaughter resembles Gerry Adams. It's structured around that absurdity anyway and ends violently. It reminds me somewhat of the plays by Martin McDonagh (Beauty Queen of Leenane) who also wrote the script for the movie 'In Bruges' mixing comedy and violence with a schizophrenic carrying the plot.

Also 'Flights' by Olga Tokarczuk--recent winner of the Nobel Prize. It was very good.

 

[TheBloodyNine]

Before They Are Hanged - First Law Book 2.

 

[SlingshotVv]

Of Human Bondage - Somerset Maugham. Just finished The Club Dumas

 

[SnowblindNYR]

I'm reading a book called "The Man who Solved the Market" by Gregory Zuckerman.

He wrote the original "The Big Short" called "The Greatest Trade Ever". His book was at least as good. In fact for some odd reason, The Big Short doesn't mention the biggest player John Paulson. Anyway, he does a great job I recommend both of these books, even though I just started the newer one it's already pretty great.

 

[True Blue]

In that case, I'm reading this

I read Song of Achilles by her. That was not bad.

 

[haveandare]

Re-reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Read it for the first time maybe 5 years ago. Had a long train ride ahead of me earlier this week and grabbed it to take with me kind of impulsively but I’ve really been enjoying it. Definitely the kind of book that you get different things out of at different points in your life.

 

[True Blue]

Read Fahrenheit 451 again. Ridiculously topical to the world today.

Also, highly recommend Hillbilly Elegy to anyone.

 

[Brooklyn Rangers Fan]

I highly recommend Ninth House, by Leigh Bardugo if you like well-written urban fantasy. (Winner of the Goodreads book of the year for Fantasy.)

 

[eco's bones]

Sometime this afternoon I'll begin Insurrecto--a novel by a Philippine American writer Gina Apostol. First half of the blurb on the back cover goes like this:

'Two women, a Filipino translator and an American filmmaker, go on a road trip to Duterte's Philippines, collaborating and clashing in the writing of a film script about a massacre during the Philippine-American War. Chiara is working on a film about an incident in Balangiga, Samar, in 1901, when Filipino revolutionaries attacked an American garrison, and in retaliation American soldiers created "a howling wilderness" of the surrounding countryside. Magsalin reads Chiara's film script and writes her own version. Insurrecto contains within its dramatic action two rival scripts from the filmmaker and the translator---one about a white photographer, the other about a Filipino schoolteacher'.

The rest of the blurb goes on to make comparisons of the book to Calvino's If on a winter night a traveller, Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch and Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire which from the above part seems a bit of a stretch to me--as the above at least references direct historical event......but we shall see.

Anyway I've never really run into much at all about the Filipino-American conflict which morphed out of the Spanish-American War ('Remember the Maine' or the one where Teddy Roosevelt supposedly charges up San Juan Hill). There was a book that my dad had that I read when I was a teenager written by Lowell Thomas that was about a soldier of fortune (you might say a murderer for hire) that had a section on that Filipino-American conflict. I can't remember anything else.

 

[Brooklyn Rangers Fan]

Wow. Have we really not bumped this thread since last fall? I feel like there’s another thread where we started talking about books more recently, but I can’t find it.

Anyway...

I just finished Naomi Novik’s new novel, A Deadly Education.

Holy f***. I’d describe it as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire meets The Library at Mount Char. HIGHLY recommended.

(Oh, and if you haven’t read, Library, that is outstanding — and trippy as hell — as well.)

 

[eco's bones]

Of recent I finished Anna Burns No Bones--a novel set in Belfast during the troubles. She's very good at contrasting the grim with a macabre humor. A couple books by the fairly recently departed British culturalist theorist Mark Fisher (recommended by the more recently departed Michael Brooks) The weird and the eerie and Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? Also Molly Crabapple's Drawing Blood which comes illustrated with a number or her drawings. She's a NYC based artist and former sex worker who was diagnosed as a youngster with something called ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder--I thought when I read that 'it sounds like me. I have ODD too. You can not tell me different'.--so you can see I was already gathering my oppositional forces of defiance together to be ready to battle over it')--so naturally I had to check that out.

Right now I'm finishing a novel by a Spaniard A.G. Porta titled The No World Concerto. It's not the greatest thing I've ever read but it's pretty good.

What's coming up is Alan Garner's Red Shift (which is follow up from Fisher's above mentioned Weird and eerie), David Niven's The f***-it List and David Mitchell's Utopia Avenue. When it comes to modern English novelists--David Mitchell and David Peace (GB84) are the best IMO. One of the novels Mitchell is known for is Cloud Atlas.

 

[motopanekeku]

I like your toilet paper collection.

Solzhenitsyn is not toilet paper

 

[motopanekeku]

Sometime this afternoon I'll begin Insurrecto--a novel by a Philippine American writer Gina Apostol. First half of the blurb on the back cover goes like this:

'Two women, a Filipino translator and an American filmmaker, go on a road trip to Duterte's Philippines, collaborating and clashing in the writing of a film script about a massacre during the Philippine-American War. Chiara is working on a film about an incident in Balangiga, Samar, in 1901, when Filipino revolutionaries attacked an American garrison, and in retaliation American soldiers created "a howling wilderness" of the surrounding countryside. Magsalin reads Chiara's film script and writes her own version. Insurrecto contains within its dramatic action two rival scripts from the filmmaker and the translator---one about a white photographer, the other about a Filipino schoolteacher'.

The rest of the blurb goes on to make comparisons of the book to Calvino's If on a winter night a traveller, Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch and Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire which from the above part seems a bit of a stretch to me--as the above at least references direct historical event......but we shall see.

Anyway I've never really run into much at all about the Filipino-American conflict which morphed out of the Spanish-American War ('Remember the Maine' or the one where Teddy Roosevelt supposedly charges up San Juan Hill). There was a book that my dad had that I read when I was a teenager written by Lowell Thomas that was about a soldier of fortune (you might say a murderer for hire) that had a section on that Filipino-American conflict. I can't remember anything else.

Calvino's If on a Winter Night is one of the coolest reads structurally. Highly recommended if you like purposeful non-linearity. Also his Cosmicomics are amazing. Think Borjes with a sense of humor.

Pale Fire is at the top of my list right now. Gotta finish my rereads of CSLewis Perelandra and Orson Scott Card Children of the Mind.

Also the CRAZIEST sci fi is coming from Image Comics. East of West, Saga, Descender/Ascender, Black Science. All great and bingeable. My sci fi addiction has never felt so satisfied.

 

[eco's bones]

Calvino's If on a Winter Night is one of the coolest reads structurally. Highly recommended if you like purposeful non-linearity. Also his Cosmicomics are amazing. Think Borjes with a sense of humor.

Pale Fire is at the top of my list right now. Gotta finish my rereads of CSLewis Perelandra and Orson Scott Card Children of the Mind.

Also the CRAZIEST sci fi is coming from Image Comics. East of West, Saga, Descender/Ascender, Black Science. All great and bingeable. My sci fi addiction has never felt so satisfied.

I've read a lot of all of Calvino (btw an Oulipo writer), Borges and Nabokov. Speaking of Calvino--back in Kreider's draft year in his draft bio he cites Baron in the trees as his favorite book. Not sure I'm the greatest sci-fi reader. I do like JG Ballard quite a lot--particularly Atrocity Exhibition. I'm not sure I'd categorize Mitchell as sci-fi per se though there seem to be some elements of sci-fi--much of his work is kind of intra-dimensional and/or imaginative of future times. Generally I read a lot in translation and am prone to all kinds of whimsy choosing what to buy or what to read next. I have a lot of favorite writers--the first that really had great impact on me was Louis Ferdinand Celine who certainly had a problematic history.