What are You Reading Now?

[makhorkasmoker]

I've had the Vintage edition on my bookshelf for a few years since I found it in a charity shop. Accounts of how depressing it is have likely contributed to me not having read it yet. I tend to have to be in a particular mood to read "downers".


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I did not find it a downer. Very much a transcendental novel. My only struggle with it was that stark, often humorless, earnest style——and that mainly because that style has been used, and abused, in so many American “literary” novels of recent decades. Once I saw the style really served a purpose, I entered the story and enjoyed it

 

[Aylesbury Pike]

I did not find it a downer. Very much a transcendental novel. My only struggle with it was that stark, often humorless, earnest style——and that mainly because that style has been used, and abused, in so many American “literary” novels of recent decades. Once I saw the style really served a purpose, I entered the story and enjoyed it

Great to hear, I think I'm encouraged to finally pick this up and read it through. I'll add it to my "reading next" pile.

 

[makhorkasmoker]

And now, for comparison with Brave New World

 

[Some Joe Blow]

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton- It discusses Chesterton's theological beliefs- it was written while he was still an Anglican (of which he converted from later) but certainly serves as a piece of apologetics that Catholics use to defend the validity of the Faith. It is not a religious piece of work but instead his personal journey that led him to believe it. He claims that the Christian faith is the answer that solves all the worlds problems and needs. It certainly is Chesterton that is a poetic genius! A very good read and frequently revisited.

 

[warren99]

Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes.

 

[crawdad]

Book of poems by Robert Burns

 

[khiddy]

Read them all - feel like I know Aubrey and Maturin like old friends at this point. Probably going to start a re-read next year. Some of my favorite books involve sailing the globe (Moby Dick, Typee, The Bounty Trilogy, Hornblower, etc.); makes me wish, at times, to quit my job and climb aboard a ship for a year or two. Reality quickly rears its ugly head.

I’m in a book club that is reading each of the Aubriad one book per month and meeting to drink rum and chat. We just finished Desolation Island, so we’re officially 1/4 of the way through. Thoroughly enjoyable, love the fact that every other novel so far has included a case of trepanning. Such a fantastically detailed world, even if most of it washes over me (sorry, dad joke).

 

[khiddy]

I just finished rereading (via audiobook) Lost In Thought by Zena Hitz, about the life of the mind. She is a dear friend and classmate of my former boss’s, and was in residence at the academic center that I work at while she was writing the book, so it was a delight to revisit.

Tonight I started Kubrick: An Odyssey, the new biography of the auteur.

 

[Phiredog]

I’m in a book club that is reading each of the Aubriad one book per month and meeting to drink rum and chat. We just finished Desolation Island, so we’re officially 1/4 of the way through. Thoroughly enjoyable, love the fact that every other novel so far has included a case of trepanning. Such a fantastically detailed world, even if most of it washes over me (sorry, dad joke).

I had no idea what “trepanning” was until I read these. Maturin’s natural history collections fascinated me as well. I have a much greater appreciation of bugs and such now.

 

[Douglas]

 

[SoupCan]

Just finished A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. It’s half a history of the Vietnam War and half biography of a deeply flawed man. A really engaging read.

 

[BCF]

 

[MartyA]

I recently finished reading Bret Baier's 2021 book, "To Rescue the Republic - Ulysses S. Grant, The Fragile Union, and the Crisis of 1876."
I bought this book simply because I forgot to bring the book I was reading at the time when I had to do some waiting, and picked it up on impulse from a store selling used stuff cheap for a couple bucks. However it's VERY will written, and extremely interesting! Baier tells the story of Grant's life, and his time during the civil war, but concentrates on his presidency and efforts during reconstruction after the war.
I wasn't expecting to be so captivated, but it's a helluva well researched and written book! I'm going to be reading more about Grant in the future...

 

[huntertrw]

During pursual of a favorite local used-book store this weekend I found a copy of Burton L. Spiller's Grouse Feathers in the "Ancient And Honorable Order of Brush Worn Partridge Hunters" Edition (1972), signed by Mr. Spiller himself! I already had a copy (unsigned) of this delightful book which I have read, and re-read, many times. It will be passed on to another grouse-hunting nut like myself, while the signed copy will be a permanent (at least for my lifetime) part of my library.

 

[Python 357]

Bible, starting Ezra

 

[Aylesbury Pike]

Reading some M. R. James stories. I was skeptical of these editions at first but I have to say that they surprised me. Cloth bound, ribbon marker, nice endpapers and the size is very comfortable in the hand.

 

[carlomarx]

 

[JoeW]

Every few (3-5) years I reread Millennium by John Varley. The older I get, the less tolerance I have for Varley, but I still enjoy this one...mostly. I haven't decided whether I prefer this or the original short story ("Air Raid"). The book starts off strong and eventually devolves into nonsense, but fortunately ends before it gets too nonsensical. It's still good enough to reread every so often. The same cannot be said of many of the 70s and 80s SF books I used to enjoy.


(Not my photo, but this is the edition I have)

 

[makhorkasmoker]

 

[shanez]

Just got this today:



Some copy and paste info stolen from the interwebs:

Hoffmann, E[rnst] T[heodor] A[madeus]. SELECTED WRITINGS OF E. T. A. HOFFMANN. Edited and Translated by Leonardf J. Kent and Elizabeth C. Knight. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, [1969]. Octavo, two volumes, cloth. First edition of this collection. Volume one collects seven tales, including "The Sandman," "The Golden Pot," perhaps Hoffmann's finest single piece of fiction, and "The Mines of Falun," a subterranean fantasy of love and death. The whole of volume two consists of Hoffmann's novel THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF KATTER MURR ..., a subtle satire which tells of the doings of Murr, the tomcat. KATER MURR, one of Hoffmann's longer works, was unfinished at the time of his death. The first volume was published in 1820 and the second in 1822. The projected third volume was never written. Hoffmann "rivals Poe (whom he influenced) in his importance as a creator of the modern supernatural tale." - Sullivan (ed), The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, pp. 204-05. "The celebrated short tales and novels of ... Hoffmann ... are a byword for mellowness of background and maturity of form ... they convey the grotesque rather than the terrible." - Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature, p. 45. Clute and Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), p. 472-73. Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature II, pp. 831-835.