What are You Reading Now?

[Pooh-Bah]

I really should sit down and reread The Lord of the Rings, or maybe go through my Sherlock Holmes or Poe collections.
But I am lazy, and have the Internet on my phone, so instead I'm slowly working my way through a bunch of old manga.

Kodomo no Omocha was very solid. Basically a coming of age story about a child star trying to balance her career, unusual home life, and awkward young love - and how each one of those gives her inspiration to deal with the problems she encounters with the others.

 

[aspiring_sage]

This was outstanding, if you like spy yarns, one of the best books I've read recently

Thanks for the tip!

 

[brooklynpiper]

It's been a little since I posted here, but I wanted to share something notable. Here, a little less well known than the My Struggle series, with the Bible, angel stories, false histories, Knausgaard's novel has it all.

 

[huntertrw]

Ray Bradbury's I Sing the Body Electric!

 

[crusader]

Was watching Joe Rogan and his guest was commenting on how different eastern Europe and Russia are from the west in thought, history and how things are done.
A very interesting book. And as a history buff type, I recognized that I new very little about this region.

 

[Jwebb90]

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Was watching Joe Rogan and his guest was commenting on how different eastern Europe and Russia are from the west in thought, history and how things are done.
A very interesting book. And as a history buff type, I recognized that I new very little about this region.

As an American living in Bulgaria I’m very interested in this book. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

 

[warren99]

Walker Percy, The Moviegoer.

 

[warren99]

John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces.

 

[huntertrw]

Just completed reading the title story in Ray Bradbury's book titled I Sing the Body Electric! and it had me in tears. Certain of his other stories produce a similar effect in me, e.g., The Sound of Summer Running from his book Dandelion Wine.

 

[brooklynpiper]

John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces.

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Really liked this one

 

[brooklynpiper]

 

[Briar Lee]

My grandmother, otherwise a genius, and a locally famous writer, was obsessed with Pearl Harbor, which she placed 100% of the blame on that damned old whoremaster, syphilis riddled, low down, lying, drunken no good Franklin Delano Rooselvelt.

(My mother said she hated FDR because her first fiancé was killed in October 1918 and her only son volunteered (although she’d won him draft exemptions being a famous writer) and she was convinced he’d be shot in the last days of the war. As it was Uncle Jiggs managed to avoid combat entirely and died an old man. But she didn’t know that in 1944.)

I must have two dozen Pearl Harbor books my grandmother owned, but not this one.



I know why she didn’t leave it for me to find. This is the most balanced, well written, truly great book about why the USA was caught napping at Pearl Harbor ever written.

You need to have a basic prior understanding of the controversy before you read it. This book isn’t a primer. It’s a masterpiece of how large and powerful nations get blindsided by smaller, craftier opponents.

My grandmother lived until I was 22 years old. By then I knew to only listen to the conspiracy stories, never argue.

But even in 1980 I knew that if Kimmel and Short, or any one higher up had KNOWN Yamamoto had sent the task force they’d have tried to bushwhack it.

Having all eight of the Pacific Fleet battleships (then thought the primary sea power weapon) either sank or badly damaged the first hour of the war, is not anything any American intended or wanted.

They thought those battleships were a deterrent.

Yamamoto saw them as a target.

 

[jaingorenard]

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What's this like? I'm intrigued after reading about it on Wikipedia.

 

[TheBarstoolsBuiltForBen]

I’m in the middle of finally reading the Hobbit, but I set it aside and bought three classics for my boys (10 & 12) and I to read. Jekyll and Hyde, Dracula and Frankenstein. Buying my Halloween pipe inspired inspired me and I couldn’t remember if I had actually read the story or not. I thought i could get them interested with Halloween approaching as well. Anything to get them reading, right? I knocked out J&H and I’m on Dracula. Kinda fun for the spooky season.

 

[brooklynpiper]

What's this like? I'm intrigued after reading about it on Wikipedia.

I read Ferdydurke because I’m a big Milan Kundera fan and he writes about Ferdydurke’s influence on him in his essays.

I enjoyed the essayistic / rant parts of the narrative though other parts were difficult to get through. The premise of a celebration of immaturity promises a lot of fun but rarely does the execution, particularly the scene / character action, ever make good on that promise. The strength of the novel I felt was in the narrator’s rants on psychology, being and the ‘pupa’ and I also enjoyed the two preluded short story insertions. It has both feet deep in modernism and both point to more experimental postmodern works.

I wanted to like it more and for the most part was working my way through the book surviving on a few amazing passages of narrative voice and was ever aware that of what I was reading somebody, maybe just Witold, thought it was funnier than I did.

If you want a rec, just read Kundera.

 

[Kobold]

 

[jaingorenard]

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I'd recommend Michael Palin's Erebus, as well as Ranulph Fiennes recent biography of Shackleton if you liked this one! There's also the Worst Journey in the World by Cherry-Garrard, that's a really interesting one.

 

[Kobold]

I'd recommend Michael Palin's Erebus, as well as Ranulph Fiennes recent biography of Shackleton if you liked this one! There's also the Worst Journey in the World by Cherry-Garrard, that's a really interesting one.

Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll have to check those out too.

 

[Briar Lee]

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Oh good Lord that’s a good book.

This is why Winston Churchill is the greatest man to ever speak modern English:

source
“Fancy that ridiculous Shackleton & his South Pole — in the crash of the world.

“When all the sick & wounded have been tended, when all their impoverished & broken hearted homes have been restored, when every hospital is gorged with money, & every charitable subscription is closed, then & not till then would I concern myself with those penguins. I suppose however something will have to be done.”

— letter from Winston Churchill to his wife, writing from a Flanders trench, 1916

And in the event England dispatched a battle cruiser from the Grand Fleet to bring her brave sons home.

 

[Flatfish]

Just started on this book from the library.