What Are You Reading?

[amish rob]

I've just finished reading Le Grand Meaulnes, and a re-read of (or just a first read of a revised version) Fowles The Magus. My literary brother-in-law up the coast has suggested McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, so that's at the top of the stack now. Michael Connelly has a new one out, so I will be adding that to the stack now.

I've a curious Cormac McCarthy story. While in France last year, his The Road was among the books in my apartment's library. The paperback was edge-stamped from the Missoula Public Library. It's currently sitting on the desk behind me. I plan on bringing it back to the apartment this summer, along with the horse story. (My b-i-l up north tells me the succeeding two novels of this tale get very grim. I may find out how grim.)

Cormac McCarthy never wrote anything that ISN’T grim. Ever.

Suttree is tops, in my eyes, but I re-read the Border books often, too.

[Rigadog]

A book on the Maya, pretty dense stuff but some good pictures

Just finished "The All Of It", quite a good little read (fiction).

[Rigadog]

Interesting article on the 'best opening paragraphs'. Before you click the link... take a guess.

https://www.shortlist.com/lists/lite...ing-paragraphs

Really enjoyed that. Would make a good thread

[amish rob]

Quadzilla bought Youngest Son his own copy of The Hobbit. Because he doesn’t want to share his copy.

YS asked permission to interrupt his current series to read The Hobbit. I simply laughed. Bro, it gets worse!

[David G]

Really enjoyed that. Would make a good thread

Go for it!

[Hugh MacD]

Just finished (re)reading "1215 The Year of the Magna Carta". Unless you're a history geek it's pretty dry, but it gives a really good snapshot of the economic, cultural and social environment of the time.

[CWSmith]

Interesting article on the 'best opening paragraphs'. Before you click the link... take a guess.

https://www.shortlist.com/lists/lite...ing-paragraphs

Really enjoyed that. Would make a good thread

Go for it!

I agree! Last paragraphs can be great, too.

[Breakaway]

Interesting article on the 'best opening paragraphs'. Before you click the link... take a guess.

https://www.shortlist.com/lists/lite...ing-paragraphs

My Top Three

Call me Ishmael. MOBY DICK

The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed. THE GUNSLINGER by Stephen King

When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the dark movie theatre I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. THE OUTSIDERS by S.E. Hinton

Now, Ill look at the link.

Kevin

Edit: I got 2 out of 3


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Keith Wilson]

Just finished this; I recommend it.

[Paul Pless]

did you read it in time? or would you have been better off reading it ten? twenty?? thirty??? years ago. . .

Just finished this; I recommend it.

[Keith Wilson]

Nah, it's about statistics and history, not a how-to. But hey, if I read it thirty years ago, it must have worked, right? At least so far.

[David G]

Just finished a new-to-me LeGuin. 'Gifts'.

Not a huge romp, or a dramatic tour-de-force.

Just her subtle, brilliantly told, message about life. Kinda like rafting/kayaking down a beautiful river, with just enough variation in the waters, but no great turbulent rapids to distract from the scenery... or from the tale being told by the geology if one can focus and consider.

[NickW]

Devil-Land: England under siege, 1588 - 1688 by Clare Jackson.

It's a tome, 704 pages, by a Senior Tutor at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. From the publisher's https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/299/...241285817.html
A ground-breaking portrait of the most turbulent century in English history.
Among foreign observers, seventeenth-century England was known as 'Devil-Land': a diabolical country of fallen angels, torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. Clare Jackson's dazzling, original account of English history's most turbulent and radical era tells the story of a nation in a state of near continual crisis.
As an unmarried heretic with no heir, Elizabeth I was regarded with horror by Catholic Europe, while her Stuart successors, James I and Charles I, were seen as impecunious and incompetent, unable to manage their three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. The traumatic civil wars, regicide and a republican Commonwealth were followed by the floundering, foreign-leaning rule of Charles II and his brother, James II, before William of Orange invaded England with a Dutch army and a new order was imposed. Devil-Land reveals England as, in many ways, a 'failed state': endemically unstable and rocked by devastating events from the Gunpowder Plot to the Great Fire of London. Catastrophe nevertheless bred creativity, and Jackson makes brilliant use of eyewitness accounts - many penned by stupefied foreigners - to dramatize her great story. Starting on the eve of the Spanish Armada's descent in 1588 and concluding with a not-so 'Glorious Revolution' a hundred years later, Devil-Land is a spectacular reinterpretation of England's vexed and enthralling past.

Not even half way through yet, but it's a serious work.

Nick

[Ralphie Boy]

My Top Three

Call me Ishmael. MOBY DICK

The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed. THE GUNSLINGER by Stephen King

When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the dark movie theatre I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. THE OUTSIDERS by S.E. Hinton

Now, Ill look at the link.

Kevin

Edit: I got 2 out of 3


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

One of my favorite opening lines:

But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited?…
Are we or they Lords of the World?…
And how are all things made for man?—Kepler (quoted in The Anatomy of Melancholy)

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

[John Meachen]

Devil-Land: England under siege, 1588 - 1688 by Clare Jackson.

It's a tome, 704 pages, by a Senior Tutor at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. From the publisher's https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/299/...241285817.html
A ground-breaking portrait of the most turbulent century in English history.
Among foreign observers, seventeenth-century England was known as 'Devil-Land': a diabolical country of fallen angels, torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. Clare Jackson's dazzling, original account of English history's most turbulent and radical era tells the story of a nation in a state of near continual crisis.
As an unmarried heretic with no heir, Elizabeth I was regarded with horror by Catholic Europe, while her Stuart successors, James I and Charles I, were seen as impecunious and incompetent, unable to manage their three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. The traumatic civil wars, regicide and a republican Commonwealth were followed by the floundering, foreign-leaning rule of Charles II and his brother, James II, before William of Orange invaded England with a Dutch army and a new order was imposed. Devil-Land reveals England as, in many ways, a 'failed state': endemically unstable and rocked by devastating events from the Gunpowder Plot to the Great Fire of London. Catastrophe nevertheless bred creativity, and Jackson makes brilliant use of eyewitness accounts - many penned by stupefied foreigners - to dramatize her great story. Starting on the eve of the Spanish Armada's descent in 1588 and concluding with a not-so 'Glorious Revolution' a hundred years later, Devil-Land is a spectacular reinterpretation of England's vexed and enthralling past.

Not even half way through yet, but it's a serious work.

Nick

That looks like something to go on my list of books that need to be read.I still have a few years of Samuel Pepys' diaries to consume and it will be an interesting counterpoint.

[AndyG]

With a War going on, I recently recalled Tony Conran's poem 'Elegy For The Welsh Dead, In The Falkland Islands, 1982", written about the 40+ Welsh soldiers who were killed in the Falklands Conflict. This remarkable poem was available online, but I suspect copyright reasons had caused it to be removed a few years ago.

So ... I opened a tab to an online independent bookstore and bought a copy, which arrived a day or two ago. And I got an email: "thank you for buying from an online independent bookstore". "No problem!"

The poem is styled on Y Gododdin, by Aneurin, a Welsh poet who wrote (around AD600) about a Welsh defeat at Catterick, launched from (the then-Welsh) city of Edinburgh, capital of Henn Ogledd: "The Old North", a city of Welsh-speaking people, following the end of Roman Rule. The poem starts: "Gwyr a aeth Gatraeth..." "Men went to Catreach..."

Many of the original poem's stanzas relate to a fighter and their demise, and (in passing) to the preceding months of drinking mead and feasting in the halls of Welsh Edinburgh. From the original (and the only mention of Arthur, ever):

He fed the black ravens on the rampart of a fortress,
Though he was no Arthur,
Among the powerful ones in battle,
In the front rank,
Gwawrddur was a palisade.

Conran picks up this style:

Malcolm Wigley of Connah's Quay. Did his helmet
Ride high in the war-line?
Did he drink enough mead for that journey?
The desolated shores of Tegeingl,
Did they pig this steel that destroyed him?
The Dee runs silent beside empty foundries.
The way of the wind and rain is adamant.

...

Men went to Catreath. Of the forty-three
Certainly Tony Jones of Camarthen was brave.
What did it matter, steel in his heart?
Shrapnel is faithful now. His shroud is frost.

With the dawn men went. Those forty-three,
Gentlemen all, from the streets and byways of Wales,
Dragons of Aberdare, Denbigh and Neath -
Figment of empire, whore's honour, held them.
Forty-three at Catreath died for our dregs.

Stunning.

And "Figment of Empire", eh, Putin?

Andy

[David G]

'Gentlemen & Players' -- Joanne Harris

I also read her 'Five Quarters of an Orange' recently. Both very good.

[David G]

Death at LaFenice by Donna Leon.

A murder mystery set in modern-day Venice. Very nice job of plotting. Understated humor and wisdom. Most enjoyable.

[Gerarddm]

Cixin Liu's Chinese sci-fi trilogy that starts with The Three Body Problem. Barack Obama called it " wildly inventive! ".

[David G]

Finished 'The Burden of Proof' by Turow. Almost put it down several times, as I grew weary of the litany of self-imposed, first-world, privileged problems he employed as plot devices. But the writing kept me going.

Tried 'The Professor' by Robert Bailey. A debut effort at a legal thriller from an Alabama lawyer. Perhaps it got better, but I didn't make it past the cliched, ham-fisted, first few chapters.

Also finished 'The Last Agent' by Dugoni. Very good!!

[johnw]

Re-reading Mort, by Terry Pratchett. Excellent!

[JayInOz]

The book I wanted to read was "The Blacksmiths Cookbook" by Whitaker. It has formulae and measurements for iron that would be really handy at the forge. The only stores which have it listed are in America. Almost all say they have none in stock. Some want stupid prices- like three to four hundred dollars. I found this one for forty US dollars- United States Postal Service Priority Mail Express International Padded Flat Rate Envelope $73.95

Subtotal	$40.00
Shipping (United States Postal Service - Priority Mail Express International Padded Flat Rate Envelope)	$73.95
Order Total	$113.95

That's $159.80 Australian for a six by nine inch book- 150 pages. $104.58 Australian for postage. Greedy stupid bastards. If my favourite American book store had it in stock postage would be free. JayInOz

[Canoeyawl]

Facing the Mountain
Daniel James Brown

[David G]

The book I wanted to read was "The Blacksmiths Cookbook" by Whitaker. It has formulae and measurements for iron that would be really handy at the forge. The only stores which have it listed are in America. Almost all say they have none in stock. Some want stupid prices- like three to four hundred dollars. I found this one for forty US dollars- United States Postal Service Priority Mail Express International Padded Flat Rate Envelope $73.95

Subtotal	$40.00
Shipping (United States Postal Service - Priority Mail Express International Padded Flat Rate Envelope)	$73.95
Order Total	$113.95

That's $159.80 Australian for a six by nine inch book- 150 pages. $104.58 Australian for postage. Greedy stupid bastards. If my favourite American book store had it in stock postage would be free. JayInOz

What book store do you particularly like?

[Tom from Rubicon]

Boom Town, the rise and fall of Lake Wobegon Millenialfication. Keillor

Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya What better way to learn to loath Post Communist Russia.

Tom

[CWSmith]

My father just read Critical Mass by Carter Plympton Hydrick. Dad is very excited about it. The author claims that the familiar story about America's development of the atomic bomb isn't true. I think it has to be BS, but I can't find any critical analysis on line that will tell me one way or the other. Has anyone else heard of this?

[JayInOz]

What book store do you particularly like?

I've bought a lot of books from betterworldbooks They have access to several million from various parts of the world. Postage is always free, but surface mail so it can take a looong time. Part of the proceeds from every book sold go towards world literacy programs. They have books listed in order of condition and price, from hard cover and limited edition down to tatty old ex library books- I've bought some excellent old books for a couple of dollars. The only book I ever bought from them that failed to arrive was a book of Native American canoes. Sharpiefan on here had a copy he said he would send me but then he fell off the face of the earth and disappeared. JayInOz

[David G]

I've bought a lot of books from betterworldbooks They have access to several million from various parts of the world. Postage is always free, but surface mail so it can take a looong time. Part of the proceeds from every book sold go towards world literacy programs. They have books listed in order of condition and price, from hard cover and limited edition down to tatty old ex library books- I've bought some excellent old books for a couple of dollars. The only book I ever bought from them that failed to arrive was a book of Native American canoes. Sharpiefan on here had a copy he said he would send me but then he fell off the face of the earth and disappeared. JayInOz

Thanks! I normally use Powell's or AbeBooks. But every so often I'm looking for something both of those stores are out of.

[Nicholas Carey]

Thanks! I normally use Powell's or AbeBooks. But every so often I'm looking for something both of those stores are out of.

FWIW, AbeBooks.com is owned by Amazon. I believe Alibris is as well.

[ron ll]

Re-reading Mort, by Terry Pratchett. Excellent!

You’ve inspired me to go back to Disc World. I read a couple of them many years back but they didn’t light me up then for some reason. Went back to the start yesterday with “The Color of Magic”. Seems to make more sense now. Not sure what that says about who I’ve become.

[amish rob]

Is Mort the one where the kid gets a new job?

[David G]

Is Mort the one where the kid gets a new job?

Yes. A grim one, but it has its perks.

I've just recently finish two - both of which I'd highly recommend.

First - I reread 'Moontrap', one of Don Berry's marvelous trilogy. Not sure if I'd call it the 'best' Oregon novel or if that would be Kesey's 'Sometimes a Great Notion'... but it's excellent. Set mostly on the Willamette river, just a few miles from my present residence, it a tale of transitions and identity... of the larger sort and smaller, more personal, sort. Solid history, and an insightful exploration of the role and psychology of the 'mountain man' in such times. The grand finale is set a stone's throw from where I grew up, atop Saddle Mountain. His description captures both the physical character and spirit of the place, and is transcendent.

Second - A noir of rural Virginia set in modern times. S.A. Cosby's 'Razorblade Tears'. Nicely written, fast paced, a tale of regret and perseverance, and hope. A paean to humanity and a condemnation of hatred, fear, and bigotry. Second one of his I've read this year. Very good. Might have to circle back and see if I can find his first two.

[Rigadog]

Reuel Parker's boatbuilding book. I am getting back to my Seabright 33 and refreshing my memory about how to build all the stuff that goes inside it. Jesus, I still have a long way to go...

https://parker-marine.com/product/th...-boatbuilding/

[David G]

Finished 'Every Cloak Rolled In Blood' by James Lee Burke last night. He claims it's his best novel. Maybe, but it's certainly another HomeRun. Brilliant writing, with a lot to say.

[Rigadog]

Margret Atwood -"Running Questions" a collection of essays