What book(s) are you reading?

[ZephyrFate]

yay folklore at UO! ...

it's a small program.

[Polari]

Just read Blue Nights. Shrivelled up old Joan Didion left only with her grief can still write.

[Joe Molotov]

(Image removed from quote.)

I stumbled across this book while reading about the sovereign citizen movement.  I have an uncle who likes to send extreme right stuff through e-mail and I've heard about the fringe movements like these so this book is interesting to me.  Nobody else will probably give a shit.

I looked up this book on Amazon and I found another book by the same title:

[Bacchus7]

Der Zauberberg and The Counte of Monte Cristo

[Madrun Badrun]

Been on a history binge.  Reading two books on early Rome (up to the Punic wars) and the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

[Eric P]

Wrapped up the book on Robert "Believe It or Not" Ripley

eh book.  Crazy life told in a boring manner.

Back to reading about the history of advertisers using music to sell products.

[hampster]

I read the Hero and the Crown several times when I was a kid and loved it. I considered it one of my favorite books even until today despite not reading it in at least 15 years. Anyway I gave the audio book a shot and was surprised how much I forgot... and I forgot most of the bad stuff I was a little depressed after finishing because I lost some of magic I had for it. You expect this shit for Saturday morning cartoons but not books :'( Anyway I still think the first 2/3rds are great but it goes down hill from there

Also there is some serious time travel bullshit in the book. I spent way too much time trying to figure out how that stuff made sense

[Eric P]

finished up The Serialist in two days.  It's a book about a porn writer who is hired to write the life story of a serial killer who gets wrapped up in a murder mystery.  it's a comedy that's really about the nature of story telling and reading.  Quite good.  Highly recommended.

started to read Red Moon which sounded like an interesting literary thriller (ugh, right?) about werewolves.  This fucking book, I swear to god. I gave up on the train this morning after 25 pages.  The werewolves are from the Lycan Republic which sits on huge uranium stores and the US govt has occupied it.  There are Lycan fundamentalists who turn to terrorism in an attempt to force America out of their country.

Yes, it's a book that LITERALLY turns Muslims into bloodthirsty monsters in the most ham-handed way.  I couldn't believe this was published by a major publishing house in 2013.  fucking horrible.

[Eric P]

http://www.humblebundle.com/

ebook bundle 2

Cory Doctorow Little Brother
Cherie Priest Boneshaker
 Robert Charles Wilson Spin
Lois McMaster Bujold Shards of Honor

it's worth paying whatever the minimum is for Spin.  If you pay more than $10 (good lord why?) you get a Wil Wheaton book and The Last Unicorn

[Howard Alan Treesong]

http://www.humblebundle.com/

ebook bundle 2

Cory Doctorow Little Brother
Cherie Priest Boneshaker
 Robert Charles Wilson Spin
Lois McMaster Bujold Shards of Honor

it's worth paying whatever the minimum is for Spin.  If you pay more than $10 (good lord why?) you get a Wil Wheaton book and The Last Unicorn

I quite enjoyed Little Brother, and I normally can't stand Cory Doctorow's schtick. BTW, don't bother following up on the Spin sequels.

Eric, did you read The Chronoliths? That's my fave Robert Charles Wilson book. I read a lot of his stuff after Spin came out ... most of it's quite skippable. Darwinia may be the biggest "starts out a 5, ends up a 1" of all time however.

I just finished two books from the library (!). A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny and Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson.



A Night in the Lonesome October is a cute and slight book. It's basically League of Extraordinary Gentlemen style fanfic (though with all the names removed, even those in the public domain). So you have The Good Doctor (Frankenstein), The Mad Monk (Rasputin), etc. They all gather once every 50 years or so as participants in "The Game" to aid or stop the Lovecraftian Old Ones from passing through into our universe. Allegiances are not known until The Game is almost over. Oh, and each of them has an animal familiar, and the story is told entirely from their perspective, with the (actually important) human characters almost incidental. The main character is Snuff, faithful hound of Jack the Ripper. It's also illustrated? I dunno, if it sounds like something you'd enjoy, you probably would. As with all Zelazny, it feels like something Gaiman would write with more humor and less pretension.



Alif the Unseen was okay. It's better than Air (which COMPLETELY fizzled out), but it still has the great premise that never quite gets delivered on. G. Willow Wilson enjoys writing about characters relationships and interior lives, which is fine but I just wish the characters were more interesting! Gaiman has the cover blurb, which is fitting - like his work, the book feels like a pastiche of modern day and classical elements, filtered through Wikipedia and dropped in at a superficial level. It's Arabic fantasy, though, and overtly brings in the Arab Spring in the last third, so at least it's unique.

 Minor character spoiler:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I couldn't help but see the character of "the convert" as a stand in for the author, who is herself an American who semi-famously converted to Islam. That might be unfair, but I just couldn't separate the two.

[close]

Now that I'm all caught up on my library books, I can finally start The Shining Girls. CAN'T WAIT.

[Eric P]

Eric, did you read The Chronoliths

nope.  tried that leftist post-america novel though and hated it.  it was like reading daily kos bloggers predict the future under g w bush

Minor character spoiler:

loathed that character.  take yourself out of the novel. 

The Shining Girls

i still think of it fondly which is a rarity for me

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

(Image removed from quote.)

I stumbled across this book while reading about the sovereign citizen movement.  I have an uncle who likes to send extreme right stuff through e-mail and I've heard about the fringe movements like these so this book is interesting to me.  Nobody else will probably give a shit.

I finished this book.

The book is pretty interesting.  Basically sovereign citizens started off as people who hate blacks and jews (huge shock there).  Back in the day (1950s), they could just join the John Birch Society.  Then the JBS started softening their views on hating blacks and jews in light of the Civil Rights era, which caused some splinter groups to form because JBS didn't hate blacks and jews enough.  Then they formed the Posse Comitatus, which mostly existed in the Pacific Northwest.  Then after some high profile incidents, the Posse reforms and relocates to the midwest during the 1980s farm crisis.  Then after some high profile incidents, the Posse reforms as the militia movement of the 1990s.  The sad thing is here is that the GOP starts moving so far to the right that many GOP politicians openly associate with militia groups and pass legislation based on militia tenets.  Then the militia movement goes tits up due to the Oklahoma City bombing.

The 1980s seemed like a crazy time for politics.  For instance, I had no idea Jesse Jackson and farm organizations were so tight during this time period.  Good read if you're into reading up on fringe movements, which since the 90s began to increasingly mesh with mainstream Republican policies.  The fact that the GOP last year started flirting with the gold standard is proof that this is still going on now.  Granted, what I said was an oversimplification but there's a lot to this book worth reading.

[Howard Alan Treesong]

I finished The Shining Girls last night. Really blew right threw it, quite tense and exciting.

Went to look at Amazon and was surprised to find it has a lot of 2- and 3-star reviews. It looks like it may have actually gotten some extra-genre crossover as a "summer thriller" for folks who like serial killers, and ended up reaching an audience a bit out of their element.

Several reviewers specifically complained about (minor spoiler):

spoiler (click to show/hide)

How well-characterized each of the "shining girls" felt, only to have each horribly and brutally murdered. Uh, THAT'S THE POINT.

[close]

Anyhow. I don't really care, but I'm shocked someone could dislike this book considering how much I loved it.

[Eric P]

it's being pushed HARD as "this year's Gone Girl" or The One Book For People To Read This Year Who Only Read One Book a Year

I'm currently reading London Falling which is london cops vs monsters

it's pretty awesome and written by the guy who wrote the Saucer County book for vertigo along w/ Demon Knights for the new 52

good fun stuff that tickles the Call of Cthulhu, Police Procedural and Urban Fantasy pleasure receptors all at once

[Howard Alan Treesong]

it's being pushed HARD as "this year's Gone Girl" or The One Book For People To Read This Year Who Only Read One Book a Year

yeah, that was the impression I got from some of the reviews (a few of which mentioned Gone Girl specifically). pretty weird for her to go straight from Zoo City to Sudden Mainstream Supersuccess, but it couldn't have happened to a nicer author?

[Eric P]

Yeah I'm cool with it.

I'd say that's the success of Muholland Books's marketing arm

I know I read almost everything they put out, so it must be working to a degree

(don't always like it, but I'm usually interested enough to give it a chance)

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

I've been reading a shitload lately:



I covered this in the hip hop thread.  This is a pretty good book about Nas done in the usual Byron Crawford way.  I think it is his best so far because it is so focused.  His previous book, Infinite Crab Meats, resembled a paid for version of a bunch of blog posts.



This is about a Russian soldier fighting in Chechnya.  The Russian military is a bitch to be in and so was fighting the Chechens.



This book is about Comrade Duch (pronounced "Doik"), a guy who ran a torture prison (which was once in a school) for the Khmer Rouge.  It was guaranteed death as only a couple people survived that prison.  The story is about the rise of this guy through the Khmer Rouge ranks.  The author was a guy obsessed about finding out who this guy is since there seems to be very little information about who the Khmer Rouge is outside of Pol Pot.  Turns out the guy is working for a Christian charity after changing his name and going underground to obscure who he was.  The guy interviews his family, other Khmer Rouge people, and of course the man himself to put together a story about one of the notorious butchers in one of the most extreme meat grinder states in the 20th century.



It's been forever since I read this book.  Decided to read it just because.

[Eric P]

i have been reading mostly comic books and manga at the expense of prose books but I've been devouring the above

War in Europe never ending and it fucking suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked even if you were a wealthy noble.

We think of the Renaissance as a shining era of human achievementa pinnacle of artistic genius and humanist brilliance, the time of Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and Montaigne. Yet it was also an age of constant, harrowing warfare. Armies, not philosophers, shaped the face of Europe as modern nation-states emerged from feudal society. In Furies, one of the leading scholars of Renaissance history captures the dark reality of the period in a gripping narrative mosaic.

As Lauro Martines shows us, total war was no twentieth-century innovation. These conflicts spared no civilians in their path. A Renaissance army was a mobile city-indeed, a force of 20,000 or 40,000 men was larger than many cities of the day. And it was a monster, devouring food and supplies for miles around. It menaced towns and the countryside-and itself-with famine and disease, often more lethal than combat. Fighting itself was savage, its violence increased by the use of newly invented weapons, from muskets to mortars.

For centuries, notes Martines, the history of this period has favored diplomacy, high politics, and military tactics. Furies puts us on the front lines of battle, and on the streets of cities under siege, to reveal what Europes wars meant to the men and women who endured them.

[Polari]

Hey so is that a compelling read? I love a bit of history but I'm not really into a slog at the moment.

[Eric P]

I'm enjoying it.  It's broken up quite a bit so he will cover themes and will tell you about stuff at various points in time that reinforce the theme rather than this happened then this happened then this happened then this, etc.

I don't consider it a slog at all.  It's not quite pop history but it's not a dry academic text

[Polari]

Cool, on the list for things to read during my rapidly approaching post-dissertation holidays.

[lordmaji]

Propaganda by Edward Bernays.

Very informative and insightful. Interesting read for sure & it's not horribly dry like I thought it would be.

[Eric P]

all i've been reading have been comix

the new Joe R Lansdale book came in and it's...ok.  It's a Lansdale book and it's absolutely in his voice, but it is basically Hap and Leonard in the old west with slightly meaner characters.

[Robo]

I'm reading this series called Wool.  It's a sci-fi series about a race of super-intelligent sheep who discover their natural fibers can be used as an energy source for time travel.  I like it!

[Howard Alan Treesong]

I'm reading this series called Wool.  It's a sci-fi series about a race of super-intelligent sheep who discover their natural fibers can be used as an energy source for time travel.  I like it!

better than the actual plot of Wool

[Phoenix Dark]

I'm enjoying it.  It's broken up quite a bit so he will cover themes and will tell you about stuff at various points in time that reinforce the theme rather than this happened then this happened then this happened then this, etc.

I don't consider it a slog at all.  It's not quite pop history but it's not a dry academic text

It's on my book list, looks interesting. "Wounded" in battle meant something entirely different during that era.

[Eric P]

looks like i never commented when i finished it but man, people during the enlightenment were fucking absolutely brutal

grimdark history :metal

[Eric P]

my girlfriend's bookgroup is contemplating reading Ender's Game.

[Crash Dummy]

should have the new pynchon waiting for me at home by the time i get home from work, honestly no idea what to expect since it's been so long since i last read anything by him

[Phoenix Dark]

my girlfriend's bookgroup is contemplating reading Ender's Game.

I thought it was good, but I read it when I was a teen. Dunno how it holds up.

[Eric P]

currently reading Hollywood and Hitler 1933 - 1939

say, can you guess who was a lot more willing to work with Nazis than they like to let on?

if you said American Jews in Hollywood, you're right!

[Howard Alan Treesong]

I got the new Pynchon on my Kindle and ready for my upcoming flight. YEAH BOYEEEE

[Steve Contra]

currently reading Hollywood and Hitler 1933 - 1939

say, can you guess who was a lot more willing to work with Nazis than they like to let on?

if you said American Jews in Hollywood, you're right!

MAAAAAAAANNNNNDDDDDDDDDAAAAAAAAARK GET IN HERE AND EXPLAIN YOURSELF

[Tucah]

I got the new Pynchon on my Kindle and ready for my upcoming flight. YEAH BOYEEEE

I got my copy from Amazon today, preordered it a while ago but didn't realize it came out on GTAV day. I'm excited to start it up but I probably won't get a chance for a couple days because all my free time is going towards GTA atm.

[Crash Dummy]

i started the bleeding edge while waiting for gta v to install, the way the clauses are strung together in the first paragraph reminds me a lot of crying of lot 49

[Joe Molotov]

I forgot Pynchon had a new book out, probably have to get up in this.

[tiesto]

Reading "Breakout Nations" by Ruchir Sharma. It's extremely interesting for a book on economics, it's right up my territory with some of his namedropping: Malthus, Morphogenetic Resonance (which you may remember from 999), Girls Generation... it's got a slight anti-Keynseian bent, but he makes a compelling argument against it (due to easy access to money mixed with a commodities futures boom).

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

(Image removed from quote.)
i have been reading mostly comic books and manga at the expense of prose books but I've been devouring the above

War in Europe never ending and it fucking suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked even if you were a wealthy noble.

We think of the Renaissance as a shining era of human achievementa pinnacle of artistic genius and humanist brilliance, the time of Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and Montaigne. Yet it was also an age of constant, harrowing warfare. Armies, not philosophers, shaped the face of Europe as modern nation-states emerged from feudal society. In Furies, one of the leading scholars of Renaissance history captures the dark reality of the period in a gripping narrative mosaic.

As Lauro Martines shows us, total war was no twentieth-century innovation. These conflicts spared no civilians in their path. A Renaissance army was a mobile city-indeed, a force of 20,000 or 40,000 men was larger than many cities of the day. And it was a monster, devouring food and supplies for miles around. It menaced towns and the countryside-and itself-with famine and disease, often more lethal than combat. Fighting itself was savage, its violence increased by the use of newly invented weapons, from muskets to mortars.

For centuries, notes Martines, the history of this period has favored diplomacy, high politics, and military tactics. Furies puts us on the front lines of battle, and on the streets of cities under siege, to reveal what Europes wars meant to the men and women who endured them.

I just finished this book.  The camp followers thing was something I had not heard about before but it makes sense, considering how most armies were the size of large cities then.  I'm surprised suicide wasn't more common then; maybe it just wasn't reported.

[Joe Molotov]

I've almost finished "This Book is Full of Spiders (the sequel to "John Dies at the End", which I haven't read) and it's pretty good. It does a good job of juggling the funny bits with the tense action bits. The basic premise is these two dudebros live in this town that's sort of a nexus for all sorts of weirdness, and because of a drug they took in the previous book, they're more sensitive to it than most people, and end up generally being right in the middle of all the shit that goes down. The shit being alien spider-things eating people's faces off and taking over their bodies, government black ops, doomsday preppers, and mad scientists.

[chronovore]

I loved the first book; it was a free download for a long time, and if you dig around hard enough now, it still is.

The movie was a lot of fun, but uneven. The audiobook is a better way to experience it if you're not feeling like straining your peepers on text.

[fistfulofmetal]

Oh joy my new Kindle will be here next week so I need a fresh new book to read on it.

[Eric P]

more than half way through Hollywood and Hitler and it's just a fascinating book.

I wasn't aware of just how little i knew about films at this time.  In NYC there were film houses devoted to only showing news reels where political junkies would gather and yell at the screens.  just like today there were ones that catered to liberal sensibilities (mostly immigrants) and to conservatives.  yelling the wrong thing at the wrong theater was a good way to get yourself beat up.

the chapter on Mussolini's son trying to break into the film biz and the birth of the Cinecitta studios was also fascinating.

luckily MoMA agrees and they will be showing a few of the early early anti-nazi films mentioned in the book this fall.

 

[hampster]

Robin McKinley's new book, Shadows, is out this week

Oh god my reading habits are that of a preteen girl Fuck the bookshelf outside my room as a kid full of my sister's books :'(

[Dickie Dee]

Just started this. The Years of Rice and Salt is an alternate history novel written by science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson and published in 2002. The novel explores how subsequent world history may have been different if the Black Death plague had killed 99% of Europe's population, instead of a third. Divided into ten parts, the story spans hundreds of years, from the army of the Muslim conqueror Timur to the 21st century, with Europe being re-populated by Muslim pioneers, the indigenous peoples of the Americas forming a league to resist Chinese and Muslim invaders, and a 67 year long world war being fought primarily between Muslim states and the Chinese and their allies. While the ten parts take place in different times and places, they are connected by a group of characters that are reincarnated into each time but are identified to the reader by the first letter of their name being consistent in each life.

The novel explores themes of history, religion, and social movements. The historical narrative is guided more by social history than political or military history. Critics found the book to be rich in detail, realistic, and thoughtful. Robinson had previously published several other science fiction novels and short stories which had won him several Nebula, Hugo and Locus Awards. The Years of Rice and Salt won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2003. In the same year it was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, a Hugo Award, and a British Science Fiction Award.

Just started it. Alternate history has always intrigued me but I usually avoid it since it always seems to have a whiff of "fan fiction" about it. This one sounded promising though. Plus, no CACs

[fistfulofmetal]

I've always wanted to read House of Leaves but I heard that it's not a book to read in digital format. Can someone confirm/deny?

[Eric P]

i would absolutely never try to read it in ebook format unless it was some gorgeous tablet app redesigned by the author

[Joe Molotov]

Started reading:



Non-fiction book about the history of conspiracy theories in American society/politics. Should be good.

[Eric P]

i have that on order from my library

[Joe Molotov]

It starts out awesome right from the first page. It about how Andrew Jackson's attempted assassination was blamed (by Jackson) on Congressman John Calhoun, and then anti-Jacksonians claimed that Jackson staged the assassination attempt to make himself look awesome, and then some other dude comes along and claims that Calhoun was just a member of a secret organization called Slave Power and that they had already assassinated William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor (with poison) for not being cool with having lots of slaves.

[CajoleJuice]

This sounds sweet.

[chronovore]

(Image removed from quote.)

Just started this. The Years of Rice and Salt is an alternate history novel written by science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson and published in 2002. The novel explores how subsequent world history may have been different if the Black Death plague had killed 99% of Europe's population, instead of a third. Divided into ten parts, the story spans hundreds of years, from the army of the Muslim conqueror Timur to the 21st century, with Europe being re-populated by Muslim pioneers, the indigenous peoples of the Americas forming a league to resist Chinese and Muslim invaders, and a 67 year long world war being fought primarily between Muslim states and the Chinese and their allies. While the ten parts take place in different times and places, they are connected by a group of characters that are reincarnated into each time but are identified to the reader by the first letter of their name being consistent in each life.

The novel explores themes of history, religion, and social movements. The historical narrative is guided more by social history than political or military history. Critics found the book to be rich in detail, realistic, and thoughtful. Robinson had previously published several other science fiction novels and short stories which had won him several Nebula, Hugo and Locus Awards. The Years of Rice and Salt won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2003. In the same year it was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, a Hugo Award, and a British Science Fiction Award.

Just started it. Alternate history has always intrigued me but I usually avoid it since it always seems to have a whiff of "fan fiction" about it. This one sounded promising though. Plus, no CACs

 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAC

I'm a fan of Robinson's stuff; the Mars series is really good. I've had that Years of Rice and Salt book since it came out in paperback, but haven't yet got 'round to it.

[Joe Molotov]

cracker-ass cracker (aka whiteys, honkeys, snow niccas)

[chronovore]

cracker-ass cracker (aka whiteys, honkeys, snow niccas)

I laughed until I couldn't stop coughing. THANKS, ADAMA.

[Eric P]

I have stopped reading Hollywood and Hitler because I am reading The Complete Judge Dredd Casefiles Vol 1 and it's absolutely insane.
No one told me it would be like this.

Violent, wry, ironic satire.  It's like if the silver age of comics never ended.

[Eel O'Brian]

cracker-ass cracker (aka whiteys, honkeys, snow niccas)

I laughed until I couldn't stop coughing. THANKS, ADAMA.

[Eric P]

I'm currently reading Chase Novak's Breed which is a hilarious book about a couple of rich upper west side New Yorkers and their attempts to have children and the complications their lives face once they have them.

It's billed as a horror novel, but I guess you have to have / want / like children for that to apply because to me it's a laugh a minute.

I think it's a semi-covert werewolf novel (not really a spoiler) but I'm not yet at the half-way point so I can't comment definitively just yet.

[Joe Molotov]

Bout halfway through the United States of Paranoia, it's been pretty good so far. I'm putting it on hold though for some Halloween reading:



The first one was a pretty solid anthology, and this one looks good too judging by the table of contents. A lot of familar names (Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon, Laird Barron, Fritz Leiber, W. H. Pugmire, Kim Newman), some stuff that I've seen collected before, but mostly not. Well worth the fiver I paid for it at HPB.

[Joe Molotov]

BTW, I buy all my Mythos anthologies in print because ebooks aren't eldritch enough.

[Eel O'Brian]

W.M. Pugmire sounds like a guy who has traveled in time from the 1910s to stomp you a new asshole

[Eric P]

google him

you may be surprised!