Books What Are You Reading or Listening To?

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

@thewhyteboar - Don Winslow just released a collection of novellas called "Broken"

 

 

[thewhyteboar]

2 minutes ago, Emperor Diocletian II said:

@thewhyteboar - Don Winslow just released a collection of novellas called "Broken"

 

 

Interesting. I'll have to check that out.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

So I was in a mood and wanted chick lit. Read Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult. Glad I got that out of my system for now.  

 

Really getting into The Templars by Dan Jones now and I’ve also started John Grisham’s new one, Camino Winds. 

[Chris-]

I’m reading ‘Point B’ by Drew Magary, which is very enjoyable so far. Some of the characters are a bit much, but anyone who is familiar with Drew’s work will be able to see they are different aspects of his personality through the looking glass, so in a sense it works. I also think, given his Drewness, that he has written the narrator (a 17 year old queer girl) with surprising tenderness. It’s kind of funny to think of ex-Deadspinners reading this, but anyone who has liked his past stuff will like this. 

[thewhyteboar]

8 hours ago, Chris- said:

I’m reading ‘Point B’ by Drew Magary, which is very enjoyable so far. Some of the characters are a bit much, but anyone who is familiar with Drew’s work will be able to see they are different aspects of his personality through the looking glass, so in a sense it works. I also think, given his Drewness, that he has written the narrator (a 17 year old queer girl) with surprising tenderness. It’s kind of funny to think of ex-Deadspinners reading this, but anyone who has liked his past stuff will like this. 

I've been meaning to check this out. I read his other books and enjoyed them.

[Chris-]

14 hours ago, thewhyteboar said:

I've been meaning to check this out. I read his other books and enjoyed them.

One of the things that is similar to The Postmortal is that he does a really good job of taking the technology in question to its logical conclusion, and highlighting all of the unintended consequences. Even stuff like ‘Hey, if a person suddenly teleported it would create a vacuum where their body was’, which is a detail I might not have otherwise thought of.  

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Still working my way through The Templars, but I’m over halfway there. Also reading The Carrow Haunt by Darcy Coates. I really have enjoyed her ghost story novels for the most part. 

[Dre801]

Working through a series of short stories featuring an avenger called Nameless that Dean Koontz did exclusively for Amazon.  

[gamer.tv]

I drifted through a few books (the danger of having a lot to access with Kindle) but have settled on Masters of War, which is pretty much like every other historical fiction that I've read, but I'm still enjoying it. 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Finished both books I mentioned earlier. 
 

current reads: 

 

Fiction - Natchez Burning by Greg Iles 

nonfiction - All But My Life by Gerda Weissmann Klein 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Phew, blew through Natchez Burning quickly. I would have done it faster, if not for working three straight. It's almost 800 pages and the other two in the trilogy are just as long. Debating on if I wanna go right into the next one, because I'm dying to know how goes. Or maybe I'll read something a bit lighter before that.

 

I think for tonight, I'm just going to continue to read All But My Life, since it's gotten a bit neglected this week.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

I decided to read Lock Every Door by Riley Sager. It should be a quick easy read before I move on to the heavier stuff and I wanted to read this one before my June BOTM pops up. If I like Sager, I may get one of his other books on BOTM.

[gamer.tv]

I finished Masters of War and in it's genre (historical fiction) it was good, though no Iggulden, Mantel etc good. I will pick up the next book(s) if I see them somewhere cheap, but I won't rush. I wanted to get back into the Uthred books again, so I'm going to re-read (I assume, I literally can't remember if I have, or haven't) the Empty Throne and start working my way through the series. 

 

I also grabbed a random book from my shelf called The Long Take, which in it's own description is a noir narrative written with the intensive and power of poetry. I've read the first 15 pages and it's been good so far, but will be 250 odd pages of poetry about a WW2 veteran with PTSD. Nothing like reading out of your comfort zone. 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

I picked up a couple more Bernard Cornwell books. The man can write historical fiction. 

[rc0101]

On 5/24/2020 at 3:36 PM, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

I picked up a couple more Bernard Cornwell books. The man can write historical fiction. 

He describes battles better than anyone else I have found so far. Which ones did you pick up? I have read most of his other than the Sharpe series. 

 

About to start Lionheart by Ben Kane

 

 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

9 minutes ago, rc0101 said:

He describes battles better than anyone else I have found so far. Which ones did you pick up? I have read most of his other than the Sharpe series. 

 

About to start Lionheart by Ben Kane

 

 

Winter King and Agincourt. 

[rc0101]

58 minutes ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

Winter King and Agincourt. 

Nice. Both are really great!

[CastlevaniaNut18]

7 hours ago, rc0101 said:

Nice. Both are really great!

Yeah, I want to read his Warlord Chronicles and Agincourt was only $5 on Book Outlet, so I grabbed it. 

[Nokt]

I'm currently trying to read Lord of the Rings. I remember being put off after trying to read the Hobbit some years back and being bored to tears with it.

As a lover of the film series I thought it was worth at least the attempt to finish the books. I'm enjoying it so far, there is so far a pretty good number of changes I had no idea about so its nice to at least be kept on my toes.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Started American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century by Maureen Callahan last night.

 

I'm about to go get my oil changed and I'm taking Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell to start today.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Started The Bone Tree by Greg Iles. It's part two of the trilogy I started last month.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

For my nonfiction, I'm finally getting around to reading Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson. It's sat on my shelf for the past two years, so I was overdue. I expect this won't be a speedy read, but that's okay. That's what fiction is for.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Started my next novel, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gaily Honeyman. A few pages in and I was already laughing. 

[Brick]

My girlfriend gifted me The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, and I finished that a couple of weeks ago. Apparently this is a very beloved book, but I did not care for it at all, and thought it was mediocre. 

 

I know the author is from Brazil, so maybe something is lost in the translating to English, but I didn't care for the way it was written, and found the prose to be rather annoying. I can see why people like it as it's about a young man (who is given a name in the first chapter, but always just referred to as The Boy) following his "Personal Legend", which is basically about following your dreams, so of course I'm sure a lot of people liked the whole theme of "follow your dreams, and don't give up because you don't want to grow old and be full of regret not going for it", but it was just too sappy and saccharine for me. A lot of moments that just made me role my eyes like

Spoiler

how The Boy starts the story traveling to a town he visited the year prior so he can propose to a girl he met there before, and briefly talked to, only to then while on his journey met another girl that has the most beautiful eyes he's ever seen, so he asks her to be his wife right then and there, and she says yes. 

It's a very spiritual book, but not being a spiritual person it did nothing for me. 

 

Luckily my girlfriend didn't like it either when she first read it, and also didn't understand the hype, and only gave me the book to gage my reading interests, and has now gifted me Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchen, and The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Hopefully I like these a lot better. 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Current novel is Mississippi Blood by Greg Iles. Final book in the trilogy. I'm ready to see how it ends.

[EternallDarkness]

currently reading an advanced copy of Jeremy Robinson's NPC. 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

My reading has definitely slowed down since The Last of Us released. Still working on Battle Cry of Freedom, about halfway through it. Also reading White Fragility by Robin Diangelo. Figured I'd start with it before moving on to other anti-racism materials.

 

I think for my next novel, I'm gonna do Home Before Dark by Riley Sager.

[Dre801]

Book 4 in the Extinction: Dark Age series.

[thewhyteboar]

I can't fucking stand The Alchemist. It's the "live, laugh, love" of books.

[Brick]

28 minutes ago, thewhyteboar said:

I can't fucking stand The Alchemist. It's the "live, laugh, love" of books.

 

That's a good way of putting it actually. 

[rc0101]

On 5/28/2020 at 9:00 AM, rc0101 said:

About to start Lionheart by Ben Kane

 

 

Finished this one a while ago and I’m still not sure what book to start. Kind of weird not having anything to read but nothing sounds interesting at the moment. 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

I’m going to start The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett if I get a chance tonight. 
 

I'm at 50 books on the year, but I’ve e not read as much the last couple weeks. 

[CitizenVectron]

Finished Redemption of Time, the kind-of fourth book in the Three-Body Problem series. It's a paraquel, meaning it takes place over the same time period as the previous three books. I highly recommend it.

 

Currently reading We Are Legion [We Are Bob], the first book in The Bobiverse series.

[gamer.tv]

Finished The Long Take (which was great) and now reading The Testaments, which so far is better than The Handmaid's Tale. I also have a copy of There's a Boy in the Girls Bathroom which is my classes book in September, so I'll read that in the next week or so (probably in one sitting). After that, I need to have a look at my Amazon basket and decide which books to buy/read as I've stashed about 10 teaching related books on their and need to decide as they're in the £180 mark for all of them.

[Nokra]

I just finished The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory by Adam Domby. It's from a history professor that I actually knew when I lived in North Carolina. He was going to grad school at UNC Chapel Hill with my girlfriend at the time, so it's kind of cool to see his book published and recognize a lot of the names in the Acknowledgement section.   Also he has been in the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, etc. on the issue of Confederate memory, especially lately given how often Confederate monuments are appearing in the news.  

 

Anyway, the book was really interesting and timely, too. It examines the myth of the Lost Cause and how the attempt to recast the loss of the Civil War by the Confederacy was really an attempt to support white supremacy. That this was done is probably not news to anyone paying attention, but exactly how and why this was done is the focus of the book. Essentially, it boils down to the South portraying itself as a homogeneously white and supportive entity, when in fact the Confederacy had far more issues than the US with deserters, dissenters, pension fraud after the war, etc. The book really tears apart a lot of neo-Confederate arguments, too, so that's pretty satisfying if you hear people saying things like "it wasn't about slavery" or they try to glorify the Confederacy or Confederate soldiers.  The book is also a really interesting look at how historical narratives are created and maintained. 

 

I know we have a couple people who are interested in history ( @Emperor Diocletian II and @CastlevaniaNut18 come immediately to mind) though I don't remember whether there's much interest in Civil War history. In any case, as a former history minor, I loved the book and I'd definitely recommend it.