What are you Reading (Part 2)?

[RabbitKM]

I'm starting In The Woods by Tana French, which is a pick for my book club. 

[TXGirlInAMaterialWorld]

Just finished reading "Black Diamonds" by Catherine Bailey. If you liked Downton Abbey you will love this book. I also heard that the next series that PBS masterpiece theater produces will be based on this book.  

Just started "Reconstructing Amelia". 

[Kailash]

@violynn I've only read the first three so far. I also love Louis and Angel. It was really hard for me to read about Angel being tortured in The Killing Kind, and I was thinking about taking a break from the series because of it. I'm glad to see that you love this series too, and I'll keep reading.

[violynn]

2 hours ago, Kailash said:

@violynn I've only read the first three so far. I also love Louis and Angel. It was really hard for me to read about Angel being tortured in The Killing Kind, and I was thinking about taking a break from the series because of it. I'm glad to see that you love this series too, and I'll keep reading.

Oh you still have SO many great books still to go then, @Kailash!  What Angel went through was horrific, and Connolly writes about his recovery from it in the next two books.  We learn a lot more about Louis in The Black Angel, but the next one in the series deals with some of his past as well.  I think from The Black Angel on, Connolly deals more with Charlie Parker's place in the supernatural, if you like those aspects of his novels, you're going to love the books from there on out especially.  

[FloraKitty35]

I just finished Lost At Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries.  It was compilation of the weird things people believe like indigo children, and the time he followed Robbie Williams to a UFO convention.

[sparkles]

Finishing up Ron Chernow's Hamilton. Next up: Jane Mayer's Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. I should be a raging lunatic about halfway through.

[CTRLZero]

On ‎4‎/‎15‎/‎2016 at 2:53 PM, sparkles said:

Finishing up Ron Chernow's Hamilton.

I just bought this and plan to start it next week. 

Just finished Bill Bryson's Shakespeare: The World as Stage, which examines the hard evidence that has been found in historical documents regarding Shakespeare.  Very easy to read and really shows how language changes.  Shakespeare introduced many new words and phrases through his works.  Fascinating stuff.

[RabbitKM]

Finally finished In the Woods.  I was getting worried I would never finish that book.  It just did not jive with me! I think I'm gonna read Looking for Alaska by John Green next, to cleanse my palate and give me something lighthearted and fun.

[EyeQueue]

I'm now reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, and it's making my brain hurt. His Snow Crash and The Diamond Age are two of my favorite books ever (and read and re-read them several times), but this one is super technical and makes for dense reading.

[CTRLZero]

3 hours ago, EyeQueue said:

I'm now reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, and it's making my brain hurt.

You're not the only one.  In a later novel, Cryptonomicon is described as being used as a doorstop, so he has a sense of humor about his increasing verbosity as an author.  I enjoyed Cryptonomicon, but I was going through a phase where I was reading lots of background material on the enigma machine, etc., so that might have helped with my comprehension.  I think I need to be in the right mood for Stephenson (at least the later works).  Seveneves seems like a novel I will enjoy, but am still working up my courage to launch.

[EyeQueue]

On 4/23/2016 at 4:19 AM, CTRLZero said:

You're not the only one.  In a later novel, Cryptonomicon is described as being used as a doorstop, so he has a sense of humor about his increasing verbosity as an author.  I enjoyed Cryptonomicon, but I was going through a phase where I was reading lots of background material on the enigma machine, etc., so that might have helped with my comprehension.  I think I need to be in the right mood for Stephenson (at least the later works).  Seveneves seems like a novel I will enjoy, but am still working up my courage to launch.

I can totally see Stephenson doing that.

I'm about 20% into it now, and I'm really liking it, even slogging through the technical verbosity.

I agree with his later works vs. earlier works. I breezed through Snow Crash and The Diamond Age (in fact, that is one of the few books where I immediately turned right back to page 1 and read that shit from a second time from the beginning...I loved it that much). I had more difficulty with his System of the World series (and I think I only made it through the first 2).

Seveneves is a sequel or has something to do with Cryptonomicon, no? Or am I mistaken?

[CTRLZero]

8 hours ago, EyeQueue said:

Seveneves is a sequel or has something to do with Cryptonomicon, no? Or am I mistaken?

I haven't bought Seveneves yet (still gathering courage), but the description doesn't indicate it's a sequel.  The premise is, post-disaster, humanity scatters to space, forms a new society over many generations, and then returns.  This seems like a perfect storyline based on some of my favorite themes:  post-disaster, space exploration, forming societies (sociology minor here), etc.  With luck, I'll find it on sale in the next year and tackle it then.

I have read and enjoyed Zodiac, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon.  I have tried and (temporarily) abandoned The Baroque Cycle.

In the meantime, I finished Asimov's I, Robot last night and realized it was time to read through the Foundation series again.  Good luck with Cryptonomicon!

[RabbitKM]

I really enjoyed Looking for Alaska!  I am now starting Carolyn Jessup's Escape, her memoir about leaving the FLDS.

[RabbitKM]

Reading Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob.  I am really liking it so far! It's hard to describe, but I would say it's about a family, the 3 generations, and immigration, and dealing with the ghosts/secrets of the past. 

[PennySycamore]

I just finished Stephen King's Black House and just started Mr. Mercedes.  Black House is a worthy sequel to The Talisman.  I bought Mr Mercedes at Target yesterday afternoon because I wanted to start another King and they only had Mr Mercedes and Doctor Sleep.  It was also threatening a thunderstorm and I wanted to have something to read while I waited for the rain to slack off.  I'm already  on page 58.

[FloraKitty35]

Right now I am reading Rick Pearlstein's The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and The Rise of Reagan.  I am also starting A Carlin Home Companion: Growing Up With George

[EyeQueue]

On 5/12/2016 at 11:52 AM, PennySycamore said:

I just finished Stephen King's Black House and just started Mr. Mercedes.  Black House is a worthy sequel to The Talisman.  I bought Mr Mercedes at Target yesterday afternoon because I wanted to start another King and they only had Mr Mercedes and Doctor Sleep.  It was also threatening a thunderstorm and I wanted to have something to read while I waited for the rain to slack off.  I'm already  on page 58.

I read Black House back when it first came out, and don't remember that much about it. I think I'm due for a re-read of both The Talisman and the sequel. 

I'm still trying to slog through Cryptonomicon. I really like it; it's just dense reading and seems to be taking sooooooo loooooooong.

And I just got Carolyn Cagagan's Time Zero delivered to my Kindle today. I'm so tempted to rip right into that (near-future dystopia about fundamentalists who take over the US...more info here http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2016/04/19/novelist-creates-a-dystopian-world-for-girls-inspired-by-homegrown-fundamentalism/) but I really want to finish up the Stephenson thing before I start something new.

I sometimes read 2-3 books at the same time and hop amongst them.

[RabbitKM]

On 5/16/2016 at 7:26 PM, EyeQueue said:

And I just got Carolyn Cagagan's Time Zero delivered to my Kindle today. I'm so tempted to rip right into that (near-future dystopia about fundamentalists who take over the US...more info here http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2016/04/19/novelist-creates-a-dystopian-world-for-girls-inspired-by-homegrown-fundamentalism/) but I really want to finish up the Stephenson thing before I start something new.

Ooo this sounds fascinating.  Let us know what you think of it when you read it!

[CTRLZero]

My summer reading usually includes a lot of lighter fare (goes well with sunshine and beer), so my subscription to Kindle Unlimited come in handy.  I rarely find anything noteworthy, but Snowfall on Mars by Branden Frankel turned out to be plotted and edited fairly well.

This one would make a good movie (Matt Damon, ready to return to Mars?).  The premise (no spoilers):  Mars is becoming settled, but needs Earth's help as a lifeline for supplies.  Then Earth goes silent due to war and nuclear winter.  What to do?  The Mars story line picks up twenty years after Earth's war. 

If anyone else finds gems in the jumble that is Kindle Unlimited, please let me know. 

 

[EyeQueue]

7 hours ago, RabbitKM said:

Ooo this sounds fascinating.  Let us know what you think of it when you read it!

OK, I couldn't resist. I have read the first 3 chapters of Time Zero (before finishing the Stephenson book), and so far it's really good.

There are a lot of things that sound straight out of what we see in some of the fundamentalist families, though amplified, which is what some of the best dystopian fiction does: it takes certain trends in current society and amplifies them by showing what it would look like if those trends were taken to their most extreme conclusion.

While I like it and am intrigued by the society Cahagan is creating (and the main character, Mina, is pretty interesting so far), I'm not yet seeing the "groundbreaking-ness" of this book. There are several rave reviews that talk about it in terms of how innovative it is in addressing social issues, etc.

Have these people even *read* The Handmaid's Tale? Atwood did all this way back in 1985.

And as another example of this sort of thing done really well, check out Sheri S. Tepper's Singer From the Sea (1999). It takes place in the future on a distant planet where religious men from Earth settled and started two different societies that are the worst blending of extremist Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.

TL;DR: The Cahagan Time Zero is good so far, but not particularly groundbreaking in tackling issues of the terrifying potential of a future American society based on religious extremism and the oppression of women.

[sparkles]

Finished the audiobook of Jane Mayer's Dark Money about a week ago and it was an infuriating as I thought it would be. Kudos to the narrator, who read the book in a voice that just oozed contempt and disgust, as if she had just turned over a rock and found something horrible (which is kind of the truth). The picture the book paints is truly frightening. The radical right runs like a well oiled machine (on Koch-backed oil). Unfortunately, there's nothing similar on the left as a counterbalance. I'd say the book is a must-read—hopefully, it will be a wake-up call as well.

I'm currently about halfway through Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. Fascinating and engagingly written..

Next up: The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee.

[theinvisiblegirl]

I've got eight different books going right now  I just started rereading the Harry Potter series for the first time since I read them, but I've also got two books of writing prompts going, Hamilton the Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, a book about crochet, Walk Away the Pounds by Leslie Sansone, and my state's DMV manual.

[RoseWilder]

I'm reading several books at once right now;

Think Big by Jennifer Arnold, MD & Bill Klein (not as good as the first one - it's very disjointed and kind of jumps all over the place with a few really good parts.) 

America's Women by Gail Collins (it's about the history of America told from the perspective of the women - I'm about halfway through and it's fantastic.)

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (this year-long project genre is a bit overplayed, but I'm still enjoying this one so far, although I'm only a few pages in.) 

And I just recently finished reading Devoted by Jennifer Mathieu (a fiction book about a teenager who was raised in the Quiverfull movement. This book was one of those books that I had a hard time putting down. It was fascinating.) 

[PennySycamore]

I finished Mr Mercedes the other day and read the first chapter of the sequel that was at the end of the book.  I didn't know that it was a sequel, though, and started The Dark Half because I'd not read it and the book was lying on my bookcase in the hall.  I learned yesterday that Stephen King is coming out with End of Watch on June 7 and it ends the trilogy he began with Mr Mercedes.  Finders Keepers the middle book and I bought a copy of the mass market paperback today at Target.  I think I'll pre-order End of Watch from Barnes and Noble.  Still reading The Dark Half, btw, so I've got two SK books going.

Edited May 20, 2016 by PennySycamore

[Kailash]

I recently reread To Kill a Mockingbird, and then followed it with Go Set a Watchman. 

Then I read A Song of Shadows, a Charlie Parker thriller. Loved it. My favorite Charlie Parker book by far. @violynn: you were so right about the books getting better.