What are you Reading (Part 2)?

[elf1590]

Oh goodness, it's been too long since I posted here lol Since my last post here's what I've read:

His Majesty's Dragon
The Queen's Protectors
Stillhouse Lake
Killman Creek
The Kiss Quotient
Four Dead Queens
They Both Die at the End
The Chosen One
The Retreat
Devices Brightly Shining
One Night Gone
The Wicked King
The Cruel Prince
Shout
The Treatment
The Program
Sisters
Belles
Winter White
The Grass is Always Greener
Once & Future
The Disasters
The Accidental Beauty Queen
The Princess and the Fangirl
Verity
Finale
Little Darlings
The Shift
Wolfhunter River
The Martian
Soundless
The Umbrella Academy V1
Before She Knew Him
Heartless
Bringing Up Bebe
Small Spaces
Heretics Anonymous
These Witches Don't Burn
Kill the Boy Band
Hot Dog Girl
The Lost Coast
Furyborn
One Tequila
The Honeymoon
Fractured
The Opportunist
Dirty Red
There's Something About Sweetie
Shadow and Bone
Siege and Storm
Ruin and Rising
History is All You Left Me
Super Fun Sexy Times
The Near Witch
The Cheerleaders
Watching You
Flunked
Final Girls
The Last Time I Lied
Lock Every Door
It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken
The Vanishing Stair
Stay Sweet
The Farm
Blended
Think No Evil
The Blue Bistro

[Snowless]

This is my first post in this thread, so relative newbie here.

I’ve been reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy in my e-reader since New Year’s Day.  I initially started it as part of a book discussion group on Goodreads (if interested, I’m snowlessknitter on there, although my profile name reads my first name and last initial), but other books kept getting my attention, so I didn’t finish it in the scheduled three months, but I did decide to make an effort to finish it, no matter how long it took.  I’m on Book Fourteen of my edition now (it uses the Maude translation, which is in the public domain; that particular translation divides it into fifteen Books and two Epilogues).  It’s gone by more quickly since getting past the two longest Books, Ten and Eleven.  I hope to finish it by the end of the month.

For physical books, I am also currently reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

The books I’ve read and/or finished so far this year:

• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (carried over from last year)
• Looking for Alaska by John Green
• All the Light We Cannot See  by Anthony Doerr

I’m planning on reading Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut once I finish War and Peace.  That is definitely not a book for fundie eyes.  I’m excited to read it, though.  I have a feeling Kurt Vonnegut would have loved FJ (he was a humanist and atheist and his work often involved a lot of satire and irreverent dark humor).

[elf1590]

Since reading The Blue Bistro, I've finished:

Miss Spelled (Cute cozy mystery)
An Anonymous Girl (really unique thriller)
The Girl Who Chased the Moon (magical realism)
Stray Magic (magical realism)
Under the Trestle (true crime)

[louisa05]

Just finished Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water & Loving the Bible Again, by Rachel Held Evans. I had been avoiding it because having been beaten up with the Bible for six years in Christian school; I just couldn't. 

Then she died and the eBook was cheap and I've read everything else she's written...

It's a good book. But I slogged through it. I still couldn't stomach it. She wrote a good thing for those recovering from fundamentalist interpretations of scripture. But even 19 years later, I just didn't want to hear anything related to that perspective. And she explains that perspective before dismantling it a little too much if that perspective has beaten you down in your life. 

Just started Crashing the A-List. Something super light as recovery. It's funny so far. 

I started the summer reading at a fast pace. Since slogging through Barbara Kingsolver's Unsheltered the last week of June, not so much. I've loved everything she ever wrote until that mess. 

[clueliss]

Fire and Blood, the Targaryen history part 1 by Martin.  Still have some to go but it really makes me hope HBO gets to the dance of dragons era in tv series format

[Ozlsn]

Finished Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein, about the closing of the GM plant there in 2008 and the first five years of the town's adjustment. I found it fascinating, and it covered a few families in depth but also a broader group across the community. Also covered some of WI's political history at that time.

Now reading The Mechanism: A Crime Network So Deep That It Brought Down A Nation by Vladimir Netto, which is about the Petrobras scandal in Brazil. Fascinating but a bit of a harder read (also some translation mistakes that should have been picked up in editing.)

[church_of_dog]

Since my last update in May:

Continued moving through the Sue Grafton alphabet with "D", "E", "F", "G" and "H".  Still finding them just barely compelling enough to continue, but they are entertaining enough to get me through lots of yardwork sessions, so I continue.

I listened to an odd little motivational book called "Nudge", by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein.  About how to encourage people to make the decision you want them to, a la marketing, but more subtle, like how the phrasing of questions on a questionnaire favors specific responses, etc.  More from a political or institutional perspective than interpersonally.

My previous enjoyment of the book about the development of the electric grid led me to a short autobiography of Nikola Tesla, titled "My Inventions."

I also found four more by Lisa Scottoline I liked: "Someone Knows", "Save Me", "Daddy's Girl", and "Keep Quiet".  Some of my favorites of hers so far!

Then in discussion with a friend of what I liked about the Scottoline books, I described them as "psychological thrillers" where the reader is inside the head of at least one of the characters, who often means well but takes just the tiniest ethical shortcut in some stressful situation and then finds it spirals into more and more unethical choices, until suddenly there is real trouble.  My friend said that sounded like a book she liked, called "Our House" by Louise Candlish, so I listened to that and enjoyed it too.  Not as much as the Scottolines, but still quite a bit.

Also listened to a few more titles in support of my decluttering push:

"Stop Clutter From Stealing Your Life" by Mike Nelson

"Throw Out Fifty Things" by Gail Blanke

and

"The Hoarder In You" by Robin Zazio.

I also read a thought-provoking book about elder care, assisted living, etc, titled "Being Mortal" by Atul Gawande.

Then I resumed my interest in the Supreme Court (a few years ago I listened to both an autobiography and a biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg) with a biography of Sandra Day O'Connor, titled "First", by Evan Thomas.  He has some other interesting history titles I'll be looking at in the future.  I also listened to "The Nine", by Jeffrey Toobin, which is about the Supreme Court as a whole in recent decades.

I'm currently listening to "iWoz", an autobiography of Steve Wozniak.  A year or two ago I really enjoyed Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, so this is an interesting "other side of the same coin" perspective.

Next up will be "The Sound of Gravel" by Ruth Wariner -- a polygamy memoir mentioned by someone here on fj.

On deck after that: "Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Harms The Planet and Threatens Our Lives" by Michael Specter.

 

[elf1590]

Since Under the Trestle I've read

Meet Cute (contemporary)
The Rule of One (dystopian)
The Rule of Many (dystopian)

[Coconut Flan]

Carry on here: