What are you reading?

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by godfry n. glad

I have in hand:



I have not decided with which to begin....Moist?...or Tiffany?

Expect to be sad at the beginning of The Shepard's Crown.

[Janet]

It is FANTASTIC. It just won the Nebula and it's well deserved. I keep wishing Miyazaki hadn't retired so he could make the film. I know that's partly because it's a little reminiscent of Howl's Moving Castle, but mostly because I can almost see the imagery in my eye as I read and it's suited to animation.

[Adam]

I'm about halfway through Alan Moore's novel slash history of Northampton slash fictionalized autobiography slash doorstop Jerusalem. I don't reallly know how to categorize this thing. It's a love letter to the neighborhood where Alan Moore grew up. It's an excuse to show off how much local history Alan Moore knows. It's a lengthy treatise on Alan Moore's ideas about what I guess I'm supposed to call the "Einsteinian block Universe". It's a reflection on change and loss and death. It features a character who is clearly a gender swapped version of Moore himself. It is a condemnation of the social invisibility of the poor. It incredibly all works together. So far, anyway. He somehow makes this crazy sweeping mess of a thing about angels and devils and ghosts and time travel feel personal and contemplative.

Is there a term for the sort of novel that starts off really slow because it's hopping around between disjointed stories, laying down information that isn't going to be connected until much later? This is one of those. There's a prologue that sets the story up, then the first third of the book is a series of short stories, from the points of view of different characers living at different times in the same Northampton neghborhood. Only in the second section does the plot actually get moving, but it does so in a way that is informed by information doled out in, and reflects the themes of, the individual stories from the first section.

If I have a complaint, it's that some of the local history stuff feels sort of shoehorned in. Like, there are two conecutive chapters in the second section where characters pop in to visit important historical events in Northampton's past literally because they happen to be in the temporal neighborhood and think it would be fun to see, say, Oliver Cromwell for themselves.

Oh, and read this: If you read only one Alan Moore Jerusalem interview, make it this one.

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by specious_reasons

Expect to be sad at the beginning of The Shepard's Crown.

Yes, indeed...But, all in all, I thought it a nice finish to the Aching series.

[Crumb]

[specious_reasons]

I read the script for "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" this weekend.

It's a script, not a novel, so reading it is not the best way to consume the story, and it suffers for it.

I found myself not liking it initially, but got more into it around 1/3 of the way. I think the story suffers for being limited to the length of a play, and it's so packed with scenes that I think some conversations were way too abrupt.

I'd have to actually see the play to see if some of these defects could be eliminated by the performances.

[ceptimus]

Don't buy it if you're not interested in electronics - but if you are interested then it's pretty much essential reading.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Crumb

I'm watching the TV series before reading the book.

* JoeP REBELS

[Watser?]

I read The Fallen Man by Tony Hillerman which is a detective set in the American southwest in Navajo territory and features a Navajo police lieutenant, who has just taken over the job plus the man who had that position before him, his former boss, who is asked to privately investigate the same case. It had a pretty good story and a lot of local scenery and Navajo culture. So I ordered a volume containing the first 3 novels with those 2 Navajo cops. Now reading the first one: The Blessing Way.

Also just started Haruki Murakami's 1q84 (in Dutch). Seems promising.

[Janet]

I have Jerusalem sitting at home. I started it in August, I think. I was offered an e-galley as a librarian. I've never signed up for one before, but I had to do it for that. I was enjoying it, but the limitations of an e-galley meant I could only read it in my office, so I never got fully stuck into it. Since pre-ordering, I have become hooked on the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik. I am on book four, Empire of Ivory of eight in the original and one in a second series that just started. It may be quite a while until I dive into Jerusalem, even longer if I go all delayed gratification and make excuses not to start.

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by Watser?

I read The Fallen Man by Tony Hillerman which is a detective set in the American southwest in Navajo territory and features a Navajo police lieutenant, who has just taken over the job plus the man who had that position before him, his former boss, who is asked to privately investigate the same case. It had a pretty good story and a lot of local scenery and Navajo culture. So I ordered a volume containing the first 3 novels whit those 2 Navajo cops. Now reading the fist The Blessing Way.

Tony Hillerman's 'Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee' series of tribal police mysteries are superb stories set in the Navajo country of northern Arizona and New Mexico. They are 'mysteries' that introduce the reader to other cultures and the interplay of cultures. If you like it, there are many hours of enjoyable reading ahead; Tony Hillerman has been prolific.

[Watser?]

Yeah, I noticed. I already like this first novel.

[specious_reasons]

WMD.jpg

Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil

Cathy O'Neil is a former math professor, former quant and now a blogger and activist.

So far, a good read, and not too difficult, but I haven't gotten into the meat of the book yet. Since I follow her blog, mathbabe | Exploring and venting about quantitative issues I knew I'd enjoy it.

[Adam]

Jerusalem screeching halt alert! I've hit this chapter, described in the interview I linked about:

Another chapter, described from the point of view of James Joyce’s mad daughter Lucia who was institutionalised for 30 years in a Northampton mental hospital, is written in a mangled, pun-filled gibber-English as a homage to Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. It was so laborious to compose that Moore took a year’s break after finishing it.

Goddammit, Moore, there is a reason I have never read Finnegans Wake and this kind of bullshit is that reason. Seriously, it's not even like many books (including this one!) where the going is slow until you learn the unique language of the story and the characters, but once you've deciphered it, you can just read. Every sentence here is a string of homophones and puns and allusions that have to be decoded individually. It was fun for a few pages, but this is a long freaking chapter.

Still very much digging the book, but shaking my fist Northamptonward for the duration of this chapter.

Janet, Temeraire is on my long list. Glad to hear it's worthwhile.

[Janet]

Have you read Voice of the Fire, Adam? Moore has a chapter in that written by a pre-literate character. Took me months and walking away for a while to finish.

[Watser?]

1q84 by Murakami is really good, already like this more than any of his other books (that I liked a lot too). Finished about 300 pages out of almost 1300.

[Nullifidian]

I've been reading Greek and Roman classics like Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War and Ovid's Metamorphoses, and I'm not yet ready to quit the Eternal City, so I've started the following three books:





On a lighter note, I've been listening to this as an audiobook, the first Nero Wolfe mystery novel:



And I've been dipping into this work, which I borrowed from the library the day after the election results were in because I needed a pick-me-up:



The subtitle is a bit low-res, but it's The Tiger in the House: A Cultural History of the Cat. For anyone who is interested, I've found that this work is also in the public domain and available here.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Nullifidian

The subtitle is a bit low-res, but it's The Tiger in the House: A Cultural History of the Cat. For anyone who is interested, I've found that this work is also in the public domain and available here.

[godfry n. glad]

and

Solstice gifts.

[Crumb]

[Ensign Steve]

I'm starting A Dance with Dragons, having finished the first 4 books in the series.



I tried reading them years ago and I made it almost to the end of A Clash of Kings. After the Blackwater I was like, wait, who the fuck just won and why do I care? I just didn't have it in me to keep track of everyone so I gave up.

But now that I've seen the show and I can put faces to names, it's a lot easier to follow. The further along I get, the more it diverges from the TV series, so I'm getting to enjoy some mysteries and surprises, but for the most part I know whom to pay attention to and what's important.

Dunno what I'm gonna do when I'm done. We got a release date for book 6 yet?

[livius drusus]

Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema. It goes into far more depth than I expected on the political, economic and cultural context of the early 1930s, which of course makes me very happy. That's peppered with juicy how-the-sausage-is-made stories about old movies, so that makes me even happier.

My only complaint thus far is that sometimes the author will make a throwaway comment or use terminology about women that sets my teeth on edge. Nothing obscene or hugely obvious, just random intrusive shit like referring to a character as a "slut" or the female audience as "femmes."

[thedoc]

I read "Autopsy of a Deceased Church" by Thom S. Rainer, It's a small book only 102 pages, we're doing it for a book study during Sunday school. The first thing is to decide if our church fits the description, and then if it does, see what we can do about it.

[thedoc]

I'm also reading "The Philosopher's Alice" by Peter Heath. I got a copy when it was first published but I lost that copy, and have recently acquired another copy that I am now reading.

[Kyuss Apollo]

Background research for a presentation on the history of smallpox in Rhode Island for the HistoryCamp Unconference in Boston. Many interesting and horrifying stories in these books (recommend all of them as well-written engaging prose except Princes and Peasants).

Glad this rotten disease is finally dead...