What book are you reading, ιf' - Iff you read books

Reading This Book is Overdue!, on librarians and computers. It's from 2007 so it's a bit dated, but as a librarian who does IT I am its entire niche audience.
 
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Franklin book is good.

Another Now is awful (some people should not try to write fiction)
 
Ended Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi

Enjoyed a lot. Best reflexion on freedom I have ever read. 5/5.

Started a re-read of The man in the high castle
 
Just started American Lion, a novel about the rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Jeff Shaara.
 
City on Fire a novel by Don Winslow. Italian vs the Irish mafia story in the 80s. I would expect: soon to be a movie! Halfway through and it is gripping and good.
 
Finally secured a copy of The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough.
 
Ended The man in the high castle.
The first time I read it it was about 20 years ago. This re-read has been like reading a new book because I barely remembered anything about the plot. The reading was ok, but book is overrated. Remarkable considering that 20 years ago I considered it as masterpiece

Started Odysseus by Javier Negrete. It is supposed to be a Odysseus based mix of Iliad and Odyssey
Still reading The Dawn of Everything, it is an interesting reading but it is being hard taking time to read this book
 
Finally secured a copy of The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough.
Make that The first man in Rome. And then for The grass crown.
 
Finished the Roosevelt novel and wasn't particularly impressed -- Teddy doesn't come off as a plausible 19th century personality.

Currently reading The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis.
 
Consumed by Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist by Paul Kingsnorth.

If a flush toilet is a metaphor for a civilisation that wants to wash its hands of its own wastes as long as they accumulate somewhere else, then a compost toilet is both a small restitution, and a declaration: I will not turn my back on the consequences of my actions. I will not hand them over to someone else to deal with. I will not crap into clean drinking water and ush it down a pipe to be cleaned with industrial chemicals at some sewage plant I have never visited. I will fertilise my own ground with my own manure, and in doing so I will control an important part of my life in this world, and that control will give me more understanding over it. I will claw something of myself back. Even in the rain, even in winter, I will deal with my own ----.
 
Earlier this week, I finished reading a second hand book:

The Necropolis Railway

by

Andrew Martin

copyright 2002

It is a sort of detective story starring a bright but inexperienced young Yorkshire lad who goes to work in November
1903 on the Necropolis Railway, which actually ran from Nine Elms (London) to Brookwood Cemetery (Surrey).

There are a series of violent deaths that our hero identifies as murders and he is put in a coffin himself.

I found it provided an interesting insight into a bygone era.
 
Finished The Anxious Generation by Haidt yesterday; began Beauteous Truth, a collection of essays on literature and Catholicism by Joseph Pearce today.
 
HeavenBreaker by Sara Wolf. An original idea unfolds in this first book of an expected series. Great characters are coupled with the lingering remnants of old earth culture in a story I'm only halfway through.
 
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How was it? It's on my maybe list.

I enjoyed it enormously, but I am in the choir he's preaching to. Have been deeply skeptical of the screen-oriented life since the early 2000s. Will post a review within a few days. Basically argues that cellphones completely revolutionized childhood, and not in good ways. Last third is on ways the government, schools, and parents can combat it.
 
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Finished the first (cutesy sci-fi 3.5/5), second I saw a woman reading at library so requested a copy. Started reading the introduction in a queue of people waiting for free food (just past expirary donated by supermarkets), most of which looked like the cover.
 
Started reading American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Civil War in the Republican Party, which is about the populist takeover of the GOP from 2008 on. Been chewing on it a few days. VERY detailed, but it's 600 pages so I'm iffy on whether I finish it or not.
 
I'm going to read Asimov "Foundation' part 2 tomorrow. They are quick to go through and show all vices of common statesmen. How they can be bought and tricked.

For some reason I find these books to be very predictable (but they are exactly about that - common human can be predicted). Maybe I read them in another life or simply in English (reading Latvian translation this year) when I was 16 and consumed a lot of books as a way to learn new English words.

There is no love in those books, politics over and over again. Someone told me they are classics worth reading just like Dune.

Oh, and I should read my own manuscript more often. Someone challenged me to write a story of at least 40 pages long and I'm at page 9.
 
I'm going to read Asimov "Foundation' part 2 tomorrow. They are quick to go through and show all vices of common statesmen. How they can be bought and tricked.

For some reason I find these books to be very predictable (but they are exactly about that - common human can be predicted). Maybe I read them in another life or simply in English (reading Latvian translation this year) when I was 16 and consumed a lot of books as a way to learn new English words.

There is no love in those books, politics over and over again. Someone told me they are classics worth reading just like Dune.

Oh, and I should read my own manuscript more often. Someone challenged me to write a story of at least 40 pages long and I'm at page 9.

Asimov's intent was to do a SF version of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, so yes -- very much about culture and politics. However, Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation are more character-based as I remember.
 
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