What Book Are You Reading XV - The Pile Keeps Growing!

[Valka D'Ur]

Reading novels takes time.


My late father was a great reader of Reader's Digest condensed books.
And having watched the word processor enable some authors to spin out
a few core ideas over more and more pages and volumes with unnecessary
descriptions, narrative, sub-plots etc; I am coming to value word rationed stories.

Novels do take time. That's why it's best to read a little at a time (though I used to be able to read a novel in about a day and a half if it wasn't too long or too complicated).

I've tried Reader's Digest condensed books. I've found that if I enjoy the ones I've read, I want to find the real, unabridged version to get the whole story.

Nowadays, I read a lot of fanfiction online. Some of the stories are definitely novel-length. The one I'm currently reading is New Blood, a Harry Potter novel-length story about Hermione Granger being sorted into Slytherin. The story's author just posted Chapter 412 yesterday, and it's still not quite at the end of the events of Prisoner of Azkaban (it's loosely following the major events of the actual novels). New chapters are posted twice a week, so it's easy to keep up.

The Dumas Club is a translation, but never mind. Start with what I've just read: Have spacesuit-will travel! by Robert A. Heinlein.

Also, a great recommendation is Röde Orm by Frans Bengtsson.

The problem with Heinlein is that so many of his novels are hopelessly out of date now, given what we've learned about various planets and moons since his books were published.

One of the few I can think of that isn't out of date is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

The Stand by Stephen King. It is one of his best. You want to start with great stories that engage and entertain. If you find an author you like, many of them have lots of best sellers.

Sounds like what you'd get if you combined covid with a Civ scenario.


My own current reading: Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It's a novel about the Trojan War, told from the point of view of Kassandra, the priestess of Apollo who was granted the gift of accurately foretelling the future, but cursed that nobody would believe her.

 

[Josu]

Ended Started The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks
I would be lying if I say that I did not have amusement while reading this book, however plain plot with a couple of twists that are cheap fireworks.
Not the book I would recommend to someone that wants to introduce to fantasy literature

Starting Por qué creemos en Mierdas: Cómo nos engañamos a nosotros mismos (Why do we belive in **** : How do we fool ourselves) by Ramón Nogueras

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

Why are paperbacks nicely uniform in size, when hardbacks are all over the place? It makes my library look messy.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I'm about to finish Ed Yong's An Immense World, on the subject of animal senses, and am just starting Out of the Jungle: Jimmy Hoffa and the Remaking of the American Working Class. The latter is more a history of the Teamsters than a biography of Hoffa himself, unfortunately.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I'm about to finish Ed Yong's An Immense World, on the subject of animal senses,

My copy will arrive in the next few days.

 

[Smellincoffee]

My copy will arrive in the next few days.

It's fascinating. Have you read his I Contain Multitudes?

 

[Birdjaguar]

It's fascinating. Have you read his I Contain Multitudes?

No, your mention of him above was my first hearing his name. The ideas seem similar to those expressed in biocentrism:

When describing this theory, Robert Lanza explains that what we call space and time are forms of animal sense perception rather than external physical objects.

 

[Smellincoffee]

No, your mention of him above was my first hearing his name. The ideas seem similar to those expressed in biocentrism:

That does come up a time or two, when Yong is reflecting on rapid-fire animal lives compared to both ours and more elongated ones like those of whales. I Contain Multitudes is focused on the importance of bacteria to our bodies.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Once I read it, I will pass the book on to my daughter who teaches middle school science.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Yesterday I finished reading:

The Widowmaker Reborn

by

Mike Resnick

It is the second of three Sci-Fi Western novels.

 

[Josu]

Ended Por qué creemos en Mierdas: Cómo nos engañamos a nosotros mismos (Why do we belive in shits: How do we fool ourselves) by Ramón Nogueras
6 stars out of 5. The chapter about cognitive dissonance deserves 5 stars at it own.
Brilliant and fun book about why do we belive in conspirancies, why we remember things that did not happen or why we continue having same opinion despite havind evidences proving we are wrong
The book has one big fault, it is too short

Started Origins: How earth's history shaped human history by Lewis Dartnell

 

[bene_legionary]

I only just found this thread, it sounds pretty cool. Always have many books to read and many more distractions... but the books I did read this year were:

Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy): Just a great book. I got it on a whim from Project Gutenberg and couldn't stop reading; although I had to stop for a few weeks to catch up on schoolwork. I was more interested in Levin's story than Anna's though, but Stepan is always there to tie things together. I'm using a passage from Anna Karenina for a monologue, the writing is so vivid and it was perfect for what I was doing.

The Death of a President (William Manchester): It's a very in-detail (almost too much detail) retelling of the events immediately before and after John Kennedy's assassination. In fact the political situation then was not that different to America today. Some details I liked: how the Birchers (John Birch Society members) were taping their own mouths to protest being 'muzzled' by Kennedy; major newspapers in Dallas were putting up full page advertisements of fake "Wanted for Treason" notices for Kennedy the day he landed at Love Field; that there were multiple instances where people cheered when the news came of Kennedy's assassination, while the Birchers were all worried that one of them had done the act; and that Oswald is a sad, worthless little guy. I still haven't finished it though, because I only started to read it for an assignment on JFK's assassination and had to limit it to the parts that were relevant. I'm definitely going to pick this one back up when I'm free.

Case Closed (Gerald Posner): Similar story to Death of a President, I had to stop after the important bits for my assignment but nevertheless very engrossing and I still might continue reading it. It shows in much more detail how worthless Oswald is. I could almost feel bad for him, his upbringing is pretty tragic and I could see how it at the very least defined Oswald's character. I thought the book made a convincing argument (as far as I read) and that conspiracy theories are generally pretty silly.

The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood): It's decent, and it solves 1984's main issue with sex. But I felt that it was inconsistent, definitely uncertain; one sentence will be about the present situation and the next will be about the border with Canada. That's really the trouble with unreliable narrators. The main character is aware of this and tells the reader that she can't remember everything. The epilogue explains it a little but but makes things less understandable, and really just made me question if the way it was told was actually possible.

Spoiler :

Supposedly the book was recorded by the main character and it's been transcribed afterwards, but because the tape recordings were ancient technology at the time it was transcribed and the tapes weren't in order, the characters in the epilogue tell the reader that they pretty much guessed everything, and only give the reader more questions about what actually happened. The recordings can't have been done during the events of the book because the main character doesn't anticipate later events (like meeting an important character), but it can't have been done afterwards because it seems improbable that she would get a tape recorder and then send the tapes back to Massachusetts. Really the problem is that the book is written more like a story than a recording; the book does seem to make some more sense by saying it's a recording, but it raises more questions as well.

Atwood forgets speech marks and capital letters sometimes, but it looks intentional. The feminist message is pretty clear, which I suppose is the most important part because I have to use this book for another assignment. Fits in well with all the stuff going on in NZ with that fundamentalist Christian colony we have on the West Coast.

If I had a book to recommend it would be The Village in the Jungle (Leonard Woolf, the husband of Virginia Woolf). It's about a family in the jungles of Sri Lanka during British rule, and their struggle to exist. It's not a happy story, however. I'll probably re-read this one. You can find it on the Gutenberg Project.

 

[Josu]

While I continue with my stuff, can anyone recomend a historical novel from "the ones at the other side" of the history's point of view?
For example a novel in which main characters are persians in Persian Wars and their motivations are explained, The conquest of constantinopla from the otoman side etc

 

[Arakhor]

The Penelopiad describes Penelope's viewpoint whilst Odysseus is off at the Trojan War and its aftermath. Similarly, Circe tells her story during the Odyssey and other myths.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Rabble in Arms

While I continue with my stuff, can anyone recomend a historical novel from "the ones at the other side" of the history's point of view?
For example a novel in which main characters are persians in Persian Wars and their motivations are explained, The conquest of constantinopla from the otoman side etc

Chronicles of Arundel by Kenneth Roberts This is a 4 book series about the American Revolution from the side of colonists opposed to the revolution. All the books are excellent even though they were written in the 1930s. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/911868.Arundel​

 

[sophie]

I’ve been reading more lately thanks to the bus commute and longer lunch break at the new job. This week I’ve been making my way through Whipping Girl by Julia Serano, which I’ve been meaning to read for awhile. I’m really liking it so far! I like the way the distinction she draws between subconscious sex, conscious sex, and gender expression, although I quibble with her insistence that the presence of such a distinction precludes sex/gender being a social construct.

I also really like her description of oppositional vs traditional sexism. She really approaches the question of transphobia/sexism in a way I hadn’t really thought about before.

I’m in the section on the institutionalization and formalization of transgender as a category for psychological, sexological and sociological study now and it is just gut-wrenching to read. It’s so vile to read, and saddening to think about how little different current medical praxis is in many respects from how they’ve been doing it since the 60s. The chauvinism still hasn’t gone anywhere.

 

[Takhisis]

Nice way to break the humblebrag about the new jerb there, fuchsie.

I am thinking that one thing this new-old Dragonlance book is guilty of is off-handedly killing off so many nameless goblins that One-eye would have a seizure.

The problem with Heinlein is that so many of his novels are hopelessly out of date now, given what we've learned about various planets and moons since his books were published.

One of the few I can think of that isn't out of date is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Not just planets and moons!

Seriously: Slide-rules? Come on.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Nice way to break the humblebrag about the new jerb there, fuchsie.

I am thinking that one thing this new-old Dragonlance book is guilty of is off-handedly killing off so many nameless goblins that One-eye would have a seizure.

Not just planets and moons!

Seriously: Slide-rules? Come on.

Heinlein grew up in a time when that era's equivalent of a "nerd" always carried a slide rule around, and before everyone had computers (whether on a tabletop or in their pocket). I was never good at math, so I opted for the middle stream of math in high school. The math class I took in Grade 10 was geared toward those with problems in certain areas, and was a go-at-your-own-pace setup. You could do a unit in two days or two weeks - however long it took, in any order you wanted, as long as you completed all of them by the end of the trimester and passed the tests.

So I learned where my strengths and weaknesses were, and could get extra help if needed. One of the units we had was on the slide rule. I still have mine, though I haven't used it in many years.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood): It's decent, and it solves 1984's main issue with sex. But I felt that it was inconsistent, definitely uncertain; one sentence will be about the present situation and the next will be about the border with Canada. That's really the trouble with unreliable narrators. The main character is aware of this and tells the reader that she can't remember everything. The epilogue explains it a little but but makes things less understandable, and really just made me question if the way it was told was actually possible.

Spoiler :

Supposedly the book was recorded by the main character and it's been transcribed afterwards, but because the tape recordings were ancient technology at the time it was transcribed and the tapes weren't in order, the characters in the epilogue tell the reader that they pretty much guessed everything, and only give the reader more questions about what actually happened. The recordings can't have been done during the events of the book because the main character doesn't anticipate later events (like meeting an important character), but it can't have been done afterwards because it seems improbable that she would get a tape recorder and then send the tapes back to Massachusetts. Really the problem is that the book is written more like a story than a recording; the book does seem to make some more sense by saying it's a recording, but it raises more questions as well.

Atwood forgets speech marks and capital letters sometimes, but it looks intentional. The feminist message is pretty clear, which I suppose is the most important part because I have to use this book for another assignment. Fits in well with all the stuff going on in NZ with that fundamentalist Christian colony we have on the West Coast.

I've read this book many times over the years since the '80s (one copy wore out so I had to replace it). It was adapted to a movie in 1990 and later to opera and ballet. Now it's a TV show, currently in its 5th season. It looks like this season is laying the foundation for the next series that's based on the sequel, called The Testaments.

The thing about when and where Offred records her story is uncertain because the indigenous scholars discussing it at their far-future symposium have had to treat it as an artifact of the Gilead era - like a find in an archaeology dig. As with any artifact, unless it's modern enough to be extensively documented in real-time, there will always be questions. I find the book realistic in this respect, as they really don't know everything and have to take their best guess based on whatever information they have at their present time.

As for Atwood's writing style in this book, that's her actual writing style in many things she's written (I've read other novels she's written and some of her essays). So she didn't forget anything. That's how she writes. It's similar to how Alan Paton wrote Cry, The Beloved Country, a novel set in South Africa during apartheid. There are no quotation marks to indicate dialogue. The author does it differently, and the reader has to adjust their perception of it. Some people manage (I did), but others may not.

As for THT being a feminist novel, it definitely is. In an ironic twist, the star of the TV show is Elisabeth Moss - who is a practicing Scientologist. This had the bizarre situation of the press asking Moss, "Is The Handmaid's Tale" a feminist novel?", and Moss - whose cult doesn't embrace feminism - said no. Margaret Atwood was present at that media event, and was very displeased at that answer and let Moss know it. Moss had to retract what she said and her new answer was a mealy-mouthed tap dance of trying to please both Atwood (who was right) and her cult upbringing.

 

[Arakhor]

Wikipedia says she identifies as a feminist, so maybe she's updated her views since.