What Are You Reading? Third Quarter, 2023

[Zorral]

Naomi Klein's Doppleganger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelganger_(Klein_book)

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

And with finishing Octopussy and The Living Daylights, my Fleming Bond journey is at an end. Some of the books are great, but like with the movies some not so much.

Now it's time to finish Open and The Inner Game of Tennis. I'll start reading Life of Pi and 300 soon. Once I clear those out it's finally time to read Lord of the Rings. 

Edited September 21, 2023 by Tywin et al.

[IlyaP]

Finished reading Adam Christopher's Dishonored: The Corroded Man, which is the first of three novels he wrote in that playground. Can say without hesitation it's one of the better tie-ins that I've read over the years, and has some interesting ideas and presents characters with legitimately interesting challenges. 

[LongRider]

15 hours ago, Zorral said:

Naomi Klein's Doppleganger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelganger_(Klein_book)

I listened to a podcast about this book with an interview with Klein, how did you like it?  I do want to read it too.

Here is a link to the podcast too. 

171: Cracking the Mirror World (w/Naomi Klein) — Conspirituality

[Zorral]

On 9/21/2023 at 11:12 AM, LongRider said:

I do want to read it too.

She does an excellent job of showing us the history of our current contretemps, our dreadful situation, that anything 'we' believe, 'they' believe and propagate is actually evil and satanic -- which goes rather further than 'we' believing they are cruel, willfully deluded for the sake of money and recognition, or just because 'they' like being cruel and hateful w/o repercussion.  It's a mirror world.  I feel a lot more pessimistic about all this than she's gotten herself to say, admit by now.

The post here regarding The Warlord Chronicles -- this is related to the above, btw! -- got me recollecting that in the books, Guinevere can't stand to have anything not beautiful in her surroundings and this includes, maybe even particularly, people.  She sees them as not only inferior but harmful to her.  This came about due to the emergence of tR>>p's petulant whining orders that he wouldn't meet with a dreadfully wounded veteran.  He didn't want that person anywhere around him.  Woo.  Cornwell could really nail characters and characteristics, for good and for evil, that run through our history always.

[LongRider]

On 9/20/2023 at 8:43 PM, Tywin et al. said:

Once I clear those out it's finally time to read Lord of the Rings. 

Go ahead Ty and read LotR first, you know you want to!               

[LongRider]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Cornwell could really nail characters and characteristics, for good and for evil, that run through our history always.

A friend of mine told me that the Merlin portrayed in the new series based on The Warlord Chronicles is young, good looking and nice.    Uh, no, no, and fuck no!   I want my Merlin to be a crabby old jerk who says hilarious things about poetry and treats Nimue quite badly.  An old Druid priest who tries to bring back the Old Pagan Gods, if I can't have this Merlin, then why bother.  Merlin wasn't exactly evil, but he wasn't exactly good either.  

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

27 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Go ahead Ty and read LotR first, you know you want to!               

Idk, Open is pretty good. And 300 will honestly take just a couple hours. 

However, if you buy me this I may consider letting them jump the line.

[LongRider]

24 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

However, if you buy me this I may consider letting them jump the line.

   Dream on goofball, it ain't happenin'!

[Zorral]

35 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Merlin wasn't exactly evil, but he wasn't exactly good either.  

He was obsessed with the fixation that bringing back the Old Gods would make a much easier and finer world -- which even Derfel knows in his heart is the "easy way out," much easier than accepting what is is what is, and then Doing Something.  Leave it to the gods, and we don't have responsibility.  Even so he sides with Merlin, not Arthur -- who has his own idée fixe.  I really admired that work of Derfel to know himself and others around him.  And still ride off with Merlin to almost certain death to find the mythical caldron.

[Wilbur]

On 9/16/2023 at 3:07 PM, Wilbur said:

...Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City read by Ray Sawyer...

Inspired to find the sequel to the above, I pulled down Ray Sawyer's reading of How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It, the second of The Siege Trilogy.

Once again, Holt's character development / gradual reveal is professional and skilled, drawing the reader into alignment with the various characters.  The plot works very well, with the various Chekov's Guns stored and then used correctly and in the proper time.  Also, and this is important for me, the siege of Constantinople is clearly the basis of the story, but he avoids the risks of hewing too close to the historical events, eventually breaking free of the straight-jacket of paint-by-numbers historicity without violating the spirit of the siege.

Normally, I would have stopped listening to this book after a chapter or two, as the protagonist is an actor, and I just don't care about actors' lives or their concerns.  In fact, the only books about actors not named Shakespeare than I can think of worth reading since anything Mary Renault's heyday is the Dagmar Shaw stories by Walter Jon Williams.   But Holt shows the protagonist, sets up expectations, and then breaks down those expectations with a revelation about the character through his actions in each chapter that is just enough to keep me hooked.  And by the end, I was happy I got through to the conclusion.

Furthermore, although this is a sequel, the first book is setting, but not key to enjoying the book.  A few faint references show through here and there, and some secondary characters re-appear, but reading the first book isn't necessary to enjoying the second.  A light touch that spices up the enjoyment, that is all.

So in summary, not essential reading, but very good reading.

[Zorral]

I'm continuing to ponder Derfel's decision in Enemy of God (1996), the second vol. of The Warlord Chronicles to accompany Merlin in the quest for the cauldron, one of the mythical Treasures of Britain, to almost certain horrible and prolonged torture and death -- and his great love also determined to do so, because only a Virgin can claim this Treasure.

This is out of the sense of honor possessed by both Derfel and his love, Princess Ceinwyn of Powys, particularly as they have also vowed to not sexually/physically consummate their mutual love until the quest is achieved, which they both are keenly aware may well mean they never will, instead experience prolonged agonies.  This is difficult if not impossible for our own era to comprehend, or even believe in.  But it is out of their contemporary idealism, at the least, that Cornwell explores so deftly, to show us in our time, that as L.. Hartley said, "The past is a different country; they do things differently there.

No matter how much our essential personal characteristics transmit through time, yet .. and yet .. some things are different.

This pertains even to "facts", historical facts. Which is what this chronicle Derfel's wiriting at the end of his life in the monastery is about.  What doesn't change is how we can and do change what happened to what we want happen (which is also why so many rulers paid very well poets and players and minstrels and historians/chroniclers etc.). As example, like the queen for whom Derfel composes the Chronicle, many readers of Cornwell's Chronicles found it difficult as hell to accept the portrait of Lancelot that isn't the one propagated by the Edwards and Malory and the Pre-Raphaelites, etc. while showing what such ages were likely more like than those later idealized, fantasy depictions.  For in the end, the legend of King Arthur is still legend -- made-up, imaginary, fantasy -- not historical fact.  This is one of the reasons I so like these books -- that, and their entertainment value too, of course! It always works -- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance!  Print the legend, not the truth.

Our current world of rulers have forgotten largely it seems that ultimately the legends should show up after one's left the stage.  In the world of digital technology and communications there are so many fact checkers out there -- despite the clogging all the information systems with shit, as They crow They are doing, and doing so successfully. 

Edited September 23, 2023 by Zorral

[dog-days]

Read The Bullet that Missed, the third instalment of Richard Osman's cosy crime series The Thursday Murder Club. Liked it -- it was sometimes touching and funny -- though bits of the plot didn't seem to hang together all that well and in general it needed more focus. I've been reading it in small amounts over a couple of weeks, so wasn't gripped by it, but never so bored that I thought of giving up. 

[VisenyaTargaryen]

I finished the audiobook of The Princess Diarist, by Carrie Fisher a few days ago. I wasn't planning on reading it, but I needed something fun and an easy reading to keep me occupied while I tried to get some sun and improve my vitamin D levels. It wasn't as funny and interesting as Wishful Drinking, but I still enjoyed it and it made me miss Carrie a lot, even though I've never watched any of her movies and only like her as a writer.

I'm also reading American Prometheus. I haven't watched Oppenheimer yet, so I thought I should give the book a shot, since I love reading about famous people (John Nash's biography, A Beautiful Mind, was great!). Tbh, I find Oppie annoying, pretentious, and I can't see why everyone was so enamoured by his charisma and aura (I think I'd have preferred reading about folks like Fermi, Dirac, or von Neumann due to their personalities). I was also expecting more details about Oppie's life prior to The Manhattan Project. But overall, I'm still enjoying it a lot and I think the author did a good job at research and at not making the book dull or dry, which happens to a lot of biographies.

[Zorral]

5 hours ago, dog-days said:

he Thursday Murder Club

Brought home yesterday, in the pouring rain, the latest Thursday Murder Club, The Last Devil to Die.  While reading the one previous it felt to me the series had likely hit its sell-by date.  Several Brit readers have said this is definitely the case after reading The Last Devil to Die.  Time to move on, they say.  I haven't started it yet, but might tonight, if it continues to rain like it has all yesterday and so far today.

[dog-days]

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Brought home yesterday, in the pouring rain, the latest Thursday Murder Club, The Last Devil to Die.  While reading the one previous it felt to me the series had likely hit its sell-by date.  Several Brit readers have said this is definitely the case after reading The Last Devil to Die.  Time to move on, they say.  I haven't started it yet, but might tonight, if it continues to rain like it has all yesterday and so far today.

Yes, finishing book three today had a fair bit to do with the lousy weather. I think Osman needs to resolve the Stephen plot in some sense before closing the series. Not that he's a plot, exactly, but he feels like a Chekhov's something. There should be a book based around an element from his past, and one that I guess that lets him die peacefully at the end. 

Next up is going to be a Lindsey Davis Desperate Undertaking. 

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, dog-days said:

the Stephen plot

From what I understand this happens.   I'll write it up -- non-spoilers -- in the Mysteries thread, when I've read it. Osman is starting a new series, btw, according to the interview in the Guardian.

It's still pouring rain, after all, at 530 PM.

 

Edited September 24, 2023 by Zorral

[Peadar]

I finished Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe -- a reread after decades. It's *very* male-gazey, something my teenaged self failed to notice at all. Onto part two...

[Ser Not Appearing]

I recently picked back up my reread of The Heroes and finished that (somehow, I had lost interest) and decided to jump into re-reading Red Country which had been among my favorite on first read.

I chewed through Red Country pretty quick. I really enjoy that one.

I don't know what I want to read next. My nephew is trying to convince me to try Horus Rising. I also kind of want to re-read Dune and progress to the latter books which I've never read. I also kind of want to listen to some podcasts and try to jump back into writing my own book. I also have two Audible credits staring me in the face and maybe a new horizon and unexpected adventure should come next.

I don't know.

[dog-days]

T Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon's web comic continues. Smiting Cancer with Rooster the Paladin