What are you reading right now?

[glass_houses]

I've started Michael Crichton's 'Andromeda Strain'. I got curious after I watched the latest miniseries. We'll see how it goes. It's very annoying but there aren't many cheap volumes of Crichton books around. I don't think many of them have been reprinted for a while. They're charging best seller prices for the Kindle edition, though.

 

[Wampak]

I've started Michael Crichton's 'Andromeda Strain'. I got curious after I watched the latest miniseries. We'll see how it goes. It's very annoying but there aren't many cheap volumes of Crichton books around. I don't think many of them have been reprinted for a while. They're charging best seller prices for the Kindle edition, though.

What country do you live in? Crichton's books are some of the most reprinted in the world.

 

[CowPox]

Just finished StarShip troopers and kinda want to read Queer by burroughs since i've kinda been on a miny beat kick this winter but i don't want anything overly faggy at the moment, i stared at my bookshelf but nothing popped out, maybe i'll continue this scifi trend, until then keep your ears open for frying bacon.

 

[CowPox]

I've started Michael Crichton's 'Andromeda Strain'. I got curious after I watched the latest miniseries. We'll see how it goes. It's very annoying but there aren't many cheap volumes of Crichton books around. I don't think many of them have been reprinted for a while. They're charging best seller prices for the Kindle edition, though.

I see them at goodwill all the time.

 

[PoC wagner group]

why we sleep by mathew walker which is a pretty well written book about mental, physical and societal effects of sleep deprivation. overall good read

 

[Ferdinand Bardamu]

Death On Credit and The Crying Of Lot 49

 

[WhiskeyZuluLima]

Space Marine Battles novels always make for super simple good reading, just ape your way through the crusade of a planet because why not.

Giving the first Discworld novel a chance, not sure if I'll stick with that. I'm positive that a fair few expressions and phrases go over my head due to being non-British.

There's not a whole lot of British-ism to Discworld I've noticed, being from the UK granted, and honestly I think you'll find that just the fundamental ridiculousness of the work pretty compelling. As a note for future Discworld reading if you do continue: there's no real continuity through the whole lot in the form of order of release, they're all just sub-series within the central world - so you may find one thread more interesting than others. The books specifically in the series of Death are especially funny to me (https://www.goodreads.com/series/109516-death), so at the very least enjoy the silliness of Mort.

 

[Power Glove]

I've started Michael Crichton's 'Andromeda Strain'. I got curious after I watched the latest miniseries. We'll see how it goes. It's very annoying but there aren't many cheap volumes of Crichton books around. I don't think many of them have been reprinted for a while. They're charging best seller prices for the Kindle edition, though.

I should really start a small Crichton collection, easily one of my favourite authors.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I read the first Witcher series book "Blood of Elves". While it's overall alright, after finishing it I thought if I really want to proceed to the next book and decided that no, that's enough. The main issue is that, playing the games, I already know what's going to happen, a lot of the reveals and that out of all the characters in the first book nearly all of them appear in the games (and anyone not appearing is very likely to be dead), making me feel like the world is populated by tiny amount of people and everyone else is there to be killed or an NPC.
Furthermore, I mainly liked book Geralt due to liking the game Geralt, but the book version is very much as typical power fantasy as you are going to get. Being a super badass everyone knows and respects, including cucking another character just because with no real point storywise, logic or buildup.
Also the least said about Ciri the better. She's the typical boring protégé can-do-it-all with her chapters being very boring but with creepy over emphasis on her 13 year old body.

 

[Patrick Bait-man]

A Harry Potter book a day keeps the trannies away.

 

[Jewthulhu]

The Divine Comedy was decent. Paradisio was ok, though not as good as some people told me it was. I don't know if I'm just too cynical, or if learning that Beatrice was some random women Dante met once distracted me. Maybe a bit of both.

 

[Twinkletard]

I've just started reading the Eternal Champion by Moorcock. I can't believe I haven't read these books yet

 

[WhiskeyJack]

Started "The Eiger Sanction" today; so far it is remarkably similar to the Eastwood film version, almost word-for-word at times. His film was barely an adaptation, it turns out. I expected most of the sexual hijinks were added by Ol' Clint, but if anything he downplayed the sexy bits. So far the only real change is that the gay villain's dog (a Yorkie named "Faggot") actually survives in Eastwood's film but gets eaten by the gay guy in the original book version. Guess Clint didn't think the hero should effectively kill a dog.

 

[Candlelight Desolation]

I finished reading High Minds by Simon Heffer earlier tonight. It was published in recent years, and it's a history book about steadily growing societal, legal, and political changes throughout the course of Victorian England. It also features the exploits of prominent Britons such as Charles Darwin, William Gladstone, and Florence Nightingale, and the book also talks about matters such as the poor sanitary and living conditions of the Victorian Era as well as religious attitudes and the growing improvement of people's living conditions as the four decades the book covers went on. I first found out about this book on /lit/ in a history book thread when I asked for suggestions for books that are like H.W. Brands's Dreams of El Dorado except with Victorian Britain instead of the American Frontier.

However, if you're really interested, please be aware that this only covers Victorian history up to 1880 and is focused ONLY on Victorian England. Queen Victoria herself is mentioned often, though she is surprisingly not a prominent player in the book, unlike Gladstone. So if you are walking into this expecting to hear a biographical piece on Queen Victoria or perhaps about the British Raj or Jack the Ripper, prepare to be disappointed. If you're concerned this book is woke, it's not. I did research on the author, and Simon Heffer is a Tory who has spoken out against laws liberalizing divorce and abortion. However, it's clear he has an admiration for Gladstone, and I gained one, too after finishing the book. If High Minds is anything to go by, Gladstone was kind of an English Theodore Roosevelt with his passing of laws promoting city and food sanitation as well as ending child labor.

 

[skykiii]

I found a copy of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson in a Goodwill, and just got past the first chapter.

Damn, I miss when books were short and easy to read and didn't read like a frustrated screenplay writer hastily adapting a script to a novel....

..... But there is one thing I hate about getting things at Goodwill. So often, books will have markings in them. For some this makes sense (I have copies of Iliad and Odyssey that have pencils in the margins). But this copy of Hill House has just... random highlighting, where I'm like, "why is this being highlit?" It seems like just random phrases, stuff like "you know" and "One more person." At least the term "maniac juxtaposition" stands out now, I guess.

Really this wouldn't bother me except that at first the orange highlight marker is... really attention grabbing, so the highlighted phrases are the first thing I notice. Thankfully, I guess this marker ran out of ink because the previous owner switches to a more subtle yellow highlighter which I took awhile to even notice was there.

.......................

I also just finished reading Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, the book the animated film Secret of NIMH is based on. It was a fun read, but for the curious... the movie starts out accurate (though leaving out a lot of details and context) but sharply diverges once Frisby (and yes, its Frisby in the book, but Brisby in the movie)... but once she goes to actually visit the rats, it sharply diverges.

One reason I read the book at all though is because I was always curious what exactly Jonathan Brisby did that made him such a fucking legend to these rats. The movie (and its sequel) are vague about this... which it turns out is for the best, as it allows you to build up the legend in your head. When I read the book and found out... it was actually kind of a "that's it? That's why he's so special?" moment.

For those who are curious: Basically during the Rats' (and mice) original escape from Nimh, there was a point where essentially a door was locked from the outside and the one gap was too small for rats to fit through, but both Jonathan and Mr Ages fit just fine and thus could get outside and open 'er up. Essentially Jonathan is a fucking hero for opening a door. Other than that, he actually had very little to do with the actual escape from Nimh--it was actually Nicodemus, Justin, and Jenner who did the brunt of the work.

It's the literary equivalent of that scene in Star Wars The Phantom Menace where R2D2 is given full honors just for repairing one doohickey.

 

[Hazel Motes]

I finished reading High Minds by Simon Heffer earlier tonight. It was published in recent years, and it's a history book about steadily growing societal, legal, and political changes throughout the course of Victorian England. It also features the exploits of prominent Britons such as Charles Darwin, William Gladstone, and Florence Nightingale, and the book also talks about matters such as the poor sanitary and living conditions of the Victorian Era as well as religious attitudes and the growing improvement of people's living conditions as the four decades the book covers went on. I first found out about this book on /lit/ in a history book thread when I asked for suggestions for books that are like H.W. Brands's Dreams of El Dorado except with Victorian Britain instead of the American Frontier.

However, if you're really interested, please be aware that this only covers Victorian history up to 1880 and is focused ONLY on Victorian England. Queen Victoria herself is mentioned often, though she is surprisingly not a prominent player in the book, unlike Gladstone. So if you are walking into this expecting to hear a biographical piece on Queen Victoria or perhaps about the British Raj or Jack the Ripper, prepare to be disappointed. If you're concerned this book is woke, it's not. I did research on the author, and Simon Heffer is a Tory who has spoken out against laws liberalizing divorce and abortion. However, it's clear he has an admiration for Gladstone, and I gained one, too after finishing the book. If High Minds is anything to go by, Gladstone was kind of an English Theodore Roosevelt with his passing of laws promoting city and food sanitation as well as ending child labor.

Man, I recently finished Heffer's book on grammar. I bought it for two quid and it turned out to be signed by him. I also have Age of Decadence which I used for my dissertation.

 

[glass_houses]

What country do you live in? Crichton's books are some of the most reprinted in the world.

I see them at goodwill all the time.

I'm in Australia. Crichton was really popular here too, but I've not been seeing many of his books in op shops for a few years now. It may be that I just have terrible timing/taste in op shops. There are a shitton of his books on eBay, but many titles are a lot cheaper than others.

There's not a whole lot of British-ism to Discworld I've noticed, being from the UK granted, and honestly I think you'll find that just the fundamental ridiculousness of the work pretty compelling. As a note for future Discworld reading if you do continue: there's no real continuity through the whole lot in the form of order of release, they're all just sub-series within the central world - so you may find one thread more interesting than others. The books specifically in the series of Death are especially funny to me (https://www.goodreads.com/series/109516-death), so at the very least enjoy the silliness of Mort.

IMHO the Discworld doesn't really hit its stride until Mort or Sourcery. The Death books are also favourites of mine, especially when Susan is featured. I love the Moist von Lipwig books though, he's just such a slippery bastard, and the Patrician is amazing in them. I didn't get very far into Raising Steam, though; I found it so upsetting. It was obvious that Pratchett was focused in getting as many books finished as he could before he died, and Raising Steam was the product of Pratchett's writing assistant and Pratchett's deteriorating brain. I just couldn't see the old Sir Terry in those pages. I ended up giving my copy to my father, I couldn't bear the sight of it. I've been reading and rereading all of Pratchett's works since I was twelve, and when Sir Terry died I felt like I'd lost a close personal friend that I'd had for decades.

I don't know how big of an industry this is, but consoomer Bibles seem especially cursed:

I can understand wanting to present the word of God in a beautiful fashion, but calling yourself "Humble Lamb" when your cheapest option starts at 130$ is a bit much.

I suspect that at least some buyers aren't consoomers so much as they're after heirlooms or meaningful gifts for their family. The name 'Humble Lamb', however, is probably on of the most cynical marketing strategies I've come across for a ways.

Man, I recently finished Heffer's book on grammar. I bought it for two quid and it turned out to be signed by him. I also have Age of Decadence which I used for my dissertation.

A few years back I picked up the first three Dexter books by Jeff Lindsay in an op shop. Got them home and discovered that they were all signed, so that was a nice bonus. They were much reprinted paperbacks, however, and this was also past the Dexter heyday, so unfortunately they weren't worth anything. But it was definitely a, "Oh wow!" moment. It was one of those times where I wished I could be more of a fan of something so I could appreciate it properly.

 

[Dumcumpster]

Got this for Christmas but I've finally gotten a chance to read it. Very good stuff.

 

[Usagi-Stop]

I'm reading the first game of thrones book. I haven't read anything in a long fucking time and I figured it'd be a good way to get back into reading. I have listened to some audiobooks recently, but I don't think that really counts.

 

[glass_houses]

I have listened to some audiobooks recently, but I don't think that really counts.

I wondered about it for a long time, and I've come to the conclusion that it does count. Even though you're only listening, you're still absorbing the exact same information. Certainly there are many books out there that lose in the transfer to audio, but most of them don't. I listened to audio books and creepypasta when I was still doing laboratory work. I was able to get through a lot of HP Lovecraft books that way. In text I find Lovecraft to be rather dry, but a good narrator really brings his work to life.

Read Max Ehrlich's The Cult. I think that when it was written it would have shocked many people, but I've done a fair amount of prior reading on cults and psychology, so I was able to concentrate more on the story in of itself. Truthfully, I found it to be rather bare bones, the characters badly developed, and the denouement unsatisfying and predictable. It describes brainwashing and mind control in a lot of detail, however, so I think anyone not already familiar with that would find the book a lot more interesting than I did. It was okay, I guess, but I'll pass my copy along to someone else.