What are you reading right now?

[Alexander Thaut]

Was looking into Alistair Maclean, anyone have recommendations on which book or books to start with?

How is Robert Silverberg's Book of Skulls?

 

[fist_of_khonshu]

I'm currently reading Voices From Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich. It's testimonies from Chernobylites, Liquidators and etc who experienced first hand the disasters Chernobyl caused. It's a very informative look at just how much if affected people's lives and how the Soviet People didn't understand the true damage that radiation causes.

 

[Carnavoyeur]

Finished:
Hiroshima - Man, what happened to journalists? The way it was written without any sort of slant, without preaching, just simply relaying these people's lives was so effective.
All Quiet on the Western Front - meh. I guess the only reason it's constantly touted as "the best war novel of all time" is simply because it's so anti-war. The fact that Remarque only spent like a month actually in the trenches kind of soured it a bit for me as well. I kind of want to watch the 1930 film now though.
In Pursuit of the Truth - A decent autobio of a former Metropolitan Police detective. He seems like a pleasant chap.

I'm going to read No Longer Human next. I'm in the mood for a real bummer.

 

[ScurvyRat]

All Quiet on the Western Front - meh.

the part that really stuck with me for over 10 years was the screaming of the horses dying.

 

[Commander X]

Current reads, the most recent entries in Loren Estelman's series of novels about Detroit-based private investigator Amos Walker, who debuted in the 1980 novel Motor City Blue and, asides from a gap of some years back in the 1990s has been reliably published, and there have been various short stories as well. One of the perhaps last examples of an "old fashioned" hardboiled private in the tradition of Hammett, Chandler, MacDonald, etc. and still going strong with the mysteries, plotting and dark humor after all of these years. Walker is a dogged tough guy, an increasingly analog man in a digital world who as the years have gone by proved that good ol' legwork can still get the job done, though he makes some concessions to the modern age (in one of the mid 00s entries, Walker finally gets a cell phone - but it's an older model with a retractable antenna.)

Cutthroat Dogs finds Walker walking into a bank, taking notice of a suspicious-acting character and thwarting the would-be robber after he pulls a gun on a teller. Chrys, the grateful teller, meets with Walker and wants him to look into the case of her older brother, Dan Corbeil, who was tried and convicted of murdering his college girlfriend, April Goss. April was found dead in her bathtub and what was initially thought to be a suicide was deemed murder. After all these years, Walker can't make any promises but when he digs, he gets little help from the resigned-to-his-fate Dan, and faces antagonism from the public defender who'd represented Mr. Corbeil at trial, and April Goss' father, Charles Goss, who turned his daughter's case into a public crusade against criminals and now hosts the titular popular true crime and tipline show.

In Monkey in the Middle, Walker has just learned that his ex-wife, Catherine, has passed away from cancer, he experiences a wave of complex and conflicting emotions. In the midst of this, he is approached for help by Shane Sothern, a top-notch research assistant wanting to strike out on his own as a investigative journalist who believes he's being followed by people out to discover the identity of his confidential source. Walker's tailing of his own client on foot and by bus

...watching the scenery deteriorate from theaters and municipal buildings to public housing; the pipe dream of a dull-witted former governor who knew nothing of meth labs and crack houses, now waiting their turn at demolition; had been waiting for decades.

reveals that he is indeed being followed around by people who seem like feds. The case gets complicated when Walker finds out Sothern's source is a fugitive whistleblower, Abelia Hunt, wanted for leaking government secrets. Confusing issues further, Walker learns Catherine was under surveillance as well. The partner of a murdered NSA agent, Hunt's publicity-hound defense attorney, and a former government assassin Walker encountered years ago in an earlier novel, who had been involved with Catherine once all bring their pieces of the puzzle.

In City Walls, while in Cleveland, away from his usual territory Walker is approached by an automobile tycoon, Emmett Yale, to look into the shooting death of his stepson. Yale, who’s under federal scrutiny after his company's new self-driving cars crashed during test runs, believes it wasn't a another one of a recent outbreak of cases of random shooters taking potshots at motorists on the highway, but related to his business, suspecting his stepson was involved in insider trading with a former executive. Walker agrees to investigate and quicky finds a trail that includes more victims to obscure matters.

In the most recent novel, Smoke on the Water Detroit is being overwhelmed by smoke drifting in from Canadian wildfires

You never know what summer will bring to southeast Michigan. No sooner had the storm from Canada had blown itself out than had Ontario had caught fire, burning an area roughly the size of Massachusetts and spreading smoke--depressing when you could see it, poisonous when you couldn't--over the entire metropolitan area. For weeks the air smelled like a wet dog dipped in lip wax.

and Walker is hired by a representative of a mid-sized law firm to look into the killing of a junior member, a victim of a hit-and-run while crossing a street. He was carrying sensitive legal files on him at the time that have gone missing, and the firm wants them back, especially one that contains documents from a wrongful termination suit that involved a phony eco-terrorism racket as a cover for industrial sabotage. Walker soon identifies the killer vehicle and learns it was owned by the victim and stolen by whoever ran him down. Attempting to discover the identity of the mystery driver, Walker digs but the case gets more and more complicated.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

Finished Children of Memory. The last couple of chapters turns a lot on it's head in a very good way. It's gets pretty philosophical but doesn't get ahead of itself, not for everybody but I certainly liked it. No idea if there will be another one in the series coming out but I think it's Adrian Tchaikovsky's big break as an author so I would imagine there would be. Guy cranks out a lot of books from the look of it though so in the future I'll have to give something else of his a try.

Just started Black Company over again, my first try to read it was filled with random little distractions and starting it again made me realize how much basic and important things I missed. I also just love gritty shit about normal people trudging through fantasy stuff so it looks promising. It's been forever since I've read a fantasy novel so I'm looking forward to continuing onward.

 

[ChampFantana]

I've been on a 40k kick recently, read Valdor: Birth of the Imperium, Lion: Son of the Forest and The Emperor's Gift last week.

I'm currently reading Necromunda Omnibus 1 and will dive into Volume 2 once I'm done. The Infinite and the Divine is up next after that.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

started reading Clarke's Childhood's End.

finished the first part. it blows Rendezvous with Rama outta the water in terms of my impression of him. Jeez.

 

[Enigmatic Gale]

I've been reading Dream of the Red Chamber over the past few months, its a novel from the 18th century considered to be one of China's greatest pieces of literature. The relationship between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu is so pure and seeing it fated to crumble is deeply saddening. Its been an enjoyable read so far but the novel's length can be offputting.

 

[Anonymous8330]

War of the Worlds. It's the first Wells I've read, and I really enjoy how he just gets straight down to it. There's no like, "Timmy was a welder with a loose and wayward wife," and sort of coming around to the main point in a circumspect way, only after establishing a mountain of exposition and proving that one can think about life like an adult, as if embarrassed of the subject matter. It's just immediately, "Crazy that aliens are about to invade."

I think that one should always write like this. Don't waste time with "I'm getting there" and "setting up" the climax or main idea, all you're doing is pussyfooting. If aliens are about to invade just say so. It's more impactful when a writer goes full bore rather than trying to finesse.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

War of the Worlds. It's the first Wells I've read, and I really enjoy how he just gets straight down to it. There's no like, "Timmy was a welder with a loose and wayward wife," and sort of coming around to the main point in a circumspect way, only after establishing a mountain of exposition and proving that one can think about life like an adult, as if embarrassed of the subject matter. It's just immediately, "Crazy that aliens are about to invade."

I think that one should always write like this. Don't waste time with "I'm getting there" and "setting up" the climax or main idea, all you're doing is pussyfooting. If aliens are about to invade just say so. It's more impactful when a writer goes full bore rather than trying to finesse.

Wells' most famous novels are all rather short, yet they're well-written.

I'm of the opinion that if a writer's not capable of really letting me get into the meandering slow burn stuff, then just hop to the development of the plot/anything

 

[August Levasseur]

Currently about halfway through the Iliad. It's kinda funny how often it'll go into a diatribe about how Xenophiles son of Kaistolos, Prince of Styria was such a brave warrior and went on such incredible adventures, only to end it with "and then Ajax beaned him in the head with a rock and he died."

 

[Anonymous8330]

Just got caught up on JKR's detective novels

Remember when the first book wasn't selling for shit so her publisher had to leak that it was her

 

[LordOfZhbagva]

I've finished the Witcher books up to Baptism of Fire. Pretty good, enjoyable fantasy adventure/political books. They feel like they drag a bit on occasion, but the political intrigue in them is good enough to make me want to continue and I spend quite a bit of time thinking about it. Total Nilfgaardian death, total elf death, total halfling death, etc

I've also started going through the (commie) 10 book history of the Serbian people and finished the first one. I'm finding it a very enjoyable read that adequately elaborates on the topics it brings up, economy, art, architecture, social structure, politics... I'd like it more if it was even longer (it's 550 pages for the first book), but it's fine. Very nice, if you can read Serbian, I fully recommend it.

And I'm also going through Mark Edward Lewis' Chinese history books and am about 4/5ths through his second book "China between Empires: Northern and Southern Dynasties". It's a nice 350 page book covering (thankfully) both the political (in less detail) and cultural/societal/economic aspects of the longest "inter-dynastic" period of Chinese history, from 220 to 581, a period oftentimes dismissively viewed as merely a period between the Han and the Sui, rather than as I feel it'd be more fair to view it as, a Wei-Jin dynasty. I recommend it aswell.

Now, for the main course - I've been wanting to get into Iranian history and I've picked a couple of books:
-The Persians: Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern Iran, by Homa Katouzian - utter dogshit of a book, extremely moderncentric to the point where it projects modern, Pahlavi era Persian sentiments onto the ancient history, to the point where it's detrimental to the overall history. For an example, the first 180 pages cover Persian myth, Achamenids, and everything from them up to the 20th century in painfully little detail, degrading history into an actual list of names and dates, while the remaining 300 pages cover a century, all in a voice of an obviously self hating emigre faggot. I did not finish this book as I found it too insufferable, self degrading and moderncentric.
-The Persians, by Maria Brosius, a nice little cultural and architectural history of the pre-Islamic Iran. Pleasant, not what I was looking for. If it is what you're looking for, go for it.
-The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History, a pretty good, if too short of a look at the overall Iranian history. I find I can best understand a nations history if I know the overall picture of it from which I can dedicate myself to more niche/specific periods of it better. Very good for an introduction.
-Iran: A Modern History, by Abbas Amanat. Whew, still reading it, it's a behemoth of a book standing at nearly 1200 pages, of which I've only covered some 700. It's good. It does a good job at covering (in increasing detail as the topics become more modern, as it states it will at the very beginning) the Iranian history, starting with the Safavids and progressing onwards. It is well written, it is interesting, it provides insight into some very fun events and it makes you rightly hate the Qajars (despite the objective and neutral stance of the writer). If you're into modern Iranian history, I can recommend it. If you're not, stay the fuck away from this.

All in all, I think I'll take a break from Iran after Abbas' work and eventually come back to it with a few other books focusing on pre-Safavid Iran. I'd like one focusing on pre-Islamic and one focusing on Turkish dominated Iran, as I believe that, eventually, when I bother looking into Arab history, I'll get an adequate knowledge of Arab dominated Iranian history.

Has anyone ever read The Black Company series by Glen Cook?

Yeah, it's pretty good. I enjoyed listening to it in audiobook form as I didn't find it required reading. It was a very fun ride after I got past the intro hurdles, as well, the first segment of the first book was fucking rough and a horrible impression for the book. It was closer to a collection of disconnected sentences than anything else.

didn't he autistically binge-read Gibbon's Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and just get inspired.

I remember hearing similar things and the intro itself gave very strong "Gibbonsian" vibes. If anything, that put me off giving it a shot. I really dislike the cyclical history and the ideas it implies, alongside the dark ages and the massive loss of knowledge, which are almost universally simply local events. Might bother with it eventually, but it's near the bottom of my list.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

War of the Worlds. It's the first Wells I've read, and I really enjoy how he just gets straight down to it. There's no like, "Timmy was a welder with a loose and wayward wife," and sort of coming around to the main point in a circumspect way, only after establishing a mountain of exposition and proving that one can think about life like an adult, as if embarrassed of the subject matter. It's just immediately, "Crazy that aliens are about to invade."

I think that one should always write like this. Don't waste time with "I'm getting there" and "setting up" the climax or main idea, all you're doing is pussyfooting. If aliens are about to invade just say so. It's more impactful when a writer goes full bore rather than trying to finesse.

One of my favorite books by Wells is The Sleeper Awakes. It gets to the point of the story just as fast. It's an 1899 dystopian future novel about a guy that falls asleep for a couple centuries and the wealthy all write him in their wills so they can just turn the estates into megacorps. Has a lot of interesting predictions about what the future would end up looking like. It's a fun little read.

-----

In other news I've read up to the point I was in Black Company and it's so much better when I'm paying attention. Like the characters and I want to know more about the world. Cool shit all around.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

I remember hearing similar things and the intro itself gave very strong "Gibbonsian" vibes. If anything, that put me off giving it a shot. I really dislike the cyclical history and the ideas it implies, alongside the dark ages and the massive loss of knowledge, which are almost universally simply local events. Might bother with it eventually, but it's near the bottom of my list.

I read the first one. It's fine. The thing is that it's an interesting thought experiment and the series introduces plenty of stuff that's become foundational to SF in terms of tropes and cliches and trappings.

In the case of Foundation, there's a loss of knowledge because not all of it is centralized properly. There's more of a good reason for why things drifted apart versus a hodgepodge explanation for our medieval age. I won't spoil it as it's one of the intriguing parts.

If you want Asimov at his best, the short stories are the way to go. The Foundation Trilogy is considered to be canonically important to SF and all that, but it's flawed and highlights Asimov's shortcomings as a writer. Especially since it's still part of his earlier work. I'd compare Foundation and it's "early big idea centric Golden Age SF" to something like Clarke's Childhood's End (reading right now) and I'd say that, this early on in their careers, Clarke's looking to be a better novelist. I'll probably try Asimov's other novels like the Robot/Empire novels and End of Eternity. He seems like enjoyably light reading. I know of an old guy that told me about how Asimov's non-fiction got him through high school and college.

Earnestly wonder who the best Golden Age SF novelist is. I'd wager Asimov's within the top 10 at least, but not the top.

 

[Bigfootstinker]

I've only read one book this year, and it was The Old Man and the Sea, I enjoyed it. I put my bookmark in The Stranger by Camu, but I'm yet to start it.

 

[Rustle]

Just finished 'Gravity's Rainbow' was excellent.

Currently reading 'And the hippos were boiled in their tanks' alongside 'Intersecting Lives' by Francois Dosse

 

[Head Muggle]

Just finished 'Gravity's Rainbow' was excellent.

Currently reading 'And the hippos were boiled in their tanks' alongside 'Intersecting Lives' by Francois Dosse

Have you found GR to be difficult? I've only read Inherent Vice (loved being confused) and Crying of Lot 49. Both I enjoy so I bought V today. I hope to read more Pinecone until the new book comes out.

 

[Rustle]

Have you found GR to be difficult? I've only read Inherent Vice (loved being confused) and Crying of Lot 49. Both I enjoy so I bought V today. I hope to read more Pinecone until the new book comes out.

Hi,
I don't think GR was anymore difficult to read really than TCOL49, it took me about 6 months to finish it. The first and last chapter are both the most difficult parts of the book to read, especially the first chapter 'Beyond The Zero' a lot of shit happens that is really hard to keep up with but to be honest with you it isn't that important really until way later. I would highly recommend sticking with it at least until you get to part 3 'The Zone' which is the best part of the book and relatively easy to follow along with, also highly entertaining. I really liked GR and would recommend it.