What are you READING right now?

[erp]

Just started Fairy Tale by Stephen King.

I read this years ago and just loved it. Easily my favourite Stephen King book.

I'm actually reading Stephen King's Fairy Tale as well, it's great, but he just released it in late 2022.  ERP, you may be thinking of SK's "Eyes of the Dragon" from the mid 1980s which also has a fairy tale-esque feel.  If so, the newer book "Fairy Tale" is definitely worth checking out.  King's still got the magic. 

  - Chops

Thanks for this! I was actually thinking of "Fairie Tale" by Raymond E. Feist, so it clearly wasn't a SK book at all. I'll still take a look at it though!

[Metalcat]

Gangsters of Capitalism

Holy fuck, this is one hell of a book. This is now on my absolute must-read list.

If you don't know about Smedley Butler...well you should, and if you do know about Smedley Butler, then you probably want to read this insane fucking book about him.

There are countless reviews about this book, so I won't go into too much detail, but Butler is essentially a one-man microcosm of US imperialist history.

This is also NOT a dry book. It hits the ground running from the first pages and pretty much never lets up on the fascinating details and critical commentary both from Butler himself and from the author.

Very, very few books have given me the kind of insight that this book has. I STRONGLY recommend it.

This is what the US Naval Institute has to say about the book

"Katz skillfully intertwines the conflicting facets of Butler’s lived experience with the heavy hand of American interventionism in this period. The author’s method of using a travelogue that follows the life of Butler is a useful medium to show the consequences of the past for the present. And this is far more than a history book: The excellent selected bibliography, endnotes, and index make this book a necessary addition to scholars specializing in any of this book’s interrelated subjects."

That's a very polite way of saying that if you have any interest in US history, you kind of have to read this book, because you're probably missing a few puzzle pieces if you don't.

[midweststache]

Just finished Gideon the Ninth (lesbian necromancers in space) and Atlas Six (magical librarian secret society) as beach reads for my recent vacation. Both are the beginning books in trilogies (or, in the case of Gideon, a pending tetralogy).

Gideon was the better book, but Atlas was the more intense cliffhanger, so I'll probably dive into the Atlas Paradox before starting Harrow the Ninth.

I enjoyed both, but Gideon was way more substantive. Atlas Six was very character driven with time jumps that were too big and not enough substantive plot, while Gideon kept me rapt at every page turn.

[TempusFugit]

I'm reading Death's End, the last in The Three Body Problem series.  Anyone else that was on this trilogy get to it yet?  I'm relaxing into it, knowing how much I liked Dark Forest even though that one took some time to get used to.  This one added yet another 100 pages onto the length of the last (which was itself about 100 pages longer than the first), so I guess I'll be reading it for a few weeks.  I'm have no idea what to expect.

I preferred the first book. It felt like the next two were trying to cash in on the popularity of the first and did not match the first book.

I'm about 1/3 through Death's End and I like it so far.

I've had it checked out for a couple weeks and am only 10% of the way through. Once I get into the meat of a book, I burn through it, but it definitely takes me a while to get to the meat.

I think Cixin Liu takes a long time to get to the point in a book, which makes them unnecessarily long. I still enjoyed the first two books in their own way, and I really love the premise behind the dark forest theory.

Finished this yesterday and loved it.  I'm quite forgiving of the length and the random wanderings as I think they added a lot overall to the series and enjoyed almost all the rabbit holes and tangents it went on.  It wasn't perfect, but I am stunned by Cixin Liu's creativity as well as his and his translator's ability to convey complicated concepts in layman's terms.

Ok just finished Death's End and verdict is I liked it.  I think of the trilogy, I most liked the second installment, The Dark Forest.    I found the first of the series to be the least enjoyable, actually.  I started the book last year and kind of put it down for a few months because it didn't grab my attention and was a bit depressing.  Some of that was due to struggling with the Chinese names.  I confess I stopped worrying too much about keeping them straight. 

Because this is a translation, and because the author is Chinese,  I did find myself wondering on a couple of occasions whether the translators had taken any liberties for the sake of the Western reader in regard to cultural references such as the one to Gone With The Wind.  Did a Chinese writer really make that reference or was it originally a reference that no American reader would have known, so another more familiar was substituted?   

Anyway, good trilogy.  Very imaginative. 

It certainly hardened my belief (along with Elon Musk, et al) that we should not be trying to make contact with any alien civilizations.  Bad idea.

Just found out that Netflix has released their show based on the 3 Body Problem.  I’m curious to see how they have handled it, since the books are pretty technical which I’m sure doesn’t translate very well to the visual medium and mass-market audiences. 

[Warlord1986]

'When a Scot Ties the Knot' by Tessa Dare. I need something easy and sweet in my life. @.@

[SunnyDays]

Just finished The Sound of one Hand Clapping by Richard Flanagan.  Unusual book about a grieving alcoholic immigrant man whose wife walks away from him and their 3 year old in 1950s Tasmania.  I didn’t think I’d finish it but I did and can’t decide if I liked it or not.  Just kind of an odd book.

Now starting The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje, about 3 boys thrown together on a ship voyage from Ceylon/Sri Lanka to England who give themselves free run of the ship and all of its mysteries.  And manage to uncover one.  Don’t know what the mystery is yet.  The writing is very good.

[Serendip]

Bring Me the Rhinoceros by John Tarrant...a book about Zen koans that I've been wanting to read for a while. Loving it.