What Are You Reading Now.

The Birth of Tragedy - Nietzsche. Started it years ago and quickly realised I was in over my head. Having now done some background reading of Aristotle, Plato and various anthropological selections I now feel like I’ll appreciate this work more.

Anyone seriously interested in literature and narratives - the dynamic between audience and author - will find this worth looking at imo.

 

Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus: The Lost Hero

Three pages in, liking it!

 

Diving into Nick Hornby recently. Finished High Fidelity, which I really enjoyed, and I'm now midway through Slam. I've discovered that my writing is, at least to some degree, influenced by whoever I'm reading at the moment and right now I'm trying to become better at writing more realistic stories from everyday life so Nick Hornby is perfect

 

Well, I tend to read many books at the same time and since discovering thriftstorebooks.com ... I am currantly reading :

Tenth of December - George Saunders
The Lottery - Shirley Jackson
Full dark, No Stars - Stephen King
The Spooky Art - Norman Mailer
On writing - Stephen King
Random Esseys- Chuck Palahniuk
and
The first few pages on David Copperfield (this ones going to take some time)

 

Well, not now, but two nights ago I just finished Tarzan of the Apes. The original book by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Some surprises, some things I expected. I don't think I'm better for having read it, but it wasn't a waste of my time either.

As a (former) linguist, one thing I wonder about the writers of that era is why they thought language acquisition is so damn easy. Tarzan goes from literate but non-verbal by staring at a couple of books for a while, then picks up perfect French in a matter of months. In At the Mountains of Madness, Lovecraft's characters are able to, by staring at some literally alien hieroglyphics, get a more complete history of a long-dead race than we know now about the Egyptians or Babylonians. In a few hours.

Anyway. Yeah.

 

@Iain Aschendale Nice signature.

 

Thanks! It seemed like a compliment, and I like to change things up every so often.

 

Yeah, that thing in At the Mountains of Madness was pretty expletive dumb and nearly ruined the story for me (the penguins helped.) I get that they were magical Eldritch hieroglyphs, but come on!


So, I've picked up a couple of new (meaning published in the last couple of years) Fantasy books. I wanted something a little different from my usual diet of quasi-European Medieval grimdark.

I started with Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri. This book let's Medieval India, rather than Europe, inform its setting. Already a breath of fresh air! This is a coming of age type thing, which I don't usually go for, but it's nice. I'm already way invested in the characters and their troubles. It's a slow burn, which I enjoy; time will tell if it might not be too slow, as stated in some of the reviews I've read. I'm not very far along, but it's quite good so far.

Next up is Senlin Ascends, which I'm very excited about, precisely because I know next to nothing about it.

 

You might like The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's an alternate history in which the Black Plague killed 98% of Europe's population, rather than 60. A world without white people, basically, in which the Mongols and Arabs slowly repopulate Europe, the major superpowers are China, India, and a Native American coalition. It's got a bit of weirdness to it in that the main characters are reincarnated but always bound together, but it's a pretty good book overall.

 

Thanks, I'll add it to my list! You wouldn't happen to know anything with a strong Ancient Mesopotamian/Egyptian vibe?

 

Not off the top of my head, sorry.

 

Oh well, I'll just write it myself

 

Finished Slam by Nick Hornby and decided to dive into Haruki Murakami. Started reading Kafka on the beach today.

 

Finished the Scotland book and gave it back to the person. It was an enjoyable little read. Got me in a kinda Scottish kick, I`ll be eating porridge and watching Braveheart before you know it. I do have "The Scottish Prisoner" by Diana Gabaldon on my to be read self (I picked up). Right now doing "Chicken Noodle Soup for the Cat Lovers soul." Plan on submitting something to them (the company not a cat lovers book) so reading one of there books. I was also given a book about unlocking my psychic intuition. Might read that one if I need a good laugh.

 

Just picked up the first book of Jane Auel's Earth's Children books because it looked cool, and then The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo.

 

The last two omnibuses of Tsubasa

 

Added: Dude, You're Gonna Be a Dad!: How to Get (Both of You) Through the Next 9 Months by John Pfeiffer.

 

The Terror by Dan Simmons
&
Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn

 

Just finished Lies Sleeping, the latest Peter Grant novel by Ben Aaronovich, and the one that wraps up the conflict that's been building since book 2. It.....didn't entirely work for me, though the book was still a good read overall, and I'm curious to see where the series goes next, and I want to explore more of the wider world.

Spoiler: Thoughts on why it didn't work for me.

One problem was that the climax just kind of happens by pure coincidence. The narrator randomly checks out a place that wasn't that important to the investigation, and the villain just happens to be executing his master plan there at that place at that exact moment.

The other problem was that the Faceless Man had been suffering the recurring villain problem--every time he shows up in person before now, he's been handily beaten (or at least contained) by someone who's meant to be much less powerful. He needed an "it was building up to THIS all along!" impressive master plan to regain credibility, but even at end, we don't even see what the heroes are trying to avert, or get any indication that his plan would have actually worked.

 

it just keep adding on and on!
In addition to The Clan of the Cave Bear and The Ghost Bride, I've added:

• Who Is Dracula's Father? by John Sutherland
• Breathless by Beverly Jenkins
• Saga: Vol 2 by Brian K. Vaughan

 

I'm currently reading The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson. It's not bad, but I've been reading a stream of realistic fiction that seem like memoirs lately, and that has left me feeling sort of "heavy." Hopefully, I'll get to some light-hearted sci-fi and fantasy after this.

 

Triplanetary, by E. E. 'Doc' Smith.

 

Boring, IMHO. A whole novel of infodump. The Lensman series didn't get going until the next book, First Lensman if I remember correctly.

 

Your Soul.