What Are You Reading Now.

Its that time again: Weeding... Where books that have not been checked out in X amount of years get discarded and (hopefully) donated.

Naturally, i raided the pile and came out with

• Arabella of Mars by David D Levine
• the entire Athenian Mystery series by Gary Corby
• 4 Beverly Jenkins paperbacks

-adds them to my list of already started books and audios-

 

Robert McKee's books on writing. His blending of movies, plays, and novels in his discussions on writing add context to the topics.

 

I finished The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward last night. It was trippy, psychotic and dark. On the cover, Stephen King is quoted as calling it "A true nerve-shredder that keeps it's mind-blowing secrets to the very end." I'm not sure my nerves were shredded, but he was right about the rest of it. I did not see it coming.

Now I'm onto The Great Gatsby. I've started this book twice before and didn't get very far. Maybe this audio version read by Jake Gyllenhaal will keep my attention. I mean it's only four and a half hours long, for God's sake. So far, so good too. I'm a third of the way through already, not that anything has happened in that amount of time. I read a collection of Fitzgerald's shorts a couple of years ago. They were very hit or miss. I enjoy his prose style. He's clever and concise. I just don't know if he's much of a story teller most of the time. "Benjamin button" and a couple of others were worth the read. The rest bored me to tears.

 

I struggled to get through Crime and Punishment. Good story. Someone later told me I was probably reading the original translation, which was contemporary to Dickens, and that more modern translations are easier to read.

 

The most difficult book I ever finished was The Trial by Kafka. Reading it was a trial by ordeal.

 

War and peace was the toughest read for me. At several points it was War and Źzzzzz. Great sleeping pill.

 

Page and a half paragraphs and no paragraph breaks for dialogue.

 

I was forced to read that book back in high school and hated it. Took another crack at it in my thirties and...

...hated it even more. Good luck.

 

Why did you hate it? I’ve not read it, just trying to get an idea. It’s on my shelf.

 

Okay, so I finished The Great Gatsby. Meh. It was alright. I'm glad I didn't have to invest more than four and a half hours in it, and Jake Gyllenhaal's performance was somewhat lacking. I thought he could do no wrong, but apparently voice acting, or at least reading audiobooks, just isn't his thing. His sister did a bang up job on The Bell Jar though. I highly recommend that one.

I need a modern horror to cleanse my palate after all that bland. Enter Home Before Dark by Riley Sager. Let's see how that goes, shall we?

 

It's just a late example of the classic literature problem of people with no discernable income moping around. I know that's part of the theme, but I can't relate at all to people whose primary concern in life is which party to attend and how many people attended theirs vs Lord Poopington's last Saturday.

Honestly that's all the critique I can give of it as my brain refused to waste RAM space and flushes the book out within a couple months of reading it each time. I may have even read it more than twice.

No, this isn't a self-harm image. IYKYK:

 

Behind on what I've been reading by three books now. I finished the Shuddering and it was written like a classic slasher film. Not bad, but not my favorite. I did like the descriptions of the creatures.

Then I read Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon. I've read several of his books, and have several on my shelf to read, but this one was by far my least favorite. Very rambling and at one point goes on a twenty page sentence. Yes. One sentence over twenty pages. It reminded me of Rand, just far more imagery and lyrical language.

And then tonight I accidentally started and finished The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson. Spooky book. I gave it four stars because the ending left me a little myeh after all the spooky bad people stuff, and that's not to say I don't like a happy ending (although I'm starting to wonder...). It just felt rushed and like I was being hurried out the door.

Now I'm going to read It's Not About the Burqa, a collection of essays written by Muslim women. Looking forward to this one quite a bit.

 

I reckon I'm in the minority here, but I like The Great Gatsby a lot and have read it several times. Your spoiler information is kinda the point of the whole novel. No one evolves in the book except the narrator who is profoundly affected by events and the way these wealthy people react to them.

Oddly enough, I can't recall whether Gatsby was required reading at any point. I don't think so. My nominee for most godawful book ever assigned in high school is Lord of the Flies. With that one, I blessed my ability to grasp a plot while skimming over a story as quickly and superficially as possible. My one word review of that one is "Blecch."

Currently I'm in summer re-read mode. Sharon McCrumb's The Rosewood Casket is on my table right now. The first of her novels I read was She Walks These Hills, and it blew me away. Her Elizabeth McPherson novels don't appeal to me, but the Appalachain Ballad series is outstanding. My current audio book for the car is Elizabeth Peter's Trojan Gold. Barbara Mertz's work under this pseudonym and her Barbara Michaels pseudonym have been my favorite escapist fare since I was in junior high school over fifty years ago. Just recently, I found a book of hers that I'd somehow missed which wrapped up the adventures of my favorite of her heroines. What a lovely discovery that was.

 

That might have been part of the problem. I don't think one can appreciate a story in fast forward. It might not be a universal favorite, but I don't think it usually draws ire.

I could be wrong about that, but I enjoyed Lord of the Flies quite a bit. Of course my take is slightly different from most people's. So many see it as a book about inherent evil, and while that's certainly present, I felt it was more about standing up to mob mentality. The MC never loses his convictions even in the face of death. That may have made it easier for me to like. I also read it as an adult, as apposed to reading it as part of a hated school assignment. That definitely made a difference.

 

My copies of The Wishing Pool: And Other Stories by Tananarive Due came in for my Summer Book Club at work..... so my gears have shifted and I'm reading that now to get a jump start on activities for it.

I just finished the Introduction and i must say.... WOW! Tananarive is a African American horror writer who has been writing since the 90s (my mom was obsessed with her books when I was growing up). She now writes for Black Panther anthologies and just released a collection of stories this month (her first horror collection in a long while). Her intro is basically an essay on the evolution of horror fiction and her start writing it. She writes that when she was in college, all horror was directed at white males. She was taught to write from that perspective and read books and stories from that perspective.

"In those days as a creative writing student learning from the "canon," I lost sight of myself as I began writing contemporary realism about white male protagonists having epiphanies. Not genre. Not Black women (The first short story I sold right after college, "Amusement," also featured a white male protagonist.)"
​

This is interesting to me because, when i took Horror writing in college... we never read anything by or about POC. and it reflected in my writing.

"With the growing respect for the late Octavia E. Butler, the rise of Jordan Peele, and a slew of talented writers of all races and ethnicities, no speculative fiction syllabus would be complete without a much broader spectrum of voices"
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My lunch break is over, so I'll get started with the first few stories sometime this evening!

 

A Tale of Two Cities is one of the stories I read for a high-school literature class. It was a very unusual class, and my absolute favorite. The teacher said he wanted us to keep a journal about the stories we read—not to be graded or read in class or anything, just for ourselves, and he said he hopes we continue to do that. That's when I first started journaling, and I never looked back. It really helps you develop your ideas and understanding.

And Dickens became my favorite author for a long time. Now I can't even remember what the book was about (though of course I remember the opening line). I was in awe of his skill and dexterity.

If I remember right the teacher didn't assign books, but gave a list and we each chose which one we wanted to read from it. I had never had a class like that before. It seemed aimed at self-development rather than just following assignments.

I also liked a lot of things about Lord of the Flies, but not enough to finish reading it. I think mainly I liked the poetic language and intense imagery he created.

 

Thanks for sharing this. I'm totally going to check out this book and author. How do you like the collection so far? I wish I could come to your book club.

 

We had Lord of the Flies for our HS class too. Along with other classic literature like Dicken's Christmas Carol and the Of Mice and Men. Disappointingly, the school was more interested in showing us the movie adaptations rather than the books. I think it was so the students would engage with the stories more.

I don't think that's really needed though. One teacher from an earlier year did class readings and I enjoyed that much better than the movies. But I can't recall what the title of one book is. It was about a guy who badly injured his face in a car crash. The name "Apache" springs to mind, but that's another character and not the MC. I've been wondering what that book is called. If anyone knows I'd be interested to find out.

 

Nah, for me the book just sucked. I started skimming through it after it totally bored and grossed me out and not just because I made up my mind at the beginning to skim it. I loved to read then perhaps even more than I do now and wasn't given to wild unreasoning dislikes just because a book was assigned.

 

Just finished Robert McKee's books story, character, and dialogue. I got the most out of dialogue. It's examination of beats, did a lot to clarify the topic. The indepth discussion of subtext was fascinating, to see things from the view of an actor in the role we write. Story and character both had insights, but not as fresh in my mind as dialogue.

I am part way through the terminal list by Jack Carr. A surprisingly powerful story. I strongly recommend the book.

 

You just inspired me to finally get Dialogue for the kindle. Can't believe I waited so long! He kernels everything down to such a fine degree—it can be overwhelming, and difficult to remember because he goes into so much detail on every aspect of things. But on the other hand—he goes into so much detail on every aspect of things.

I'm also reading (at least a few stories from) the Hardboiled Omnibus by Joseph T Shaw, as well as working my way through Truby's Anatomy of Genres.