What Are You Reading Now.

Never Whistle at Night, an Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr.

This is just marvelous.

 

Rednecks. Taylor Brown. Novel about the West Virginia coal battles in the twenties. Not a story for the faint of heart.

 

I haven't read any Hemingway, but even I know where the expression "For Whom the Bell Tolls" comes from -- Meditation XVII, by the famous 17th-century theologian and poet, John Donne. He wrote it as a thanksgiving for his recovery from a nasty illness.

It's impossible to read this poem without crying. (Go ahead, I dare you to).

 

Dare accepted. No tears. What does the contestant win, Johnny?

 

A lifetime supply of facial tissues! That you apparently don't need.

 

Finished The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane last week. I’m curious: has anyone read Ramsey Campbell’s finished versions of the stories Howard left behind as fragments? Are any of them worth tracking down?

 

Huzzah! Check out my new acquisitions, which I got myself for my birthday!





I've never heard of Travis Baldree before. Are his books good? I hope so.

And I also got these two ...





I look forward to reading them. The "Shortest History" series is a favourite of mine -- they're relatively short (duh), but cover all the essentials to understanding the story of the country.

(And no, there isn't (yet) a "Shortest History" of the USA, or of Canada. But I've read at least 5 books on USA history (the Revolution, the Civil War, etc.), and 3 on Canadian history, written by Pierre Breton.)

 

I have not, and I fear it will be some time before I have the opportunity to spend more time with her work. Such is life, that work has once more taken over and simplicity and that which is known are the orders of the day. Simplicity from The Two Towers (Andy Serkis is narrating. I mean... Andy Serkis is narrating), and the known in the form of the Paris Peace Conference as explained by Margaret McMillan. Followed by the search for Shackleton's Endurance. Nothing challenging there, until half-term at least.

 

Started Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. It's mostly just made me sad.

 

Targeted: Beirut: The 1983 Marine Barracks Bombing and the Untold Origin Story of the War on Terror

By: Jack Carr, James M. Scott

Only a few chapters in, and already you can see this was the rest of the international community, cocking things up royally.
James Scott is a noted historian, who has been doing a deep dive for source material. He goes beyond news headlines and into sources like Regan's diary

Jack Carr is a former seal and the author of the terminal list series. He brings events to life with analysis of the various factions involved in the events.

 

During this period one hotel would ask guests if they wanted a room on the artillery side of the building or the car bomb side.

The same hotel had a parrot in the lobby that had learned to mimic the sound of exploding artillery, which says alot about how often the parrot heard the sound.

 

This book definitely gave me a lot of stuff to think about, and reading through the reviews on Goodreads, I can see that it is a rather polarizing piece. People either loved what it's about or they outright hated the subject of the book. In the end, my opinion is it's just a devastating sadness.

Now I'm going to dive into A Million Little Pieces by James Frey.

 

Then I shall read it as such, haha. That's disappointing, though.

 

That seems to happen a lot -- Go Ask Alice, Papillon, I can't think of more off the top of my head. Escape from Camp 14 apparently contained falsehoods but was mostly true.

 

I'm 230 pages in, there's 200 pages left, and I don't think I can do it. Even if I didn't know it's not entirely true, it is so far out of the realm of believability that I don't think I'd ever see it as something other than fiction. It's also just awful in terms of style. The constant repetitiveness, the random capitalization of words, the lack of actual punctuation that should be there, I feel a bit tired trying to keep going with it.

I'm gonna let this one be a DNF on my list, although I did go in and read the ending for the heck of it.

Gonna try a different, actual non-fiction next. Probably go back to Isaac's Storm since that's been on my dresser staring me down for months.

 

I’m currently reading High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (only 46 pages into it) and I’m rather impressed at just how faithfully the film adapted Barry’s introductory scene. Walking on Sunshine, "sad bastard music," the Righteous Brothers argument, the "when did this shop become a fascist regime?" That’s all straight from the novel.

Very fun read so far.

 

Currently re-reading The Case of Charles Dexter Ward ahead of Halloween. This one doesn’t get a ton of attention, but in my opinion, it’s one of Lovecraft’s best.

 

The BBC has an updated take on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and several other Lovecraft stories, reimagined as a modern day 'true' crime podcast. Its really good!

• BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06w5zwg
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/ep-1-the-case-of-charles-dexter-ward/id1444464816?i=1000426886357

 

Read the Dare by Natasha Preston the other day - didn't realize it was young adult when I picked it up from the library. It was o-kay in a kinda insufferable way. I kept thinking is this what passes for young adult fiction?
Now I've written some risque stuff but I never wanted to sell it to kids although a few suggested I should. In fact some stories I never wanted to put out there for adults either. Lol.

Do I need to hide spoilers? I've forgotten how to do that here so I'll just give you the low-down. It's about a twitty girl with a group of friends roped into doing dares/pranks by a fellow senior or else he'll sabotage them somehow/maybe. Considering it's the end of the school year & their senior year - who cares? I feel like the writer did this because they didn't want their mc to be judged on going along with the pranks. Naturally there's a prank/dare where someone dies and dun dun dun everyone's true nature comes out when they cover up the crime. Yeah right. Without spoiling too much I'll just say I don't think people that have been best friends for four years could turn on each other that quickly and that ridiculously.
Character motivation is an art form and writers hellbent on twists totally butcher it.