This book is absolutely fantastic and I highly recommend it. I’m not going to say anything else about it because the first time I read it, I knew absolutely nothing except for having been told “you have to read this!” and was absolutely shocked and delighted by every twist, so I think the best way to go in is knowing nothing beforehand. Definitely a top 5, maybe even top 3 books I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot of books.
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And now a Miss Marple
Interesting how little she’s been in the book so far, the detectives detect, and she’s more a person who knows the town and the people, notices things and is a good judge of character, but not really a master sleuth (at least so far)
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I have just started Year’s Best SF (2008) edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. Stories from 2007 (and older translated stories, if they first appeared in English in 2007.) The first story is “Baby Doll” by Johanna Sinisalo, translated from Finnish, in which language it first appeared in 2002. Besides the fact that it’s the first example of Finnish SF I’ve ever read, it’s also a real eye-opener. It extrapolates the sexualization of preteens into the very near future of 2015. The protagonist’s slightly older sister (about ten or eleven) is a top model for sexy lingerie. Worthy of Dangerous Visions !
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Just at the part where they’re talking about Charles Darwin’s last book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms with Observations on their Habits. One of the things Darwin investigated was earthworms’ hearing, during which he found them “indifferent to shouts”.
So now I’m picturing an earthworm lying on a table, with Darwin leaning over it yelling “YOU MISERABLE LAZY MUD-SUCKING WOOOORM oh, hi Vicar.”
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A fascinating, brief essay about Stendhal’s complicated relationships to the political environment of his time (first half of the XIXth C, let’s say…from Revolution/Republicanism through the Terror, to the Restoration, and more Revolution…and so forth…and that’s just within France, to say nothing of similar patterns throughout Western and Central Europe).
I can’t be the only one imaging the Kurgan from Highlander saying this! I like it.
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I’ve been going thru a bunch of memoirs that my library has as free ebooks. Just finished the one Burt Reynolds put out a year or two ago — whatever you think about him, he tells some great stories
Last night I started “Knife” by Salmon Rushdie. Holy smokes what a 180
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Bill Carter’s quasi-sequel to “The Late Shift”, about the Leno/Conan debacle of 2009 and how Conan got screwed over when Leno went on at 10 PM.
A very entertaining read.
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I had lunch with a friend and she recommended this book
New to me and mainly YA but the artwork in the hardcover was amazing! She said I should buy it directly from the author website but it kind of looks like a lot of stuff going on there. Not sure I want to explore this whole thing. Anybody have advice?
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I read that book a few months ago and it was fun.
I didn’t buy it though, got it at the library.
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My take on having read Ulysses is that it’s more of a script to be recited than read off a page.
I’ve just finished Sweeper! by Steve Bruce. Yes, that Steve Bruce, the stolid workhorse of the Manchester United defence who became the stolid workhorse of mid-league club management.
He wrote three murder mysteries set in the world of Football and the two I’ve sourced are gloriously awful. Steve himself confirms that the third volume is no better. You do learn an immense amount of detail about the 3.2 litre Jaguar XJ8. However hard you try not to.
I am currently enjoying The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov, a mystery set in Kyiv in the year 1919.
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Asked my library nicely to add it to their collection, and got to be the first to borrow it. I sometimes wish the scans had a little more contrast, but it’s a real look over his shoulder.
He was asked years ago if he’d ever publish his Culture drawings. Yes, but only when he was finished with writing about it.
Well, he’s certainly that.
(Shown on the cover: a System-class GSV, a la the Empiricist.)
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Never before read these early pieces, that she wrote when she was young, 11 years, up to her later teens - before she started work on Sense and Sensibility (at age 19 to 21). Most are intended for Austen completest, only a couple are considered to be up to higher standards. But I’m curious about them.
Edit - and the first tale is funny as hell, it’s obviously a kid writing this, they kept in the mistakes (she likes to capitalize randomly, for Example if I were Jane this Sentence might look Like this) .
She has one character who vows to be agreeable to everyone she meets, so she keeps accepting proposals of marriage from every man who asks her. Her father wants her to wait before consenting to marriage, feeling she’s too young (she’s 36, which for that time, makes you middled aged, or even near deaths door). She’s teasing the writing styles of the time, the formalism, and is inventing town names (one is called Crankhumdunberry).
So, funny kid, good imagination, she might go places.
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Pronounced “Crumby.”
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And now we’re in the town of Pammydiddle, which sounds like a very naughty place indeed.
I have just started Lord of the Fantastic: Stories in Honor of Roger Zelazny (1998) edited by Martin H. Greenberg. Mostly original to the volume, although there are a couple of reprints. Each author supplies an afterword talking about Zelazny.
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I have just started Joanna Russ: Novels and Stories (2023) edited by Nicole Rudick. It’s one of those fancy hardcovers from the Library of America. Contains footnotes, etc. Contents:
The Female Man (1975)
We Who Are About to . . . (1977)
On Strike Against God (1980)
The complete Alyx stories (1967 to 1974)
“When it Changed” (1972)
“Souls”(1982)
I believe I have read all of these except On Strike Against God, her only mainstream novel. The two novels not included are And Chaos Died (1970) and The Two of Them (1978).
I should mention here that, when I am at home away from the computer, I alternate my reading of SF/fantasy (which occurs mostly during down times at work) with a huge volume of mainstream (mostly) short stories called The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories (1987) edited by Daniel Halpern. It collects works first published after World War Two. (The single exception is a story by Vladimir Nabokov, which appeared in Russian in the 1930’s but was first translated after the war.) Stuff from all over the world, about one-third of them translated. Eighty-one stories, a lot by very familiar names. As noted, mostly mainstream fiction, although there’s a touch of fantasy here and there. (Borges, etc.)
I guess I should mention that, between “real” reading, I have been making my way through eighteen large volumes from Fantagraphics of the Prince Valiant Sunday newspaper comic strips. I just finished the last one. The whole collection takes me from 1937 to 1972, when Hal Foster turned the art over to somebody else. (Fantagraphics is still printing collections beyond that point.)
In place of that, I have Home to Stay!: The Complete Ray Bradbury EC Stories from the same publisher. It reproduces stuff from EC comic books like Tales From the Crypt and Weird Science that either outright stole plots from Bradbury or, after he wrote them a surprisingly polite letter, officially adapted some of his stories.
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Now that I’ve had a look through the enclosed papers, and the intros and such, I’m settling in on the novel itself.
I usually like to have an annotated copy for older writers who were writing for their contemporaries. But I’ve become comfortable with Austen. I’ve learned enough about the time period, the differences in language (a word like “condescending” has evolved from a positive to a negative over the centuries, for example) and am aware of her use of irony and satire - so I’m forging ahead without that resource (or a SparkNotes). Plus, I’ve seen/read this before.
Funny, in my retirement I thought I’d really attack the wishlist, and while I’ve done a bit of that, much of my free time is spent revisiting movies, music (The Beatles, especially) and now the Austen’s for books. Just enjoying the old favorites.
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Started the Disney Villains series by Serena Valentino. I’m not a huge Disney fan, but I’m familiar enough with the stories that I understand the major references, and Valentino’s writing is strong, particularly in the first two books.
I’ve been listening to the audio books, and the narrator is a great match for the material.
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Yes, this is apparently for real and I am reading it. Well…reading is kind of a big word for how one consumes this drivel.
No, this is not a Chris Shapan, I’m afraid to say. Pretty sure not.
But I am drinking whiskey and watching Werewolf and I got the link from here, so it’s I’m for sure it’s on the level.
No. A spoof would have been more subtle. Hey! When I wake up at three our four in the afternoon, I can have my bar’s jukebox play “Tiptoe through the Tulips” on repeat! From the comfort of my own chair at home!
It’s true…the bartender doesn’t actually have the ability to turn off the sound or volume on the system in that particular bar. It’s an electronic thing! Like a bluetooth or a wireless internet highest true fidelity or one of those things the ___ __ _____ ____ing ____ ____ing ____guzzling _____ creatures enjoy so much these days.
Money well spent.
And with every fifth play I get a song credit! Or something. Can’t remember.
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So I started reading this because it’s by a person I sort of know and about an urban park a bunch of us weird kids hung out in back in the 80s and 90s and also about one of the local kooks who hung around as well.
When I got to the fourth punctuation error by chapter 3, after reading two on one page, I gave up. This was supposedly professionally published.
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