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Whatcha readin now? (book, books, reading, read) (3 Viewers)

Swing 51 said:
To each his own but I can't believe some of you found The Drawing of the Three underwhelming. That's my favorite in the Dark Tower series.
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Yeah, that one seems to be the best-loved amongst the King community, with Wizard & Glass second.

I liked The Dark Tower a lot, but I could see where people wouldn't. There are some jarring tonal shifts (kind of understandable to me, given the span of years between the 1st book and the last - and also with King almost dying in the middle of it) and some.....interesting..... plotting decisions.

 
Uruk-Hai said:
Yeah, that one seems to be the best-loved amongst the King community, with Wizard & Glass second.

I liked The Dark Tower a lot, but I could see where people wouldn't. There are some jarring tonal shifts (kind of understandable to me, given the span of years between the 1st book and the last - and also with King almost dying in the middle of it) and some.....interesting..... plotting decisions.
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To say the least. I'm not a big fan of the last book.

 
Ok, folks.  Red alarm lightning hot deal here:

Endurance: Shackelton's Incredible Journey is free for Audible.   Yeah, just get it.  It is seriously the best real life adventure history I've ever read (and about 2000 reviewers agree).  If we didn't know this story was true you'd never believe it.  This is not the kind of book you ever expect to be free. 

So, just get it.  Like now.

 
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Uruk-Hai said:
About the same  :D

I'll finish it, though, and book 3 too.

I think the new Stephen King (co-authored with his son Owen) is either out or will be in a few days. That'll be next when I'm done with Vandemeer.

I'm also reading Can't Buy Me Love by Jonathan Gould (same guy who wrote the Otis Redding bio I talked about above). It's about the Beatles. I know there are 50 bazillion books about them (I've read a bunch of 'em, too), but I like Gould and this one seems to be putting them in a little different context than most of the others I've seen.
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Just finished this one last night...  I liked it, but it was a bit confusing just because of the sheer number of characters in it.

It felt a little like "Under the Dome" to me.  I could have done without the Trump bashing and political jabs.. I'm not a Trump fan, just don't need to read about it in my fiction..

 
Don Quixote said:
Recently started Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing, which was released earlier this month.  She's the author of "Salvage the Bones," which won the National Book Award a few years ago.  It's a break from the historical stuff that I generally read.  It's a novel set in modern day rural Mississippi, focused on a family including a drug addict mother and father in prison. Central story of the book is a road trip to the prison for the father's release.  Pretty well-written and a good page turner.  The lyricism has resulted in some critics comparing it to "Beloved," but it's more restrained and not as excessive as Morrison (at least so far), and I prefer Ward's writing style.
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With the end of year lists coming out, happy to see this one getting a lot of love.  Like Ward's earlier book, it won the National Book Award for Fiction.  Time had its #1 on its list of best novels of the year. Washington Post had it in its list of the top books of 2017 too.

 
FINALLY finished The Southern Reach books by Jeff Vandemeer.

I think he's a great writer from a nuts-and-bolts standpoint and he knows how to write evocative passages. The fact that he doesn't have an explanatory info-dump to tie everything up didn't bother me.

However, this story was too sterile for my taste. Kubrick would surely have adapted this. I only cared for maybe one character. My mind doesn't do "abstract" well, so it all left me kind of cold.

I can see why others love this, but I didn't.

I'm off to Mexico in the morning and have some pulpier stuff loaded on my Kindle - Stephen/Owen King, new Grisham, and Joe Hill's latest.

 
I am about half way through Sleeping Beauties and I dont like it. I am honestly just finishing it because its a Stephen King book and I have read all of his stuff. I will say I did like the twist in the middle. Not sure if it's really a twist but I thought it was a cool idea. I dont want to explain as I dont want to spoil anything.

 
prosopis said:
I am about half way through Sleeping Beauties and I dont like it. I am honestly just finishing it because its a Stephen King book and I have read all of his stuff. I will say I did like the twist in the middle. Not sure if it's really a twist but I thought it was a cool idea. I dont want to explain as I dont want to spoil anything.
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Just checked this out of the library.  I love Joe Hill (Owen King) so was excited.  But every review I've seen in here and elsewhere have been quite lukewarm.  Sigh.

 
facook said:
Just checked this out of the library.  I love Joe Hill (Owen King) so was excited.  But every review I've seen in here and elsewhere have been quite lukewarm.  Sigh.
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Joe Hill is not Owen King. They are two different sons. 

 
Uruk-Hai said:
I think he's at least as good as his father was at his peak.
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We all have our own opinions but I would say no. S King in my opinion had much better character development. I could certainly relate better with S King's characters. I do like Joe Hill quite a bit and he may get to where S King is but hes not there yet in my opinion.

 
Just starting using Audible. Finished 4 hour work week now starting Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. 

Any other suggestions available on audible, preferably business/investing/Real Estate related or that could apply?

 
finished the Troy trilogy by David Gemmell. hist/fantasy. I loved it. It had all the characters you would expect. I liked Gemmell's take on the Trojan horse. 

 
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The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors.   True story of the navel battle in Samar or Leyte island in 1944(Philippines).  for anyone who wonders about  heroism & sacrifice in battle this book will absolutely astound you.  quick recap:  15 massive Japanese ships(Ad. Halsey's huge force that was supposed to guard this area took some bait & headed out chasing a few minor ships) line up to take out 6 carriers guarded by 7 destroyers pretty much trapped in a strait.  Just one of the Japanese ships had more tonnage than the entire destroyer fleet of the Americans.  A destroyer has a maximum range of maybe 7 miles firing distance.  The Japanese is over 20 miles.  A destroyer's job is to protect the carriers.   Earnest Evans the skipper of the Johnston didn't wait for the fleet commanders orders as he knew their job.

"All hands to general quarters.

Prepare to attack the major portion of the Japanese fleet.

All engines ahead flank.

Commence making smoke & stand by for torpedo attack.

Left Full rudder.

and at that, the USS Johnston, with a crew of 325 charged straight head on into the biggest Japanese fleet assembled since Midway.

At that the Capitan of the USS Samuel B. Roberts, Robert Copeland, said this to his crew before heading into the middle of the Japanese armada:

"A large Japanese fleet has been contacted.  They are 15 miles away and headed in our direction.  They are believed to have 4 battleships, 8 cruisers, & a number of destroyers.  This will be a fight of overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected.  We will do what damage we can".

tremendous book for those that like this sort of genre.

 
prosopis said:
We all have our own opinions but I would say no. S King in my opinion had much better character development. I could certainly relate better with S King's characters. I do like Joe Hill quite a bit and he may get to where S King is but hes not there yet in my opinion.
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Yeah, that may have been a bit of hyperbole on my part but I think he's close and his latest collection of novellas makes me more sure. I read Strange Weather on vacation last week and loved all four stories. I thought his characters (both heroes and villians) were well fleshed-out. Some of the plots - and their resolutions - were bizarre, but the characters made sense to me. 

Anyway, I also made the grave mistake of reading Grisham's latest. Now I remember why I stopped reading him 15 years ago. He always sucked at characters, but he's somehow gotten worse. There were whole pages of characters speaking to each other where I literally could not tell who was speaking. The only way he had to differentiate the three protagonists was that one was a black female and he'd either mention it every time she spoke, or have one of the other two hit on her. What used to be his relative strength - good ideas and some cleverness and weaving them together - appears to be gone now. He's regurgitating plots from earlier books and jamming way too many hot-button social topics into his plot. Bad book - stay away.

I've had Mira Grant's Feed (or whatever it's called) series on my Kindle forever and started that after Grisham just to get the bad taste out of my mouth. I'm half-way through the first book and like it so far.

 
steelerfan1 said:
I thought it was a great book shuke. Brutal in the sense of the story. You, or at least I really put myself in the story and could see real life playing out this way. I'd highly recommend it.
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I agree with you on the story - there are some tough scenes. And it's obvious the guy's done his research. He struggles a bit with bringing his characters to life, IMO, and his dialogue ain't good. I didn't know there were sequels. Since I'm apparently on another post-apocalyptic kick, I may check them out.

 
Looking at some beach reads for the New Years Holiday. I have The Big Clock and Red Harvest. Both are old school crime noir type thrillers. 

 
Don Quixote said:
On hardcover, I had pre-ordered Ron Chernow's Grant, and just got that last week.  Grant was up next in my quest to read all Presidential biographies in consecutive order, and it timed with the release of Chernow's book.  Although I've read Jean Edward Smith's excellent bio on him, I could not pass up the chance to read Chernow's take, as he's my favorite biographer going.  I do most of my reading on the Kindle these days, but felt the need for the hardcover for this one.  Up to Chernow's standards so far.
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Tax reform has taken a toll on my reading lately, but finally finished Grant over the holidays.  Excellent biography.  I wasn't sure if another biography on Grant was needed, but it made me reconsider his Presidency in a more positive light.

I started Anne Applebaum's Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine.  She does a good job of putting the famine in the larger context of Ukranian nationalism and the issues that caused the Soviet Union's attempts at subjugation.

Also started Mike Duncan's The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic. I've been listening to Duncan for free for years between "The History of Rome" and "Revolutions" podcasts. I felt like I owed some dough as recompense.  Interesting book so far on an era in Roman history not written about as heavily as many others: the generation of leaders before Caesar, featuring people like Sulla and Marius.

 
Went way too long without reading.  It's amazing how a string of 1 or 2 duds will put me off reading for months.  Finished Everybody Lies in a long couch session yesterday.  Pretty good non-fiction book in the realm of Freakonomics - counter-intuitive findings based on data mining.   I took advantage of Amazon Kindle Best of 2017 GoodReads so I got it for $3.  Next up is Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson

 
Reading the new "Tom Clancy" book - Power and Empire. Got kindle version for Christmas. About 1/3 of the way through. Solid. Not sure it's Clancy level but interesting enough,

 
Just finished a "Fine Dark line" by Joe R Landsdale. I'm a big fan of his story telling. It's about a tennage boy living with his family in a drive-in in the 1950's and he befriends the black projectionist and they go on a little adventure investigating a murder from 20 years ago.

Just started "The Lies of Locke Lamora". This is about con artists in a fictional mid-evil city.

 
Finished Meddling Kids a few weeks back. Fun read for those who grew up on the Scooby Doo characters, basically a parody on those characters with an adult twist as they are now grown ups being haunted by the last mystery that they “solved”.

Also really liked Ready Player One, hoping the movie does it justice.

 
I’m becoming a John Scalzi fan. Just finished the second book in the “Old Man’s War” series, and have liked a couple others - Redshirts is a fun read.

 
MindCrime said:
Finished Meddling Kids a few weeks back. Fun read for those who grew up on the Scooby Doo characters, basically a parody on those characters with an adult twist as they are now grown ups being haunted by the last mystery that they “solved”.

Also really liked Ready Player One, hoping the movie does it justice.
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I've been meaning to check out MK. It definitely sounded fun and has gotten strong reviews. Thanks for the reminder.

 
Ilov80s said:
The Big Clock, a Chandler-esque 40s murder story and critique of big media.
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Ended being quick and good. Like GoT it had different chapters from different POVs which was made it unique from the typical detective story told from the #### the entire time. 

Now jumping into something very different - Big Sur by Kerouac although it definitely has a big connection: semi autobiographical main characters who are total drunks. 

 
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trogg78 said:
Just finished a "Fine Dark line" by Joe R Landsdale. I'm a big fan of his story telling. It's about a tennage boy living with his family in a drive-in in the 1950's and he befriends the black projectionist and they go on a little adventure investigating a murder from 20 years ago.

Just started "The Lies of Locke Lamora". This is about con artists in a fictional mid-evil city.
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love, love, LOVE Joe Landsdale!

 
steelerfan1 said:
Been off the reading wagon for a while and started to miss it. Currently rereading "One Second After" to refresh my memory, so I can get started on "One Year After".

For anyone into the Apocalyptic type books, this is just a brutal one.

https://smile.amazon.com/Second-After-John-Matherson-Novel-ebook/dp/B002LATV16/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1513428752&sr=8-2&keywords=1+second+after
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I tried reading this one and posted about it in here (or another books thread) at some point.  I just could not get past the terrible editing.  He self published I believe but he really needed to get someone to read it and correct poor punctuation and grammar.  It felt like a good idea written by a high school sophomore who did a lot of research but had no idea how to write a paper.

 
facook said:
I tried reading this one and posted about it in here (or another books thread) at some point.  I just could not get past the terrible editing.  He self published I believe but he really needed to get someone to read it and correct poor punctuation and grammar.  It felt like a good idea written by a high school sophomore who did a lot of research but had no idea how to write a paper.
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Yeah, he's not a good writer but he does have good ideas and, as you say, you can tell he's done his homework. Maybe the 2nd book was given a little more professional attention. Hope so, anyway, as the first one had way too many errors in it.

 
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