What are you reading?

[system7]

Some good stuff there, EddieT. Read everything by Connelly.

I read "The Litigators", about ambulance-chasing cheap lawyers, by John Grisham lately and it was laugh out loud funny. P.G. Woodhouse's Jeeves and Wooster books are achingly funny too.

You will probably enjoy James Lee Burke | Author Robicheaux novels.

Home | John Connolly Charlie Parker novels are gripping too.

I do feel I have slightly overloaded with reading in these strange times.

 

[system7]

Hilariously subversive article on the BBC today:

Labour Party: Starmer aims to build trust with 'new leadership' slogan - BBC News

Ostensibly about rebranding Sir Keir Starmer as the great hope for the future, which he may or may not be. But, I can tell the reporter's heart isn't in it.

By Iain Watson Political correspondent, BBC News

Look at the headers:

Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name...

You've got to accentuate the positive...

All around me are familiar faces...

Systems fall, walls come tumbling down...

One vision?...

No direction home?...

Marvellous bit of misdirection by that reporter to slip that one under the radar. I know me music. Respect.

 

[jackinnj]

"Nose Dive -- a Field Guide to the World's Worst Smells" by Harold McGee -- for those who have a sense of humor.

Given to me by #2 son.

Elsewise, on this side of the pond still recommend "In the Hurricane's Eye" which describes in very well written detail how the French Fleet was critical to the Americans in 1781.

 

[nezbleu]

Currently reading "Guns Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond.

 

[jackinnj]

Currently reading "Guns Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond.

#1 in a trilogy -- will have to get this. Jack

 

[canyoncruz]

Hello Jack,


Off topic: I sent a DM with a couple of questions I have on a PCB.


Thanks!

 

[Flavious Maximus]

#1 in a trilogy -- will have to get this. Jack

I really enjoyed Guns, Germs and Steel. Had no idea there were others....

Another P.K. Dick book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. This one was made into a movie "Blade Runner." This is better than the movie (I loved the movie) in that there is more to it. Not quite the brain blender that Ubik was but still a good read.

Dick was a break from a trilogy that's bothering me a bit. Octavia E. Butler's "Lilith's Brood." A few humans left after a nuclear war are found by aliens and forced to interbreed with them to produce hybrids. Sorta creeping me out a little and needed a break from that one for a bit....

I've noticed that there's a lot of erotic illustrations that fans have made online for this series....

 

[system7]

I think I have read every book by Philip K. Dick. My particular favourites were:

Clans of the Alphane Moon:

War between Earth and insectoid-dominated Alpha III ended over a decade ago. (According to the novel, "Alphane" refers to the nearest star to our own system, Alpha Centauri).

Some years after the end of hostilities, Earth intends to secure its now independent colony in the Alphane system, Alpha III M2. As a former satellite-based global psychiatric institution for colonists on other Alphane system worlds unable to cope with the stresses of colonisation, the inhabitants of Alpha III M2 have lived peacefully for years. But, under the pretence of a medical mission, Earth intends to take their colony back.

On Alpha III M2, psychiatric diagnostic groups have differentiated themselves into caste-like pseudo-ethnicities. The inhabitants have formed seven clans... (Various Mental Disorders..)

Flow My Tears the Policeman Said:

The novel is set in a dystopian version of 1988, following a Second Civil War which led to the collapse of the United States' democratic institutions. The National Guard ("nats") and US police force ("pols") reestablished social order through instituting a dictatorship, with a "Director" at the apex, and police marshals and generals as operational commanders in the field.

Resistance to the regime is largely confined to university campuses, where radicalized former university students eke out a desperate existence in subterranean kibbutzim. Recreational drug use is widespread, and the age of consent has been lowered to twelve.

The novel begins with the protagonist, Jason Taverner, a singer, hosting his weekly TV show which has an audience of 30 million viewers. His special guest is his girlfriend Heather Hart, also a singer. Both Hart and Taverner are "Sixes", members of an elite class of genetically engineered humans. While leaving the studio, Taverner is telephoned by a former lover, who asks him to pay her a visit. When Taverner arrives at her apartment, the former lover attacks him by throwing a parasitic life-form at him. Although he manages to remove most of the life-form, parts of it are left inside him. After being rescued by Hart, he is taken to a medical facility.

Waking up the following day in a seedy hotel with no identification, Taverner becomes worried, as failure to produce identification at one of the numerous police checkpoints would lead to imprisonment in a forced labor camp...

Gripping Stuff! My current wheeze is James Lee Burke's 40th. Murder Mystery:

Rather racy stuff:

"I'm sorry for the pain you feel, Ms Balangie," I said. "I just don't know what I can do about it."

She pressed the side of her face against my heart. I placed both hands between her shoulder blades. Her hair smelled like the Carribean. I felt a throbbing inside me I coulkd barely restrain, and I could think of no words to say to my Higher Power other than I'm sorry for this.

FOUR DAYS LATER, Clete Purcel was back from New Orleans....

 

[StevenCrook]

Brian Stableford: "Wildeblood's Empire"

 

[jackinnj]

"The Anglo Saxons" -- history from 400 AD to the early medieval period. What the Venerable Bede left out or didn't know.

 

[PRR]

....Rather racy stuff:
"I felt a throbbing inside me I coulkd barely restrain, and I could think of no words to say to my Higher Power other than I'm sorry for this.

"FOUR DAYS LATER, Clete Purcel was back from New Orleans.... "

69 years ago, Prather wrote the part you are missing:

She lay motionless for a moment with her eyes closed and her breathing rapid and heavy while my lips caressed her throat and descended slowly to the brazen fullness of her bare breasts, my fingertips gentle against the smooth firmness of her thigh and the swelling curve of her hip, and then her fingers dug into my shoulders when my mouth found hers again, and she pressed her teeth into my lips as I caressed the soft, warm, myriad-curved length of her, and then there was only the intimate caress of her tongue against mine, and her fingers clutching at my flesh, and her yielding body writhing against me. * * * I turned on the small table lamp at the side of the bed and lit two cigarettes for us

 

[system7]

HaHa!

They used to call these books "Shilling Shockers", always with Racy covers! Popular with teenagers.

I was quite surprised James Lee Burke even delved into this Love scene. It's usually about shooting and fights.

Science Fiction is a generally clean genre. Though I remember "The Pollinators of Eden" and "RiverWorld" could make your ears burn.

 

[Juhazi]

I'm not a keen reader any more, I got an overdose during school years because my parents had a bookstore and public library was just a 1/4 mile from us.

Here is saluted Finnish writer Sofi Oksanen presenting her first library, which is same 1/4 mile from my house now. My 2 youngest kids were regular visitors too! We local habitants campaigned for preservation of this public service twice during previous decade, and as the chairman of the committee I asked for Sofi's help then, and she naturally helped us! We are not on shutdown list now, but it warms my heart to see and distribute this video!

Halssilan kirjasto / Visit to my first library - YouTube

 

[yngvejos]

At the moment I'm reading "Best damn garage in town" by Smokey Yunick.
It's his autobiography and a dive in history of stock car racing and Indy 500. He was a really interesting guy that I would love to drink beer with.
His Autobiography | Smokey Yunick

 

[cracked case]

Guy Gavrial Kay.

 

[Flavious Maximus]

I think I have read every book by Philip K. Dick. My particular favourites were:

I'll keep those in mind! I can't be too choosy though, I find his books hard to find. I take whatever I can find. It would be nice if I could be a little more choosey.....

I got in an order from Amazon a couple of weeks ago that included some books.

I read the Cephalopod book right away, that was good. I never realized the vampire squid was neither an octopus nor a squid but was an early offshoot from them. A very unique animal. Who knew??

I read a few pages of the PK Dick book and right away I felt like it was the story the film Bug (directed by William Friedkin) was based on. It seems similar (at leas the first four pages.) I've included a still from the film Bug. At this point in the film they've already covered the inside surfaces of their house with tin foil to protect themselves from mind control waves. And they're now in the process of pulling their own teeth out with plyers because they realize the government is spying on them and has planted listening devices in their molars. Crazy, freaky film....

Ends of the world is about the 5 great extinctions. I've read enough to have a general feel for how these things go. Great climate change, usually volcano's spewing huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, temp goes up, oceans go acidic perhaps even anoxic and most life dies. This guy apparently tells the tale particularly well so I'm looking forward to this one.

The last one is We by Yevgeny Zayatin. I read it when I was 17 and thought it was great but I hardly remember it now. I do remember that the government controlled all aspects of life and the city was made of glass to facilitate citizen surveillance of one another. Classic dystopian SciFi from early 1920s Russia.

 

[jackinnj]

Eve Babitz passed away -- known as one of the chroniclers of a fictionalized Hollywood, lover of many Hollywood stars, and most famously played chess nude with Marcel Duchamp.

 

[Soundhappy]

One more time some chapters of the Orwell book "1984"

 

[jan.didden]

Much ado about almost nothing - Man's Encounter with the Electron by Hans Camenzind*.
Chronicles the slow and painstaking discovery of the electron over last several 1000 years.
Very readable, it reads like an adventure novel!
For instance, did you know that Lee de Forest sold his initial invention of a vacuum diode for $ 150.000 without really understanding what he had made. He then proceeded to purchase a nice villa on the Hudson, until after 15 years and three divorces he was broke again.
He then moved to Hollywood and married a 21 years old starlet, his only marriage that lasted!
The whole history of inventions of electricity and electronics is one long parade of peculiar and weird characters.
You can't make that stuff up!

* He is more known as an IC designer.

 

[jackinnj]

One more time some chapters of the Orwell book "1984"

Might want to revisit "Screwtape Letters" -- C.S. Lewis 1942