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What are you currently reading?
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Werner
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Oct 13, 2015 10:11AM
On Oct. 23, my oldest daughter and her husband will arrive from Australia for a roughly two-week visit, and I don't expect to read much (or any) while they're here. Also, in November another of my groups will be doing a common read (though they may pick a book I've read already). So to fill in the intervening time, I'm reading in the DAW anthology Novel Ideas-Fantasy. (There's a companion volume for science fiction, but I don't own a copy of that one.)
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Well, my plan to read Novel Ideas --Fantasy fell through. I'd begun with "Hatrack River," the story related to the only one of the eight novels that I'd actually read, and discovered that although it was published separately, it's actually the initial chapters of the later novel, word for word. All or most of the other stories may likewise be incorporated word for word into the later novels --the introductions here don't give a clue one way or the other. Reading a book made up wholly or largely from novel excerpts isn't really my cup of tea!Instead, I've started The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1: Frontier Stories, part of a three-volume set of his Western, or "frontier," short stories, which is part of the larger seven-volume collection of all of his short fiction. (Goodreads only has entries for the individual volumes, not the sets.) My wife owns all three of the Frontier Stories volumes; L'Amour's her favorite writer, and I've consistently liked what I've read of his work myself.
Charly, I am only reading it (Night) during breaks at work; that is so I will only be reading it in very short segments.
Our company from Australia left earlier this week, sending me back to a more normal reading routine, and my Christian Goodreaders group chose a book I've read already for the annual common read this month. So, I'm now reading a free review copy my Goodreads friend Shane Joseph sent me of his newest novel, In the Shadow of the Conquistador. It's general fiction in a contemporary setting; I haven't read much in that area, but I'm hoping to remedy that eventually.
My Kindle app isn't something I use frequently, so I don't often have any book I'm currently reading in that format; but I started one over the weekend. Guy S. Stanton III, an author in my Christian Goodreaders group, recently offered all of his works free on Kindle, so I decided to check out Agent with a History, the first volume of his Agents for Good series --yes, just what I (don't really) need, another series! I started reading it over the weekend.
Just finished reading November 9 by Colleen Hoover. And started reading Daughter of Smock and Bone!
Usually, once I've read a book, I tend not to reread it --there are so many books I haven't read yet for a first time, and want to! But though I read Willow, the novelization of the 1988 film starring Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley, back in ca. 1990, I'm reading it again now. I want to review it for an action-heroine fan website where I often post book reviews; and I need a refresher read in order to write a serious review, after the lapse of 25 years.
Pursuant to my current goal of being more focused about following up on series that I've started, I've started on the second volume in Madeleine E. Robins' Sarah Tolerance series, Petty Treason. It's also pursuant to my liking for a great read: Sarah's definitely my kind of heroine, and I loved the series opener, Point of Honour. (My review is here: www.goodreads.com/review/show/73549574 .)
I've just finished The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette and After a While You Just Get Used to It.I've now begun Bleak House by Charles Dickens, and am already captivated.
I've recently begun reading a newly-published short story anthology, Misunderstood (I was graciously given a free copy by my Goodreads friend Andrew Seddon, who has a story in the collection). It's made up of mostly newly-written speculative fiction tales (mainly fantasy, with some sci-fi), which either focus on the perspectives of magical creatures that usually aren't featured as the protagonists in fantasy tales, or which present a perspective from character types, like alien adversaries of humans, who are usually portrayed unsympathetically, and viewed from a psychological distance.
Charly, I think you have a typo in your link to The Postmistress.
My Goodreads friend Seeley James gave Taylor Steven's first novel (and series-opener) The Informationist high praise in his review of it, and that put it on my to-read shelf. Through BookMooch, I was recently able to snag a free copy; so I started on it on New Year's Day (making it the first new book I've actually started in 2016, though not the first that I've reviewed!).
Personally, I've never been a big reader of memoirs. But someone donated one, Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together, to the library where I work; and the question of how to classify it proved to be complicated. (Library books are assigned location codes, or "call numbers," according to a subject classification scheme; but where a given book fits in may not be cut-and-dried.) I've started reading it today, in order to arrive at a (hopefully) more educated guess as to where to put it. :-)
For February, the Norah Lofts fan group I belong to here on Goodreads is doing a common read of her historical novel (most of her novels are historicals) Crown of Aloes, about Queen Isabella of Spain. Since the discussion thread is already up, and I was ready to begin a new read this week, I went ahead and started it a bit early.
Earlier this week, I finally started reading Night Sea Journey, by my Goodreads friend Paula Cappa; I'd bought a copy a couple of years ago, but hadn't gotten around to reading it until now. So far, I'm mesmerized!In e-book format, I'm also reading another anthology with a story by my friend Andrew Seddon, The Worlds Of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror . (I was able to download it for free on Smashwords in Mobi format, which attaches itself to my Kindle app.) It's likely to prove a mixed bag (I'm only into the second story so far), since it appears that the compiler, Robert N. Stephenson, just threw it together from any stories that were submitted to him; but I'm treating it as a review copy. As usual, I expect Andrew's story will be one of the collection's high points!
The Little Paris Bookshelf is on my to-read list -- did you enjoy it , Charly? I recently read The Nightingale.
Over the weekend, I've been reading a free review copy of Coyote, by Goodreads author Bran Gustafson (who's in a couple of other groups with me). This is proving to be a quick read, and I expect to finish it today. (I'm benefiting from a three-day weekend, because of Bluefield College's spring break, and a good deal of backlogged reading time to make up for from last week.)
I've finally started on the third, and so far most current, novel in Madeleine E. Robins' Sarah Tolerance series (which I've mentioned on this thread before), The Sleeping Partner; so when I finish that one, I'll be caught up with this series.Before starting on it, though, I read a very short children's chapter book, Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner. This was one my 10-year-old oldest grandson had just read; excited about it, he kindly loaned me his copy so that I could read it too. :-)
How fun that must be... to share a read with your grandchild!I just finished The Law of Similars and now reading Confederacy of Dunces which is quickly proving to be an amusing read.
Reggia wrote: "How fun that must be... to share a read with your grandchild!"It was, Reggia! When I told him I'd given the book three stars on Goodreads, and that this meant I liked it, he gave me a hug and exclaimed, "Grandpa, I knew you'd like it too!" (Price of the book: probably about a dollar at Dollar Tree. Memories like this: priceless.)
Today, Barb and I started on a new "car book." It's The Serpent's Daughter, the third book in Suzanne Arruda's Jade del Cameron historical mystery series. (This particular book takes Jade to Morocco in 1920.) I've mentioned this series on this thread before; we're committed to reading the whole thing, which should keep us in reading material for quite a while!
Currently reading the second of Leigh Bardugo's "Grisha" books-- Siege and Storm. It's classified as YA, but I think it's more than a cut above a lot of what's marketed as that genre. Magic, adventure, conflict, sweet romance between characters with actual personalities.
Back in my junior high school days (when dinosaurs roamed the earth), I read Robert Louis Stevenson's The Black Arrow, and liked it. However, I've never gotten around to reviewing it here, and after the lapse of some fifty years, I'd forgotten a good deal of the specifics of the plot, etc., though I remembered the general gist of it. To write an intelligent review (especially after one of my Goodreads friends panned it), I thought a fresh read from a more adult perspective would be required. So I'm reading it again, as a common read in another group.
Charly wrote: "...in some cases I just find that I was way too young to understand some of the nuances in a given book but we read it because it was something we should have read.
Going back to these books in some cases is like reading a book you have never read."
I'm with you there, too. I wonder if it's really beneficial to read some of these classics at young ages. Anyone have an opinion or feedback to offer on that notion?
As for reading, I'm currently working through Confederacy of Dunces
Personally, I don't think any classic novels --especially not ones written in an older style of diction, with complex sentence structure and very demanding vocabulary, which typically turns off younger readers (and modern adults) if they aren't motivated inside to read it-- should be required reading in K-12 schools. If we agree that school kids should be required to read novels, I believe teachers should let students make their own choice of which ones to read. That's more apt to foster the joy of discovery and create a genuine, lasting love of reading, which is the crucial goal here.IMO, in the literature survey courses required (and rightly so) in the typical U.S. high school curriculum, students should be taught the history of the literature involved (American, British, world), and learn facts about the classic works and their writers. They should be required to read a representative and constructive body of complete shorter pieces --short stories, essays, poems (not book-length epics, though!), both for their intrinsic value and to be exposed to the style(s), and required to watch some good film adaptations of classic novels that are true to the originals. And the novels themselves should be available for their reading if they choose to try them. (This was the approach I used when Barb and I homeschooled our girls.)
In my own K-12 schooling, I don't recall ever being assigned a particular book for a report; I think we mostly or always chose our own selections for those. In junior high school and high school, we did read both Silas Marner and Great Expectations in English classes as part of the curriculum. I thoroughly enjoyed both, but a lot of my classmates didn't. And for a senior book report in British Literature, I picked Pride and Prejudice (which inaugurated a permanent love for Austen), and sought out other 19th-century classics outside of class during those years; but to my knowledge, none of my peers did. Having read and liked books like Treasure Island, Oliver Twist and The Last of the Mohicans in my pre-tween years, my reading tastes were atypical. (And even in my case, I missed a lot an older reader would have gotten; in the latter book, for instance, I didn't pick up on the subtle romance between Uncas and Cora, and when I read The Scarlet Letter in my high school days, the whole critique of Calvinism went over my head. I only saw those things when I reread the books as an adult.)
Fresh off of a reread of a book I read as a junior high school student, I've started a reread of yet another book from my school days, this one reaching even further back --all the way to 1962, during my grade school days. Like The Black Arrow, I found Dave Dawson on the Russian Front, by R. Sidney Bowen, in my school library; it was part of an action-adventure series written during World War II for younger readers (though I've never seen any of the other books in the series). I'd actually done a Goodreads review of this one from memory back in 2008; but I knew my memory left a lot to be desired, so I'd recently decided to do a reread from an adult perspective and possibly revise the review. (Looong story behind that!) This book isn't standing up to adult scrutiny as well as The Black Arrow did, though!
Since last year, I've been trying to make more effort to follow up on series I've started and left hanging (as I indicated over on our series thread). One of the many is the Amelia Peabody historical mystery series by Elizabeth Peters (a.k.a. Barbara Michaels), whose real name is Barbara Mertz, author of serious nonfiction on ancient Egypt. I read the series opener, Crocodile on the Sandbank, six years ago (and gave it five stars), but I just started on the second book, The Curse of the Pharaohs, yesterday.
That's a series I've enjoyed, too! Not sure why I never got past book 2 or 3...
If you ever review any of these, Reggia, I'll be interested in your thoughts!
This month, my Action Heroine Fans group is doing a common read of Modesty Blaise, the 1965 opening novel of Peter O'Donnell's eponymous series. So I'm taking part in this, reading the book in paperback format. Meanwhile, on my Kindle app, I'm reading another series opener (for Goodreads author Zee Monodee's Corpus Brides), Walking The Edge. Zee had offered it as a free sample for a limited time earlier this year; and since my Goodreads friend Danielle had given it a five-star review a few years ago, I grabbed the chance to check it out.
Charly, I looked this one up in the World Catalog database. Having been published by Popular Library back in 1976, it was never assigned an ISBN; those numbers weren't in use at that time. If you're adding it to the Goodreads database, you can just leave that field blank.
Getting ready to begin Wind, Sand and Stars (one for our classic shelf)... and still reading All the Light We Cannot See
Charly, I don't think I officially have Beowulf on my to-read shelf (I'm trying to keep that one from being so overloaded it shorts out the Internet, and it's recently hit the 400 books mark anyway --sigh!). But I've always intended to read it someday, so I'll be very interested in your review!Back in 2009, I started reading The Queen of the South by Arturo Perez-Reverte, but I quit after the third chapter. At least one fellow Goodreader, though, has argued that I didn't give the book a fair chance. Since then, a Spanish-language TV miniseries has been made out of the book (it was originally written in Spanish). On another site, to which I contribute book reviews sometimes, the site administrator wants to review the miniseries; and he and I agree that having a review of the book there too would be worthwhile, for purposes of comparison. So I've started it again, and will read it all the way through this time.
Charly wrote: "Providence's Trinity Repertory Company, to which we sub-scribe is presenting Beowulf this fall so I thought it would be good to have a sense of the actual work."That makes good sense, Charly!
Still where I was at nearly 2 weeks ago; although I have added a book on CD when driving back and forth to work: Bridge to Haven
Well, I almost gave up on books on CD as I had so much trouble paying attention and listening to it in the car. But after several days, I started tuning in much better and I'm more than halfway done (as well as engaged in the story) in less than a week. This gives me time at home to do 'real' reading, lol...
As I've mentioned before on this thread, Barb likes to listen to books when she's driving, but only when I'm along to read them to her. We've just started on The Leopard's Prey, the fourth novel in the Jade del Cameron series. That's nicely timed, since we're planning to take our first trip of the summer to visit her side of the family next week, so will have plenty of travel time to use for reading; having a relatively newly-started book makes us less apt to run out of book before we run out of road. :-)
Despite his busy day job as a medical doctor, my Goodreads friend Andrew Seddon is a prolific writer; I've mentioned his work before on this thread. I've just started (yesterday) reading the latest book he's gifted me with, Eldritch Embraces: Putting the Love Back in Lovecraft, an anthology which includes one of his stories. Like most of Andrew's stories, it's one I've beta read; so I know this collection will have at least one good story in it! That's encouraging, since the first two selections in the book (which are the only ones I've read so far) didn't work for me.
In keeping with my project of being more intentional about pursuing series that I've started and left hanging, I've just started the second novel of C. S. Forester's Hornblower Saga, Lieutenant Hornblower. Interestingly (to me, at least!), I notice that this book was published in the same year that I was born, 1952. :-)
My CD player (in the car) broke so I didn't finish listening to Bridge to Haven. At the moment, I'm reading Bertie Plays the Blues by Alexander McCall Smith, whose lighthearted books of gentle wit never fail to refresh my human spirit.
Charly wrote: "I am reading Chocolat but it is taking me longer than I thought, not by virtue of the book but my schedule."One of my favorite books and now I just finished another favorite by the same author, "The Marriage of Opposites."
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