What are you reading at the moment

[stuporfly]

I'm working my way through the James Bond series for the first time since I was a teenager, inspired by Anthony Horowitz's Forever and a Day, which is set just prior to Ian Fleming's first Bond book, Casino Royale. I'm only on Live and Let Die at the moment, so I've got a long way to go.

I'm also running through a final look at the manuscript of my next book, Rock and Roll Explorer Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area, which was meant to be published last month but was pushed by the pandemic into March 2021. It's the second book in a series, following Rock and Roll Explorer Guide to New York City (Globe Pequot Press, June 2018), which had a foreword written by Legs McNeil (Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk). Joel Gion of the Brian Jonestown Massacre wrote the foreword of the new one.

[wihogfan]

Peter Hamilton's Nights Dawn trilogy. Started it awhile back, but at 3,500 plus pages got distracted by another few books at some point. No releases that I see coming soon that are gonna distract me from making it through to the end this time.

[Russoguru]

I've been reading Mary L Trump's book "Too much and never enough" and... it's really damn good so far. I would feel sorry for Trump if he weren't such a piece of shit.

[goflyblind]

i've been re-reading andromeda strain (shut up, reading about deadly space bacteria is oddly calming at the moment), and i'd forgotten just how smug and chauvinistic crichton was. it's a good story, but rough to read at times.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7358766/#s0030title

 

[Iron Curtain]

I'm reading a bunch of stuff at the mo, so I'll list them:

• Ironclad, which is one of three Wasteland 3 novellas you get when you purchase the Wasteland 3 deluxe edition. I backed the game on fig at the collector's edition tier for $95+S&H, so I got a bunch of awesome physical goodies in addition to awesome digital goodies (which was also included with the deluxe edition).
• Gulliver's Travels: I obtained this book not only in e-book form from Project Gutenberg, but also in audiobook form from librivox.org. I finished Chapter 1 of the audiobook. Very good so far!
• Homeland by Cory Doctorow: He's having a kickstarter to fund his upcoming audiobook which is a sequel to this book, which got me thinking: I read Little Brother but never had the time for Homeland. Now that I have time, I should rectify that. I downloaded the ebook for free because it has a creative commons license, and I bought the audiobook from his website which doesn't have any DRM because Cory is a hardline DRM-abolitionist, and I am grateful for that!

So that's pretty much it. I got a lot of reading to do!

[Iron Curtain]

In addition to the three books mentioned in the previous post, I'm also reading The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 1 (of 4), by Wu Cheng'en in the late 16th century, translated by Anthony Yu first in 1983 and then in 2012. I'm reading the 2012 version. There is a ton of introductory material before the actual story. Let me tell you exactly what that entails:

• A Preface to the 2012 revision
• A Preface to the initial 1983 edition
• A glossary/index of terms for the reader to understand when the editor/translator is making a footnote or reference
• a whopping 93-page introduction which I am still reading

It really is a long crawl to get to the actual story, but to be fair, there is a lot of cultural and historical context that would be lost to modern westerners reading the story for the first time so I believe it's necessary.

[Pak-Man]

I picked up Sid Meier's Memoir! a week ago, half expecting to read a couple chapters and put it away unread, but I was hooked from cover to cover. It probably helps that video game history is a passion of mine, and Sid has made a number of my favorite games over the years, but the book is surprisingly engaging.

[CJones]

I'm house sitting for the next 10 days, and the family has a copy of World War Z in their library. I've been wanting to read this for quite a while, and now I have the book and the time.

Not too far into it, but it's already way better than the movie. And I liked the movie. It's a real shame they couldn't really do the book justice. It really doesn't lend itself well to a movie format, but they could have at least attempted to retain the documentary feel of the novel.

[CJones]

I'm reading a bunch of stuff at the mo, so I'll list them:

• Gulliver's Travels: I obtained this book not only in e-book form from Project Gutenberg, but also in audiobook form from librivox.org. I finished Chapter 1 of the audiobook. Very good so far!

I've read Gulliver's Travels. By the end you get the distinct impression Jonathan Swift doesn't think much of English society, or humans in general for that matter.

[stansimpson]

In my attempt to read more fiction, I was reading the book of The NeverEnding Story. Crazy how accurate the movie is to the book. It's like reading a first draft script with an unlimited budget. Biggest difference I would say is that the character of Bastian is better in the movie, but the character of Atreyu is better in the book. It's great knowing the reasons for a lot of the movie's moments, characters, and themes such as the significance of the medallion. In fact, the movie seems way more random now knowing how much backstory was left out.

I got 100 pages in and stopped, because, well, my mindframe just isn't in it right now. I recommend it on the whole though. From what I can tell, the movie is the first half of the book and the second movie follows the second half. Reviews for the book aren't too dissimilar to the movies: first one is well regarded and the sequel not so much.

I'm back to non-fiction... sort of. Currently reading Michael Shaara's book on the Civil War, Killer Angels. I haven't seen the movie Gettysburg, but it's the novel the movie was based on. It's all true events and people, just with some creative liberties to make it much more interesting to read. Considered possibly the best book on the war. I first heard of it when Conan O'Brien said it was his favorite book (he's a gigantic Civil War nerd). But the biggest reason I wanted to read it is because I loved reading 12 Years A Slave which is a subtle but powerful precursor to the war. It basically ends right before the war begins, when tensions between the North and the South couldn't be higher.

I'm only a few pages in, but already I'm really enjoying it. I know almost next to nothing except what I remember from 6th grade history. Time is zipping by as I read it, so I have to make sure I carve enough time out in my schedule to really enjoy it. I'm looking forward to seeing the movie later too. When I have 4+ hours to do that.

[Iron Curtain]

I'm also reading Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow now, especially since his Kickstarter ended and I can now read the eBook, audiobook, and hardcover book thereof. I finished Chapter 1 so far. There are fourteen chapters in all, but man, they are LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG. The first chapter took up 62 pages in the hardcover book and two hours and forty-five minutes in the audiobook! That's an insane amount of length for a chapter!

[George-2.0]

Chocky by John Wyndham - based on Cole's recommendation, short, enjoyable sci-fier.

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler - the Altman movie might be a decent Altman movie, but it's shit Chandler (and marble-mouthed Gould is a shit Marlowe) - so the picture doesn't really give you the real Chandler experience.

Raymond can be tough to take, even when allowing for the era (his contemporaries, like Hammett, weren't as harshly misogynistic, homophobic, and racist. I mean, take Little Sister, which sees Chandler in full woman hatin' mode). Still, he's great with the snappy dialogue and in creating atmosphere and tension, he might be a better writer than Hammett on a technical level. This is my favorite of those I've read so far. Even surpassing Farewell, My Lovely.

[George-2.0]

picked up Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer from the library, and it's a grabber right from the first paragraph. I also got  another Chandler, Trouble is my Business

[CJones]

I’m reading Rendezvous with Rama. About 1/3 of the way through. Just got to the part where

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

the lights come on for no apparent reason

Really liking it. Thanks to those who voted for it in the List of Crap.