I have not. But I’m pretty rubbish at reading ‘classic’ books (actually, does CCF farm count as classic? It isn’t that old, is it?)
1 Like
Can any of you happy mutants identify this?
ANSWER: Richard Garfinkle’s All of an Instant, his second novel; I recommend it and Celestial Matters, his first.
From his webiste:
Some critics were a little puzzled by this one. It helps if you know that this is a Buddhism-based allegory for putting the mind in order.
Hunh. That doesn’t help at all. Perhaps takes away from it, a bit.
Gates of Fire, oh hell yes. Although it’s odd that Xeones never mentioned how many crunches the Greeks did every day to get those wonderful abs! 
I’m slowly working through “The God That Limps”, and it’s feeling slow simply because I raced through “World War Z” a few weeks ago and enjoyed it greatly. For train reading I’ve got the latest issue of Joint Force Quarterly only because it has an essay on the “Ethics of Big Data”, and, frankly, anything involving ethics coming out of the National Defense University is good for a laugh or two.
Also (hey @japhroaig), I’m re-re-re…re-reading my first edition (ahem) “How to grow more vegetables” by John Jeavons, which has excellent gardening advice on bed preparation and companion planting as long as the reader can stomach being told, repeatedly, of the greatness of the Biointensive method.
“Re Jane” is on the list, too, and I’m sure recommendations here will extend the already long list into the never-finishable book list.
1 Like
Reading this now, and enjoying it. Struck me that this series might make a good choice if some network wants to do something along the lines of GoT. As might Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow and Thorn.
1 Like
I need to read that. Some things are easy, but why is one zucchini producing yellow leaves!? Why is one lettuce bolting but the other buttery? Why is my sage world flipping class?
1 Like
A few months back (sometime last year?) I finally interlibraryloaned a copy of Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman Walter M. Miller Jr’s long-uncompleted follow-up to A Canticle for Leibowitz, “finished” by Terry Bisson.
Bears discovering rocks sent me back to his website, where I found THIS, his afterword to the French edition.
Anyway, I enjoyed the book. It’s vastly different from the first novel. It’s much… better? It’s better written. It’s more coherent. It takes a small, brief period of time – a few decades after the second part of ACFL – and spends the whole novel covering two years of church and non-church (such as they may be divisible) politics and machinations in the long-recovering plains. Maybe that doesn’t sound fascinating to you – but the detail of the various societies, churches, movements, geophysical and legendary remnants of the war – I loved it.
OMG, Bisson wrote the novelization of the film of Johnny Mnemonic. My head is failing to warp around this, leading me to look like one of those Deep Dream figures and seriously weirding out others in the office…
Piketty, still, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. And then, having slagged it off here and saying I wasn’t very interested in it, Armada turned up at the library, I forgot I put a hold on it a few months ago.
2 Likes
I’ve seen both rave and gutter reviews of it, but I’m with you–can’t wait to get it. Also waiting on Ta’Nehisi Coates’ <a href=http://www.amazon.com/Between-World-Me-Ta-Nehisi-Coates/dp/0812993543/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438795318&sr=8-1&keywords=tahnesi+coates>Between the world and me. Finishing up Harris’ <a href=http://www.amazon.com/Gospel-Loki-Joanne-M-Harris/dp/148144946X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438795406&sr=8-1&keywords=gospel+of+loki>The gospel of Loki and liking it, although it’s almost too referential to pop culture; also mid way through Capps’ memoir <a href=http://www.amazon.com/Seriously-Not-All-Right-Years/dp/1936182580/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438795492&sr=8-1&keywords=seriously+not+all+right>Seriously not all right: five wars in ten years; just finished Gibson’s <a href=http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Recognition-William-Gibson/dp/0425198685/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438795594&sr=8-1&keywords=pattern+recognition+gibson>Pattern recognition and found it…good but not great; and the always outstanding Flannery O’Connor’s <a href=http://www.amazon.com/Wise-Blood-Novel-FSG-Classics/dp/0374530637/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438796042&sr=8-1&keywords=wise+blood>Wise Blood. Oh, also waiting on Ted Rall’s cartoon compilations…
And wondering–any zines or comics I should be watching for?
2 Likes
Is Piketty’s work digestible by the non-economist, non-numbers person? I’d like to read it but I’m afraid I’ll get bogged down in a policy wonkfest…
1 Like
I am way out of touch on what is current with comics, but I did pick up 2 compilations of The Goon from the library on a whim and I found them to be great two-fisted pulpy fun.
2 Likes
Have you seen the threads on our book club reading of it?
I’d say it’s totally readable, and I’m definitely not an economist.
2 Likes
Just picked up Nick Offerman’s Gumption at the library, and I have Paddle Your Own Canoe on hold.
2 Likes
I live near Atomic Books in Baltimore and they’ve got a seriously killer selection, so much that I don’t know where to start other than to walk in, buy handfuls, and then whittle down from that point.
1 Like
4 Likes
That place would be so so dangerous to what little disposable income I have.
1 Like
Which is why I asked about specific zines–otherwise I walk in empty-handed, and leave empty-walleted.
2 Likes
I think that when I was 12, I’d have really liked Armada.
Very pleased I borrowed it from the library instead of buying it. It’s definitely a YA book, at best. Once again with the shoehorning of the thinly veiled excuse for a young character to be obsessed with 80s nostalgia.
2 Likes
Replying to my own comment because this is a strange coincidence–reading Neate’s “City of Tiny Lights” a few days ago, and now Palahniuk’s “Tell All”, both mention the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which is something I’d never heard of prior, and yet to hear about it in two vastly different books…
2 Likes
The Education of Robert Nifkin by Daniel Pinkwater. Written as an college entrance essay by the main character. A son of eastern european immigrants and recent transplant to Chicago finds the city wonderful and high school painfully tedious and ends up in an alternative school full of misfits and actually learns a lot as well. This one is quite bounded in reality compared to his other books but it still takes delight in the oddball characters of life. If you like Pinkwater (and what the hell is wrong with you if you don’t?) read this book. If you haven’t read any of his stuff this is a great start!
I reread this as I had read it years ago now and passed it on to my mom who spent some of her youth in Chicago. We stumbled on a copy while trawling for used books and got it for the kid to read as he is the right age for it and he loved it as well.
1 Like
The Wars of the Roses by John Gillingham.
Wow, I’m only on the second chapter (the first was an overview), and I’m loving it. Really energized! Which is kinda weird, but I do like history.
I liked what I started in Capital, but I just couldn’t commit to the length or commitment. Bully for all of youse who are.
