Oooh, thanks for the suggestion! I’m almost finished with it and that sounds like an interesting contrast. Housman was an early favorite of mine in high school.
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I’ve finally started reading T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. Been meaning to pick it up for years. Knocked out the first two chapters during lunch. So far, so good!
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That sounds really excellent. For anyone who hasn’t read Donald E. Westlake, I can’t recommend him highly enough - particularly the Dortmunder comic novels (try Get Real for a great intro) and the Parker novels (written under the name Richard Stark), which are lean, mean, existential and brilliant.
Sadly he died a couple of years ago but was producing ever-better books right up to the end.
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Westlake’s 1993 story was the first for the Mysterious Bookshop and it is a jewel: it made the drive worthwhile.
I’ll look for Get Real; my first and only Dortmunder novel so far is What’s So Funny?. I just took two more mystery/crime anthologies edited by Otto Penzler: The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries, just barely three paragraphs in Westlake’s “The Burglar and the Whatsit”; and The Vicious Circle, a collection of Algonquin Round Tablers’ stories (no Westlake in that one, but S.J. Perelman has a Chandler parody!).
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Lately I have read:
Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt -Fun!
Dead Souls by J. Lincoln Fenn - worth a read
The Fisherman by John Langan - starts slow, ends well
The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher New text fun, I found the diary entries tedious
Death’s End by Cixin Liu A huge disappointment after his previous novels
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I have this. It’s a fun book but hard to read for too long.
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Currently nearly finished with:
I enjoyed it too, but one should check the footnotes and references.
Got some books for Chrismukkah. The one I decided to jump into first is… The Terranauts by T.C. Boyle. I loved the last book of his I read “The Tortilla Curtain,” so I’m looking forward to a good read.
Finished these.
Now starting:
and
Precisely - I can only digest somewhere south of a dozen in an evening. Trying to power through it is an exercise in diminishing returns. I get the same feeling in museums when trying to see everything in a few hours - one can only wind up numb/overwhelmed.
I’d be very curious to eventually hear your thoughts on the books you are now starting - both titles delve into subjects that are of personal interest.
I’ve read four or five of Knight’s other works, though only his first novel, so expect to like it. I’m a Buddhist Studies doctoral dropout and have an MA in Interdisciplinary Humanities (Philosophy) focusing on beliefs concerning the soul in a 19th century occult order so my religious studies reading tends to be odd and broad.
The Ballad of Black Tom was recommended by a friend but I’d already bought it so I decided to knuckle down and read it. It is short (I was reading it a few minutes ago) and I’m a childhood Lovecraft fan.
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Finished this. It is a short read and very well done, unless you’re a rabid puppy or a nazi (or a racist) since the experience of Black folks is kind of central to it.
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Currently for fiction:
I finished Only The Dead Know Burbank.
It was fun and interesting but not quite my thing. I did enjoy it though.
Now I am reading Sixth Watch which is supposed to be the last of the series. It has started quite interestingly. I really love the world setting in this series.
I’ve never gotten into any of those though my mother loved them.
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Currently reading book 2 of Jon Grimwood’s Arabesk trilogy - Pashazade.
As per the “best book you’ve read in 2016” thread, going to be trying to catch up on other books I should have read in 2017 - definitely need to read The Handmaid’s Tale and also want to get around to some N. K. Jemisin.
Still have Godel, Escher and Bach, Drawing Blood and Hope in the Dark to read.
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I loved this trilogy. Love it.
I read redRobe and reMix years ago, then for some reason never got around to reading anything else by Grimwood. I asked him on the twitters what of his stuff he’d recommend and that’s what he suggested.
My only complaint about Grimwood is that he was very prolific for a decade or so and then his output mostly stopped. I don’t know if he’s not writing as much or just not getting published.
