Season's Readings
5What are you reading?
I’m working on City of Nets, a history of Hollywood in the '40’s, as a short break between Gladys Mitchell mysteries. My mother is obsessively listening to Agatha Christie adaptations by BBC radio on youtube. I’m thinking about a seasonal rereading of The Dark is Rising, but haven’t dug out my copy yet.
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Also, Love, Janis is 99¢ right now, I don’t know how long it’s been or how long it will last, it just randomly showed up in my recommendations.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0776T6FYB
I just blew through Frederick Douglass’ Narrative and now I asked the library to send me a whole collection of autobiographies by ex-slaves. Pretty heavy, and it puts my little hill-of-beans problems in context.
@UncleVinny
Sometimes I avoid certain kinds of history if I think it will be very depressing.
I should not let self get away with this.
@f00l If you’re up to it, Douglass’ story would be a great way to nudge your Self into dealing with a bit of depressing stuff…it’s quite short, and riveting throughout. His dignity and persistence is quite something.
I get waaaay too up my own asshole w.r.t. getting in a rut with books/movies/art/ideas, and it’s a constant challenge to boink my Self out of it.
I took a pause from the Longmire series. . If I do too many of one series without s break, it can start to feel stale.
Haven’t decided on what else to listen to. Something different. Perhaps a Great Courses audiobook.
PS thx for reminding me about Gladys Mitchell.
@f00l I just put my Gladys Mitchell book n my kindle.
Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? By Caitlin Doughty. Pretty good
@moonhat
If any cats get interested in mine, I’m telling them your eyeballs are tastier.
@f00l yes please do.
Here’s a free zombie book to get you in the holiday spirit- The Infected- Jim’s First Day.
https://www.amazon.com/Infected-Jims-First-Day-Book-ebook/dp/B00TEF95AI/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+infected+jim’s&qid=1575384936&sr=8-1
@sammydog01
“zombie book” <–> “holiday spirit” ???
do I sense a bit of irony? please elucidate
(BTW, I don’t do zombies, vampires, rap, and the like)
@phendrick Dark humor?
I purchased City of Nets. Looked interesting.
Is it wrong that I was disappointed that this wasn’t a thread of snarky, thinly veiled insults?
@mtb002 Oh, bless your heart.
I just finished Neil Gaiman’s Ocean At The End Of The Lane, whish is brilliant and just the kind of escape that I needed, and am now rereading the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman.
@mossygreen I might suggest you take your mother to the Knives Out movie; it’s like AG on steroids
@compunaut I’ve been talking about it for MONTHS! I’ll show her your comment to clinch it.
@compunaut @mossygreen I have a dumb question, what is AG?
@compunaut @mossygreen @therealjrn My guess is a typo for Agatha Christie? Although I could be wrong. Yeah, I’m probably wrong.
@compunaut @mossygreen @sammydog01 I thought it might be Agatha Ghristie too.
@therealjrn @sammydog01
Oops - typo. AG s/b AC
/image Agatha Christie
@compunaut @sammydog01 @therealjrn I assumed that it was a clever portmanteau-type combination of Agatha and Gladys, and possibly the movie features satanists or a pig farm (not really).
Chirp has a book called A Town Divided by Christmas by Orson Scott Card. It’s two dollars. I’m trying to get into the Christmas spirit and failing- maybe a book will help.
@sammydog01 You could read The Dark Is Rising and get into the spooky solstice spirit!
@mossygreen I just checked it out of the library.
@sammydog01 I hope you like it! It’s a kids’ book, but has a lot of depth. And a lot of English folklore/Arthurian legend elements, which are catnip to me (probably because of this book).
Random trivia I learned this year: the author, Susan Cooper, married Hume Cronyn after Jessica Tandy died.
@mossygreen Cool trivia! It looks like this is book 2 in the series- do I need to read book 1 first? I got them both.
@sammydog01 Hmm, that’s a good question. You don’t need to, there’s only one character who’s in both books and I don’t think there’s anything set up directly in Over Sea, Under Stone for The Dark Is Rising. But it’s for slightly younger readers (?), so it’s a fast read and a fun mystery story, and you already have it in your possession…
I was looking at the description for the novel upon which Hitchcock based Spellbound, and thought gee, there are a lot of British mysteries that feature Satanists, that’s kind of weird, now that I think about it. And then I realized that there was an approximately 40-year period where, if you were in London, there was a good chance you’d run into Aleister Crowley shouting that he was The Great Beast or biting women or having wild gay sex with amputees or darkly insinuating he’d engaged in cannibalism in the Himalayas. And that probably explains it. [Although I know there were many ritual magicians running all over Western Europe at the time.]
I met an author at a book signing today and actually bought a physical book in person. I don’t think I’ve done that in quite a few years.
It’s a political book…so…I’ll just leave the discussion to the wonderment of actually going to an independent bookstore and buying a physical book. Did you know they had other stuff in the bookstore too? Like posters and coffee even? Pretty neato.
I totally forgot about two of my favorite holiday-ish books. I’ll try to find time to fit them in- maybe Krampus by Bron will wait until next December.
The Stupidest Angel
When Elves Attack
@sammydog01 I just love Christopher Moore!!!
Mediocritee has literary shirts this week. I read the wrong kind of books to appreciate them but you guys might.
Mediocritee.com
@sammydog01 Not just you, I didn’t recognize either phrase. Something about how it goes out an open window?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@therealjrn The writeup explained the sources. I think I read both books but didn’t remember the quotes.
@sammydog01 The write-up? Pfft. As if.
I don’t want to have to walk around with a piece of paper explaining my shirt.
@sammydog01 @therealjrn What about several pieces of paper bound into some sort of, say, book?
@mossygreen “You don’t understand my shirt? Read this, you ignorant cow.” @therealjrn would be soooo popular.
@sammydog01 @therealjrn True, if there’s one thing the American public loves, it’s reading. And if there’s another thing, it’s being corrected!
If for some reason you wanted to buy John Bellairs’ The Face in the Frost for $1.99 last July but didn’t, it’s a $1.99 kindle daily deal again today.
https://smile.amazon.com/Face-Frost-John-Bellairs-ebook/dp/B00J84L45E
@mossygreen Looks like I already did. I already have a few of your recommendations queued up. I’m reading the Gladys Mitchell one right now- it’s pretty good.
Is amazon messing with me? They sent me an e-mail saying I have a $5 credit to use on a wish-list read. It appears to be good only on four books (out of many) on my ‘save and compare’ list. They’re all more expensive books, but not the most expensive. I can’t figure it out. It must be specific publishers or something. It really feels like an experiment.
Anyway: I seem to be able to use it on Nora Ephron’s Crazy Salad, the Illuminatus trilogy, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, and a book called Proust’s Duchess. I own the first three (Crazy Salad in hardcover and paperback) and the fourth is at my local library. I guess my question is, should I buy the Illuminatus trilogy on kindle and give away my withdrawn library trade paperback? It’s still kind of expensive ($5.99 after various credits) considering that I apparently bought the paperback for $1.25. But it does take up less space. But in the same way that I still have two copies of Crazy Salad after having taken the paperback on two separate trips with the intention of leaving it behind, and two sets of Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber with a similar back story, chances are good that I will fail to give away the paperback no matter what decision I make.
@mossygreen Oh crap, I just realized the Nora Ephron book is Crazy Salad AND Scribble, Scribble, so that’s a pretty good deal. Going by page count, still not as good a deal as Illuminatus, but I have three days left to decide.
@mossygreen If I read that correctly, the only book you do not have a copy of is Proust’s Duchess?
ETA: and Scribble, Scribble?
@therealjrn I not only do not own Proust’s Duchess, I have never read Proust and should not buy this book. But if it had been published when I was shelving books at the library, I would absolutely have read it anyway when I was supposed to be working (the basis of my true education). I do own Scribble, Scribble. And I will probably be moving sometime next year and should base my decisions on how many books can be donated somewhere beforehand. The Illuminatus Trilogy takes up at least as much space as my two copies of Crazy Salad and one copy of Scribble, Scribble, but is more stable because it’s all in one.
@mossygreen Amazon is just messing with you ; )
@therealjrn Right?! I’ll put a book on my wish list just to think about it, and then the price drops from $7.99 to $1.99, but only for half a day, just to see if I notice.
@mossygreen @therealjrn
I’d get whatever I might be interested in that didn’t mention the Illunimati.
Proust’s Duchess world interest me but so would the rest (excepting Illuminati anything“)
Yeah amz is prob messing with you
I have a ton of kindle stuff on a wishlist. But I never thought to check for temp personal discounts.
Does amz notify you of the price drop? Or do you have to check the wishlisted books manually? If the latter, what’s the easiest way to do that?
@f00l @therealjrn Aw, come on, the Illuminatus trilogy is basically Pynchon filtered through the Church of the Sub-Genius, it’s fine. Unless… you know something I don’t?
My amazon wish/shopping lists have become a Skinner Box I check pretty much every day to see if there are any price changes. Which is why I think it might be some kind of variable reinforcement experiment rather than, or in addition to, unadvertised sales. I don’t always open my amazon promotional e-mail, so I’m not sure how often they notify me.
@mossygreen @therealjrn
Re Illuminati: I always knew I shoulda taken more lit courses.
/giphy “literary Illuminati”
Re Amz:
Maybe I’ll have to put my kindle format wishes into their own separate list.
Much of the “has a physical existence” stuff on my “everything jumble wishlist” is just stuff I don’t wanna have trouble finding again. I don’t really want most of it at the moment.
But I don’t want to look at all that crap everyday.
Books, now …
Yeah I like being reminded of those.
Like the idea of personal amz temptation even better, if it’s about books.
@f00l @therealjrn Re Illuminati: it’s also the book series beloved by your friends in high school who liked to talk about how George Washington smoked weed, man, why else would he have separated the male and female plants. Or maybe I’m projecting.
I’ve been meaning to make a book-specific wish list on amazon for at least a year, and have not managed it yet.
@mossygreen @therealjrn
Re kindle books on your amazon wishlist:
When you look at the kindle stuff on your list: how do you know or notice that the price on something has dropped?
Do you have the prices half memorized so that you notice?
Or are these items marked out on the list in some manner?
@f00l @therealjrn I do have the prices at least partially memorized, but when a price drops amazon does provide both the percentage of the price drop and the price when added to your list. Which is nice, because camelcamelcamel doesn’t track kindle books.
@mossygreen @therealjrn
Ok, that makes it worth the list tracking. Thx!
Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. I heard it was made into a movie. I hesitate to see the movie because the book is gooooood.
@elimanningface I saw the previews- it looks really good.
@sammydog01 I saw a couple of the previews. I think it’s going to center around 2/3 of the book and the other 1/3 (commentary about the court system as it pertains to the death penalty and long term incarceration) will be text we see at the end of the movie. It will not paint Alabama police or court officers in a good light.
Apparently, for me, 'tis the season of reading books I end up hating…
After years of curiosity but it not being available on Kindle until this (past) year, I finally read The Catcher in the Rye.
I was curious what about it could have inspired so many people towards violence and jokingly wondered if reading it would make me want to kill someone.
It did.
Halfway through the book I wanted to murder Holden Caulfield.
To me, it was just a boring, pointless tale about a boring, pointless, loathsome character.
Has anyone here read and actually enjoyed this book?
If so, can you tell me why?
Well, after such a disappointing ‘literary classic’, I decided to return to my favorite genre, sci-fi.
Amazon recommended a recent title by William Gibson, who I didn’t even realize was still alive and writing.
I’m still struggling with ‘Peripheral’ (2014), about 3/4 of the way through it.
The first ~40% of it is completely opaque, it’s impossible to understand who’s who and what’s going on. Apparently that’s intentional.
Not my idea of a fun read.
I didn’t like Neuromancer either, so maybe I should’ve known better.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m still going to finish it, though.
When it comes to stories, it has to be really frickin’ awful for me to give up before seeing it through to the end.
I can count on one hand (probably 3 fingers, in fact) the books I’ve quit before finishing. (Heart of Darkness being the most memorably torturous.)
Next on my list is Exhalation, the collection of short stories by Ted Chiang.
I’m looking forward to it and expect to enjoy it.
I read his collection that included the story that the movie Arrival was based on, after seeing the movie, and liked it.
@DennisG2014
I read Rye in HS I think. That’s a nearly uncountable # of decades ago.
I recall enjoying it. Well-written portrait of aimless teenage consciousness. Given that the protagonist was seriously into a life phase during which many not-yet-grown persons can be somewhat-or-highly intolerable, it’s a good thing the book wasn’t too long.
Literature comes to us with a variety of purposes beyond entertainment and/or great world building and storytelling. Not all worthy versions of lit fit all readers.
No worries. Each should whatever gives value to their own lives.