This summer, I’ll be in
Minneapolis (Wed, June 15 only)
Davidson, NC area (for a few days around July 4)
Denver (July 22-24) – I’ll be speaking at VegFest
and Japan (!) early August (Tokyo and Tohoku region)
Area Juicers – email me (see Quick Links menu at right) if you want to get together.
Also, anyone have any reading / listening plans for this summer? I can recommend:
The Long Ships by Frans Bengsston – a rollicking good read about the travels and travails of a Viking. Set in and around the Year 1000.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman – great book that I heard HBO is making into a miniseries. In particular, I reocmmend the ensemble audiobook.
As a bonus, both of these books feature road trips (or, in the case of Ships, the watery equivalent), and (for Betty) both put the Thor back in Thursday.
No Thor in this one, but otherwise fine: the audiobook of Goodwin’s Team of Rivals was a superb listening experience.
Anyone else have any summer plans or recommendations to share?
Tom Levenson
Some random recs: Last year I really enjoyed The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell — which has a Japanese setting and some really fine writing. I’ve recently been led (by Annalee Newitz!) to the fantasy writer N. K. Jemisin. Her The Fifth Season is excellent, and the second book in what I’m guessing is a trilogy will be out within a month or so. Geophysics, racism, love, and more, all in a page turner. I’ve just finished a mixture of art-essay and memoir/meditation on love called Travels in Vermeer by the poet Michael White. It’s a funny book, I suspect not to everyone’s taste, but I found it very moving. I also found myself reading it with the iPad by my side, so that I could look closely at the paintings as he wrote. (In the Vermeer vein I also really enjoyed Vermeer’s Hat by Timothy Brook — a learned and fun read using Vermeer’s paintings to open a door onto the global network in which he, the Dutch, and Europe at large were increasingly enmeshed.)
Right now I’m taking wicked delight in a return to an old friend, prompted by Julian Fellowes. His tv adaptation of Trollope’s Dr. Thorne sent me to Gutenberg.org to get the original. It’s been a very long time since I read any Trollope, or really any of the high Victorian novelists, and I’m just wallowing in gloriousness of it all. It helps that it’s a little shorter than some of the monsters of the genre, and that Trollope himself has a wicked, but gentle eye for his characters. It’s a hard world out there, and I like that kindness.
Last, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention what is, if not the best read I’ve had recently, certainly counts as the best write: my own The Hunt for Vulcan. If you want non fiction with (I hope) some bite to its theme, and at a length that won’t demand all summer of your time…that’s the book for you. ;-)
the Conster, la Citoyenne
I’ve recently read Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk on a recommendation from here – Iowa Old Lady, IIRC, and I just saw the trailer for the movie I didn’t know was being made from it – by Ang Lee, no less. So much of the story is told from inside the protgonist’s mind, I can’t imagine how the movie will work.
Just finished All The Light We Cannot See which was wonderful, and am well into The Devil in the White City, which is also amazingly researched about an event I had no knowledege of.
Too many books, too little time, although in the interest of full disclosure if I spent as much time reading as I do on this random blog, I’d be wicked smaht.
Hillary Rettig
@Tom Levenson: Great recs, Tom – thanks! I love the Victorians, and am a huge fan of George Eliot. However, even I wasn’t able to get through Felix Holt. Finally listened to the audiobook and was able to do it. There’s an English reader who goes by a couple of names, Nadia May and Wanda McCarran, and she’s a marvel at stuff like this.
Love good science writing and so will check out The Hunt for Vulcan!
Hillary Rettig
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: >All The Light We Cannot See
have this on Kindle and am looking forward to it
Hillary Rettig
Am also listening to The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Rhodes. a fantastic book and excellent performance but it’s not so easy to listen to with all the scientific detail, so will probably go back and read the “paper” version
Tom Levenson
@Hillary Rettig: I too am an Eliot fan. Started to reread Middlemarch earlier this year, and found my irritation with Dorothea held me back. Might just have to dive in when she, Causabon and the youth are all in Rome…or perhaps even around Causabon’s death. But mostly, I find in my Netflix addled brain, taking on the really elongated tomes is hard for me now. I don’t stop and read for a couple of hours at at time the way I did from childhood through my twenties. I miss it, and am trying to stretch myself out now but I ain’t there yet. That’s what’s made Dr. Thorne so much fun. A lot of language pleasures, great characters, and just a fine eye for the society being both skewered and affirmed. All the Victorian virtues without overmuch ballast.
Tom Levenson
@Hillary Rettig: Rhodes’ book is one of the great works of history/science writing of recent memory. Entirely worth the paper read. (I assign it regularly; the first third of the book is as good a popular account of the 20th century’s revolution in atomic physics as you can hope to find.)
Doug R
For a change this year, I wanted to show my family the west coast of Vancouver Island specifically around Bamfield, the north end of the West Coast Lifiesaving Trail. It’s an old trail that was the only access to the beach in the old days to rescue shipwrecks-the area was known as the GRAVEYARD OF THE PACIFIC with an estimated wreck for every mile. Turns out now the National Park wants money, you have to book time on the trail and we are NOT hikers, the only access is over an hour by logging road from Port Alberni.
So we are going to be camping at the south end near Port Renfrew. Access by paved highway from Victoria, provincial park, half a mile from the beach and just over an hour to Starbucks and Costco. Of course, being the Wet Coast, in late June it’ll either be hot and dry or more likely soaking wet and cool. But that’s what hotels are for.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/dockyard-of-the-damned-vancouver-islands-hidden-shipwrecks/article4100492/
TaMara (HFG)
I may be up for a Denver meet-up if I’m in town that week. I’m not sure yet. Let’s see if we can get any others. Maybe have a meet-up at Botanic Gardens – nice place to sit and chat, drink iced tea.
I’m off to hike some more. Beautiful day, again.
Miss Bianca
Billy Lynn’s Long Half-Time Walk was an amazing book – one of the best of last year, for me.
i’m re-reading a lot of Georgette Heyer as part of a group read on Goodreads – virtual book club! So, just finished “A Civil Contract”, which I’d never read before, and finishing up “Cousin Kate”, which I had. Continuing a long re-read voyage through “The Canon”, i.e. Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series, on audiobook, with the magnificent Patrick Tull narrating – just finished “The Ionian Mission”, and while I’m waiting for “Treason’s Harbor” to arrive I’m giving a listen to Joseph Jay Ellis’s “Founding Brothers”. He’s been cried up to me as the author of “American Sphinx”, which friends of mine say is the best biography of Jefferson they’ve ever read. So far – I’m not that far into it yet – he’s setting up the groundwork, painting a compelling portrait of the forces – collectivist v. individualist, government as guaranteeing v. oppressing liberty, etc. – that not only shaped the ideologies of the “Founding Fathers”, but that continue to shape us 200 + years later. The same ideas and ideologies we argue about to this day, says Ellis, we argue about *because* Washington, Hamilton (obligatory Hamilton reference), Adams et al. were arguing about them. The arguments are more or less baked into us. I’ve also got a book Adam talked about, on The Holy Grail (simply titled “The Holy Grail”), on the list as well.
Mostly right now I’m just delaying my trip back from home. The town of Paonia, my hometown even tho’ I’m not living here right now, is simply awash with the smells of roses and peonies, and alive with all sorts of birdsong. Finally heard a coal train go by – used to be that four or five of them were going by a day, every day, and now we’re lucky to get one every 24 hours. Layoff, shutdowns – good for the environment, bad for the local economy. We live the paradox of the 21st century right here.
Went to a local writer’s reading last night. Our most famous local son, Paolo Baciagalupi, wasn’t there, but a lot of others were. Read some of my own work, but only to one of my presenter friends. Got the thumbs up. Yay!
I love this place so much, I’m grief-stricken at the thought of leaving. I can”t wait to get back here for good
Miss Bianca
@TaMara (HFG): I’d come to a Denver meet-up. I should be free around then.
jeffreyw
I can recommend Neal Asher’s Polity Universe series of novels as worthy of your time, especially if you were a fan of the late Iain M Banks’s Culture novels.
Shell
Jacques Pepin’s memoir, ‘The Apprentice.’ Very enjoyable.
SiubhanDuinne
Hillary, I’m working on a contract job that will probably take me to Davidson College for an overnight, and I may be able to tweak my dates to coincide with your time there. Let me know when you know more precisely what “a few days around July 4” means. Would love to meet you.
hueyplong
Hillary R, did you go to Davidson?
You can probably guess why I ask.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: REM’s lawyer went there and he is constantly Facebooking abut how swell it is. . . especially since Curry exploded on the scene.
Major Major Major Major
I guess my summer plans are the surprisingly rapid accrual of vacation days.
I’ve been enjoying urban fantasy lately! The Dresden Files series, the Sandman Slim series, the Greywalker series. For a lighter romp, I recommend the vampire series from Christopher Moore (Bloodsucking Fiends/You Suck/Bite Me) and A Dirty Job by same, if you’re into Death. Speaking of Death, the Death serieses by Pratchett are always a fun light read.
The Pact web serial (it’s completed) is also a good read if you like urban fantasy with a demonic bent. It’s a touch long.
Elmo
@Major Major Major Major: Hugely enthusiastic second for the Dresden series, and for those who like audiobooks, James Marsters – Spike from Buffy – does a terrific job with them.
Major Major Major Major
@raven: I was once on a supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again (cruise) with the family, and our dinner companions were an absolutely insufferable nouveau riche family from La Jolla. Their eldest daughter went to Davidson and was on the cheerleading squad. It was all she talked about and the parents let her run her mouth about it, too. She was especially fond of talking about how Davidson had been in some sports commercial lately, about how the players all do something… sleep in the locker room?… before a big game.
One time the younger daughter tried to talk about something that wasn’t Davidson and the mom managed to redirect her subject to cheerleading at Davidson. I think it was a cheerleader-daughter-of-a-cheerleader thing.
Anyway, they sucked and we managed to find other dining options after a few days.
Miss Bianca
@Elmo: that’s how I want to experience them – with James Marston!
Just One More Canuck
@Doug R: Expect fog, but with some very cool formations over the ocean
Emma
@Tom Levenson: Trollope! Perfect recommendation. Haven’t read it in over a decade. Time for a third visit to Barsetshire. And the Vermeer titles sound interesting.
May I recommend a book titled Newton and the Counterfeiter by a certain Mr. Levenson? Who knew Mr.Newton had Sherlock chops!
For the fantasy/sci fi/wtf crowd. I would recommend Simon R. Green’s Drood novels. Not only fun but one hell of a seamless Universe.
(added later) Charles Stross’ Laundry stories. If you ever want to have your brain spin-dried.
Major Major Major Major
@Major Major Major Major: @Elmo: OH! That’s the one I was forgetting!!
HUGE recommendation for the Laundry Files series by Charles Stross. Imagine that Lovecraftian magic is real, but it’s actually just really complicated multidimensional math, and there’s a drafty British civil service office full of programmers- and mathematicians-turned-secret-agents that protects the homeland from eldritch threats. Very funny and surprisingly grim, my favorite combination.
Iowa Old Lady
I’d recommend a YA writer named Ruta Sepetys who’s written two WWII historicals set in eastern Europe. BETWEEN SHADES OF GRAY is about the Soviet evacuation of Lithuanians to Siberia. SALT TO THE SEA is set at the end of war when Russia is invading Germany from the east. It follows a group of refugees fleeing ahead of the army. Both are just so well done and about a part of history I didn’t know much about.
RSA
@Major Major Major Major:
I like urban fantasy, too. I hadn’t heard of Greywalker; I’ll take a look. I’ve enjoyed Harry Connolly’s Twenty Palaces books, Mike Carey’s Felix Castor novels, and the first entry in F. Paul Wilson’s Repairman Jack series.
Lonnie Harris
I’m reading a couple of H.P. Lovecraft collections now. Recently read The Handmaid’s Tale. Powerful book. Also picked up a collection of game-based sci-fi called After The Fall, which is post humanist horror.
Sadly, I’m about 75 books behind where I want to be, with zero prospect of ever decreasing that gap.
David Rands
Two phenomenal audiobooks – Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and Phillip Meyer’s The Son. The former is simply a masterpiece and the latter a great multigenerational novel of a Texas family told from three characters’ viewpoints. Also highly recommend The Long Ships. May be the best adventure novel ever written.
Marc In AZ
A YA series I’ve gotten hooked on is LJ Cohen’s Halcyone Space series (Derelict/Ithaka Rising/Dreadnaught and Shuttle). Good read, and I think has wider appeal outside of the YA market.
humboldtblue
@Hillary Rettig: I first read that book four years ago and it read like a novel to me, an absolutely wonderful work of history and science.
For another odd and interesting story from that period I recommend “The Last Battle” which revolves around the imprisonment of high value French prisoners — also known as the battle for Castle Itter — in the castle by the Nazis and what happened as the war came to an end. It’s a little known tale and the author does a nice job of profiling the captors and their prisoners in an easy to read but fascinating story.
Rand Careaga
Second, warmly second the recommendation of The Long Ships. My favorite passage is spoken by an injured viking to Brother Matthias, who is treating is injuries and attempting also to save his soul:
The first part of the novel was adapted for the screen half a century ago, with a stellar cast that included Richard Widmark, Russ Tamblyn and, ingeniously conjoined, Sidney Poitier and James Brown’s hair. It’s a good-natured travesty the sheer silliness of which approaches the sublime. Catch the film for shits and giggles, but definitely read the book.
Chris
Has anyone read “Too Like the Lightning” yet? They are gushing over it at crookedtimber. I downloaded it on the force of (Henri’s????) reccommendation. It is pretty bizarre starting out…just curious for anyone elses’s impression.
humboldtblue
@Miss Bianca: while I’m waiting for “Treason’s Harbor”
Stephen Maturin is at his best in this volume, you’re gonna love it. And yet again, for every two good things that happend with Stephen and Jack, O’Brian always find a way to have three not so good things happen to Stephen and Jack.
And a title I forgot to include in an earlier comment — The Girls of Atomic City — recounts the experience of women working at Oak Ridge during the war. Another fascinating topic if written at a sophomore level, still worth a read.
Major Major Major Major
@Tom Levenson: I always wanted to write a book like The Right Stuff but for the Manhattan project. Is that a thing?
p.a.
Just started H is for Hawk, it got great reviews. Evans’ trilogy on Nazi Germany excellent, not light summer reading.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
I always love going there. Have a good friend on the faculty. It’s an excellent school and a beautiful campus.
humboldtblue
@Major Major Major Major:
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Rhodes is one version that’s already been written.
MomSense
My new patio furniture is in large boxes on the deck. I have a feeling this project could take up my whole summer.
Major Major Major Major
@humboldtblue: I guess I was asking if the two were equivalent :)
ruemara
@Major Major Major Major: enjoy all of those series. I’m so behind on my ARC reading and reviewing, I won’t be doing more than catching up for a while.
I will be in San Diego around Comic-Con, possibly Philadelphia for the end of August & maybe NY Comic-Con in October.
JanieM
@Tom Levenson: I’ve reread Middlemarch several times over the decades, and my reaction is different each time. (As I get older and older, this turns out to be a general phenomenon!) At some point what I started to admire was George Eliot’s compassion for and kindness to Dorothea, and in part for — one assumes — her own younger self. I wish I could go so far down the path in forgiving the idiocies of my younger self! I think it’s quite a feat, and one that I treasure in a novelist, to show Dorothea’s ever so human flaws and foibles so clearly – and yet so lovingly.
Loved Jacob De Zoet, and most of David Mitchell’s other novels as well. (Number9Dream is the exception; I couldn’t finish it, though I’ve read all the others more than once by now.) Most of them I found hard to get into at first, but in most of them there comes a moment — I won’t say what kind of moment, for fear of spoilers — that knocks me over and makes me come back for more a year or two later. I’ve read that David Mitchell has another dozen interrelated novels in his head, and I’m sad that since he’s 20+ years younger than I am, I probably won’t be around to see where he takes them. (Marinus from Jacob DeZoet is an important character in The Bone Clocks, which is a much less conventional novel and in some ways irritating as hell, but which I still keep coming back to at odd moments.)
JanieM
Thanks to everyone for the recommendations – reading lists never get shorter, do they!
A couple of things I’ve enjoyed lately:
The One in a Million Boy, by Monica Wood. I’ve never read anything that blended laughter and sadness in quite this way. Amazing book. (Also try the memoir When We Were the Kennedys, by the same author.)
Everybody’s Fool, by Richard Russo. Probably best to read its 20-year-old predecessor, Nobody’s Fool, first, if you haven’t already.
jeffreyw
The Grimnoir Chronicles, by Larry Correia are a fun read.
amygdala
Finally got around to reading The Forever War, by Dexter Filkins, and am about halfway through Redeployment by Phil Klay. Both well-written, in very different ways, but no escaping that the actual horror of that time was (and remains) immeasurably worse.
The good Professor Levenson’s book is on my “to read” shelf, along with Sarah Vowell’s Lafayette in the Somewhat United States. Not sure why I’ve been on such a nonfiction binge lately.
Going to Portland, OR later in this month, in part because I’ve been jonesing for a couple of mornings getting lost in Powells Books.
(edited to fix a typo)
Major Major Major Major
Oh! The Rook is another book like the Laundry books. British civil service that patrols the supernatural. Kinda Bourne Identity meets, I don’t know, James Bond but supernatural.
Iowa Old Lady
@Tom Levenson: My favorite moment in Middlemarch is when the narrator starts talking about Dorothea and the interrupts himself and says wait, why should we always talk about Dorothea? And then he goes into Casaubon’s POV. That was a moment of great human insight and compassion.
ETA: Amygdala, I loved Redeployment.
humboldtblue
@Major Major Major Major: I think Atomic is far more science focused, Rhodes gets deep into atomic theory and application but the bios of the people involved are a perfect balance particularly for an ignoramus like me. It’s a fascinating book with the perfect balance of serious science and the humans who performed that science. What was even better was seeing and putting faces and voices to the actual people in this excellent documentary from Cal. The book led me down the rabbit hole of Feynman’s lectures which are still as fascinating today as they were when they were first produced.
MomSense
A friend of mine published her first magazine. I just received my copy of Making and plan to make most of the projects in the book. I really want to try embroidery again. The last time I tried it I was 8 and it didn’t go well at all. There was blood and crying.
jeffreyw
Europe in Autumn, by Dave Hutchison was very good, the follow-up book, Europe at Midnight was not bad.
WaterGirl
@Tom Levenson:
I may be less biased than Tom Levenson :-), but I gave two copies of The Hunt for Vulcan as gifts, and both people absolutely loved the book. One went to my best friend, who is a physicist; the other went to a friend who doesn’t do anything science-y. Both of them were delighted with the book.
humboldtblue
@JanieM: Thanks to everyone for the recommendations – reading lists never get shorter, do they!
I’ve already added four titles from this thread alone and I have always found it fascinating how many folks are deeply into science fiction. I first noticed that reading comments at TBogg’s old joint but this commentariat has a real jones for fantasy and science fiction.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: I’ll second that. I gave a couple of copies as gifts, and they were quite well received
jeffreyw
The Pratchett/Baxter Long Earth series was fun.
Omnes Omnibus
@humboldtblue: Umberto Eco has said that a library should be aspiriational.
schrodinger's cat
I want to write a book about Mumbai that is not fixated on its either its underworld or the its slums.There is so much more to Mumbai than that. Would anyone be interested in such a book?
jeffreyw
Linda Nagata’s The Red trilogy was good, sort of a cross between Person of Interest and The A-Team.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: Borges had a thing or two to say about libraries.
raven
@Major Major Major Major: Almost as bad as Auburn fans.
jeffreyw
Greg Bear keeps them coming with The War Dogs series.
humboldtblue
@Omnes Omnibus:
And now that I went and actually bought a Kindle (a year ago) I can carry my aspirational library with me.
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: The Island of the Day Before was a trip but I really wish I had known more about all the battles and wars he wrote about.
schrodinger's cat
deleted double comment
jeffreyw
Ramez Naam’s Nexus Trilogy was kick-ass.
Shell
Cant believe my online library doesn’t carry any of the Aubrey novels
Elmo
@humboldtblue: The audible of that series is my favorite thing of all things of ever. Simon Vance is my audiobook boyfriend.
Elmo
@Miss Bianca: I will see your Patrick Tull and raise you one Simon Vance. He also does amazing work with Dickens.
Major Major Major Major
@Shell: The paper version I read had a little glossary and a map of a boat in it that I found pretty necessary.
jeffreyw
Ian Tregillis’s The Milkweed Triptych was good. Something More Than Night
Tom Levenson
@Major Major Major Major: Basically, yeah.
debbie
Two books I’ve recently read and really liked are LaRose by Louise Erdrich and The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. I’m now reading Erik Larson’s Dead Wake and Helen Simonson The Summer Before the War. For readers who really like to commit to a series, Jane Smiley’s trilogy is good, and all of Ivan Doig’s books are enjoyable if you like a good storyteller (all 10+ books take place in Montana environs and his writing is similar to Stegner).
Tom Levenson
@Iowa Old Lady: Absolutely. That passage knocked me over when I first read it (at 19, right at the end of my sophomore year in college). It still does. The utter emotional intelligence of the moment!
Tom Levenson
@WaterGirl: Awww…thanks!
humboldtblue
@Elmo: I tried listening to the audiobook version of Master and Commander (Tull) on you tube but I haven’t gotten the knack for listening to a story I know so well.
Tom Levenson
@humboldtblue: I’d say the first third is straight science writing, and then when the war gets going it’s much more right-stuff-y
Major Major Major Major
@jeffreyw: now that sounds cool.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tom Levenson: Indeed, TMotAB is a masterful book. I didn’t like “Dark Sun” as much, but it was fascinating as well.
Cheers,
Scott.
schrodinger's cat
@Tom Levenson: I just picked up your book from the library this Thursday.
Elmo
@humboldtblue: I listen to audiobooks to make my hour-and-a-half commute bearable. Three hours of listening a day chews through books pretty quick. So I will often pick up audios of old favorites just to experience them differently.
schrodinger's cat
Halp I is being moderated.
humboldtblue
@Tom Levenson: Gotcha, my memory of right stuff is hazy and you’re correct, once Groves starts putting things together and they head to the desert the powerful personalities come to the fore.
Major Major Major Major
@Elmo: I don’t know if this is your thing but Douglas Adams narrated all his own books.
humboldtblue
@Elmo: I gotcha and that would have worked for me years ago when I had a commute but now I am two minutes from work and there is no more commuting and my long road trips of the past have been cut back as well as I break the 170,000 mile mark on my venerable, dependable, car.
Joyce H
Hey, if you’re tired of waiting for George RR Martin to come out with a new book, do yourself a favor and try Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series. She started her series about the same time as GRRM, and they have the same sort of deep backstory – pre-industrial society (with magic) growing up in the shadows of a fallen higher civilization (with dragons). In the time it’s taken George to write five books and part of a sixth, Robin has produced 15 books and is working on 16.
The books are divided into trilogies (though The Rain Wilds Chronicles had 4 books) and set in two different regions of the world. Starts with The Farseer Trilogy, beginning with Assassin’s Apprentice and involves Fitz, a bastard prince in the Six Duchies with two types of magic (one reviled and forbidden) who becomes the titular assassin’s apprentice and is involved in plots, wars, and palace intrigue.
Then we move down the coast to Bingtown and a different set of players for the Liveship Traders trilogy, starting with Ship of Magic. Seagoing adventures, pirates and slavers and sea serpents, and a secret about dragons. (And I have to say that Hobb’s dragons have a much more interesting life cycle than Martin’s, but to say any more would be a spoiler. )
Back to Fitz and the Six Duchies and the Tawny Man trilogy, starting with Fool’s Errand. (Fitz’s bestest friend in these books is the mysterious Fool, who happens to be a prophet.) Then back down the coast to Bingtown and the Rain Wild River for the Rain Wilds Chronicles, starting with The Dragon Keeper.
And then back to the Six Duchies for the Fitz and the Fool series (still in process) and now finally the two parts of the series (Six Duchies and Bingtown traders) are starting to come together.
Hobbs really puts her characters through the wringer, but she doesn’t seem as brutal as GRRM. There is definitely violence, but it’s not so lovingly lingered over as the Martin books seem to do.
daveNYC
Going expat as of this afternoon, which means I’ll be voting absentee. Since NY isn’t exactly competitive, anyone know how residency requirements work with expats and absentee voting?
IA is possible, but I’d be leaning towards TX or FL for tax reasons. Not that I’ll be owing any taxes here (after this year, of course), but it seems I need to file in the US anyway.
Betty Cracker
“Young adult fiction” is a thing, but is “old adult fiction” an official genre? If not, I may have recently invented it. Been putting together books (lots of photos, some narrative in large type) for my ancient grandma.
I tried to find “Billy Lynn” at a Cape Coral books-a-million the other day, but no luck. Instead, I picked up a novel called “We Are Not Ourselves” that I’ve found too depressing to get into…
Iowa Old Lady
@Joyce H: I like Hobbs’ books too! She really draws us into Fitz’s head.
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
Gee, I dunno. Could you see a publishing house exec handing out business cards with a job title that said they were the head of “old adult fiction”? The job title lacks a certain zing.
Tom Levenson
@schrodinger’s cat: [blushes] Enjoy!
Daulnay
I heartily recommend the classic The Trump Seizure of Power by W.A. Allen. Especially in these days of political chaos, it’s enlightening and perhaps a guide to our immediate future.
The actual book linked is worth a serious read at this point.
Ninedragonspot
Moved Smollett’s “The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker” from bookshelf to bedside. Enjoyed it hugely when I first read it some twenty years ago and feel like I should treat myself again.
cckids
@Joyce H: I whole-heartedly concur with the Robin Hobbs rec. My intro to her world was the “Mad Ship” trilogy; so wonderful.
hitchhiker
For historical fiction, Hilary Mantel’s books about Thomas Cromwell are quite amazing — creative, well-researched, original fiction on an era that seems to have been documented to death. (Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies)
For science, I still love (and re-listen to) Jonathan Weiner’s beautifully crafted narratives about behavioral genetics (Time, Love, Memory) and evolution (The Beak and the Finch). He’s a brilliant writer who somehow comes through the page as a kind person. Not sure how exactly that works.
Thanks for this thread! I trust your collective taste.
Daulnay
@Joyce H:
Along the same vein, if you don’t mind reading series that get new novels even more slowly than George R.R. Martin’s, try P.C. Hodgell’s God Stalk series. She published the first book in the series in 1987, and I have enjoyed every one.
If you like Robin Hobb, try some of her earlier work (under the name Megan Lindholm), like Wizard of Pigeons.
cckids
I just re-read All The Dancing Birds, by Auburn McCanta. It’s a beautiful story of the descent into Alzheimers, from the perspective of the woman suffering the disease. Heartbreaking, especially if you’ve lived through this in your circle of family/friends, but has such love and even some light in the darkness Alz. brings.
Plus, it’s written by my aunt :)
humboldtblue
@hitchhiker:
Wolf Hall was the most oddly punctuated book I have read. Loved it, but what’s with the comma usage?
Hillary Rettig
@Tom Levenson: Have you seen the BBC version of Middlemarch? It’s really good – and Patrick Malahide, who plays Casaubon, is really outstanding / heartbreaking.
I will check out Dr. Thorne. I thought Downton started strong but then sank into sheer soap opera in the end so I wasn’t that interested in checking out another Fellowes joint. But will check it out, or at least the book.
Hillary Rettig
@Tom Levenson: > All the Victorian virtues without overmuch ballast.
Yeah, and she was such an amazing observer and analyst that her characters “scan” modern. Nothing dated about them or their institutions, for that matter.
Hillary Rettig
@TaMara (HFG): great! let’s stay in touch
Hillary Rettig
@Miss Bianca: A Georgette Heyer book club sounds like amazing good fun! I will check out Billy Lynn and your other recs.
Sounds like you’re getting the most from your too-brief visit; thanks for sharing your experience with us.
hitchhiker
@humboldtblue:
No clue on the commas — I listened but haven’t seen it on the page.
By the way, in case you’re nerdy like me there’s a book about the details of daily life in the Tudor period called How to Be a Tudor by Ruth Goodman. She did (to the extent it was possible) all the things that ordinary people living in the 1500s did and kept meticulous notes about how it all worked. From her I learned how rush-covered floors worked, how people cleaned their teeth, how they stayed not-smelly, how they made ale, what their daily prayers were like, which plants to use to make the starch for those stiff neck ruff things, how to make a bed, why we still eat courses of meals in the order we do, and a ton of other mostly useless facts.
I love this sort of thing.
Mary G
I am listening to The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi right now. Kind of terrifying considering the poor excuse we had for an El Nino this winter. I agree with everyone about Robin Hobb. Fritz and the Fool are fascinating characters. I am lobbying my library to get the audio books of the Live Ships series.
humboldtblue
@hitchhiker: That almost sounds like the inspiration behind documentary style program I watched something like “Life in a medieval castle” or something similar. Goodman sounds much more interesting.
And those aren’t useless facts, those are the fun facts that fill in the details of an era or epoch. That stuff is always fascinating.
Hillary Rettig
@SiubhanDuinne: I could have brunch or coffee Sat, Sun, or Mon a.m. of that weekend, and would enjoy meeting you too!
Hillary Rettig
@hueyplong: Nope – we’re going to attend the retirement party of one of my partner’s colleagues. But I’m dying to know why you thought I would know why you’re asking?
Iowa Old Lady
@Mary G: The Water Knife is such a great read! Scary as hell.
Scamp Dog
@Tom Levenson: Coincidentally, I’ve been re-reading Barchester Towers, and looking online for images of architecture and clothing of the era, to get a better image in my head of what it should look like. I couldn’t do that the first time I read it, twenty-some years ago. We live in a marvelous era!
Hillary Rettig
@Rand Careaga: I have a zillion favorite scenes from that book including Orm’s wedding night and the one with the Killer Bees. But Toke is a GREAT character.
I had heard there was a movie – is it any good? I always imagined The Vikings movie was unofficially based on that book. Did you ever see this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SW6a1z_hUk
Scamp Dog
@TaMara (HFG): I’m in!
Hillary Rettig
@Omnes Omnibus: love that!
humboldtblue
@hitchhiker:
And here’s an Aussie who shows us how to make primitive tools and the how to use those tools to construct the necessities to survive.
nihil obstet
I recommend C.J. Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake series set in Tudor times starting with Dissolution. Shardlake is a hunchbacked lawyer (not as gimmicky as it sounds — it bears on his experience of the world) who starts as a hot gospelling reformer and then has to deal with his reservations about how Cromwell is handling things. It seems historically accurate. In one of the novels I thought Sansom had introduced table clocks before they were invented; I looked it up and found out I was wrong, and that there was a clock collection in Whitehall palace.
I’m reading a fair number of books about/set in WWI because of the centennial. I really like Adam Hochschild’s To End All Wars.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@humboldtblue: Speaking of talking elephants…
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who realizes nobody was speaking of talking elephants, but there you are.)
SiubhanDuinne
@Scamp Dog:
Have you ever seen the British TV miniseries The Barchester Chronicles? If not, I highly recommend it. The setting should give you a good sense of Trollope’s fictional Barchester, and the acting, as you’d expect, is simply wonderful. Alan Rickman, Geraldine McEwen, Susan Hampshire, Donald Pleasence, Nigel Hawthorne — yummy yummy yummy!!
hitchhiker
@humboldtblue:
Thanks for that. Very soothing somehow, watching competent hands do useful things.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
It’s allergy season.
Sunny the parrot’s new thing is to sneeze three times in an adorable bird voice.
AH-CHOOO
AH-CHOOO
AH-CHOOO.
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
Thirds for Stross, the Laundry series is at time truly grim but also hysterical, anyone who ever worked for a bureaucracy will recognize the management types who refuse to believe the actual purpose of the Laundry when in the course of their work they nearly destroy the world. Wonderfully, they are mostly eaten by those who must NOT be named, who are not the worst evil creatures in the series.
His other non-Laundry novels are also really good. My problem is that long ago I learned to read really fast, and so except for really thick books, I tear through them so fast no author can keep me satisfied over time. Additionally I sometimes buy books I read some time back, as I’m bad at remembering author/title combinations. But I don’t mind re-reading really good stuff,, exp. if I’ve forgotten some of the twists.
I can see a Paolo Bacigalupi novel peeking out from under a tool kit behind my computer right now.
jeffreyw
@Mary G: I finished that last week. It has more than a faint whiff of Johnny Mnemonic and Blade Runner – all to its credit, mind!
Ultraviolet Thunder
@J R in WV:
Stross is a brilliant writer. I read the first 3 Laundry novels and Rule 34. They are all quite funny and the writing is highly professional. But ultimately I was excessively squicked out by the supernatural horror factor and quit reading those. They literally gave me some bad nightmares. I’d love to read more Stross as long as the grossness factor is reduced to my personal limit of tolerance.
ETA: In a perfect world Joss Whedon would adapt the Laundry stories for TV, with (while we’re at it) an unlimited budget.
gogol's wife
I just finished Claire Harman’s biography of Charlotte Brontë, which reads like an excellent Victorian novel itself. Such a sad life, such a great writer.
geg6
@debbie:
Seconded on the Jane Smiley trilogy. Myself, finally picked up Perlstein’s The Invisible Bridge. Next up will be one recommended by Josh Marshal: Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration by Felipe Fernando-Armesto.
Major Major Major Major
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I would watch that. And then complain that the books were way more hardcore.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I’m reading 1177: The Year Civilization Collapsed, by Eric H Cline. Josh Marshall recommended it a couple of weeks ago. It’s dense, and I don’t have the background for this but it’s interesting. I had no idea that in the Late Bronze Age there was a wide ‘international’ network of political, social and trade alliances tying together Anatolia, Egypt and the Aegean. In Cline’s view The Sea Peoples got a bum rap.
BillinGlendaleCA
@geg6: The Invisible Bridge is an easier read than Nixonland, I need to read Before the Storm. If anyone hasn’t read The Hunting of the President, do yourself a favor and read it, it’ll prepare you for the next
65 months.Ultraviolet Thunder
@Major Major Major Major:
I think Joss would be perfect for it because he does absurdity well, and doesn’t shy away from disturbingly violent material. Not sure who I’d cast for Bob Howard. Someone unknown who can play a hapless pawn fighting bureaucracy for his immortal soul.
Major Major Major Major
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Ben Whishaw in ten years.
Linnaeus
@Tom Levenson:
I’ve assigned that book in my nuclear history class, though I found that the length of the book sometimes deters students, so I’ve used other texts as substitutions.
Linnaeus
Currently on my summer reading list*:
Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History
Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class
Edward McClelland, Nothin’ But Blue Skies: The Heyday, Hard Times, and Hopes of America’s Industrial Heartland
*Not including books I have to read for research.
germy shoemangler
For some reason I went back and reread The War of the Worlds (hadn’t read it since high school), and damn one of the characters sounds like a modern-day wingnut. It’s the guy who is hunkered down survivalist style against the martians. He’s almost glad it’s happening, he’s been waiting for society to collapse for so long.
Ramping Up
HILLARY UNIVERSITY: the new scandal nobody is talking about (yet!)
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/06/heres-hillary-university-scandal-no-one-media-talking/
BillinGlendaleCA
@Ramping Up: A link from the Stupidest Man on the Internet(SMOTI)? Come on, you’re better than that.
Major Major Major Major
Please don’t feed it. This thread has been such a nice respite…
RSA
I tend to think of Davidson College as a sleeper–I’m in NC and I didn’t realize for a long time that it’s ranked in the top ten among liberal arts colleges, up there with the best in the northeast and California, among others. All the students I’ve met from Davidson have been stellar.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: That was the only care and feeding I was going to do.
Omnes Omnibus
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Huh?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: I was being charitable.
geg6
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I already read the first two, but I’ve had a hard time starting this Reagan tome. Probably because I was becoming a party activist for the first time and just loathed St. Ronnie. I remember Nixon well, but my youthful idealism was almost snuffed out aborning by that fucker Reagan. So it’s a pure avoidance move on my part. But I’ve started now, so now I have to finish it. I never start a book without finishing it, with the sole exception of anything by Ayn Rand.
BillinGlendaleCA
@geg6: How is Before the Storm? One of the things about both Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge is I could remember some of the history since I was old enough. I have no memory of the 1964 election and what preceded it.
Major Major Major Major
I swear it posted a reply to bill under the wrong account just now.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: It posted a reply to me and another comment that got sent to the bit-bucket.
ETA: GIGO, heh!
humboldtblue
@hitchhiker: Wait’ll you watch him build his chimney/kiln and start firing pottery.
Scamp Dog
@SiubhanDuinne: I just started watching the first episode on Youtube, and it looks good–thanks for the recommendation!
NotMax
Historical fiction light reading for airplane or vacation:
“Dance of the Tiger” by Bjorn Kurten
“Sarum” by Edward Rutherfurd
A few historical treatments in the “can’t put it down, just one more chapter” category::
“Son of the Morning Star” by Evan S. Connell
“Undaunted Courage” by Stephen Ambrose
“A Distant Mirror” by Barbara Tuchman
“Peter the Great” by Robert K. Massie
Travel-related books:
“Blue Highways” by William Least Heat-Moon
“Baghdad Without a Map” by Tony Horwitz
PurpleGirl
Ruemara: How soon will you know if you are coming to Comic Con in NYC? Would you like have meet up either the Con or a day before or after the Con?
debbie
@NotMax:
Similarly in the “can’t put it down” category:
“Into the Silence” by Wade Davis. The subtitle says it all: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest.
“The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War” by Peter Englund. The author is a Swedish historian who collected letters, diaries, and papers of 20 people in the war (ie, a French bureaucrat, a Danish soldier, an Australian nurse, etc.) and arranges them in a day-by-day accounting of the experience of the War.
hueyplong
@Hillary Rettig: re Davidson. It is a very small college whose living alumni could all find seats in a single large NBA arena. If you were alum you’d know I was asking because I one too.
And yes, we all love Steph Curry.
jackmac
American Gods. Yes, great book (as is just about anything by Neil Gaiman.
PurpleGirl
@NotMax: I loved Blue Highways (William Least-Heat Moon). While it’s a travel book, it’s also a great personal reflection, a journey into his life. That’s what I found fascinating about it. I’ve read it twice but loaned my copy to a friend who never returned it.
Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror is very good. Of course, Tuchman’s The Guns of August is a classic about the start of WWI.
I think Hillary has mentioned Alice Koller’s An Unknown Woman (A Journey to Self-discovery). I got into reading memoirs at one point and found this book. I’ve read multiple times and I wish I track her on the Internet and find out what she did later.
PurpleGirl
@humboldtblue: Have you read any of Richard Feynman’s books? I loved Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman? He writes with clarity and a fine-tuned sense of humor.
PurpleGirl
@MomSense: Do you have a link to the magazine or know how to get a get a copy?
NotMax
@PurpleGirl
Suggested noted and filed for future reading.
You might like the diary of Mary Chesnut, published under various titles. C. Vann Woodward’s “Mary Chesnut’s Civil War” is probably the most accessible for a general audience.
Heh, was going to include some Feynman as vacation reading, but didn’t want the list to become Topsy-like.
Rand Careaga
@Hillary Rettig: Yes, there was a movie of the same title. It’s the one with James Brown’s hair.
The Lodger
@Chris: I’m four chapters into it. Wow. It’s philosophically unlike any other SF you’ve ever read, but still entertaining. I want to finish a couple more Hugo nominees before I continue reading my copy.
humboldtblue
@PurpleGirl:
I have not and now the list of titles I have added from this thread stands at 9. Thank you.
Miss Bianca
@p.a.: H is for Hawk got excellent reviews, but the people who reviewed it don’t know shit about hawking. Neither does she – apparently she managed to kill her goshawk when it was only three years old, and they can live to be about 20 (this according to an acquaintance of mine who’s been hawking longer than I’ve been alive). She never cops to it either – neither in the body of the book nor in an afterward, which I found incredibly intellectually dishonest.
Miss Bianca
@JanieM: I haven’t re-read Middlemarch since high school. I think it would be an awesome audio read!
Miss Bianca
@Elmo: I am coming so late to this thread – but I think Simon Vance is great too – I can’t remember whether it was Bring Up the Bodies or Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell that he narrated that I listened to recently – (there were two Simons as narrators, and I can’t remember which did which!) but both were awesome.
JanieM
@Miss Bianca: I agree, and you’ve given me an idea for my next long car journey.
Speaking of audio books, there’s an audio version of Prodigal Summer read by Barbara Kingsolver. I had it on tape a long time ago, then loaned it to someone and never got it back, not that I have a good way to play tapes anymore anyhow. Kingsolver does a great job reading it, and an already special book becomes even more so because (my theory) when she wrote that book she was coming home.
john b.
While in Davidson, go to Kindred. You will not be disappointed. You may want to make a reservation (though it’s not required).
http://kindreddavidson.com/menu-2/
They’re even great with kids (not sure if this applies to you or not).
hedgehog mobile
@Miss Bianca: Me too. I should be in town.
geg6
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Late to this, but I was the same. Remember the ’64 election vaguely, but being only 5-6 yo, didn’t live it like I have the other two. That’s why I found it fascinating. All the GOP dark artists cut their teeth with Goldwater. You get a real picture of the swamp they crawled out of and it’s cray-cray.
JustRuss
@jackmac: I don’t get the love for American Gods, it’s an interesting story but there isn’t a single character in the book that I want to spend my time with. Much prefer Neverwhere, which I preume is where our own Richard Mayhew got his nom d’plume.