What books are you reading right now?

Just finished "A Cold and Broken hallelujah" by Tyler Dilts, pretty darn good.

 

Just got the Kindle version of Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America

It starts with his fantasy trip and the best and worst of what might happen, followed by the real trip.

The intro to the audiobook:

 

A few days ago I finished Teacher Man by Frank McCourt. It was so-so, nothing especially interesting. I really liked Angela's Ashes, didn't think much of 'Tis, or Teacher Man.

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The Regulators by Richard Bachman, A/K/A Stephen King. Horror fiction isn't one of my favorite genres. This one was an interesting read, but didn't change my mind about HF. I think that Dolores Claiborne and The Green Mile are two very good novels.

 

Reading a Dune prequel at the moment. Because I could download it for free, It's called House Corino. As with all the prequels by Herbert's son, it isn't as well crafted as Frank's originals, but I enjoy reading the backstory .

I would like to read more from the Dune universe - carrying forward with the story. I've lost track of the where the arch of plot ended, and may have to find and read the last book again.

 

I've started another Irving novel, The Hotel New Hampshire. It's going to take me a while to get my mind past a major stumbling block--the wife & mother lets her husband go forward with such a totally ridiculous (beyond embecilic) idea of turning an old school located in dreary & dying town into a hotel, financed by selling their home.

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I couldn't get through Hotel. And I love Irving. I'm still in the middle of book two of the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. I actually have some time to read. It's weird. I'm also going through the Alex Delaware series via OverDrive audiobooks to see if there are any I missed. Just a few that I've found so far.

 

I liked the Mistborn series. But yeah, it is weird. And it gets weirder.

 

I've complete 34 books on my 40-book Goodreads challenge this year. Next stop, Tales of the Jazz Age, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

 

So far I'm 135 pages into The Hotel New Hampshire. I like Irving's writing style, but sometimes his plots are really farfetched. THNH starts pretty slow, and goes on to include some parts that make me say "What the hell?," such as why weren't the football players charged with rape (why weren't the parents totally outraged???), and why was Huck's death introduced but then largely ignored? The financial aspect of running a hotel--which was very importnat early in the novel--hasn't been revisited.
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I really like The Great Gatsby, but was very dissapointed with Tender Is The Night (I wrote about it somewhere in this thread). I didn't realize that TITN was his last novel, and was written during a very bleak period in his life.

 

The Hotel New Hampshire was the most disappointing John Irving novel that I've read.
If I had to use just one word to describe this novel it would be this:
Disbelief.



SPOILER ALERT!!

A gang rape of a teenage girl that doesn't get reported to the police?
A young woman wearing a bear suit doing security in hotel that is also a brothel of sorts?
At least five people knowing about a plot to set off a bomb in an opera house and all of them decide to wait to inform the police?
Prostitutes slipping out of the hotel where they people were being held hostage and not going to the police?
Years of sexual tension beween a brother and sister leading to an afternoon of multiple incestious intercourses?
A father that clueless & stupid, or at least willing to ignore the obvious?

 

Yup.

 

Empress of Eternity by L.E. Modessitt Jr.

It's proving hard to get into because he's really holding his cards about what's going on and how the world works. It's set so far in the future that society is completely unrecognizable and the action is so scattered I can't even guess how it's going to tie together.

 

A Man Called Ove - a best seller from Sweden - "a grumpy yet lovable man finds his solitary world turned on its head when a boisterous young family moves in next door."

 

And that was a partial list.

 

Nine Suitcases by Bela Zsolt, which is an interesting read composed of many mixed parts--memoir, journal, novel, history, philosophy (politics, religion, human nature), journalism, political editorial, etc. All of which make sense given Zsolt's various writings over the years.

Zsolt points the finger of guilt at nearly everyone regarding the success of Germany & the Nazis, including the Jews themselves (he's Jewish) and himself in particular. He had many chances to escape from Hungary before the Nazis took complete control, and in fact returned to Hungary knowing what was happening in his homeland.

It is sometimes difficult to follow Zsolt. He likes to use situations and conversations that he imagined could've happened, and at times it's not easy to distinguish when he's speaking figuratively or literally. Some of the conversations he presents as being real make me think he took a lot of liberties when writing this memoir. Another annoyance is he mentions multiple people in one paragraph and then isn't clear on which one is speaking or to which one he is referring.

It could the fact that the book was (poorly) translated from Hungarian to English. Perhaps the combination of years of hard drinking, fighting in WWI, having tyhoid fever at least once, nearly being starved to death several times as a POW, and nearly freezing to death at least once, took a toll on his writing skills.

 

Lost in Shangri La....free Kindle edition.

“A lost world, man-eating tribesmen, lush and impenetrable jungles, stranded American fliers (one of them a dame with great gams, for heaven's sake), a startling rescue mission. . . . "

 

Last week i finished Red Square Blues, The Decline & Fall Of The Soviet Union by the humorous Kim Trail. As sickening as it is learn more of what my people in the Ukraine went through, Kim Trail still manages to make the horror readable.

After thoroughly enjoying the extremely entertaining Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, this week i've started his At Home, A Short History of Private Life.

 

breakthrough--- I love kindle unlimited