What books are you reading right now?

Seal Target Geronimo by Chuck Pfarrer, a book about the Osama bin Laden mission and related missions. I'm 32 pages into it, just finished the part where Pfarrer explains SEAL training and is now starting on how the SEALs evolved from earlier special forces groups. It contains a fair amount of chest-thumping, but to be honest, the SEAL members earned the right to chest-thump.

 

"The Man In The High Castle by Phillip K. Dick."

Dick fans (I couldn't resist the cheap play on words ) take note--TMITHC has been made into a movie.

 

Last night I finished The 500, a novel by Matthew Quirk. I like Quirk's writing style, and he keeps the story moving, but the story has way too many improbabilities, and a Hollywood ending. It seems that many authors are writing novels with movie deals in mind, rather than writing a solid novel and then letting the screenwriters turn it into a Hollywood movie script. In fact, 20th Century Fox bought the rights to this novel in 2012; to my knowledge the movie hasn't yet been made.

Google

 

Blood And Money by Thomas Thompson. The book covers the mysterious death of Houston socialite Joan Robinson Hill in 1969, the extremely likely related murder in 1972 of her unfaithful husband John Hill, and the possible involvement of Joan's father, Texas oil man Ash Robinson. I recall these cases being huge in the news when I was a kid.

From what little research I've done--I don't want to read any spoilers--this book isn't about justice served, it's more about justice averted through money, power, & influence.

A plus--The HB book is signed the author.

 

I am reading that right now as well.

I am also reading through Neil Gaiman's Sandman series.

 

Blood And Money is a good read, even though it probably appeals more to folks who were around Houston during that time period. Chances are good I saw the made-for-TV movie, but I don't recall seeing it.

Some relatively minor complaints:
Thompson goes into too much background detail for some of the people (yawn, get on with it!).
He uses quotation marks for conversations that he could not possibly have been privy to (that's my journalism education speaking).
He goes "inside the heads" of several people and writes their thoughts with no possibility of knowing what they were actually thinking (maybe he got the info in interviews, maybe he used poetic license).
He ends the book with the conviction of the 'go-beween,' a truly and seriously evil bitch (if the book is accurate) named Lilla Paulus. A brief afterword would've been nice, such as she refused to flip on Ash Robinson, who most likely put up the money for the hit on John Hill. Perhaps later editions of the book (my copy was published in 1976) include updates.

 

Currently reading the latest October Daye book by Seanan MacGuire. A very enjoyable little series.

 

Currently in the middle (ish) of three right now:

• The Bees: A Novel, Laline Paull
• The Good Girl, Mary Kubica
• The Horse and His Boy, C.S. Lewis

Horse is part of my Narnia rereads. Bees is good, but seems a tad unfocused. Girl is fascinating, and one I didn't mean to start until I finished the others...but the preview hooked me so completely, I had to keep reading.

 

I just finished reading Accelerando by Charles Stross and am now about 5 chapters into Eon, by Greg Bear. (Actually, both are re-reads, but you can never read a good book too many times, right?)

 

I found Accelerando to be a difficult read, the main plot was slow to develop and the book was very fragmented, even though I did enjoy Stross' first two novels. With that said, SF isn't my favorite genre. Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio was another novel that took me several tries to finish.

In this thread I posted more detailed comments on both books.

 

I am continuing my reading of Sandman. Holy crap, it's good. When it first came out, I think I read the first couple issues, but it was right at the time that I stopped reading comics (a lack of funds forced me to go cold turkey on my pull list). Since getting my iPad last Christmas, I have been making my way through some graphic novels and comics. It's been great.

I noticed The Sandman was on sale recently and got the whole thing for a great price. I also just signed up for Marvel Unlimited... so much back catalogue to explore.

 

The latest Maggie Hope novel .

Former secretary/typist to Churchill turned SOE agent solves murder involving Eleanor Roosevelt.

 

I can appreciate that you found Accelerando a difficult read. It definitely is very convoluted. As for Bear, I have to pick and choose from among his fiction. Personally, I found Darwin's Radio boring and never finished it. OTOH, I like Eon very much and have read it (and its sequel Infinity) over and over again.

Unlike you, I'm definitely a science fiction fan and I like my SF hard, Hard, HARD. (Science Fantasy leaves me flat.) Two of my favorite authors (aside from Stross; I love his Laundry series) are Greg Egan and Richard K Morgan. Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs novels are about as cyberpunk as you can get. I find their flavor very similar to George Alec Effinger's Gravity Fails novel (and its sequels.)

 

Big fan of Richard K. Morgan, he manages to take whatever genre he writes and stand it on its head.
His fantasy novel The Steel Remains is genius and as you said the Kovacs books are great.

 

I'm somewhat science & math phobic, so if an author gets too technical the book leaves me cold. If you like the mathematical aspect of SciFi, you might try Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. It isn't SciFi, but it appeals to those who love math puzzles. Someone here at TFP posted that it makes The Davinci Code look like child's play, and it does. I managed to finish it, at the insistence of a neighbor, but couldn't appreciate it.

 

I'm 38 pages into City of Night, a semi-autobiographical novel by John Rechy published in 1963 (not to be confused with the 2005 Koontz novel with the same title).

Even with my eclectic reading, CON is a bit 'out there' for me. The main character is a homosexual who recounts his travels to several large cities. What makes his story different he discusses his experiences as drifter of sorts who relies on, to varying degrees, being a hustler. I'm guessing that in '63 this novel was shocking, not so much the homosexual aspect but the seedy side of being a gay--a word not in use in '63--hustler.

The Wikipedia article is interesting.

City of Night - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The Trouble with Brunch

The trouble with brunch | CBC Books | CBC Radio

 

I'm now about 1/2 through City of Night, a semi-autobiographical novel by John Rechy. TBH the only thing keeping me reading it is its significance as early gay literature. I'm hoping that Rechy wraps the story up with something interesting.