What books are you reading right now?

I was like that after undergrad. I added a lit major for fun and it wasn't too hard to add to the journalism degree. After reading and reading and reading and writing about all those books, I was burnt out. When I did read after undergrad, it was terrible TERRIBLE chick lit.

 

I never pursued a postgrad degree. To this day I cringe when I read "academia" writing (run-on sentences, run-on paragraphs, dry and b-o-r-i-n-g).

 

My quick research on Guy Vanderhaeghe indicates that he has a fair number of fans, and has won some prestigious literary awards in Canada. I doubt that any this is because of his debut novel My Present Age. Some of the humor is very good, but the main character Ed is simply not very likeable. The ending is almost as though the author is saying "Keep your eyes open for another novel featuring Ed." BTW Ed is a character from two earlier short stories, so a sequel (even all these years later) wouldn't surprise me.

 

Some questions for you SciFi fans:

Have you read any C.J. Cherryh, in particular Cyteen? Which I believe was originally published as a trilogy--The Betrayal, The Rebirth, & The Vindication.

I'm about 40 pages into it, and Cherryh is driving me crazy with too political crap and no real action (yeah, I know, what should I expect in 40 pages).

 

I'm quoting myself because I'm wanting to read y'alls thoughts on C.J. Cherryh as a science fiction writer.

 

Just picked up Douglas Brinkley's "Rightful Heritage: The Renewal of America" and how FDR created the Civilian Conservation Corp and the politics of using the CCC as an economic development stimulus to build many State Parks systems and conserve natural habitats and wildlife preserves.

 

I've misplaced Trigger Warning. Grrrrr. I know it's *somewhere* in the house, but I haven't come across it yet. Le sigh.

In the meantime:

• I reread What Alice Forgot (Liane Moriarty) - a woman falls & knocks herself out at the gym, and when she wakes up, she believes she's 29, married to the love of her life, and expecting their first child. In reality, she's 39, has three children, and is going through a nasty divorce. It's a good read, and makes me re-examine what's important to me, and how I treat people. I wrote a blog entry back when I first read it, about what I would forget from the last ten years of my life.

• Finished Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx (Sonia Manzano) - Great read, though less about Sesame Street than I expected (like, almost nothing. It's mentioned briefly once, and then she goes for the audition at the very end.) Still, I really liked it. And I had no idea she was in the original cast of Godspell, so that was cool to learn.

• Also read A Place We Knew Well (Susan Carol McCarthy) - Set during the Cuban Missile Crisis, focusing on a small family in Florida. First love, a nervous breakdown, a family secret, and high school homecoming, all with the threat of nuclear war on the horizon. Y'know, I remember learning about the Crisis in school, but I think this was the first time I really understood how scary it was.

 

I recently re read illusions by Richard Bach its a deeply moving inspirational novel . I don't pretend to understand why i found the book so compelling it just made me think about my life and the choices i made and what the future would have been making different choices it really hit a nerve with me .

 

I'm reading the graphic novel collection for The Sixth Gun.
Really good stuff, horror western but more than that.
The Sixth Gun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I found the entire set at the used book store and just went ahead and bought the entire set.
If you just buy one hoping to come back and buy the next one it's not going to be there.

 

Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh. I finally finished this 680 page (originally published as trilogy) Sci-Fi novel. Per the cover it won the Hugo Award. I don't know when and if that was for the complete novel or one of the books in the original trilogy. The competition must've been pretty lame.

 

More on my history kick. I'm ripping right through this; a great read of little known recent history.

Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled from Missiles to the Moon to Mars

 

After my disappointments with Under The Dome and Cyteen,

I've gone back to finish The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

 

Nine and A Half Weeks A Memoir of a Love Affair by Elizabeth McNeill.

Yes, the popular (and still very hot) movie is based on this novel(la). The "novel" is 131 pages long, but that is very misleading because the publisher uses plenty of white space and a generous type size.

A few notes about the movie compared to the book, since most people have seen the movie, or seen select clips, or have at least heard about it:

--The movie is about control and degradation, with most of the sex being more risque than BDSM. The woman seems to have at least some doubts about their relationship the entire time they spend together (this view could be argued).

--The book is about extreme control and degradation, with most of the the sex being BDSM. The woman eventually turns herself over to his control (this could be argued, especially given the abrupt and unsatisfying ending).

The novel itself. Sometimes McNeill's writing is very basic and amateurish, at other times she experiments with creativity (with mixed results). There are only a few parts where the sex is described in detail, and it's not particularly good or particularly bad erotica or pornography.

NAAHW reads like an extended short story that a talented but underdeveloped writer wrote for a creative writing class. It's worth a read as long as you don't expect too much, and a bonus is it's a very fast read.
--- merged: Apr 15, 2016 1:28 PM ---
Some info on-line states that Nine and A Half Weeks is an actual memoir written by Ingebor Day (under the pen name Elizabeth McNeill) based on her exprience. While it could certainly be an actual memoir, and I have no proof to the contrary, I'm still thinking it's a long short story.

 

Tales from the Big Thicket edited by Francis E. Abernethy.

A collection of memoirs, magazine articles, and oral folks stories related to the Big Thicket (BT), long before it became Big Thicket National Preserve Texas in 1974. I've visited & enjoyed BT several times. I really liked this book because most of the stories are about BT before over-hunting, the logging industry, and the oil boom took it's toll.

The good news is parts of BT will return to near it's natural state given enough time. These days it's easy to see BT. You can get maps showing the roads (which no longer require 4x4 vehicle) and hiking trails. You sign-up for guided tours by land and water.

The bad news is overall it'll never be what it once was. The wildlife, such as an abundance of black bears won't be back, and pollution carried in rainfall and the many streams feeding into BT means the end of some flora & fauna. The old growth timber will never return. Sludge from the oil boom killed off swamps & ponds that'll never recover.

 

I've returned to The Best American Short Stories of the Century, published in 1999, John Updike - Editor, Katrina Kenison - Coeditor.

This is, as anyone would expect, a mixed bag. The stories range from really good to mediocre to really bad.

This might bother some people here, but I consider it to be a legitimate complaint. I have no idea if Updike is Jewish, and I don't care. He chose the stories first, then arranged them in chronological order from 1915 to 1998. The problem is many of the stories from the early & mid '80s have Jewish themes, which wouldn't be an issue for me except they're way too close together. IMO asking any non-Jewish reader, even the most understanding one, to read eight stories with six of them having Jewish themes is a bit much.

The Way We Live Now, a short story by Susan Sontag included in the above ^ anthology. Previously in this thread I posted that Sontag was way too fond of run-on sentences and run-on paragraphs. This story written in 1987 has special meaning to me because it deals with HIV/AIDS, although Sontag never uses the actual words. This was a time when the reality of HIV was starting to hit people who weren't sexually active homosexuals. I knew several people who contracted HIV even though they weren't homosexual, bi-sexual, or intrarvenous drug users. Unfortunately Sontag writes in her run-on style and compounds it by introducing too many characters.

 

I've been chewing my way through Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, loving it so far!