What books are you reading right now?

Just ask yourself, What would Cliff Clavin do ?

I find that a large mug of hot tea can 'stretch' my reading time without interfering with my sleep. The good news, and bad news, is my wife is an early bird and I'm a night owl. If I edited written works for a living, I'm not sure that pleasure reading would even be a passing thought.

 

Please explain "off coffee."

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I finished Mutiny on the Bounty, and have started Men Against the Sea. So far it's interesting to see how the dual authors, Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, portray Bligh in the two books. In MOTB he's a tyrant who cheats his sailors out of food and personal property, and mistreats them. In MATS he's a man's man who does everything in his power to get his crew to safety, and gives himself no special privelages.

 

Many of our early industrialists were hard men willing to do bad things in the name of profit,
yet many of them did good things with part of those profits.

It's nice to find books that present a balanced view of such people.

 

I'm basically a lawyer now.

 

The League Of Extraordinary Gentleman Volume Three: Century
It's the League's adventures from 1910 to now.
Alan Moore, as usual, is insane.

 

I rently finished The Sory of O by Pauline Reage, the 1954 French novel on which the 1975 porn movie is based.

NOTE/SPOILER ALERT--If you have been meaning to read the book out of strong curosity, you might want to stop reading my comments. I'm not going to write any spoilers as to the plot, but I am going to comment what the book is perceivd to be, and what it actually is, IMO.

If your copy includes the Translator's Notes, A Note on Story of O, and Preface: Happiness in Slavery, DO NOT read them before reading the book. At least two of them contain spoilers, and all three could possibly affect how you perceive the novel. They are worth reading regarding how the novel "ends," but only after reading the novel.

IMO this is not a full novel at 204 pages, but it's more than a novella (more on that later). I wouldn't call TSOO pornography because the sex is far from graphic, and what descriptions there are drop off considerably as the novel goes on. In fact, many of the terms used for body parts and sexual acts are not only mild, they're nearly comical (belly to mean vagina, for example). The author goes into much more detail about the settings than the sex. It is erotica to a certain extent, the first of the four chapters in particular, but isn't that stimulating. Much of the sex is presented as-matter-of-factly. If it weren't for the BDSM factor, if this book was written mentioning only relatively normal sexual acts, it could considerred boring by modern standards (I can't speak as to erotica in France in 1954).

The ending of the book very clearly wasn't meant to be the ending of the book, unless the author intentionally decided on an abrupt and totally unsatisfactory ending. The publisher attempts two brief explanations they call The Second Ending. One explanation says the final chapter was intentionall omitted, the other explanation says a second ending exists. Why only extremely brief summaries are provided--neither "ending" is presented in full--is not explained. I call bullshit: The publishers printed an unfinished manuscript. But in the notes that I suggested skipping before reading the novel, at least one writer indicates that the second ending does really exist.

 

I absolutely loved the Malazan books of the Fallen . I read them as they came out, then when the second last came out I started rereading them from the start. To freshen my memory before the end.
Right now I'm rereading my favourite author Traci Harding. I own the books in the physical form but they are in storage so I'm reading them on my Kindle.
I prefer the Ancient Future trilogy, but I finished them and figured I may as well carry on with the second trilogy, the Celestial Triad. This series is set 50 years in the future but the first book Chronicle of Ages spent most of the story filling in the holes from the dark ages stories in the first series. That's the fun of a time jumping story.
I finished that first book a few days ago and am yet to start Tablet of Destinies


**Dammit! The first bit of this post is replying to a post on page one. I hope Amonkie enjoyed the series back in August 2011.

 

Really? I confess, I loved the Earthsea trilogy so dearly I went right out and started working through her other stuff, and I found myself almost universally disappointed. The Dispossessed,The Left Hand of Darkness, City of Illusions, Orsinian Tales, The Wind's Twelve Quarters, a bunch of others. Didn't much like any of them. The sole exception was The Lathe of Heaven, which was not only well done, but one of the most strikingly original ideas I have ever seen.

What is it that you are finding so compelling about her work?

 

I bought the ammo cases of Schlock Mercenary - The Comic Space Opera by Howard Tayler for myself as a Hanukkah present.
Sure I've read the whole series online but there is extra content in the books, a calendar and they're signed.

 

I finished the Bounty Trilogy, have previously posted about books one & two. Pitcairn's Island was an interesting & worthwile read, even though it had some really slow parts.



==== SPOILER ALERT =====

If Christian was truly determined to treat the four male native islanders as equals to the nine male white seamen, why did only the nine whites get to vote under the Majority Rules system? I've noticed this bit of British we're-fair-but-still-superior attitude in other works by British authors. I'm guessing that consciously or subconsciously it has something to do with bruised pride related to the rapid decline of the British Empire after WWII.

There was much copulating, esp in MOTB and PI, yet the number of preganancies was relatively low until late in PI. Most likely something that the authors did want to address. Along that line of thinking, the authors also didn't address the potential issue of incestuous mating between half-brothers and half-sisters, which would be hard to avoid given that the exact paternity of several of the children was unclear.

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I'm about 31 pages into Isaac Asimov's The Robots of Dawn. I didn't realize that this is the third book featuring Elijah Baley, the police detective & main character, but so far not reading the previous two novels hasn't been a factor.

Edit--So far Asimov hasn't thrown me with any serious technospeak, but the book was published in '82. I have no idea about his writing since to my knowlege this' my first Asimov novel.

 

Dude, where's my country? Micheal Moore

 

Just picked up the first three books in the Sandman Slim series.
Very hardboiled fantasy series about a demon/angel who fights his way out of hell and moves to LA.
Of course the only job he can get is hunting monsters.