What are you reading right now?

[Toy Revolver]

i enjoyed this poem as part of my early reading to start the day routine

Poem: 'A Quantum Cento'
Science in meter and verse
By Lorraine Schein on February 1, 2023
Scientific American February 2023 Issue

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/poem-a-quantum-cento/

[Toy Revolver]

Hyperion (Simmons novel)

i just finished this

it's considered a sci-fi classic

it was ok - it's really a collection of six short novels tied together by putting the characters in close proximity on a pilgrimage

going from plot to plot is tricky business and usually i think books suffer for it only the best can pull it off - the stories here range from pretty good to very good - but for this style to work every story has to be equally engaging and VERY engaging- if there's not complete consistency in quality it's alienating to the reader or at least this reader- i know this is a minority opinion but i think the author bit off a little more than he could chew

by the end i was happy to get it over with

still some parts of it are very cool

[Janszoon]

The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni
It's about a boy who was born with red eyes trying to survive Catholic school in the 1960s. I like the premise, but I'm not sure how well executed it is so far.

[Guybrush]

The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni
It's about a boy who was born with red eyes trying to survive Catholic school in the 1960s. I like the premise, but I'm not sure how well executed it is so far.

Like an albino kid? Or is it some spawn of  Beelzebub?

[Janszoon]

Like an albino kid? Or is it some spawn of  Beelzebub?

He has ocular albinism, so it's just his eyes that are impacted.

[ribbons]

Hard Candy by Tennessee Williams.  Reading this during my work commute.  His mastery of short stories is just as poetic and perceptive as his plays.

[fire]

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House
by Kate Summerscale

[Lisnaholic]

Written by a tv presenter, it has a style that engages you in the story quickly enough, although B O'Reilly uses the irritating modern device of describing historical events in the Present Tense: "Lincoln walks into the theater..." That really bugs me!! 



Still, I learned a lot from this book: about the Confederate surrender at Appomattox and the fanaticism of John Wilkes Booth. Also interesting were the comparisons to be drawn between the US then and how it is today. On the one hand, totally different because The White House, "the people's house" was open to the public, with petitioners to see the President even sleeping in the corridors overnight. On the other hand, something that hasn't changed so much: a bitter lingering divide between two Americas: the Confederate South and the Union North. The exact points of contention have shifted a bit, but the two mindsets are still there, grating against each other, turning every issue, from vaccines to abortion, into a new version of the same old political resentments. (At least, that how it seems to me as an ill-informed outsider.) 

[Toy Revolver]

i assume you know O'Reilly is famous for being a former fox news right winger

anti-poor
anti-choice
homophobic
extremely hawkish foreign policy

that doesn't mean it's not a good book but do his political and hateful cultural perspectives shade his historical narrative or did it seem fair?

seems like an interesting read either way

[Lisnaholic]

^ No, that surprises me, Dreams. I could see that he was kind of popularizing history, keeping it simple, putting in fictionalized bits about what people were thinking and various other dramatic touches that were just guesses on his part.

As for fairness, it seemed pretty good. He was sympathetic to Lincoln, but also to the poor Confederate footsoldiers. He praised Lincoln's commitment to American unity, and that came across more strongly than his admiration for Robert E Lee's military abilities (which is an attitude I've heard elsewhere.) He presents JWBooth as a pathetic, deluded  but dangerous figure.

Didn't notice anything anti-poor, homophobic, and pro/anti-choice, foreign policy didn't arise as topics at all. One weird thing that did arise: he's written a couple of other "Killing..." books, including one on Jesus Christ, and so, not to waste his research I presume, he throws in some bizarre comparisons about "Lincoln and Jesus Christ were both killed on a Thursday afternoon" or something like that...Ah, here's one of his forced parallels:-

"Two thousand years after the execution of Jesus, there are still many unanswered questions about who was directly responsible for his death and what happened in the aftermath. And so it is, on Good Friday 1865 that...." 

[Toy Revolver]

Two thousand years after the execution of Jesus, there are still many unanswered questions about who was directly responsible for his death and what happened in the aftermath. And so it is, on Good Friday 1865 that

lol 😂 that's a pretty strong indicator that the author is a weirdo

i still bet it's an engaging informative read

[Lisnaholic]

Yeah, lucky for him he has another profession apart from writing books 
Still, it was a quick, easy read and has given me enough info to allow me to mouth off like an expert in a bar conversation!

just finished I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid my second netflix inspired read of 2023

loved the film
loved the novel

probably the finest work of art on the nature of consciousness ever created or at least in the past couple of decades- truly brilliant

I saw this recommendation, so I'll track down the Netflix film, thanks.

[Rubber Soul]

Written by a tv presenter, it has a style that engages you in the story quickly enough, although B O'Reilly uses the irritating modern device of describing historical events in the Present Tense: "Lincoln walks into the theater..." That really bugs me!! 



Still, I learned a lot from this book: about the Confederate surrender at Appomattox and the fanaticism of John Wilkes Booth. Also interesting were the comparisons to be drawn between the US then and how it is today. On the one hand, totally different because The White House, "the people's house" was open to the public, with petitioners to see the President even sleeping in the corridors overnight. On the other hand, something that hasn't changed so much: a bitter lingering divide between two Americas: the Confederate South and the Union North. The exact points of contention have shifted a bit, but the two mindsets are still there, grating against each other, turning every issue, from vaccines to abortion, into a new version of the same old political resentments. (At least, that how it seems to me as an ill-informed outsider.) 

No, that's basically about right. If one side says the sky is blue, the other side has to swear the sky is yellow. It gets pretty tribal here.

[Toy Revolver]

just finished Escape by Carolyn Jessop and Laura Palmer

it's a non-fictional autobiographical account of a woman born into the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

she was coerced into an abusive polygamist marriage and the book tells the story of how she overcame physical and psychological entrapment

not surprisingly netflix has a follow up on the cult but i haven't seen it

it's not the most shocking cult book around but it's a solid interesting and engaging read

i felt a little too much time was devoted to the health problems of her children which is obviously extremely important to her and my heart goes out to her for how deeply she suffered- but people read books about cults to read about crazy cult stuff but this book certainly has plenty of this

[Lisnaholic]

...but people read books about cults to read about crazy cult stuff but this book certainly has plenty of this

That's true, and it was certainly my motive when I read this book, which, point for point, pretty much matches your description of Escape.



She was married to Verlan Le Barron, who took his splinter-group of a splinter-group of Mormon fundamentalists to Mexico in order to farm dust, if the photos are anything to go by. What I remember most is reading about the poverty, humiliation and hard work she endured, and also how I got used to reading phrases like, " Verlan and his first five wives..." or this description of the author "...the thirteenth of thirty-one children..."