What are you reading now?

Excited to crack a new book open this evening: "The Facemaker" by Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris.

Despite the dramatic, novelesque cover, it is a medical history book about plastic surgery pioneer Harold Gillies, who worked to reconstruct the faces of many soldiers who had been disfigured in battle during WWI.

In reply to Nicole Suddard :

I anticipate that being a tough read...  

In reply to stroker :

I mostly read medical history these days, so it's right up my alley.

Nicole Suddard said:

In reply to stroker :

I mostly read medical history these days, so it's right up my alley.

That seems remarkably specific.

In reply to Duke :

What can I say? I have a type.

Just finished "Empire of the Summer Moon"  by S.C. Gwynne.  It is about the rise and fall of the Comanches, but it is also in most ways a history of Texas from 1770 up through 1900.  A good read.  Got to say you start to understand why the natives were so pissed off.

Starting book #2 for 2024. 
 

Jurassic Park was a good read, they definitely deviated a lot from book when writing the script for the movie but it was interesting to see where the got some of the material for the sequels. 

Nicole Suddard said:

In reply to Duke :

What can I say? I have a type.

Ever read any Mary Roach?  I highly recommend her.  It's not the hardest of hard science, but she takes a very factual but engaging approach and covers the general history of her topic.  Not all of her books are medical but a fair number of them are.

In reply to Duke :

Can't say I have, but after being peer pressured to create a goodreads account today, a few of her books appeared in my recommendations and made it onto my "want to read" list

I was reading Consider Phlebas but I put it down. I love the concept but couldn't get around the style. 

I'm now I'm reading Cameron Haynes' book about backcountry bow hunting. 

I've just been rereading the Wings of Gold series. Disclaimer: No relation to the tv show of the same name. 

Lincoln on Leadership.

Just finished the "exit wounds" audiobook, a collection of mystery type stories. Meh...

Just finished the paper book: Prisoners of geography: Ten Maps that Explain Everything About the World, by Tim Marshall.

I don't love the inevitability. I would love to see a counterpoint by Jeremy Black. It's interesting, though. I had no idea how terrible the Japanese and Chinese demography is currently. The section on the Artic was enlightening as well.

Finished the audiobook "The Long-Legged Fly" by Sallis, which was recommended as some sort of John D MacDonald facsimile. It was bad. Grapes of Wrath meets Hardy Boys. He always solves the mystery, and the person is always dead or worse. Over and over. The silly surprise ending was lame.

Also, he's poor, in a halfway house, not a penny to his name in New Orleans at one point. So naturally he has five coffee drinks in a cafe, eats a seafood lunch, stops for snacks everywhere, eats a big dinner out, and has 17 cocktails. I wish I had that kind of food budget.

stroker said:

Just started "Starter Villain" by John Scalzi.  So far, it's really good. 

How was that?  I've seen trailers for something about that - maybe a Netflix production.

Finished the Shirley Jackson collections.  Hitting the library on Saturday to see what I can drum up.

I read Starter Villain a couple of months ago. I liked it, but didn't enjoy it as much as I did Old Man's War.

I just finished Rubicon, by J.S. Dewes. Shades of Tom Cruise's Edge of Tomorrow and maybe some Cylon inspired enemies thrown in. It was okay, but not great.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Over 1,000 pages. Nobody I know has actually finished reading it after starting the book.

Wallace had a really weird sense of humor. At one point he wanted to open a shelter for stray dogs.

He hung himself on his back porch in 2008.

RevRico said:

RevRico said:

10 since Jan 1.

Finally finished the random encounters series, there were 9 books not 7. Could have ended at 7.

I started Mindburn last night. It's eh so far. Basic Matrix meets 2077, for the good and the bad. I'm catching a lot of basic errors in the writing, like misspelled words, characters changing mid sentence break, quotes that open and never close or that only close. It's kind of annoying, and with a very generic storyline, even I find it distracting.

 

I'm going to have to note the author so I can avoid him in the future. Rhett C Bruno. 

560 pages to get to  that  ending?? What a waste of time that was. 

I tried to read Reaping Independence, I got 4 pages in. AI writes better, in more complete thoughts. 

Now starting the Awaken series. Hopefully it's better than the last couple books. 

11 since Jan 1.

Finally finished the first book of Awaken Online.

Rough summary, nerdy bullied kid gets into new VR game with a crazy AI changing code on the fly. Good v evil, grey boundaries between them, magic, knights, violence. 

But the book is written? Described? Portrayed? like a videogame when he is in VR. So there's skill updates, XP updates, general RPG notifications. A little weird if you aren't expecting it, but I got used to it throughout the book and got into watching the skills level up. 

I'm kind of liking the series, I'll stick with it. 

I should probably try reading a litrpg, there are more than enough recommended at me already in the kindle unlimited store. I'm just not sure how that works because I picture it as a choose your own adventure style, and don't think that would translate digitally well without a dynamic response.

I have made a personal goal to try to publish my own books through KDP. My problem is currently I'm stuck between "outline" and "short story" for like 5 current ideas. 

12 since Jan 1

Reading The Millionaire Next Door and doing a 'book report' for my master mind group. 

Just finished the audiobook "The Rules of Prey" by John Sanford. The book was okay, but it still hasn't scratched my itch to find another John D MacDonald. The narrator, Richard Ferrone, was abysmal. If you like listening to an old guy with huge jowls talk like he just finished a pastrami sandwich, he's your guy. It's really hard to listen to him do a womans voice, and even harder to hear him smack those gigantic jowls all the time. I didn't really find the main character, Lucas Davenport, to be relatable enough to cheer for. After a few chapters I felt it was a fairly well-trodden detective novel path. I wanted to see how it ended, but it was pretty much as I anticipated. Imagine the Lethal Weapon as a book, but without the likable smack talking duo. The inevitable end of the inevitable showdown between the bad guy and the main guy was trite.

In reply to tuna55 :

That sounds utterly disgusting.  I wouldn't have lasted 10 minutes listening to that.

Currently reading I Will Find You by Harlan Coben.  I noticed his name in the credits of a couple of decent British thriller series on Netflix ["Based on a novel by..."] but he is actually from New Jersey. I think.  Picked this one at random off the new titles shelf at the library.

So far it is full of generic modern thriller tropes:  falsely convicted protagonist with a troubled past from a blue collar background, evil rich family dynasty with a ruthless matriarch and protected sociopathic son, etc.

The writing is decent but nothing to, errrrr, write home about.  It's a shallow page turner.  We'll see how it turns out once the inevitable plot twists start hitting.

Just picked this up, keep ya posted.

I just read QuasiMofo's book.

914Driver said:

Just picked this up, keep ya posted.

I've heard Clint on the Mike Rowe podcast. That book would likely make me very sad.