What are you reading?

[dubiousbystander]

I don't read a great deal these days. I really, really need to get back into John Mosby's 'Fearful Symmetry: The Essential Guide to all things 'Highlander''

Yes, yes you must! Then come in here and shout about it. Hopefully in praise.

Currently reading
Murderbot Diaries #7: System Collapse. 41% in. We are ramping up!

And

Words By Baye, Art By Miki: Crafting a Life Together with Affection, Creativity, and Resilience by by Baye McNeil and Miki Hayashi McNeil.
I'm still quite early in the book, and he's talking about the first time he went to Haiti. Realizing they celebrate the history of 1804 and the leaders of the Haitian Revolution.

[Dragon Katana]

I don't read a great deal these days. I really, really need to get back into John Mosby's 'Fearful Symmetry: The Essential Guide to all things 'Highlander''

[dubiousbystander]

Between access to two digital libraries, being in an online book club, and grabbing e-books or visiting the Internet Archive, I have in my currently reading/I'll get to it soon list: "Remote Control", by Nnede Okorafor. A novelette about a girl who has an encounter with something that suddenly makes her able to generate deadly killing energy. Not sure how I feel about this one. There are apparently two other books in the future of this same reality, but I don't yet know if I'll try them.

For the book club I recently finished "The Future", by Naomi Alderman. Three of the world's richest people disappear while escaping a nascent pandemic, and a survivalist finds herself marooned with them.

For next month I finished "In the Lives of Puppets" by T J Klune. A boy raised in the depths of the woods by a robot father has been rebuilding decommissioned junked robots, so his best friends are a Roomba named Rambo and a medical robot named Nurse Ratched. Then he saves a quite temperamental fighting robot. But when the Authority finds out where they are, his father hides him, but is taken away. The boy and his three companions go on a rescue mission.

Just started the March book. "The Deep Sky" by Yume Kitasei. One of the richest women in the world has launched a colonizing ship loaded with specially trained young women and lots of sperm stored so they can get pregnant. But something fishy is going on. Deadly sabotage endangers the mission, with a laundry list of possible culprits.

"Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets" by Jeff Horwitz, was recommended by a friend who used to work for it.

[Cyrus The Great]

I just started to read the Marvel graphic novel "Eternals" written by Neil Gaiman. The story centers around an Eternal who has forgotten who he is. As the story opens, he is a medical student who has lost his girlfriend and isn't getting much sleep. In the hospital, he is visited by a man, who claims to know him, and who tries to convince him that he is an immortal super being who has been alive for half a million years. The sleep deprived "med student" thinks he is crazy and tells him to get lost! Things get even more interesting after that.

[Cyrus The Great]

I have been reading the "A Brides Story" series of Manga written and illustrated by Kaoru Mori. I have just finished volume 3. The story is set in various Central Asian locations in the 1800's. In the first three volumes, the action took place in locations just east of the Aral Sea. In volume 4, one of the characters will be traveling through Persia en route to Turkey. The author has very carefully researched the cultures that the main characters are a part of. The stories told are very engaging. The illustrations are beautifully detailed. There are no superheroes, just ordinary people in a culture very different from anything I have ever experienced or learned about, doing their best to live in sometimes very difficult circumstances. Overall, these are some of the best graphic novels that I have ever read.

[Cyrus The Great]

I started another Neil Gaiman graphic novel: "The Graveyard Book". Its a fun story about a little boy who grows up in a graveyard amidst a multitude of ghosts and various other night creatures. Its rather vague about the location of the graveyard, but one of the ghosts is a Roman who mentions being on an island. Also, there is a Celtic burial mound. So, the location is probably somewhere in England.

[Cyrus The Great]

I am currently reading Neil Gaiman's graphic novel "1602". The cast is populated by a number of Marvel Universe characters who are living in the year 1602 instead of the present. The action takes place mostly in England, Spain, and America. Among the superheros that have been translated into the past are: Nick Fury, Dr. X, Magneto, and Peter Parker. It is a very engaging and well told story with numerous surprises. I am enjoying it very much!

[Cyrus The Great]

I am currently reading a graphic novel based on the book "Small Gods" by Terry Pratchett. In Pratchett's Discworld, Gods, large and small are real, but their existence waxes and wanes based on how many believers each has. Also, these Gods are not always clear on how their expect their believers to behave. Life and death, war and peace, all hang in the balance. Pratchett uses his unique sense of humor to teach us lessons that a few wise readers might put to good use in their own lives.

[dubiousbystander]

I have started reading "The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara, about the battle in Gettysburg.

[Cyrus The Great]

Just finished "The Sandman: Overture" last night. Today I will start reading another Sandman related graphic novel called "Endless Nights". Neil Gaiman is an amazing writer!

[Ceridwen]

Dragged out my (incomplete) set of Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody series for some fun reading.

[dubiousbystander]

I'm reading a horror anthology, "The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 4", put together by Ellen Datlow.
Also reading (continuing my history reads) "Whispers Across the Atlantick: General William Howe and the American Revolution" by David Smith.
Amusingly, though I am still impressed with our having won, I am far less surprised by the fact, now. Good heavens, Howe and the others made so many mistakes...

[Cyrus The Great]

After finishing all four HUGE volumes of "The Annotated Sandman", I have started on a prequel volume called "The Sandman: Overture". The word psychedelic comes to mind!

[Cyrus The Great]

I started reading a fascinating book about a species of octopus that has formed a social colony off the coast of Australia. The book is "Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea, and The Deep Origins of Consciousness" by Peter Godfrey-Smith. The author comments that interacting with octopuses is the closest that humans can currently come to meeting intelligent aliens. They are so different from us and yet somehow managed to evolve highly sophisticated brains.

[dubiousbystander]

Oooh, thank you!

[Cyrus The Great]

Sounds like an interesting potential movie. Ok, I just looked up Cargill and discovered that he helped write the script for the first Doctor Strange movie. I had not heard of him before. Thanks for bringing him to my attention.

[dubiousbystander]

This week I'm reading Sea of Rust: A Novel : by C. Robert Cargill. It's not a cheerful story. It's a dark, post-apocalyptic story of robots fighting to survive!

[Cyrus The Great]

I have been reading the graphic novel "The Complete Maus" by Art Spiegelman. It focuses on the experiences of his parents Vladek and Anja who were both survivors of the Holocaust. It also focuses on the relationship between Vladek and Art decades after WWII as Vladek recounts the memories that Art translated into his illustrations. This work is the only graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize. It is truly amazing and incredibly moving!

[dubiousbystander]

Entertainingly, his wife's biographer seemed to be of the opinion that the Maria Reynolds affair might have been faked. Also quite possible there never was an affair with Angelica. Mind, a few people seem convinced there might have been an affair, or just a crush, on John Laurens.

It's not directly about American History, but reading several things from the same time period is incredibly informative. I'm almost finished with Washington's Immortals, and wow, there is so much in it! Between all these books my access to relevant trivia to bring up in conversation has proven quite useful.

Also, when I told my parents I was reading Washington's Immortals, she assumed it was a Highlander story.

[Cyrus The Great]

You seem to have a great interest in American History! I am interested too, but I mostly learn through watching documentaries. I have watched some about Ben Franklin (he was a genius in so many different ways!), Washington, and Jefferson. I am interested in learning more about Alexander Hamilton. In general, I know that he was responsible in some ways for setting up the American economic and banking systems, but I really don't know and understand the details of what he did. In his personal life, I know that he had a very unhealthy interest in other men's wives!

[dubiousbystander]

It's all Lin-Manuel Miranda's fault.

I've listened to the Hamilton soundtrack too many times. This has led me down a rabbit hole of (drumroll) BOOKS! As I'm in Libby, it provides me lots of opportunity for audiobooks.

I started with the necessary one, Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton.

Then went to Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. That, though, is too short, as he stopped writing it before he got to the Declaration. So I went on to, as recommended by a friend, Carl Van Doren's biography of Benjamin Franklin. It's quite good, and I learned a lot. Also I got to enjoy The Decemberists performing Lin-Manuel Miranda's Ben Franklin's Song!

I went for Tilar J. Mazzeo's book: Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton. Good writing, though it fretted me a bit that she would write something to the effect of "and this is how Eliza felt".

Then I read Alexis Coe's delightful You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington. That was fun, but I'll still have to seek a more detailed one. Even if it's a biography that goes on about his manly thighs. Alexis Coe found some humor in that phrase appearing in other biographies.

I went on to David McCullough's John Adams. I'm so glad I did, because there is a lot to know about both him and his wife Abigail, and I hope to see the mini-series someday.

Presently reading both Patrick K. O'Donnell's Washington's Immortals: The Untold Story of an Elite Regiment Who Changed the Course of the Revolution. I'm 73% through, and boy does this unpack the whole problem expressed in Right Hand Man. There is a lot in there about the Howe brothers and Cornwallis. How did we make it?!

The answer is:
Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, by Sarah Vowell. It makes a good supplement for Washington's Immortals.

[Cyrus The Great]

I have been reading an illustrated book about the Universe. It is an astronomy and astrophysics book aimed primarily at children, but it is still interesting. These have been interests of mine for many years.

[Cyrus The Great]

I'm well into the second Sandman volume. I'm reading an annotated version (my library has a very long wait list for the regular volumes). This version is in B&W, but the extra notes are interesting: some historical details and some notes written by Neil Gaiman. I like the character Hob: a human who has decided to live forever.

I'm also reading the tale of Aldarion and Erendis by Tolkien: one of his unfinished tales.

[dubiousbystander]

I mean it in a good way, by the way!

[Cyrus The Great]

Looking forward to more Lucifer.