What BOOK are you reading right now?

Yes, as I said the times they were a-changing.

I'm sure of it. In Shakespeare's day Wittenberg was code. His audience immediately understood the connotation.

Thanks for that tip. I'm certain that a great many things in Shakespeare's plays were "the talk of the town."

(@all)



During my teenage years and my early twenties I read dozens of "classics" about heroic men and (outwardly, at least) lyrically beautiful women.

I read the classics because I thought they were the best the human race had to offer.

I stopped reading almost entirely when I realized I wasn't going do anything heroic like those men, who suddenly made me acutely jealous of their epic lives, rather than offering inspiration. I also wanted female characters to be something more than just the romantic interest of the story. They had to more than just pretty.

Now I mainly read scifi novels by women about women, because I never feel the need compare myself with the heroines or wish that I could become them, because that would just be ... weird.

===

Anyhow, my "book du jour" from that genre is Rediscovery by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Mercedes Lackey. Amazing speculative look at what happens when a medieval culture meets people from outerspace.

I'm reading not a god damned thing. I got a kindle a year ago, devoured many books, then figured out I could play games on it. .

Another good reason for me not to get a Kindle.

'K!
<spin>
<thud>

Made me laugh..
but I figure you will get back to reading at some point.
In a way, a2k and the blogs I look at and fantasy sports pull me away from reading (as such) too.

Right now I'm reading Blue Blood, a non fiction book about becoming and being a policeman in New York City, by Edward Conlon. Fascinating. I'm only about 1/4 the way through it, learning a lot. He's a pretty thoughtful writer.

Next up is Rome, also non fiction, by the Australian art and culture critic, Robert Hughes. "A cultural.. visual.. and personal history."



Have missed you a lot.

It's good to be back. I hope to make more of a habit of it.

YAY!

Fifty shades of grey.

I just finished reading "Tinsletown" by William J. Mann. It's the retelling of the murder of William Desmond Taylor in 1922 Hollywood. I've always been interested in the early days of film making, but this book is crammed with information about that period. Officially the murder was never solved, but this book narrowed down the suspects and has an interesting theory about the possible participants.

I'm interested since my father became a film cutter (editor) in 1926 or 1927.

Oh it would still be a scandal when your Dad was a film cutter. Quite a few notables at the time. Mabel Norman was one of his best friends, lots of info on Famous Players-Laskey, Adolph Zukor, Olive Thomas, Mary Miles Minter and her ominous mother Mrs. Shelby. It doesn't cover all of the pioneers of early film, but Mack Sennett and his studio/films/comedies are mentioned. This book, I think, is the first time I've ever read that he and Mabel Norman were a thing. Tinseltown was just released in 2014 by William J. Mann,

It's about 480 pages stuffed full of background, morphine use, church ladies, and everything else that's interesting about the era.

I've just finished Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes, a German book in translation. It's a satire on Hitler. Hitler appears in Berlin in 2012, how/why is never explained. Hitler is recognised, but as a method actor who refuses to break character. He gets his own "comedy" show and becomes a Youtube sensation. I wouldn't say it's wildly funny, but it's definitely worth a read.

This is a Guardian review.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/30/look-whos-back-timur-vermes-review

I'm reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

I hope you do, too.

That was the first I read. Then I went through the others in no particular. JK Rowling has written a couple of detective stories under the name of something like Robert Galbreath. Not bad, but being British there isn't much of a body count.

I finished the audiobook version of Nathan Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex.

Listening to The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu. Not an easy listen as my understanding of physics is a tad weak and the Chinese names are a bit overwhelming to distinguish for a westerner's ears.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

It's a tough read at the beginning. There's a deluge of characters, all with
Dutch or Japanese names. I don't know which are harder to keep track of.