What BOOK are you reading right now?

I read that some years ago now (8?), and I remember some difficulty, but also finished it and overall liked it. I think.

Aha, it was 2010. Pemerson sent it to me.
An intermediate review by me here..
http://able2know.org/topic/1042-272#post-4410854

and sometime later, here
http://able2know.org/topic/1042-274#post-4424554


mmm, I wonder if he's the David Mitchell that writes for the Guardian.

The Guardian David Mitchell is this one, Osso....



He originally made his name by being a stand up comedian, and since then has had television show successes (Peep Show and Mitchell and Webb) and is a regular on a hilarious game show, Would I Lie to You.

Very funny and highly intelligent guy.

Without the distractions of a house and home internet connection I'm doing a bit more reading - right now I'm half way through

Dave Crawford's 'The Deadly Serious Republic'



The first chapter didn't really grab me and I nearly returned it to the library, but it's got more intriguing and makes more sense now I understand the book's 'world'.

Not sure how to describe it - sort of satirical magical realism near future FSF that has the protagonists painted onto a dystopian tomorrow extrapolated from the partisanship along political and economic lines that we see today, particularly the ceding of any sort of government control of anything to big business.

It's pretty fast paced and not overly serious about itself, a bit like Raiders of the Lost Ark for political satirists.

Just finished The Sermon on the Fall of Rome by Jérôme Ferrari. About a Corsican family, and parallels drawn with the life of St Augustine, author of the eponymous sermon. Complex, original and densely written. Made me think of 100 Years of Solitude a bit.

Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower. Interesting stuff, 'revisionist' in many ways. Philbrick doesn't just take the Pilgrims to Plymouth. He stays with them through King's Philips' War 55 years later, showing how the originally friendly relationship between Massasoit's people and the newcomers deteriorated to the point of war. There's a strong suggestion that this bloody conflict was in no way 'inevitable' and was, in fact, easily preventable wihout ruffling anyone's feathers.

omigosh this book could use a proof reader. The typos are starting to bug me. Seems like I find one every couple of pages.

Squaller instead of squalor. It's like they ran a very average spellchecker over it. Once.

...must be a Georgia author...

I never got into 100 Years of Solitude, bad me, my mood that month perhaps. Did read/like Love in the Time of Cholera.

Fbaezer, a guy I listen to, top rung a2ker, recommended some books, some I read and some not.
I'll see if I can find an a2k link re his tips about latin american books.

http://able2know.org/user/fbaezer/

Oh, I'm still reading Rome, by Robert Hughes, still wrapped up in it, now on page 87, but taking a break for this week's New Yorker, their 90th anniversary edition. Dense with interest.

which Georgia?

The Georgia where a squaller is a person that whines and moans.

Ah, yes.

The audiobook edition of Flashforward (novel), a 1999 novel by Robert J. Sawyer. I was sick and tired of not knowing how the television adaptation was supposed to end since it was cancelled after a single season.

I read that a while back and found it funny too. Finally the Germans can make fun of Hitler like the Brits always do.
--
Finished 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, over 900 pages long, so it took a while. Quite interesting though, having a parallel universe ...

I hope that point wasn't a serious spoiler???

A third of the way through Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride.

Just finished The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley.

I am reading two: Women of Will by Tina Packer and Braiding Sweet Grass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. The first is Tina Packer's observations on how Shakespeare grew as an artist and observer of women and is based on her years as an actress and director. The second is a mix of first hand observation, Native American lore, science and memoir from a woman who is a mother and a Native American with doctorate in biology. All the women I know seem to be reading it. I bet all of them will read Tina Packer's book next.

I'm still reading Rome, dense, rich, worth it but also reading New Yorkers, dense, rich, worth it. I keep on learning again.

The New Yorkers occupy a special place on my bed. But lately they're crowding my side