What BOOK are you reading right now?

I remember thinking it was terrific..

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.

I'm rereading Waterworks by E. L. Doctorow. That man could write.

said so on a2k

I finished the book, Namesake, and liked it

Now I'm about finished with The Bernini Bust, by Ian Pears. I've read before, but long ago.

I just started reading "Beyond the Dark Water" an autobiography by Charles Mitch Turner, known as edgarblythe on a2k. I met Charles several years ago in Houston while visiting another friend, and our son who lives in Austin.

It's a melding of fiction and truth.

I just finished a new book "HUE 1968". I got an advance copy. It spends some time to understand, based on the big battle of the Tet Offensive, why we , pretty much dont trust our leaders anymore.

This was the best damn book Ive read in several years .

Will have to look up that book, because I traveled throughout Vietnam years ago from Halong Bay/Hanoi all the way south to Saigon, visiting Hue, Danang, Hoi An, and the Mekong Delta. What I found surprising is that the war's destruction were not visible in the places we visited. However, the War Remnant Museum in Saigon had pictures taken by two Japanese photographers during the war that told the story. That famous picture of the young naked girl running from the bombing is also there.

Here's an article on Hue 1968. http://deadline.com/2017/04/hue-1968-michael-mann-michael-de-luca-mark-bowden-event-miniseries-vietnam-tet-offensive-1202076136/

I had been alerted by reading other Japanese authors, such as Yukio Mishima, to expect twists to the story line that leave your jaw hanging slackly, so was not disappointed here. I thought I anticipated the conclusion two or three chapters too soon. I did not care for the early chapters, because it is told in the first person by a woman of 22, who seems too scatter-brained to carry the complete novel. But, we all adjusted and I am going to award the book four of five stars.

Finished:
We Stand On Guard by Brian K. Vaughan.
Set in 100+ years into the future. Who attacked who first? Canada seems to have started the war by annexing the Great Lakes. Results in the US taking over the bottom 2/3rds of Canada. Far more graphic and violent than I expected it to be.

Y: The Last Man, Vol. 2: Cycles (Y: The Last Man, #2) by Brian K. Vaughan;
Currently reading:
Copperhead, Vol. 2 (Copperhead, Volume 2) by Jay Faerber.

Them Canadians is tough. Devious. They are lucky we left them with the Yukon.

I've finished Iain Pears' The Bernini Bust (again, as I'd read it before, some years ago). Still liked it this time, so it's back on the shelf for a bit, before its ride to Goodwill. It's convoluted to the max, if you don't like that; pretty crisply written.

I'm on the last page (note by author) of a real keeper for me, Equal Danger, since I will have to reread to absorb it all; fast enough, since the book is short, me figuring stuff out. This is a Leonardo Sciascia book, a guy I've read before, at least twice, well respected, at least in Italy. He is worth a look in Wiki for his own history. I read this in translation, natch. In its richness of subject and its smallness as a book, it reminds me of another recent favorite of mine, Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone. Keepers on the shelf, together, and neither will be sent by me to camp at Goodwill.

I'm thinking about getting this one.
Based on a true story of the one woman at Custer's last stand.

I need to save these photos, lotta reasons.

Children of Time

AMERICAN WATERCOLOR"In the age of Homer and Sargent"

Its a scholarly text about the rising status of watercolor as an art medium from the 1820's through the 21st century. Its a bit dense but really insight- fully written

Oops, a brief description...

Children of Time is a SciFi novel in which primates are dropped onto a newly terraformed planet along with a "Transform Virus" intended to cause forced, rapid evolution in the primates resulting in a new form of "human" evolved for the new world. But the primates are accidentally killed on re-entry and the Transform Virus attaches itself to minute spiders and ants which had stowed away on the re-entry probe... oops, the result is a planet full of advanced, transformed and intelligent spiders and ants... not a great place for eventual human colonization.

The story centers a lot around genetics, evolution and cultural development.

I'm enjoying it so far.

sounds like a neat premise for a story. Kind of like "The Island of Dr Moreau ...OOOPS" version

CRISPR style Transform Virus technologies are a largely unexplored area of SciFi in my opinion, mostly because the actual real-world technology is so new that a lot of authors haven't given much though to it yet or don't yet understand it well enough to extrapolate its possible outcomes.