What BOOK are you reading right now?

He's a fascinating person. Heard a couple of different interviews with him on several different NPR programs.

He's that good chef, isn't he? I know I've read about him, will have to look him up.

He really is. I'm going to have to find more of his books.

I've been rereading books I've kept on my shelves since I liked them previously - while trying to cull those that don't pass the second time reading test. This week's is Almost Blue, by Carlo Lucarelli, translated from the italian. It's a police procedural set in Bologna, a city I've been to twice, one time for a day, another for a couple of days. Lot of history in that city.. among other things, it's called Bologna the Fat since it has long been famous for its food. Plus the famous university, famous at least to Europeans.

This one is on the gory side, but interesting in other ways, for the female protagonist/police inspector, and for a blind man who turns out to be a good help as the book moves along with the story. His dialogue is particularly fascinating.

He has an interesting background story so there's probably good material for this book, and he's obviously very bright and very passionate about cooking. I think I'll have to get this one.

He's is frequently a "judge" on the TV show "Chopped" (I know there's a Canadian version, because they air it from time to time here) and I sometimes find his criticism of a contestant's dish to be nit picky and pedantic (God forbid one of them calls something a ragout and it not meet the technical definition!) but I think all of the judges are encouraged to, in some sense, be this way, and the format seems to require that every dish receive some negative criticism preceded by a "but..." I don't think I have ever seen a show where all three judges only praised a dish. It must be tough sometimes to find fault with something you think is delicious, only because you're the judge the producers picked to go negative on that dish.

"Change Agent" by Daniel Suarez. CRISPR out of control

Finished Lumberjanes Beware the Kitten Holy: Vol. 1;
Basically finished Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd (Flavia de Luce, #8) by Alan Bradley.

The book is fabulously written, if not disturbing,

Claw your eyes out with a pasta fork before bothering to see the movie.

I downloaded the audio book of the book that started this thread .... 15 years later

I'm about 109 pages in to 'Killers of the Flower Moon' by David Grann. It's about the Osage murders in Oklahoma during the oil boom and land grab of the early 1900's.

The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto

Just finished a history of Christian martyrs in the Roman empire. Gruesome, but an eye opener re. the power of martyrdom to change society.

Judas by Amos Oz

Hi there. I never read anything by him but have read good reviews. What do you think of the book so far?

Hi there right back atcha.

This is the first book I've read by him. The writing (and translation) paints vivid pictures. The use of language is outstanding. The characters are "eccentric." But I don't feel drawn in yet. I'm almost at page 100.

Sounds familiar; maybe it'll get better.

Found one of the Domestic Diva mysteries in the neighbourhood Little Free Library. The mystery itself is good, but I'm guessing the target market isn't really me. Good enough for garden/beach reading. Don't expect much.

http://www.kristadavis.com/domestic-diva-mysteries/books.html

The Seekers, Boorsten (Again)

Currently reading:
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan. The 2016 Pulitzer Prize winning autobiography

Read two graphic novels:
Sumo by Thien Pham. Which I lost somewhere between finishing it on the train and walking home.

AND
Hawaiian Dick. Volume 3, Screaming black thunder / [B. Clay Moore, story ; Scott Chantler, pencils and inks ; Steven Griffin, cover colors, lettering, story fonts & book design stuff].

Which I didn't know it was Volume 3 until I copied and pasted the details from NYPL.

I'm travelling, and had stocked my suitcase with Naipaul's The Loss of Eldorado. I didn't like the style one bit. He manages to make a rather deadpan narrative out of a fantastic story... It's also littered with condescending remarks about the Spaniards. It's the first book by Naipaul I try to read, and probably the last.

So I dropped it and went searching for something else in town. I found a sort of modern Candide, a philosophical travelogue called The Curious Enlightment of Professor Caritat, by a certain Steven Lukes. Pretty good so far. It's a bit brainy but it's well written and I like philosophy so I go along with his musing. Much is made of debates between various protagonists many of who stand for actual philosophers through fairly transparent word-plays -- Caritat for instance stands for Condorcet, whose full name (we're told) was Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis of Condorcet.

Some of these dialogues make me think of A2K.

It starts in a country called Militaria run by the army. Professor Caritat, a slightly aloof scholar specialist of Enlightenment writers, is arrested because he has not given up his faith in the goodness of human beings, in spite of all the horrors around him. He is soon rescued from prison by a guerilla group called "the Hand" and given a mission: to travel the world in search of the best possible political system, and to inform the Hand of what it is so that they know there's hope. The Hand fights against the military, but they don't know what they should fight for. Caritat's job is to survey the world and tell them if a better system is possible.

The mission first leads him to a country called Utilitaria, where a powerful welfare system maximizes happiness for the greatest number of people. Everything is well-designed and functional. Everyone goes around with a smile on their face and a pocket calculator with which they constantly calculate the future utility of their actions. Utilitarians have no word for "regret" or "gratitude" because these are emotions turned towards the past, useless for them. Caritat realizes that people have no rights in this system: if it maximizes utility for society to condemn an innocent, or to kill an infirm, then the innocent must be condemned and the infirm killed. Another problem is: who should compute utility: experts or the people?

The other countries will be Libertaria, where the entire state is built on the privatization and trade of various programmes on the stock market, and Communitaria, a society based on equality and multiculturalism... I'm not there yet.