What BOOK are you reading right now?

Got Johann Hari's 'Chasing The Scream' for my birthday - moved it near the top of the 'to read' piles.

tales from shakespear

"Just Americans." It's about how Japanese Americans won the war at home and abroad during WWII. The 100 Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team was the most decorated unit in US history. My cousin in Hawaii served in that unit. So did my wife's uncle. Many don't know it, but we were incarcerated into concentration camps during WWII.
But even after WWII, we Japanese Americans were discriminated against. I was told several times by white men, "go back to your own country." Where was I supposed to go? I'm third generation American.
However, I'm glad our grandparents came to this country from Japan, because it provided us with the opportunity to succeed as middle class citizens.
https://caamedia.org/jainternment/ww2/prewar.html

Just started 'Originals : how non-conformists move the world' by Adam Grant. Don't think I've ever read a more glowing foreword.

The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

Neat little novel. Very alien aliens. I've read it before and remember the whole story, but I just felt like reading it again.

I'm reading 'Intimate Death, How the Dying teach us How to Live'
by Marie de Hennezel. Vintage Books translation 1998. non-fiction.
.
As a psychologist in a newly established (1987) hospital for the terminally ill.
de Hennezel and hospital staff tend to people who are relinquishing their hold on life, sometimes in anguish, sometimes in dignity and peace. Often it is the psychologist's care that makes the difference.
The cover describes it more succinctly than I can:
''How do we learn to die? Most of us spend our lives avoiding that question. This book answers it with an eloquence and a directness that is nothing less than transforming.... As she tells us the stories of her patients and their families, de Hennezel teaches us how to turn death -- our loved ones' or our own-- from something lonely into a sacred passage. She discusses the importance of an honest reckoning, the value of ritual, the necessity of touch.
This book is a lesson in life."

We just attended a memorial service for my wife’s cousin. As we age, it’s normal to attend memorial services for family members and friends. My older brother in Sacramento mentioned that sometimes, he attends several in one month.

I have read "The Door in the Wall", by Herbert George Wells.
This book has reminded me childhood dreams.

You go through books like I eat food. I read a chapter or two before I hit snooze land. In my youth, I got hooked on Ian Fleming and 007. Got work associates hooked too! Enjoyed Sean Connery as the best James Bond. Use to stay up at nite through the wee hours as my eyes got blurry, but too stubborn to hit the hay. Now, when I feel tired enough, I just go to sleep. Takes me a long time to finish one book.

The Book of Love . . .

I read Julius Caesar: Commentaries on the Civil War.
He began civil war "to assert his own liberty, and that of the Roman people, who were oppressed by a few factious men".
How modern this sounds...

And now I'm reading "Secrets of Pierre Woodman Sexual Technique", by Alexander Lyubimoff.
Useful book for everybody.

started "Darwin Comes to Town". Its about rapid evolution in animals living in urban environments.

Lotsa sense and is loaded with good evidence.


I started to reread "Collection of short STories by H P Lovcraft".

Finished:
The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel: Neil Gaiman.
Really simple and dark contemporary fairy tale.

Will start Paper Girls Volume 4 today. Graphic novel that will be a breeze to fly through. Also have Ring, the classic Japanese horror novel by Koji Suzuki, best known for its movie adapations (both Japanese and Hollywood). This one will likely take me months to swim through (if I don't abandon it like a neglectful parent that I can be with many much longer books I tackle).

Thanks for sharing "the book of love." Nostalgia at its best.

I'm reading "The Devil in the White City" it's about a serial killer at the Chicago World's Fair, by Erik Larson.......non-fiction account of a grizzly crime spree that baffled police foe a time during the gilded age.

An excellent book and I am amazed you've chosen to post something other than an insulting diatribe against another member. Keep it up GB!

How nice of you. But I don't like it when you're disappointed. How's this : Go **** in your tiny Stetson.

Better?

Actually, the several Stetsons I have are all XL, and I would never even imagine defecating in one of them. Gosh, you can be coarse.

"The Laughing Monsters" - Denis Johnson - "A"

"This Savage Song" - Victoria Schwab - "B" - Fantastic imagination; not so much great writing

"Autonomous" - Analee Newitz - Just started

"Borne: A Novel" - Jeff VanderMeer - "A+" Post-Apocolpsye Herman Melville