What Are We Currently Reading?

[bmasters9]

The Silent Partner, the first of the Diagnosis: Murder books by Lee Goldberg (these, IINM, based on that 1993-2001 CBS medical/mystery series w/Dick Van Dyke)

[Haleth]

22 hours ago, PaulaO said:

Read The Woman in Cabin Ten over the weekend.  Yet another psychological thriller in which the scrappy heroine.....  don't bother to read it.  Now reading The Last Days of Night, a fictionalized account of the Edison/Westinghouse/Tesla battle over the lightbulb.  It's quite good, and I have an intense interest in Tesla (who I imagine to look like David Bowie from the movie The Prestige.).

I thought The Last Days of Night was fascinating.  It really changed my opinion of Edison.

[PaulaO]

Yeah, Edison is portrayed as quite a jerk.

[GaT]

I'm reading Naked In Death by J.D. Robb, it's the first book in the "In Death" series. The series is about a NYC police Lieutenant in the year 2058. I haven't gotten very far in yet, but I'll be interested to see how it goes & whether it's a mystery or a science fiction book.

[AuntiePam]

Homer & Langley by E. L. Doctorow.  Two brothers, one blind, one gassed in WWI, and their lives in NYC through the 20th century.  So far, it's kinda like a male Grey Gardens. 

[Hanahope]

I just got the new Sue Grafton book Y is for Yesterday.  Wow, its a huge book.  I guess (kindof like the Harry Potter books), they get bigger as you get to the end of the series.  Just one more to go for Sue.  I remember when I first started reading these books, it was in/near real time.  Now its nostalgia.

[RealityCheck]

I'm on the third book of Dennis Taylor;s Bobiverse series, All These Worlds, and I've enjoyed the series so far.  I'm listening to the audiobooks and Ray Porter does a good job with the narration.  If you like science fiction with touches of humor, you would enjoy this series.

Before the Bobiverse series, I read Craig Alanson's Expeditionary Force series.  It's currently at four books and one novella and the fifth book, "Zero Hour" has been announced.  If you enjoy science fiction with sarcasm (I do), this is the series for you.  I listened to the first three books and novella and R.C. Bray did a wonderful job bringing the characters to life, especially the relationship between Col. Joe and Skippy.  The audiobook for the fourth book will be available in October.

[Zola]

"Long Walk to Freedom" - Nelson Mandela (658 pages, published 1995)

I wasn't even born when Nelson finally won his freedom in 1990, but both my parents were there in the vast crowds on that momentous day, and the great wall of Apartheid in my home country was beginning to crumble and ultimately end in the 1994 elections.

Many books have been written about this great man, some of them rather cynical and sneering; but this autobiography has gripped me from the very first few pages following the early years of his life, from humble beginnings to becoming  an educated and socially aware young man finding a voice in a country where an intelligent black man is considered dangerous and a threat. 

Am only a couple of chapters in, and it's quite heavy-going at times. But it's one of those rare books where the pieces all slowly come together like one giant jigsaw: and the more you read the more it makes sense....

[bmasters9]

A very well-written (at least so far, from what I've seen) indictment of FOX News Channel, based on the documentary film of the same name

[luna1122]

Finished Lisa Lutz's The Passenger, which I enjoyed, it's kind of batshit crazy. Fun, fast read. Then read Ann Patchett's This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, a collection of her previously published essays. As always, i love her writing.

Now reading Paula Hawkins' Into the Water, which I know a lot of folks didn't love. But so far, and I'm over halfway thru it, I like it. There are a LOT of characters and viewpoints to keep straight, but I'm finding it pretty compelling.

[starri]

Jenny Trout is reading Handbook For Mortals so you don't have to.

[Mabinogia]

I just read that Jenny Trout thing, and the link about the scandal. Holy shit! WTF is wrong with people? Oh, and the bits of the book she included sound dreadful. Thank you Jenny for sparing me that unendurable read.

[starri]

She's posted the introduction, and the first two chapters thus far.  The prose is about as bad as you think.

It's worth reading her take, though.

[DearEvette]

5 hours ago, starri said:

Jenny Trout is reading Handbook For Mortals so you don't have to.

I love how she often takes one for the team.  LOL.

[starri]

I love that she described it as being a bad fanfic version of DC Comics' Zatanna.  Zatanna is one of my favorite comics characters, and from the snippets of text and synopses, that's exactly what the book is.

Well, Zatanna + Self-Insert Mary Sue.

[Mabinogia]

I find it fascinating (in a Rube Goldberg kind of way) that the author writer (seriously, she's no author) put so much effort into getting a movie deal. She wrote a book, made the main character look exactly like her, made an IMDB page, spend a fortune buying tons of copies of her book to make it a #1 best seller so she could get a movie deal to turn the book into a movie? Why not just write a freaking screenplay? Oh, right, because her writing is crap!

IDK it's a bit like saying you want to go shopping so you build a boat that will sail you around the world to get to the mall down the street.

Honestly the story behind the book is far more interesting than the book sound.

[GaT]

1 hour ago, Mabinogia said:

I find it fascinating (in a Rube Goldberg kind of way) that the author writer (seriously, she's no author) put so much effort into getting a movie deal. She wrote a book, made the main character look exactly like her, made an IMDB page, spend a fortune buying tons of copies of her book to make it a #1 best seller so she could get a movie deal to turn the book into a movie? Why not just write a freaking screenplay? Oh, right, because her writing is crap!

IDK it's a bit like saying you want to go shopping so you build a boat that will sail you around the world to get to the mall down the street.

Honestly the story behind the book is far more interesting than the book sound.

To me, it sounds like someone who has a Kim Kardashian level of social media understanding. You no longer need any kind of talent to become rich & famous, you just need to know how to get reality show/internet famous. That will carry you over pretty much where you want to go. If she wrote the screenplay, how would she get anyone to read it? & if she somehow did, it would probably get rejected because it's crap, so she did an end run. She created her own fame, & now somebody will write the movie, but she'll get the money & fame.

[Mabinogia]

Yeah, you're right. I fucking hate society. Does anyone know a good, secluded rock I can crawl under? This is really what our world has come to?

[DearEvette]

26 minutes ago, GaT said:

To me, it sounds like someone who has a Kim Kardashian level of social media understanding. You no longer need any kind of talent to become rich & famous, you just need to know how to get reality show/internet famous. That will carry you over pretty much where you want to go. If she wrote the screenplay, how would she get anyone to read it? & if she somehow did, it would probably get rejected because it's crap, so she did an end run. She created her own fame, & now somebody will write the movie, but she'll get the money & fame.

 I really think that she thought she could actually manipulate the NYT list to make it to #1 and thus artificially create the buzz that being #1 would in turn make real buzz and then that would translate into movie success.  So I agree with you there.  She wanted her success trajectory to be like Twilight or 50 Shades.  The Huge book, the huge buzz and then the movie.  She simply tried to pre-plan it through fraud.  Honestly, she might have gotten away with it just that way except she wasn't tuned into YA book twitter.  So I am not so sure she is as social media savvy as KK.  I think do think she tried to use it to her advantage but I don't think this turned out quite the way she wanted it to.

Her come out of nowhere success is exactly what made them so suspicious.  The corners of romance twitter and YA twitter are like a small town.  They all follow each other and retweet each other and they immediately tune into and amplify anything issue based the treads on their areas-- the recent Linda Howard madness for instance is another example of it.  If she had been cultivating them for awhile or part of that community for awhile they might not have been so immediately suspicious.  But she didn't so they immediately circled the wagons on her.  Which is how she got shut down so quickly.

If she does actually profit from this notoriety it will not be because she planned it just this way, imo.  She will have lucked into it.

[starri]

5 minutes ago, DearEvette said:

She wanted her success trajectory to be like Twilight or 50 Shades.  The Huge book, the huge buzz and then the movie.

Except that at least EL James didn't want to cast herself in the film version.

[GaT]

Well. I just finished Immortal In Death by J.D. Robb, the 3rd book in the "In Death" series. I'm enjoying the books, BUT, I have figured out who the murderer is early on in all 3 books. I'm not some super Sherlock who always figures out who done it in books, but it seemed obvious to me in each of these books. This is a problem. I already bought a bunch of books in the series so I'll be reading more, but I'm not going to be happy if I can guess the murderer in every book.

[DearEvette]

7 hours ago, GaT said:

Well. I just finished Immortal In Death by J.D. Robb, the 3rd book in the "In Death" series. I'm enjoying the books, BUT, I have figured out who the murderer is early on in all 3 books. I'm not some super Sherlock who always figures out who done it in books, but it seemed obvious to me in each of these books. This is a problem. I already bought a bunch of books in the series so I'll be reading more, but I'm not going to be happy if I can guess the murderer in every book.

Admittedly of the early books, only the first one really stands out in my head.  So I am not sure if the intent of them early on was supposed to be received as whodunnits?  I do know that somewhere about books 5-ish and on -- I started to notice her playing with format. Hence,  in some of the books you know who the killer is right in the first chapter or very early on.  In some cases the reader knows who they are but Eve doesn't and in some cases both the reader and Eve knows.  One of my favorites is one where they all know the identity  of killer because he is some big-deal assassin who is on every most waned list ever  but no one has ever actually seen him (or her) so nobody knows what they look like and thus have been hard to catch.

[scarynikki12]

On 9/14/2017 at 6:31 PM, DearEvette said:

 the recent Linda Howard madness for instance is another example of it.

What happened? 

[DearEvette]

12 hours ago, scarynikki12 said:

What happened? 

Some comments she made as a member of the RWA basically boiled down to "Make Publishing Great Again" and that the push toward diversity & diverse voices  in romance was considered "social issues" and had no place in the RWA. Also implied that the rise of indie publishing  ... which of course arose because trad publishers have not been historically inclusive in acquisitions of romance from POC or LGBTQ writers -- is the reason she herself is seeing a loss in sales.  Apparently she forgot her last couple of books sucked major ass.  I mean, in her last book the pet dog had more page space than her hero or heroine. 

No one actually linked to the comments as the comments themselves were in a closed message board but were apparently felt hurtful and divisive enough by enough members that the discussion of the spilled out into the public sphere.  The reactions to her comments blew up on Romancelandia twitter.  People were pissed.  I was very surprised to learn that apparently she's made.. ah... divisive comments before.  Sigh.  If that last terrible book wasn;t enough to put me off of her this definitely is.

Anyway here is a much better insider accounting. 

[GaT]

I decided to do something I haven't done in a very long time, I'm re-reading some Agatha Christie. Instead of going for the obvious & reading a Poirot, Miss Marple, or even a Tommy & Tuppence story, I decided to read The Mysterious Mr. Quin, a collection of short stories featuring Mr. Satterthwaite & the titular Mr. Quin. It's been a very long time since I red it last.

[helenamonster]

Just finished: The Lying Game by Ruth Ware. I didn't enjoy it as much as The Woman in Cabin 10, but it was still a very interesting story that kept me guessing almost until the end (I probably called each twist about a page before it actually happened). One thing I would recommend to anyone who reads it is to not assume you have the whole thing figured out right away. Based on the description, I thought the big mystery was going to be what the women did at school to get expelled, which seemed pretty obvious from the get-go and almost put me off the rest of the book, but there is much more to it than that so I encourage people to keep reading.

Next up: Exposed by Lisa Scottoline.

[Mindthinkr]

39 minutes ago, helenamonster said:

Just finished: The Lying Game by Ruth Ware. I didn't enjoy it as much as The Woman in Cabin 10, but it was still a very interesting story that kept me guessing almost until the end (I probably called each twist about a page before it actually happened). One thing I would recommend to anyone who reads it is to not assume you have the whole thing figured out right away. Based on the description, I thought the big mystery was going to be what the women did at school to get expelled, which seemed pretty obvious from the get-go and almost put me off the rest of the book, but there is much more to it than that so I encourage people to keep reading.

Next up: Exposed by Lisa Scottoline.

I just finished Natural Suspect. It was written by 11 authors and Lisa Scottoline was one of them. Every author contributed one chapter. William Bernhardt began it and there was no set plot, so it unfolds from everyone's imaginations. 

[Darian]

Just finished Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine  by Gail Honeyman. I loved it.  Apparently so did Reese Witherspoon, who optioned it.  Glad I didn't know that when I read it, as I would have been casting it in my head and figuring out how to adapt it. 

Now in the middle of Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory, which is fun. I needed something of a romp before starting Sherman Alexie's memoir, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, which I hear is wrenching. 

[Mabinogia]

1 hour ago, Mindthinkr said:

I just finished Natural Suspect. It was written by 11 authors and Lisa Scottoline was one of them. Every author contributed one chapter. William Bernhardt began it and there was no set plot, so it unfolds from everyone's imaginations. 

That sounds very interesting. Did you like it?

[Mindthinkr]

1 minute ago, Mabinogia said:

That sounds very interesting. Did you like it?

Yes. You never knew which direction they were going to head in and each chapter had a different flavor. Interesting to see what was added (one author might put in a small detail and later a different writer would bring a greater relevance to it). It's fun trying to guess which author penned which chapter. It was also a fast read. 

[Mabinogia]

Thank you. I think I'm going to check it out. Sounds like a fun read.

[Danny Franks]

On 14/09/2017 at 8:43 PM, starri said:

She's posted the introduction, and the first two chapters thus far.  The prose is about as bad as you think.

It's worth reading her take, though.

Yeah, that shit is the worst writing I've ever seen, apart from a few fanfics that were clearly written by twelve year olds.

The problem with self publishing being so easy is garbage like this can get out into the world, and people can be conned into believing it's worthwhile. And with such low hanging fruit as YA paranormal romance, it seems even more calculated by those behind it.

[helenamonster]

23 hours ago, Mindthinkr said:

I just finished Natural Suspect. It was written by 11 authors and Lisa Scottoline was one of them. Every author contributed one chapter. William Bernhardt began it and there was no set plot, so it unfolds from everyone's imaginations. 

That sounds really cool! And it reminds me of improv games we used to play in theater class. Thanks for the rec!

[cherrypj]

On 9/18/2017 at 2:00 PM, Darian said:

Just finished Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine  by Gail Honeyman. I loved it.  Apparently so did Reese Witherspoon, who optioned it.  Glad I didn't know that when I read it, as I would have been casting it in my head and figuring out how to adapt it. 

I enjoyed that too. I wonder if it will be Reese's Charlie Theron's Monster moment, although I did have trouble imagining Eleanor's scar.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

Just finished Mother, Mother by Koren Zalickas, and man, what a read. Had to put it down and decompress a few times, but it is well work picking up and I highly recommend it for a pretty unflinching look at family dysfunction and the thorny road out of it.

[proserpina65]

I'm currently re-reading Moon Shot.  The space program has always interested me , and some recent stuff on the Science channel prompted my re-read.

[luna1122]

Finished Into the Water, which I apparently liked more than most. A lot of characters to keep track of at first, but otherwise I thought it was a fast, interesting read.

Then read Jami Attenberg's The Melting Season. Quirky and weird and intriguing.

Next was 2000's A Death in White Bear Lake....I'm a true crime reader, and this one is generally, I gather, is really well regarded in the genre. It's pretty brutal and sad, and exhaustively (some will say TOO exhaustively) researched. It wants to be In Cold Blood, and isn't, but it's well done, and tragic.

Now reading Ann Patchett's Run.

[Hanahope]

So over the summer, I read The Martian and Hidden Figures.  Maybe it was due to the fact that I saw the movies for both first, but both books were harder to get through than I would have thought.  Hidden Figures was very different, because it was written as a non-fiction documentary, and not a "story" like the movie was.  I have to admire how they turned a fairly dry book into a good story.  

The Martian was a story, like the movie, but it had too much technical jargon I thought for the average person to really enjoy.  Again, the movie made various parts of the story simpler and easier to understand.

[OtterMommy]

4 minutes ago, Hanahope said:

The Martian was a story, like the movie, but it had too much technical jargon I thought for the average person to really enjoy.  Again, the movie made various parts of the story simpler and easier to understand.

I agree with your sentiment.  However, I gave the book to my husband (an electrical engineer) and his criticism was "there wasn't enough science in it."  This is probably why he doesn't usually read novels....

[Mindthinkr]

About to start Origin by Dan Brown. 

Anyone else? 

[ccphilly]

On 10/3/2017 at 3:42 PM, luna1122 said:

Now reading Ann Patchett's Run.

Run left such a bad taste in my mouth.  I normally love Ann Patchett but this book really rubbed me the wrong way.  The overall take a-way I got was that these poor African American kids were saved by rich white adoptive parents.  It really bothered me.

[luna1122]

14 minutes ago, ccphilly said:

Run left such a bad taste in my mouth.  I normally love Ann Patchett but this book really rubbed me the wrong way.  The overall take a-way I got was that these poor African American kids were saved by rich white adoptive parents.  It really bothered me.

I wound up mostly loving it, but I get that. It's sort of the This is Us syndrome. Or The Help. or a billion more books where that seems to be the overall theme.

Patchett's prose draws me in, even when I have reservations about her content. I did like the family dynamic, and all the siblings/kids really came to life for me. I loved Sullivan, who was the actual biological son of the father, but still the least loved.

[ccphilly]

21 hours ago, luna1122 said:

This is Us syndrome.

I watched the pilot

and almost threw my tv out the window, so great point.  

[hendersonrocks]

I just finished The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena. It was...eh? I mean, I kept reading because I wanted to know how it was going to end but I didn't entirely enjoy it. It still feels like Gone Girl sparked an entire genre where the goal seems to be as many twists & turns as possible over all else. Gone Girl did it well...most of those that have followed, not so much? I think I'm going to try The Leavers by Lisa Ko next.

[proserpina65]

On ‎10‎/‎03‎/‎2017 at 3:42 PM, luna1122 said:

Next was 2000's A Death in White Bear Lake....I'm a true crime reader, and this one is generally, I gather, is really well regarded in the genre. It's pretty brutal and sad, and exhaustively (some will say TOO exhaustively) researched. It wants to be In Cold Blood, and isn't, but it's well done, and tragic.

It was very good, but very sad.

[bubbls]

I'm reading Return To the Hiding Place by Hans Poley. It's by one of the first fugitives the ten Booms sheltered during the Nazi occupation. If you've ever read and enjoyed The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom I highly recommend this. It's very interesting as a stand-alone story in addition to another perspective of the ten Boom story. 

[Mindthinkr]

Finished Origin. Very formulatic. I liked all the art and the architecture references but the great mystery of science that he revealed was nothing new to me. I got glimpses of an updated 2001...A Space Odyssey during it. 

[rmcrae]

On ‎10‎/‎6‎/‎2017 at 9:29 PM, bubbls said:

I'm reading Return To the Hiding Place by Hans Poley. It's by one of the first fugitives the ten Booms sheltered during the Nazi occupation. If you've ever read and enjoyed The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom I highly recommend this. It's very interesting as a stand-alone story in addition to another perspective of the ten Boom story. 

I knew that was a movie, but didn't know it's a book too. Thanks for the recommendation. The Hiding Place is my top 5 favorite Holocaust memoirs.

I just started Tears of the Desert by Halima Bashir. She was a Sudanese doctor who was forced to escape to the UK after she was raped and tortured for informing UN investigators about a government-supported attack on local schoolgirls and their female teachers.

[Mabinogia]

Just finished In the Shadow of Lakecrest by Elizabeth Blackwell. I got it free for my Kindle and figured how bad could it be. It was actually really good. 1920s, poor girl marries rich guy, goes to weird mansion with his odd family, uncovers family secrets. Everything I like in a book, really. It could have gone predictable but there were enough twists, twists that actually made sense not just twists to shock the reader, that I found myself staying up late into the night wanting to know what happened next. 

I will definitely look into more books by Elizabeth Blackwell.

[aradia22]

I finally finished Bread: A Memoir of Hunger. It's different from my other reading this year from feminist writers or body positivity advocates. Goodreads recommended it to me but I don't know if it would appeal to the same people who liked those books. Rather, it's a quick read (smallish print but under 200 pages) that isn't particularly well written (evocative, poetic, etc.) but it's honest and has moments of being well-researched and you might connect to something it has to say about mental illness or disordered eating. It took me longer than it should have to get through it because early on some of the passages got to me and I had to put the book down for a little while. If you're not interested in these topics, I don't think there's much for you because unlike other books, the writing is not so compelling, funny, etc. that it transcends the subject matter.

I also finished Food, Health, and Happiness... Oprah's cookbook. I never watched her show and sure there's a bit of commercial fakeyness to the way she writes sometimes but I enjoyed it. I'd totally read her autobiography and I want to give a bunch of these recipes a try even if she does use too much truffle salt and a bunch of vegetables I'm less fond of. I mean, I eat a lot of vegetables. She's just picked ones I don't use because they're expensive, hard to prepare, generally not worth it (asparagus, artichokes, etc.).

I'm currently reading Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes by Jena Pincott. It's surprisingly interesting. It's a very quick read because each passage is a few pages at most. She's basically summed up a bunch of soft science studies on human behavior, preferences, etc. It's a tiny bit dated but nothing offensive. It's mostly split between very binary male female lines (though occasionally she remembers that gay people exist... I think she's hampered by the studies available to her). I knew a lot of these things before I read them. Does anyone remember from like 2005-2009 or so when there were all these shows about human sexuality and dating and that kind of thing on the History Channel and WE tv and all those other cable channels? I feel like I watched so many of them. There was a real boom that quickly disappeared. Anyway, I take everything with a grain of salt but it's pretty diverting as a casual read and she actually recommends you skip around instead of reading cover to cover. I'm doing the latter because I need to bring it back to the library.