What BOOK(s) are you reading?

Restarting Quicksilver, the first in The Baroque Cycle of Neal Stephenson.

I really like it and I love how well researched it is regarding 18th Century shenanigans. I recognise that some people find him long winded but I find him a wonderfully descriptive and evocative writer. I've read it before but I always find new insights with this cycle, particularly on historical events. Luckily, on the Kindle app, I can look up the history of the Royal Society or the Peace of Westphalia quickly and get back to the novel.

A wonderful series and highly recommended (I may be biased though as a physicist and historian).

After what feels like a year, I’ve finished the book about the ratification debates.

They should have named it, “They still know more than you and your country is fucked up beyond all repair by their standards.”

If you have any interest in why the Constitution was written the way it was, what the States had to say about it, and why it all STILL matters, read it.

www.amazon.com/Ratification-People-Debat...7-1788/dp/0684868555

One of the most profoundly enlightening books I’ve ever laid eyes upon.

ThirstyMan wrote: Restarting Quicksilver, the first in The Baroque Cycle of Neal Stephenson.

I really like it and I love how well researched it is regarding 18th Century shenanigans. I recognise that some people find him long winded but I find him a wonderfully descriptive and evocative writer. I've read it before but I always find new insights with this cycle, particularly on historical events. Luckily, on the Kindle app, I can look up the history of the Royal Society or the Peace of Westphalia quickly and get back to the novel.

A wonderful series and highly recommended (I may be biased though as a physicist and historian).

I was at our thrift store last night and saw all three books, hardback, for $12 apiece. I should have bought them but my wife has been keeping a close eye on the checking account lately.

I am reading The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis, also on the Kindle because I'm too lazy to get out of bed and turn the light off when I get drowsy, and my yellow-bulb night table light isn't that great for reading.

I'm reading the first SpaceCorp book, the match to the SpaceCorp game that is delivering this month from GMT, It’s fIction, but really technically detailed, talking about building space stations for low Earth orbit. I’m on chapter four and it’s pretty good so far.

I enjoy reading, but lately I have been skim-reading some less enjoyable books. I lost my job a month ago, and my next position will likely involve supervision of staff again, so I am brushing up on current management fads. But business books tend to be written by plodding hacks, and the content is usually a mixture of common sense and beige platitudes. So I skim, looking for the occasional anecdote or useful insight. There was one book that gave advice to Boomers and Gen X who had to manage Millennials, and I read that one cover to cover.

Shellhead wrote: I enjoy reading, but lately I have been skim-reading some less enjoyable books. I lost my job a month ago, and my next position will likely involve supervision of staff again, so I am brushing up on current management fads. But business books tend to be written by plodding hacks, and the content is usually a mixture of common sense and beige platitudes. So I skim, looking for the occasional anecdote or useful insight. There was one book that gave advice to Boomers and Gen X who had to manage Millennials, and I read that one cover to cover.

My sympathies sir, both on the job loss and the new job in management. Here's hoping things are looking up 30 days from now.

I'm finding that I have to press myself to read long-form. It doesn't come naturally like it used to. Too much time reading things in forums like this one, where four paragraphs is considered too long to bother with.

Shellhead wrote: I enjoy reading, but lately I have been skim-reading some less enjoyable books. I lost my job a month ago, and my next position will likely involve supervision of staff again, so I am brushing up on current management fads. But business books tend to be written by plodding hacks, and the content is usually a mixture of common sense and beige platitudes. So I skim, looking for the occasional anecdote or useful insight. There was one book that gave advice to Boomers and Gen X who had to manage Millennials, and I read that one cover to cover.

I have not used it but I think Blinkist might be what you're looking for. They offer CliffNotes versions of business books which distil whatever core idea of the book into a 15 minute summary. Again, this is not really a recommendation as I haven't used it but the product does seem to fit your use case. Best of luck with the new job hunt.

I too have found long form content harder to deal with, I used to love reading for reading's sake but now reading is something I need to schedule. Once I'm in flow the love of reading resurfaces but it's a huge barrier for me to get over that initial hump.

Last weekend, I re-read Shirley Jackon's "Haunting of Hill House." It's fantastic. Shirley Jackson is fantastic.

I've spent a good portion of the past three years' leisurely reading within the haunted house sub-genre. Many were revisited after twenty years.

The Shining - meh.
The Little Stranger - gothic goodness. Unfortunately, the movie adaptation is soulless.
The Elementals - Too many red herrings, with a surprisingly gory climax. The 1980s subtext from the author is striking.
The House with the Clock in the Walls - it's a kid's book. And a dumb one. At least Edward Gorey did the illustrations.
Slade House - a loose sequel to the Bone Clocks. In many ways, it's better.
House of Leaves - post modern brain burner. You get out of it, what you put in. It took me several attempts, but ultimately worth it. I love this book.*
Burnt Offerings - Wow. Stephen King is a hack. So many elements of the Shining are in the tale. Mind you, Burnt Offerings has it's share of earlier gothic tropes.
Hell House - Unnecessarily sexualized. Stupid-fucking-out-of-nowhere-ending.

*My wife argues that House of Leaves Is not a Haunted House book.

The Slow Art by Sierra Golden. I’ve decided to give contemporary poetry a shot as I only have the time and attention for it and comics right now. Anyway, I picked this up as we were classmates at university, and I respected her writing then.

It’s legit. I’ve been under the impression for a while now that contemporary America poetry is in a bad place. The only people reading poetry are other poets, so the writing is just disappearing into allusion and reference.

Not Sierra. Her stuff is killer. There’s plenty of pieces on love, as you might expect in poetry, but there’s an edge, sadness to it as much of the work is set on commercial fishing boats or dying Alaskan fishing villages. An oil slick on water is a “radiant rainbow scar.”

It’s good. If you have any interest in contemporary poetry, you should give it a read. You can only order from the publisher, and they included a handwritten receipt. I haven’t been given one of those since I was in Kenya.

How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler. About what it sounds like. Very fun, although the humorous portions try a little too hard in parts. It would be a good reference for designing a civ game, and even has a tech tree in the back. (The god invention is the kiln. Unlocks metallurgy, glass, and everything that follows from them. Close second is the mouldboard plow.)

Has a handy guide for figuring out when and where you are, and what you should do from there. I recommend it, but wait for the paperback.

I started listening to the audiobook of The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin. It's off to a strong start. I've been really impressed with her world building, because she has grounded so many of her world's details in relatable emotional stakes. Very interested to see how it proceeds, and if it stays this good the two sequels will definitely get my attention.

"Dodger" by Terry Pratchett.

It's, er, not very good.

Pratchett was a big fan of Dickens, and a big fan of London. His discworld series turned more and more into a homage to both, to put it simply. Which is fine. This is also an homage to both, and, while I'm only a little way in, it strains just so too hard. Dickens is one of the main characters, and it's got lots of "I have great expectations... oh, that would be good name for a book, let me write that down" type jokes.

I recently read a social history of Dickensian London which was really fantastic - and gave me huge insights into where a lot of the discworld stuff comes from. It's interesting that when Pratchett tried to actually write literally, as opposed to allegorically, and sketchily, about his pet topic, it sort of devolved into some not great writing.

City of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai

It's a very densely-detailed history of two American expats running all kinds of vice schemes in Shanghai when it was still dominated by "the Settlement", which was one of the international areas in China where foreigners had more rights than the native peoples. It's kind of fascinating just from a textural basis. The descriptions of criminals, entertainers, government officials, landlords, regular merchants, farmers and how all of those professions and the various nationalities behind them interacted is pretty fascinating. I'm only about 1/4 of the way through it and I can't say that it's providing a great narrative, but for a very personal survey of the time and place, it's pretty good.

dysjunct wrote: How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler.

That one is going on the list. Thanks!

I'm reading The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism which is a look at American slavery from a financial perspective. Gives "dismal science" that much more meaning. I think I'm about a third of the way through and it's been patchy. At times the author goes on tangents in order to lay groundwork for the main thread of the book and they can be a bit tedious, but his sidebar on the battle of New Orleans was actually pretty interesting, which had significant bearing on a couple of legal and political aspects of slavery continuing into the west. I'll give an update after I get a little farther along, interesting read to date but the going has been slow with the holidays and the new house. I've picked it back up in the last week or so.