What BOOK(s) are you reading?

I started reading Look to the Mountain. An older book about a man and woman who become pioneers in New Hampshire back in the days when you could get a few hundred acres of free land just by showing up and asking for it. Pretty good so far. I'm reading it on laundry nights so will take a few weeks to finish.

I had a friend in high school/college that loved Salvatore. I picked up the omnibus of the Icewind Dale trilogy from a local used book store at the time and was absolutely blown away by how terrible it was. Some of the scenes felt like reading a session report of D&D where the die rolls were just off screen. Just awful, awful material. I've never tried any of his other stuff.

I finished Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror by Victor Sebestyen, which I thought was alright overall. It was a very engaging and enjoyable read, but kind of "meh" as a biography. It brought in a lot of stuff outside of Lenin to fill out the book, which while interesting is not really about Lenin. Sometimes it tied in by providing context, other times it was not particularly relevant as it did not impact or was the result of Lenin's actions. Judging by the blurb, introduction, and the author's comments, what sets this volume apart is that it more heavily focuses on Lenin's relationships with the women in his life, which I take it has been underplayed or ignored in prior works. As I have not read a biography of Lenin before, I could be mistaken that this is new ground. Overall, a worthwhile read, but not something I would say is essential.

I am currently reading through Antony Beevor's The Battle of Arnhem, which was just recently released in paperback and just after I finished a playthrough of Holland '44. I'm about a third of the way into the book and I quite enjoy it. I have read Beevor's D-Day: The Battle for Normandy and like it and this is more of the same engaging reading. Similarly with that volume, I do not think Beevor thinks very highly of Montgomery (easy to do for Market-Garden) though he tries to stay balanced in his prose. This book bounces around more frequently than D-Day due to its much shorter timeframe (a few days instead of a few months) and maintain a coherent chronology. I expect I will enjoy the rest of the book.

After seeing MIDWAY am re-reading SHATTERED SWORD. Excellent book on the battle, highly recommended.

Msample wrote: After seeing MIDWAY am re-reading SHATTERED SWORD. Excellent book on the battle, highly recommended.

Really a great read in a number of categories.

We had a discussion on Shattered Sword here years back, and one of the authors joined in. I'll see if I can find a link.

Edit -- therewillbe.games/forum/43-books-comics/...le-of-midway?start=0

Finished The Battle of Arnhem buy Beevor. It was an excellent, quick read on the operation. I revise my earlier statement of Beevor maybe not thinking highly of Montgomery. He clearly thinks very little of him as his exasperation slowly ramps up over the book and has some pretty condemning prose for a nonfiction book (and Beevor's writing style, while animated, is generally pretty even). Similarly to D-Day, he tends to save most of his harsh tone for the Allied commanding officers. He is generally even on enlisted soldiers, which makes it a little funny on how he tries to quickly go over bad cases of American paratrooper behavior before just acknowledging some major problems in the final chapters. Beevor also thinks very highly of Sosabowski and spends a decent amount of the Polish coverage refuting contemporary British statements about his performance and conduct.

Up next is Barbara Tuchman's Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45, which is my holiday reading book. I have not started it, but I expect to enjoy it.

I am re-reading the Budayeen trilogy by George Alec Effinger. Premium cyberpunk/hardboiled detective hybrid, set in a nameless city in the Mideast. It's a shame that it will probably never get tv/movie treatment due to the setting.

I finally started reading Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. Mindblowing.

I laughed this morning because I thought Dark Souls and Bloodborne were mildly creative, lore-wise. Then I read the first 50 pages of Wolfe and realized Miyazaki had just read Wolfe's books and aped them in a visual medium.

Gene Wolfe is amazing across the board. Wizard Knight is also great.

I finished MOBY-DICK and it was amazing. It's the best book I have ever read. I am asking for an annotated version so I can read it again. I am looking up old essays on it. It blew me away. Why waste this on highschoolers? They won't get shit out of this. You need to live to get any of this. But the language, my God. As the Pequod closes on its prey, the author describes Ahab's current mien:

Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's forehead of heaven.

Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged creatures that frolic all around us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how oblivious were ye of old Ahab's close-coiled woe! But so have I seen little Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around their old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on the marge of the burnt-out crater of his brain.

It's basically blank verse! Every sentence is wordplay and evocative and work. It's not easy to read (most of it). Sometimes it's like Cliff Clavin talking your ear off on some minutia. But it's funny and so damn good. One more quote and I'll leave you all alone. Here he describes the try-works, the furnace where blubber is melted down into oil:

...Here be it said that in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed for a time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means to quick ignition of the staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out, the crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still contains considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters feed the flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies its own fuel and burns by its own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible in inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the pit.

It is an argument for the pit. Writing like this takes my breath away. It makes me never want to read anything shitty ever again, there isn't enough time.

There are so many of these "great books" we waste on precollege kids. It poisons the books, unfortunately.

My recollection is that it has a lot to say about the hell of the industrial revolution era, something we're finishing up now with our global warming present/future.

I first read Moby-Dick in middle school and I enjoyed it. However, I did enjoy it waaaaaaaaaaaay more once I read it as an adult.

Gary Sax wrote: There are so many of these "great books" we waste on precollege kids.

My absolute "favorite" in this regard is Death of a Salesman -- exactly who thinks the plot or theme is of interest to the average high-schooler?

And don't get me started on Shakespeare.

I swear the curriculum of High School English Literature is based on what the teachers are interested in rather than what will interest their students.

I think that's definitely a bit true. The other part is probably fear that the kids will never read anything else again so you better stuff them with good stuff so they've at least been exposed to something decent before they leave.

I loved Moby Dick when I read it a few years back. But I would have skipped the descriptions and laughed off the symbolism as a kid. Kids tend not to believe that authors/creators are doing that stuff intentionally, they have a cynicism about it often which is why stuff like this can be wasted (although the English teacher says, no, all the more reason to try show them).

I'm currently reading Dune because I found an abandoned copy on the train. Never read it before. Not a fantasy reader. Not sure about some of the stylistic stuff (the inner monologues, although it is effective). World building is good - not too much exposition. The political religious stuff is interesting. You know what though. I have been sick of messianic figures since forever and this isn't changing my mind about that.

What are the other novels like?

Greg Aleknevicus wrote:

Gary Sax wrote: There are so many of these "great books" we waste on precollege kids.

My absolute "favorite" in this regard is Death of a Salesman -- exactly who thinks the plot or theme is of interest to the average high-schooler?

And don't get me started on Shakespeare.

English teachers tend to teach what will be on the exam. There's been more movement on the canon recently than in almost any previous time, actually. That's changing. For me (high school was late 80s), the worst offender was Dickens. Holy shit did I hate to read Dickens. Any Dickens fans out there want to tell me about a good one, because I fucking hated GREAT EXPECTATIONS so much I haven't read a word by him since 1989. Feel free to champion Charles and let me judge you once I try again.

mc wrote: I'm currently reading Dune because I found an abandoned copy on the train. Never read it before. Not a fantasy reader. Not sure about some of the stylistic stuff (the inner monologues, although it is effective). World building is good - not too much exposition. The political religious stuff is interesting. You know what though. I have been sick of messianic figures since forever and this isn't changing my mind about that.

What are the other novels like?

I really liked DUNE. I liked the devices he used to get rid of things that are story killers and basically unknowable to authors looking 10,000 years ahead. Lasers? Forbidden! Computers? Super-extra forbidden! He doesn't need to dwell on the whys, the characters have all internalized these taboos and as the reader, you do as well. Nice!

He basically takes every Hero Of A Thousand Faces trope (reluctant messiah, wandering Jew, terrors in the night, royal intrigue, magical intervention) and jumbles them all up in a really cool narrative that feels very lived in.

The other books keep chugging and end up incredibly weird. If you like the gist of things, stop after GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE. That's plenty. And don't ever even think about the Prequels by his son. They are such garbage.

I’ve been of the opinion for awhile that English classes need to spend more time reading garbage literature. A teacher puts some decades- or centuries-old writing in front of you and tells you it’s a classic, the sort of stuff dissertations are written on. You lack the context or life experience to appreciate it, but unless you have some real gumption, you’re not telling your teacher it’s boring, it’s trash, and debating her. No one gains anything.

Read Twilight alongside Vanity Fair, though, then you have something to talk about. Besides, I would argue it’s a real skill to explain why something is bad as much as it is why something is great.

But I get that teachers probably lack the curriculum space to do so.