What are you reading this week of April 22, 2018?

[hermetic]

Happy Earth Day!


Happy days for me! My computer is a laptop confined to a small space with minimal speakers so I recently went on a thrift store search and found a nice little pair of LabTecs for $5. Then, at long last, an audio book finally became available on the Digital Consortium end of my library so I am now able to listen while I cook. This is my first experience with the Consortium and I am a bit disappointed. There are only about 30 audio books so far and only one person at a time can listen. Why? That seems lame and I am now on LONG waiting lists. Plus, why are all libraries in the state not available to me? Who knows the answers to these burning questions?

So, I am listening to in a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware. This is labeled as a thriller but two-thirds in and I have yet to be thrilled. But the characters are rather amusing and the way Ware lays out the reveal is unusual, for me anyway. So, it's an okay tale; just not great. I only got it as Ware's The Woman in Cabin 10 is so popular and is on my list.

Still happy with Tales of Burning Love by Louise Erdrich and To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, which just keeps getting funnier. What books are making you happy this week? Apologies to those I didn't reply to in last week's thread. Please know that I do read and appreciate everything you write here. I've just been crazy busy, trying to take care of my little piece of the earth.

[Marie Marie]

1. A Brief History of Thought by Luc Ferry

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. Several books at the moment.

Just started Every Day by David Levithan, about someone who every day wakes up in a different body. The movie came out recently and was quite good.

Also still working on Can't Buy me Love by Jonathan Gould about the Beatles. It's not at all a lightweight celebrity bio, but is quite dense with information, especially about their songs.

I apparently haven't read In a Dark, Dark Wood, although I know I've checked it out of the library more than once. The Woman in Cabin 10, according to my notes (I keep a notebook about the books I read and usually comment on them) says the plot is flimsy and depends on coincidences that stretched my willingness to suspend disbelief beyond the breaking point.

I recently finished Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, the first novel by the author of A Gentleman in Moscow. It's quite good, but the second is definitely better.

[hermetic]

5. Dark Wood

Takes place in modern-day England. A bunch of college friends reunite for a weekend celebration of one member's upcoming wedding. There's a lot of drinking and rehashing of old events. Some dark secrets get brought to light. I suspect it's much more listenable than readable.

[shenmue]

3. "A Kind of Grief," by A.D. Scott

[hermetic]

6. Hi there

Glad to see you. I will definitely have to look into this series, set against the grandeur of the Northern Scottish Highlands in the 1950s, here is the sixth evocative, fast-paced, suspenseful mystery. A spellbinding case involving a woman accused of witchcraft.

All my favorite things! Thanks.

[shenmue]

11. You're welcome

[dameatball]

4. "The Descent" by Jeff Long

[hermetic]

8. We are not alone

Mankind’s shocking realization: that the underworld is a vast geological labyrinth populated by another race of beings. Some call them devils or demons. But they are real. They are down there. And they are waiting for us to find them…

Kewl.

[dameatball]

13. I think Jimmy Hoffa, Elvis and Andy Kaufman may all be down there.

[Runningdawg]

7. VIral by Jim Lilliefors

This is an espionage thriller where 2 brothers, a CIA agent and a reporter, work together to expose a conspiracy to use biological weapons.

[hermetic]

9. That sounds frightening

And quite entertaining. Oh yeah...

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

10. Oh, and I'm also reading

In the Land of Invisible Women by Qanta A. Ahmed, MD. She was born in England in a Muslim family, went to medical school there and did a residency in the U.S. Then she accepted a job in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This was in the late '90s, and she was rather horrified at the extreme gender segregation and the over-the-top male privilege and female oppression. So far it's quite interesting.

[hermetic]

12. Dr. Ahmed

is an amazing, and gorgeous, woman. What an experience that must have been!

[japple]

14. Happy (belated) Earth Day, and thanks, hermetic, for the weekly thread.

I took a suggestion from a friend whose book group is reading Steve Earle's book, I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive, and started it a few days ago. It's an interesting story; Steve writes prose as well as he does music.

Doc Ebersole lives with the ghost of Hank Williams—not just in the figurative sense, not just because he was one of the last people to see him alive, and not just because he is rumored to have given Hank the final morphine dose that killed him.

In 1963, ten years after Hank's death, Doc himself is wracked by addiction. Having lost his license to practice medicine, his morphine habit isn't as easy to support as it used to be. So he lives in a rented room in the red-light district on the south side of San Antonio, performing abortions and patching up the odd knife or gunshot wound. But when Graciela, a young Mexican immigrant, appears in the neighborhood in search of Doc's services, miraculous things begin to happen. Graciela sustains a wound on her wrist that never heals, yet she heals others with the touch of her hand. Everyone she meets is transformed for the better, except, maybe, for Hank's angry ghost—who isn't at all pleased to see Doc doing well.

A brilliant excavation of an obscure piece of music history, Steve Earle's I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive is also a marvelous novel in its own right, a ballad of regret and redemption, and of the ways in which we remake ourselves and our world through the smallest of miracles.

[hermetic]

15. Hiya

Lots of people are liking this book a lot. Guess I will have to read it. I always enjoy writing that "sings."

[pscot]

16. The Voyage of teh Beagle by Charles Darwin

While this isn't fiction, it describes a world and a set of values so different from ours that it feels unreal; specifically, the continuous casual slaughter of wildlife reported by Darwin with perfect equanimity. He describes a ride around the Falkland Islands accompanied by pair of gauchos. At one point they kill a wild cow with a knife. It's a long and bloody process that ends when the exhausted animal is sufficiently subdued that one of them can run in and stab it in the neck. They cut one slab of meat for the evening meal and leave the rest lying in the rain. Darwin is effusive in his praise for the quality of the grilled meat. He also describes the Falklands Fox, a dog-sized critter so tame that the settlers amuse themselves by luring the animal with a piece meat on a stick until it comes close enough so they can stab it with a knife. The details are recorded with an appalling air of calm, scientific detachment. It goes without saying that Falkland Fox is no more. It's unfair to censure Darwin for reflecting the values of his time and wildlife was so abundant then as to seem infinitely renewable, but knowing what we now know it all seems primitive, brutal and stupid.

Obviously there's more to the book than that. I learned, for instance, that Sweden is too cold for rabbits. Hopefully things will pick up when we get around Cape Horn and out of the Atlantic. Cheers , Hermetic.

[hermetic]

17. Gak!

Doesn't sound like something this vegetarian could handle.

I know, I know. I have the utmost respect for the importance of Darwin's work. I just don't need to internalize it.

Cheers back atya, pal.

[PennyK]

18. My first ebook (not audio)from the library!

It's Mycroft Holmes by Kareem Abdul Jabbar and so far it's lots of fun. I remember seeing him talk about it a long time ago, possibly on Keith's show.
hermetic, does your library not have Overdrive/Libby? It was insanely easy to install and browse.

[hermetic]

19. Yeah, they do

have Overdrive. But they do not have much that I am interested in. Why can they not give me digital access to all libraries in my state? (Hint: because this is a repug state) Besides, I am not lacking in actual books to read. I currently have about 30 here on my shelf. I just want more access to books I can listen to while I work around the house. There is the rub.

Your book sounds terrific. I have an online friend from Trinidad and she has told me stories about growing up there. I would love to visit.

Hope you are doing well.

[PennyK]

20. Here's an idea

You can take out ebooks from every library system you have a card for.
So, you apply for cards in other counties; don't know if you can do that without going in person.
Thanks, I'm doing fine. I have an appointment with the eye surgeon in two weeks (daughter visit next week). I just met someone who had the ptosis surgery two days ago! Her eyes look great and she is amazed at how much larger her visual area is now.

[hermetic]

21. Right

That's what I would like to do. BUT,
it doesn't go by county here, it goes by town. The big town 20 minutes away from me, same county, says I have to pay $50 a year for a card there because I do not pay property taxes (or rent) in that town. See how they are? I may end up going that route eventually. Or moving. Which sounds like a better idea. Except for I am SO TIRED of moving. :sigh:

Anyway, that sounds like good news for you. Eye surgery really is amazing these days. I have a friend who had cataracts removed and it was no big deal at all. More complicated to get a hangnail removed.

[PennyK]

22. That's awful!

I briefly lived in Forest Hills, Queens, for a while, and my library card was for all of NYC.

I was reading outside this morning, and one eyelid was drooping so much. Glad I'm going to be taking care of it.