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What book is everyone reading at the moment? Part 2.

I have four books self-published using Kindle Direct Publishing, and so far I've been notified of one formatting error and two or three typos. the formatting thing was a whole short paragraph center-justified . Don't know how three different beta readers and I all missed that.

Amazon does ask if I want to accept or reject the corrections. Accepted them all so far.
 
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Spektator said:
I have four books self-published using Kindle Direct Publishing, and so far I've been notified of one formatting error and two or three typos. the formatting thing was a whole short paragraph center-justified . Don't know how three different beta readers and I all missed that.

Amazon does ask if I want to accept or reject the corrections. Accepted them all so far.
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If people actually bought my books, I'd probably get a whole lot of those too, although, most of the grammatical spelling errors in my books are intentional, like they were in the book Flowers for Algernon.

The Criminal is a crappy writer, and since he's the one dictating (and editing) all the AmyStrange novels in the first person, it isn't until the fourth book that he finally gets it right.
 
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Currently reading a swedish novel called Ödet och Hoppet by Niklas Natt och Dag. It tells the story about the swedish nobelman Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson who led an rebellion against the swedish king during 1434-1436. But Engelbrekt was murdered by Måns Bengtsson (Natt och Dag) with an axe and the rebellion failed. The author Niklas Natt och Dag is a relative to Måns Bengtsson (15th-generation) and tells the story of his murderous ancestor in this book.

Natt och Dag (translates to Night and Day) is a Swedish noble family with origins in the thirteenth century.
 
The Skeptical Botanist, 2025, By John Entwisle.

Debunking the myths about plants and gardening. The author is the former head of the Sydney and Melbourne Botanic Gardens, and also held a senior role at Kew Gardens. This is a collection of writings from the past 30 years, updated, and some new pieces.

I'm a quarter of the way through and enjoying it so far.
 
Gone Forever, Diane Fanning
Just before the Thanksgiving holiday in 2002, Sue McFarland vanished from her home in Texas. Not until the week following Thanksgiving was she reported missing. From the outset, police suspected her husband, Rick, was behind the disappearance, which left him in the family home with the couple’s three young sons.

Edgar-winning true crime writer Fanning gives us a straightforward, dispassionate explication of the entire case, which became a murder investigation in January 2003 with the discovery of Sue’s barbarically charred body in a rusty open trailer miles from her home. In the end, the first suspicions proved correct.

Rick McFarland was an improbable husband for the hard-working Sue. He swiped his kids’ ADHD medication and took it himself. He compulsively shopped, buying multiples of weirdly assorted merchandise and got himself banned from Target and other stores for sending in proof-of-purchase packaging to manufacturers and getting rebates, then returning the items for cash refunds. He preached a form of Evangelical Christianity that focused on the family. The father was the ultimate authority, and the wife and children were under his sole authority. When Sue had a glass of wine at a celebration, Rick spread the word that she was an alcoholic. His caretaking of their sons was spotty at best. His wife left home for work early in the morning, and Rick was responsible for taking the boys to school. Time after time the school called Sue asking where the kids were – at eleven o’clock or later. She’d call Rick and he’d say, “We’re on our way, what’s the problem?” When their mother was missing at Thanksgiving, Rick wouldn’t let them go to friends or relatives but ordered a couple of pizzas.

And in the end, despite assiduous efforts to hide blood in the home, in his car, and on his clothing, despite his attempt to destroy any chance of identifying the corpse, Rick wound up charged for murder. Knowing that now he’s spent half of his sentence in prison (from which he conducts a ministry) and is currently eligible to apply for parole is . . . disturbing.



Miss Pickerell and the Geiger Counter, Ellen MacGregor
After she went to Mars in the first book of this children’s series, Miss Pickerell sets out with two of her nephews (and her cow) for the state capital, where a great circus is entertaining ladies, gentlemen, and kids of all ages (and presumably cows).

The drama begins when the steamboat captain discovers that the cow is aboard and insists on putting her and Miss Pickerell ashore. Outraged at this discrimination, Miss Pickerell buys railway tickets to the capital for herself and her bovine companion. Since the cow is ten, she gets a children’s ticket. Until the stationmaster realizes her species, and then he bans the cow from railway travel.

A disgruntled Miss Pickerell goes to the local sheriff for justice, only to discover that he is down with measles and never wanted to be a sheriff, anyway. He wanted to be an atomic scientist, and he even has a Geiger counter. Rockhound Miss Pickerell assures him the river valley cannot possibly have any uranium in it. The disappointed sheriff says he won’t be paid until he discovers fissionable material, and being bedridden, he deputizes Miss Pickerell to do the prospecting.

And this is only the first couple of chapters! A mystery develops, a character gets abducted, flies with radioactive feet somehow feature, and of course Miss Pickerell has to provide for her nephews to be taken care of in the state capital. Mild fun, again with some outdated science (though the book does a respectable job of explaining the concept of radioactive half-lives). If this one had a tighter plot, it would be more enjoyable, but you take what you can get, and since I got four Miss Pickerell books for ninety-nine cents, I can’t really complain. It’s at least worth a quarter.
 
I just finished DCeased - War of the Undead Gods (the collection). (from Amazon Comixology Unlimited for Kindle)
Now, I've been reading comics for 60+ years, and this rockets to one of the top four or five I've ever read. Great art, epic story, high stakes (Batman, Nightwing, and Robin-Damian are already dead, killed by Alfred out of self-defense.) There are several other issues in the line, but this is the collection of the conclusion. Man, I wish DC would make this into a movie, but it would probably cost a billion dollars.
 
Spektator said:
I'm a great fan of those. The two great scenes for me are the debauched sloth and Audrey's crew doffing hats when he stands in the pillory.
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The Ionian Mission has the scene where Aubrey goes into battle with a French ship without drawing and reloading from his gunnery exercise using fireworks powder that makes different colored fire and smoke. The French think it’s a secret weapon and retire.
 
Book on owls by jennifer Ackermann. This one has been slow going. I am rushing through some chapters so I can give it to my brother in law when he come by Friday. Then on to a few books on medieval everyday life. On translated from German.
 
Spektator said:
Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars, Ellen MacGregor

I saw this children’s science-fiction book from the 1950s on Amazon and remembered reading it a few years ago. Okay, when I was in first grade. Our school library had a whole shelf of Miss Pickerell books, of which this was the first. MacGregor wrote half a dozen or so, and after her passing other writers continued the series. Never read most of them, but this one stuck in my memory because my first-grade teacher thought it was beyond my reading level (it was rated as for readers 12 and older) and my teacher even made me stay in for one recess reading it aloud and explaining the plot to prove I could deal with it.

It's not a difficult read. I finished it in half an hour. Miss Pickerell is an elderly lady who values two things in life: her rock collection and her cow. In this book, for reasons never explained, while she is spending a month visiting her seven nieces and nephews (the cow is in tow), the government or somebody constructs a spaceship on her farm in order to launch an expedition to Mars. Miss Pickerell inadvertently stows away, taking the place of the astrogator, who misses the flight but winds up staying on the farm and taking care of the cow. Over about a month, the spaceship flies to Mars, the crew and Miss Pickerell explore for about a week, and they come back.

Wait, you want to know how they did it all so fast? Why, you poor simpleton, the answer is obvious: it’s an atomic rocket. Very atomic! Miss Pickerell does the navigation herself by the intricate system of “point the rocket where you want to go, then turn it around before you land.”

Frankly, none of the book’s explanations of science make much sense, but there’s a light-heartedness that still has a lingering appeal for me, and Miss Pickerell is such a grumpy-grump (though kind at heart) that she brings a smile to my face. Quite outdated, and I doubt that first-graders today would care for it, but I found it fun to revisit.
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I saw an NBC Children's Theater Episode based on this in 1972, when I was seven. Until now, I'd never known that it was adapted from a book series. I remember assuming that, because they were showing stock footage of the moon landings, that the expedition must have been to the moon, but I also remember Miss Pickerell's saying something about how one of the astronauts brought her "red rocks for my collection," which obviously implies Mars.
 
JayUtah said:
Circumnavigating Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin series again, currently finishing up The Ionian Mission.
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I read all the Hornblower books when I was in college (the first time) and really enjoyed them. I read Master and Commander about 15 years ago and liked it even better, but my local library's copy of Post Captain (the second book in the series, for those unfamiliar) had gone missing, so I didn't continue the series. I really need to see if they've replaced it, or, if they haven't, acquire one myself.
 
SpitfireIX said:
I saw an NBC Children's Theater Episode based on this in 1972, when I was seven. Until now, I'd never known that it was adapted from a book series.
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From the description it seems that the program adapted three of the books.

Shot in the dark, but does anyone remember an old SF children's novel about some British kids who stow away on a rocket to Mars? I remember only a few details:
1 it is narrated in third person, but the narrator hints that he/she was one of the stowaways - "I was a child amang ye takin' notes;"
2 an adult character is a master mimic, impersonating the voice and appearance of famous people, including Winston Churchill;
3 when the rocket lands on Mars, the professor who invented it realizes they need to test the atmosphere and does it by throwing the hatch open, taking a deep breath, and announcing, "Ah! The purest ozone!"
4 the Martians have devolved into big wrinkly bags of heads with a beak and squirming tentacles;
5 the kids call the leader of the Martian leader "Old Jellybags";
6 much less sure of this, but I think the title included "Red Planet."

This has been bugging me for years.
 
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A Game in Yellow, Hailey Piper

A kinky couple is sliding into a dead bedroom situation. It is recommended they read the notorious play, to open up new avenues of communion and pleasure. Is this a good idea? I guess we'll find out.

Skip it if you dislike smut in your horror-romance.
 
Pre-ordered A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0 in paperback by Bill Bryson, out on Oct 28.

I was wanting to re-read the original, but couldn't find my copy, then discovered this revised edition is out soon. Thrilled!
 
Alexis Wright (Australia), Praiseworthy. Incredible, read her Carpentaria, but this is even better - it's not easy reading, but well worth the effort; it took her ten years to write, so it should take time to read as well. It's complex and poetic, a serious book about poverty, climate change, very political at times, even if subtly so, but also funny, almost farcical from time to time. It reminds me of the magical realism of Marquez. Her use of language is fascinating, it almost has me talking to the book, or to the author. Or maybe to Queensland.
 
SpitfireIX said:
I read all the Hornblower books when I was in college (the first time) and really enjoyed them. I read Master and Commander about 15 years ago and liked it even better, but my local library's copy of Post Captain (the second book in the series, for those unfamiliar) had gone missing, so I didn't continue the series. I really need to see if they've replaced it, or, if they haven't, acquire one myself.
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I keep forgetting that I can borrow books from the local library on my Kindle. But my Prime membership often gets me access to the (older) ones I want anyway. And I find it odd that the library often has a waiting list for a digital copy of a book.
 
I hadn't been planning to mention the two books I recently finished reading, because I didn't think they'd be of sufficiently general interest, but seeing what others have posted has made me reconsider.

The first is Nimitz, by E. B. Potter. This is the definitive biography of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, supreme commander of American naval forces in the Pacific in World War II. It was written by a long-time professor of naval history at the US Naval Academy, who had personally known the admiral, and had collaborated with him on revising the Academy's standard naval history text.

The book is extremely well written, and, naval history nut that I am, I really should have read it a long time ago. It has a lot of insight into Nimitz's struggle to pursue his strategy for defeating the Japanese as he saw fit while dealing both with meddling from his superiors in Washington and turf wars with General MacArthur.

It was also scary to learn how many times, for various reasons, the Navy came very close to being deprived of Nimitz's services. Although I'd been aware of most of these incidents before reading the book, having all the details fleshed out really brought home how lucky the US was that he survived to become, and remain, Commander in Chief, Pacific.

Finally, there was one detail of Nimitz's career that I found particularly fascinating. It's mentioned in most histories of the Pacific War that when he was tapped to take over as COMINCHPAC, Nimitz was serving as head of the Bureau of Navigation (now known as the Bureau of Naval Personnel). But I learned that his previous assignment had been as Commander, Battleship Division 1, with the Arizona as his flagship. Further, his flag captain was Isaac C. Kidd, who, as Nimitz's indirect successor in command of the division, would die aboard the Arizona on the morning of December 7, 1941. I'm rather surprised that I'd never read about that before.

Pointless tangent: At my high school commencement, they read out the name of a guy I knew slightly, and I learned that he has two middle names: William Nimitz. I never saw him again until our 25th class reunion (the only one he's been to so far), when we sat at the same table. I asked him if he's related to the admiral, and he said they're first cousins twice removed. He told me that his mother had a picture of Nimitz signing the surrender documents aboard the Missouri, autographed by Nimitz.
 
JayUtah said:
Circumnavigating Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin series again, currently finishing up The Ionian Mission.
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Always worth it. I have completed 4 circumnavigations, and many short voyages, and they never fail to please. A recent trip to the Historic Dockyards in Portsmouth brought it all very much to life for me.

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