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

[catsmate]

Flitting about various books. Most recently Travis Baldree's Bookshops & Bonedust, the sequel to Legends & Lattes. Fantasy world with bookshop.
Also I have Greenwood's Theodora Braithwaite series queued after seeing her on the Supervet.

 

[Spektator]

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
In 1843 Charles Dickens was in financial trouble. Then he had a brainstorm: if he could publish a popular, short book for Christmas, he might just dig himself out of his financial hole. As to subject, it would be the redemption of a man, at Christmas-time. He wouldn't write of Christmas as it had become after about two hundred years of Puritan disapproval. Christmas had become a holiday observed more in the countryside than in the city, where it was another working day. It was more worldly than religious, launching twelve days of hard drinking. No, instead, Dickens would recreate an old-time British Christmas, full of cheer, goodwill, and charity for all.

He knew the little volume was something. Ironically, he insisted on a low price, while including abundant illustrations, gilded page edges, and a beautiful binding. And he paid a premium to rush it into publication in time for Christmas. That first year the costs nearly bankrupted the author.

However, the Carol paid dividends by reviving Christmas and giving later generations the pattern for a way to celebrate and a way to live a good life. I just read the book, again, marveled at its language and characters, laughed (even the unpleasant Scripts has a sense of humor), got sentimental and even shed a tear. In later years the Carol bolstered Dickens popularity, boosted sales of his other works and became a world classic. It was and is a Christmas miracle.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Sceptered Isle by Helen Carr

A new history of the fourteenth century told through the lives of Edward II, Edward III and Richard II

It looks at the fractured monarchies, social rebellion ans change the black death and the balance between nationalism, war with France and influence in Europe.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed​

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the…

Compulsory ujamaa villages in Tanzania, collectivizatio…

www.goodreads.com

about to start reading

excellent, highly recommend.

I will re-read it in a few months.
So many great concepts about what is necessary to make the ecology and population of a State "legible" for a government or organization, and the the consequences of ignoring the inevitable shortcomings the condensing of this patchy information is cause for large-scale projects.

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

Was just given a copy of Hail Mary by Andy Wier. I haven't started it yet, but I've heard good things. Will probably get into it in the next couple of weeks.

 

[Lennart Hyland]

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
In 1843 Charles Dickens was in financial trouble. Then he had a brainstorm: if he could publish a popular, short book for Christmas, he might just dig himself out of his financial hole. As to subject, it would be the redemption of a man, at Christmas-time. He wouldn't write of Christmas as it had become after about two hundred years of Puritan disapproval. Christmas had become a holiday observed more in the countryside than in the city, where it was another working day. It was more worldly than religious, launching twelve days of hard drinking. No, instead, Dickens would recreate an old-time British Christmas, full of cheer, goodwill, and charity for all.

He knew the little volume was something. Ironically, he insisted on a low price, while including abundant illustrations, gilded page edges, and a beautiful binding. And he paid a premium to rush it into publication in time for Christmas. That first year the costs nearly bankrupted the author.

However, the Carol paid dividends by reviving Christmas and giving later generations the pattern for a way to celebrate and a way to live a good life. I just read the book, again, marveled at its language and characters, laughed (even the unpleasant Scripts has a sense of humor), got sentimental and even shed a tear. In later years the Carol bolstered Dickens popularity, boosted sales of his other works and became a world classic. It was and is a Christmas miracle.

I'm about 99% through the Antony Beevor book and I'll read Christmas Carol next! I've only read one Dickens before, Oliver Twist but I loved it and really want to read more of him. Thick bricks though...

 

[Spektator]

Try Hard Times. It's short for a Dickens novel. I really like David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby too. Dickens was not paid by the word.

 

[Spektator]

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, Erik Larson
Erik Larson gives us another popular history with his usual combination of style, tension, and humor as he tracks Winston Churchill’s first year as Prime Minister during a crucial period of history. Faced with the incessant bombings of London and other British cities, fearing a threatened Nazi invasion, Churchill keeps a ferocious tenacity and solidifies his leadership.

His determination extends from the global stage to his domestic and familial surroundings. He more or less conscripts publisher Max Aitken, Baron Beaverbrook, to multiply the production of British fighter planes. Beaverbrook fronted the effort, demanding that other industries give up their facilities and staff to aircraft production. He could bully where Churchill remained quietly in the background. The point of view shifts from chapter to chapter, citing letters, diaries, and memoirs. At the same time that British industry quickly ramped up production, Göring and Goebbels both confidently expected British resistance to crumble in the face of mass bombings. However, with the continent lost, the small island nation downed more German planes than it lost.

Larson gives us ringside seats and does not limit himself to the great events, but pays attention also to private moments – the tempestuous love lives of Churchill’s children, the foolish optimism of Rudolf Hess, who flew a Messerschmitt-110 to Scotland to negotiate a peace. When Göring discovered what Hess was doing, he ordered the whole Luftwaffe to scramble planes to down him. When Hitler found out, he sent underlings to concentration camps.

Britain survived, of course, and Larson extends the book far enough to account for the terrible moment when Churchill heard the news that Pearl Harbor had been bombed by listening to the news on the BBC. Churchill immediately phoned Roosevelt to tell him Britain would back whatever the USA would do. Roosevelt said he would ask Congress for a declaration of war the next day. Churchill promptly replied, “Then I shall do the same the day after.”

The title comes from a memoir in which the witness described the weird beauty of watching bombs fall and explode. It was curious blend of the splendid display and of the vile humanity that produced it. Recommended.

 

[SteveAitch]

Well, in Ngaio Marsh novels, if there is a lower class person or arriviste type, very good odds that they are the killer.

Or a doctor. I think she had health problems and if she liked her doctor at the time of writing the doctor character would be a great guy who helped solve the case, if not he would be the killer. I like Ngaio Marsh's books but she had a bunch of hangups. Sex, class, colonialism, religion, medicine. And her beef with Sayers...I actually like that one (Overture to Death) but once you realize she's put in not just one but two stand-ins for Sayers it just seems crazy.

Inspired by TM's post, I've just finished re-reading Overture to Death. If we are both thinking of the same two characters as Sayers avatars, as it were, one does wonder about the symbolism of having one of them murder the other. Probably a thesis in there somewhere.

It's in a collection of three novels in one (thick) paperback. In one of the others, Death in a White Tie, the murderer is a blackmailing doctor; in the third, Death at the Bar, a lower class lefty. So, a bit predictable. But, to be fair, she does throw in enough red herrings to make them readable.

 

[Andy_Ross]

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, Erik Larson
Erik Larson gives us another popular history with his usual combination of style, tension, and humor as he tracks Winston Churchill’s first year as Prime Minister during a crucial period of history. Faced with the incessant bombings of London and other British cities, fearing a threatened Nazi invasion, Churchill keeps a ferocious tenacity and solidifies his leadership.

His determination extends from the global stage to his domestic and familial surroundings. He more or less conscripts publisher Max Aitken, Baron Beaverbrook, to multiply the production of British fighter planes. Beaverbrook fronted the effort, demanding that other industries give up their facilities and staff to aircraft production. He could bully where Churchill remained quietly in the background. The point of view shifts from chapter to chapter, citing letters, diaries, and memoirs. At the same time that British industry quickly ramped up production, Göring and Goebbels both confidently expected British resistance to crumble in the face of mass bombings. However, with the continent lost, the small island nation downed more German planes than it lost.

Larson gives us ringside seats and does not limit himself to the great events, but pays attention also to private moments – the tempestuous love lives of Churchill’s children, the foolish optimism of Rudolf Hess, who flew a Messerschmitt-110 to Scotland to negotiate a peace. When Göring discovered what Hess was doing, he ordered the whole Luftwaffe to scramble planes to down him. When Hitler found out, he sent underlings to concentration camps.

Britain survived, of course, and Larson extends the book far enough to account for the terrible moment when Churchill heard the news that Pearl Harbor had been bombed by listening to the news on the BBC. Churchill immediately phoned Roosevelt to tell him Britain would back whatever the USA would do. Roosevelt said he would ask Congress for a declaration of war the next day. Churchill promptly replied, “Then I shall do the same the day after.”

The title comes from a memoir in which the witness described the weird beauty of watching bombs fall and explode. It was curious blend of the splendid display and of the vile humanity that produced it. Recommended.

For so some reason there's never a book about how he sent the army to shoot striking railway workers in Wales.

 

[Spektator]

For so some reason there's never a book about how he sent the army to shoot striking railway workers in Wales.

Not surprising Larson doesn't cover it since the miners' strike occurred 30 years before the year the Blitz began. More about the 1911 event here.

 

[Steve]

Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I read it every December.

 

[dellarte]

The Skeptic's Dictionary
by
Robert Todd Carroll

Wikipedia: "The Skeptic's Dictionary is a collection of cross-referenced skeptical essays by Robert Todd Carroll, published on his website skepdic.com and in a printed book."

I bought the Skeptic's Dictionary (first edition) when I was sussing out scepticism... just after I'd sussed out James Randi for myself. Gotta say, he was an approachable guy. I emailed him, not expecting a response and he replied. He was a bit brusque at the time... approachable yet brusque. One thing I got through Randi's blog and the JREF Million Dollar Challenge and The Skeptic's Dictionary was this... it's dangerous to entertain a delusion.

I'm now re-reading the essay about Transcendental Meditation® (aka: TM®) on the Skepdic website. I've found the paragraph that made me laugh so hard when I was reading the book but it seems to have changed. Or, maybe I've changed... or both... or more.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The prequel trilogy to the Amber Chronicles, by Roger Zelazny, et al.

 

[Orphia Nay]

"A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0" by Bill Bryson.

 

[Helen]

I went to the library yesterday with no idea what book(s) to get, so I asked a website to generate a random letter and number (it was H and 19), and literally picked the 19th book after the H divider in the fiction section. It was The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett. A very odd story but compelling; the blurb says

The entire story is told in transcripts of audio files which Steve Smith (now a missing person himself) has recorded on an old phone that his estranged son passed to him; the automatic transcription isn't always accurate so for example Miss Isles gets transcribed as missiles, must have gets transcribed as mustard and gonna gets transcribed as gun a. I found this a bit difficult at first but soon got used to it.

A plot point turns on these transcription errors

The files explain Steve's personal history as well as his attempts to find out what happened to his teacher and to solve the code, and the final twist was completely unexpected. I enjoyed it and may seek out other books by this author.

I have become addicted to Janice Hallett; her stories are all told through emails, texts, documents etc, and twist and turn from person to person, as the stories unfold. Quite enjoyable as puzzles, and very well constructed. She writes well, and manages all the different voices (almost) flawlessly.

Just started reading Question 7 by Richard Flanagan, a novel, or an autobiography, or a series of essays on history, or all of the above. I think this will place itself fairly high up on Helen's list of best books of all time (the list is under constant revision, though), the language alone, not least when he describes the environmental changes of Tasmania, will stay with me.

 

[Agatha]

Three Weeks, Elinor Glyn

Would you like to sin
With Elinor Glyn
On a tiger skin?
Or would you prefer
To err with her
On another fur?

I have no idea when or where I know that from, nor why I can remember it despite having no clear memory of what I ate for lunch today!

October book club pick was I Will Ruin You by Linwood Barclay; every character took stupid avoidable decisions which irritated me, but it galloped along.
November book club pick was The Figurine by Victoria Hislop; not the sort of book I'd usually read (but that's the joy of book club). A sort of mash-up of modern Greek history, art & antiquity theft, and romance. It sparked a good discussion at the book club meeting about the Elgin Marbles.
December book club is The Second Sleep by Robert Harris which I read a few years ago and enjoyed at the time, so I'll skim back through it before the meeting. It's very clever in the way you start out thinking the book is set in one particular era and then you start getting clues that your assumptions may be wrong.

I've also recently read Elements by John Boyne (magnificent), the first three books plus one later one in the Dr Priestley series by John Rhode - more Golden Age detective fiction: The Paddington Mystery, Dr Priestley's Quest, The Ellery Case and The Motor Rally Mystery, Agatha Christie's Murder on The Orient Express and Cat Among the Pigeons in French, and The Eights by Joanna Miller - an historical novel about the first women to study at Oxford.

Currently reading Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins, another Hunger Games prequel, and waiting for my daughter to finish Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir so that I can borrow it.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Mickey7, by Edward Ashton. I'm about ⅔ through it, and I'm enjoying it. I haven't seen the screen adaptation yet, as I wanted to read the book first. A fun story, but it has some deep sociological and philosophical points as well. Plus the science is satisfyingly informed and believable - not surprising as the author apparently teaches quantum mechanics.

 

[Spektator]

Halfway House, Ellery Queen
in high school I collected all the mysteries by Ellery Queen* starring Ellery Queen. The first few, the French Hat Mystery, Chinese Orange Mystery, The Siamese Twin Mystery, and the other "nationality" books were puzzles with ingenious but artificial plots but perfunctory characterization. Halfway House begins a transition to a more grounded narrative approach while keeping the puzzles.

At the center of the story is a shack used by the victim, a man living a double life, using two identities and married at the same time to a poor but loyal woman and to a supercilious society lady. Amateur sleuths and in-universe writer Ellery is called in to help investigate and puts his finger on the crucial question: Whom did the murderer set out to kill?

Clues abound, the play is fair, and it is possible for a careful reader to reach the solution ahead of Ellery. Later novels would be more adept, but this one is a good example of a classic whodunnit.

---------
*Ellery Queen the author was a collaboration between Manfred B. Lee, who wore the stories from detailed outlines by his cousin, Frederic Dannay. The plots strained credulity, and sometimes Manny would get frustrated trying to produce believable tales from wild, witty puzzles. Now and then the cousins would hire a stunt novelist to produce the narrative. Theodore Surgeon once tagged in as a substitute.writer.

 

[Spektator]

Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas, Glenn Kenny
As whales are to Moby-Dick, so filmmakers and mobsters are to Made Men: the book tells me more about them than I want to know.

Now, I think Goodfellas is a well-made film, and I don't regret watching it a couple of times, but then again, it's not a movie I'll watch over and over. I do like behind-the-scenes stories as a genre, and so I gave Kenny's book a read. It ping-pongs around, from real-life mobsters to the actors who portrayed them (or their counterparts; many of the movie wiseguys are given fake names) to the moviemakers to their wives, friends, and cab drivers. Kenny writes about the film's origin in a biography of Henry Hill, Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, then about Martin Scorsese's interest in making the movie, creating the first realistic gangster movie ever, and then . . ..

Well, there's a scene-by-scene description of the whole film, page by page, plot summary, set descriptions, actors' line deliveries. And then there are discussions of all the roles each actor ever played in every film they ever acted in. Added is a rundown of all the movies Scorsese directed, co-wrote, acted in, or caught on a Saturday matinee bill when he was a kid. Halfway through I felt smothered red in detail, and I was only halfway through.

Then come lots of overlapping interviews with actors (rather reticent bunch; De Niro and Pesci won't give interviews) the director, the director's then-wife (and producer), critics, real criminals, and assorted others. One big problem is that Kenny includes long passages where people are discussing other people by first names, and he loses me: "So there I was back in New York, and I get a call from Paul, who has a proposal to put to me because he'd met with Susan and Roberto, and they'd read the book by Jim, you know, and Sid thought it would make a good film if I could get Leonardo involved and maybe Vito, so we took a meeting at Elaine's. I really don't like Elaine's, I had bad experiences there...."

I liked learning that Henry Hill "wrote" five books, though his brother confides that "Henry only ever read three books in his life." One of his works, by the way, is a cookbook of Henry's favorite Italian recipes, the kind he ordered in restaurants and cooked for his fellow inmates in prison.

Made Men is interesting at times, confusing at times, irritating at times. Anyway, I read the book.