Writer Sanctum
Reader's Library => Book Talk [Public] => Topic started by: Bill Hiatt on October 03, 2023, 12:05:37 AM
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Just as the movies and TV section has threads about what people are watching now, how about a thread for what people are reading now? Elsewhere on the forum, people are complaining about not being able to find anything to read. Sharing our experiences might help with this process.
I have to get to work on my WIP right now, but I'll be back when I can to get the ball rolling if no one else has.
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Not reading anything at the moment, but last read was the Nathan Lowell Martha Collins trilogy, which is a sequel in his Solar Clipper universe.
Lowell is the master of life in space Space Opera, without the high stakes of most SO.
Anyone who hasn't read him and does read SO, should start with Quarter Share, in the original 6 books series.
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Just finished P.D. James' The Private Patient - a good and complex murder mystery featuring poet/detective Adam Dalgliesh but w/just a bit too much of the Brits' customary green-and-pleasant-land detailing. That's why I prefer the BBC's Bertie Carvel's Dalgliesh - a more dynamic story and more curious character.
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I'm 2/3 the way through Marko Kloos' Frontlines series. The first book really drew me in--the descriptions of basic training are pretty accurate, and if Marko didn't do Navy basic himself, he knows/interviewed someone who did.
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Bill, thanks for starting this thread.
I'm in the middle of Mind Over Antimatter by Rose Green (middle grade sci-fi) and loving it because of the very real family/school environment.
I just finished Pride's Children, Book 1 and Book 2, by Alicia Butcher Erhardt and really loved them. Not my usual genre either. Will have to wait for Book 3. Sigh. It's not a serial, but one story in 3 parts.
Before that, Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. Loved it. Actually I've loved everything he's written. I read a lot of Indian Drs :)
Getting ready to dive into One Summer in Savannah by Terah Shelton Harris.
Happy reading, all.
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I'm on a nonfiction binge right now.
Right now, I'm reading Dennis McCarthy's Thomas North: the Original Author of Shakespeare's Plays.
Yes, there are a lot of theories about someone other than Shakespeare being the author of the plays, and up until now, I haven't found any such theory persuasive. But Dennis McCarthy, using forensic linguistics (computer based language comparisons), has produced a large body of evidence that Thomas North is the primary author of almost the entire Shakespeare canon.
It's been known for a long time that Shakespeare's Roman plays borrowed heavily from North's translation of Plutarch's Lives, including lifting whole passages almost verbatim, but McCarthy provides hundreds of other parallels with North's various works. Much of the language is unique or almost unique to North and Shakespeare. Even more tellingly, Shakespeare's plays borrow from unpublished works by North, such as his travel journal.
As if the linguistic evidence is not enough, McCarthy also provides convincing biographical evidence linking North's life to the substance of the plays, providing evidence that North wrote plays (now lost) that Shakespeare adapted (including the Ur-Hamlet) and that Shakespeare's contemporaries were aware his plays weren't all that original.
McCarthy's theory is that North, fallen on hard times, sold his plays to Shakespeare about 1591 (shortly before Shakespeare's "own" plays began to be performed).
If you're less interested in evidence for such a theory and more interested in how McCarthy accumulated clues, try Michael Blanding's In Shakespeare's Shadow, which takes about how McCarthy accumulated his clues.
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I just finished reading Ann Christy's "The Never Ending End of the World." It was excellent!
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I've finished Snow So White and am working on Blood So Red by C Gockel.
The world building is magnificent, and the characters are very engaging. This is a series I'm definitely going to finish.
Although the underlying fairytale (Snow White) is alluded to, this is not a fairy tale adaptation in the traditional sense. But it is interesting to see how the fairytale inspired something completely different.
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I'm almost done with Jesus, I Trust in You: 30 day personal retreat by Sr. Faustina Maria Pia. Based on the Litany of Trust. Really, really wonderful esp. with the world so broken. And I've just started Deena Metzger's book on writing. It's got the most interesting exercises for digging deep. But I'm enjoying the narrative as well.
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I just finished The Wager, A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann. It's not my usual kind of thing, but was recommended by a cousin who did make it sound interesting, and it was. The Wager was one of a fleet of British ships that set out in 1740 with the goal of sailing around the Horn, up the west coast of the Americas and taking and looting a Spanish galleon (one of the ships that didn't wreck succeeded at that in the end). The Wager didn't make it, and some of the crew only made it back to England years later and rather miraculously.
Since I told cousin the last book he wanted me to read was too depressing and no thanks, I felt kind of obliged to try this one even though it's not my usual thing. I like reading about history, but early 1700s and seafaring isn't my usual choice. However, this did catch my interest in several ways. Next cousin recommends Killers of the Flower Moon, which is by the same author, but that's another no thanks. I already know that story well enough and don't need hundreds of pages of that miserable tale.
Before that was The Longmire Defense by Craig Johnson, which is more my normal kind of reading. I thought Johnson jumped the shark a couple books ago and demoted him to the don't buy, get from library list, but he's finally kind of back to what made it a good series to start with.
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When I have an author I like, I buy their books, however I don’t always get around to reading them immediately (I have lots of books in my queue). Anyway, I bought Marina Finlayson’s the Twiceborn Trilogy (The Proving, book 1, 2, 3) a few years ago, but I just got around to reading them, finishing book 3 a few days ago. The trilogy was excellent!
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Let me inject a dose of frivolity into this worthy thread. Books read in the past two weeks: Pru Warren's History's Muse, a contemporary romance that incidentally and amusingly bashes Mormons; Mary Lancaster's Petteril's Ladybird, a Regency murder mystery that's the third in a series featuring a reclaimed street urchin; Christina Dudley's Minta in Spite of Herself, part of another Regency series that takes place nowhere near London and features a tomboy out to rescue her best friend from a fortune hunter; Emma Melbourne's Miss Fleming Falls in Love, another Regency, one that Amazon pushed at me at least a dozen times but turned out to be worth reading for the dry wit and the absurd minor characters; Lynn Messina's A Murderous Tryst, the latest in the Regency series in which a spinster-now-duchess solves crimes and frets over her marriage to a delightful man; and Jessie Clever's The Duke Always Wins, another Regency (yes, sensing a theme here) about two people who intelligently grope their way toward love despite the pain of the past. I also read seven other Regencies during this same time period, but they were not sufficiently noteworthy to be listed here. I'm also in the middle of a collection of time travel stories, in which the very British characters call each other "Darling" at the drop of a hat. It's a word that is used much more sparingly in the U.S. As Mies Van Der Rohe said, "Less is more."
Did I get anything else done during this same length of time? Short answer: yes. Long answer: probably should stop reading and spend the same amount of time on marketing and/or writing more.
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That's more reading than I usually get to in two weeks. But reading is also an important part of the writing process.
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Just finished another reread of Clotaire Rapaille's The Culture Code trying to figure out how to apply his theories to selling my books!
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Just finished another reread of Clotaire Rapaille's The Culture Code trying to figure out how to apply his theories to selling my books!
Ah! If you develop any new insights, please let us know.
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I love this thread for many reasons, the most important being my curiosity over what other authors/writers are reading.
I am 3/4 the way through Freida McFadden's The Housemaid. I chose it because I am currently writing my first book, and one of the genres is suspense. :writethink: I am enjoying the book thus far and it has given me some insight to plotting.
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I'm reading a delightful collection of short stories by Mary Ladd Gavell, I CANNOT TELL A LIE, EXACTLY, published after her death. More about it here: https://www.austinchronicle.com/books/2001-08-31/82792/
Also finished VIRGIN'S PROMISE: Writing Stories of Feminine Creative, Spiritual and Sexual Awakening by Kim Hudson--it's the feminine archetypical journey. I like how she compares and contrasts the Hero with the Virgin.
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I'm nearing the end of Book 2 in Sarah J. Maas's Throne of Glass series. I bought the whole thing at once because there was a very affordable box set. Earlier, I'd been enthralled by another of her series that opened with A Court of Thorns and Roses.
What can I say? Her world-building is great. Her characters are great. Her pacing is great. If you like fantasy at all, you will at the very least like her writing.
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I’m just finishing reading book 4 of T. A. White’s Firebird Chronicles. The series has been outstanding, and I’ve just pre-ordered book 5, which is scheduled to be released later this month.