Amph What book are you reading right now?

The Empty Lot Next Door
by Arthur Mills

 

OotP accounts for, like, what Harry was doing every hour of his summer and first 2 weeks or so back at Hogwarts. It's one reason why it's so lengthy, but it really delves deep in the beginning, really letting you feel what it's like to be Harry. That's what I noticed most during my re-read a year ago.

 

Was to read a book about Napoleon but changed to Mutal Aid: A Factor in Evolution by Peter Kropotkin. Just started. This follows closely on the heels of my rediscovering Henry George and Bakunin.

 

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

 

Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow. One of my favorite biographies, I had to finally buy it after originally reading it out of the library long before the musical rocketed Hamilton to a weird but welcome celebrity. It's just as good as I remembered. Chernow's a lively writer with a great talent for bringing personalities to life, and there are plenty of personalities to work with in the larger-than-life Founding era. In an place and time boasting an amazing abundance of great minds and talents, Hamilton stands out as one of the greatest political thinkers and arguably the greatest administrator of the Founding, with a strong claim to being the greatest overall mind of the age -- but hamstrung by being a lousy politician. A great statesman unconcerned with retail politics, he didn't sell himself or his ideas that well to the public, and his combative intensity led to a proliferation of political feuds. This led him into the political wilderness after the Washington administration, but it can't obscure just how brilliant and pivotal he was as Washington's aide, an influential political writer, and the driving policy and administrative force behind Washington's presidency. Fantastic reading.

 

The Shining. Surprisingly, I have never seen the movie, so I actually don’t know how it will end. I do like the dreary atmosphere, the way you can already tell it’s going to be creepy , and it is easier to follow the story because there are less characters in it compared to It which I read before I saw the movie as well. This will be my fifth Stephen King book, and so far it is my favorite.

 

What are the other four? Or other three, since you also said It.

 

It’s not just that it lets you feel what it’s like to be Harry, it’s whats like to be Harry Potter now that Harry’s nightmare scenario, Voldemort coming back, has come true. And on top of that, he can’t even talk Dumbledore, because Dumbledore spends most of the book actively avoiding him.

 

I read The Tommyknockers, Christine, and Under the Dome. I just remembered that my first Stephen King book was The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon, which means I have read six in total.

 

Don't forget having a toad...I mean Umbridge has a teacher. She is so bad that Harry is tempted to prefer having to deal with Snape.

 

Yeah and that’s considering that in the past, Snape straight up threatened to poison him.

 

Dark of the Woods (1970) – Dean Koontz

This short novella clocks in at under 200 pages and it’s a pretty typical culture-clash/romance, only in a sci-fi setting. Think Dances With Wolves, only instead of Native Americans, it’s people with butterfly wings. A writer falls in love with one of the few surviving members of a race of people that’s been wiped out when humanity took over their planet. The middle section of the book is really interesting. The two are forced to flee, because cross-species relationships are illegal, and the middle third or so is dedicated to their flight through a mountainous wilderness in winter while being pursued by the military. I’ve never been a big fan of man vs nature stories, but Koontz really nails this and something about the sci-fi trappings of the story gives a neat spin on the survival story. The atmosphere is great and you can practically feel the bitter cold the characters are struggling through. This section is more adventure style than the other two sections which are kind of straight-forward romance, in a nearly Harlequin tone. Koontz doesn’t have much facility for romance, so the book is mostly corny. But that middle section is really superlative and riveting. On the whole, it ends up not adding up to much of anything, but it’s short and has a few pleasures, not that you can’t find the same kinds of pleasures elsewhere. 2 ½ stars.

tl;dr – about two-thirds cross-cultural romance, this early novella is pretty sappy, but a riveting chase/survival sequence in the middle is superlative. 2 ½ stars.

 

Fireborn: Embers of Atlantis
by Tracy Hickman

 

Ballistic (Gray Man #3) by Mark Greaney.

 

The Half Blood Prince by JK Rowling. I just purchased The Chamber of Secrets to read next as I misplaced my copy somewhere.

 

I hate it when that happens. I have a HC of SW: Canto Bight and can't find it anywhere. It's not in the SW HC pile. I might have to buy the PB.

 

I'm thinking about trying that one. I enjoyed The Martian, but it had its problems (problems that dissipated in the movie adaptation, because the problems I had with it were about perspective changes and not giving sufficient descriptions of characters, which go away in the medium of film).

How would you compare Artemis to The Martian? Better? Worse? Incomparable?

 

Recently finished Rebel Rising, Guardians of the Whills, and the Rogue One novelization and comic adaptation. I wrote about them here: http://taralbooks.blogspot.com/2018/07/star-wars-new-canon-rogue-one-on-death.html

Rebel Rising and the novelization are excellent. Guardians of the Whills was not (which sucks, because Chirrut and Baze were amazing characters).

 

I'm reading Nomad by Alan Partridge .

its brilliant .

 

I’d call them different. Jazz Bashara is very much an Andy Weir protagonist, in that she’s a smartass, and in places Artemis is a very funny book, but I tend to think of The Martian as being more about the danger and adventure of spaceflight, whereas Artemis is more about the realities of actually living in space.

 

I liked Guardian of the Whills, but it is for younger readers. I'd have enjoyed an adult novel about the characters.

 

What I didn't like is that there was no plot. It was essentially "A year in the life of Chirrut and Baze". They fight Imperials, they help orphans, etc. But nothing happens that triggers a STORY. There is no event that starts the rising action towards a climax and dénouement.

Even good kids books usually follow narrative structure.

 

Caroline: Little House, Revisited
by Sarah Miller

I'm only about 50 pages in, and even though a lot is fictionalized based on the information Miller could gather, it's still a very real representation of how a pregnant woman, mother of two, would behave/think when traveling across states in a covered wagon.

 

I thought Side Life was going to be about virtual reality. Instead it puts the lead into a horrible reality situation.

Now, Medusa Uploaded by Emily Devenport:

My name is Oichi Angelis, and I am a worm.

They see me every day. They consider me harmless. And that's the trick, isn't it?

A generation starship can hide many secrets. When an Executive clan suspects Oichi of insurgency and discreetly shoves her out an airlock, one of those secrets finds and rescues her.

Officially dead, Oichi begins to rebalance power one assassination at a time and uncovers the shocking truth behind the generation starship and the Executive clans.

 

Marblehead by Richard A. Lupoff. It's an alternative history of the year 1927 in H.P. Lovecraft's life. It was originally released as Lovecraft's Book in 1980 in abridged format due to the length of the original manuscript. Lupoff assumed the original manuscript (160k words) was long lost but Charles N. Brown, who used to run Locus magazine, had a carbon copy that had been given to his father. This is the result of that carbon copy. (Note - I found my copy on Amazon UK.) I only started it last night but so far it's pretty good. I'll go on a limb and recommend it if you're a Lovecraft fan. (The Marblehead of the title refers to a Massachusetts town, not to HPL).