Amph What book are you reading right now?

Ironically, fly fishing.

 

Finally finished War and Peace. I'll be going low tech for a while and catching up on my Christmas, birthday and vacation books.

 

Finished The Great Hunt. Now onto the third Wheel of Time book The Dragon Reborn.

 

Book of Ages: The Life & Opinions of Jane Franklin (2013) – Jill Lepore



This book got tremendous raves when it came out in 2013; in fact, it topped the Daily Beast’s aggregate list of critic’s end of the year non-fiction book lists, which is why I read it. Well, I have no idea what everyone’s on about. It’s an interesting idea, I suppose. Lepore attempts to reconstruct the life of Benjamin Franklin’s sister, with whom he carried out a lifelong correspondence. She’s trying to get at several things: the way in which women have been written out of history to a large degree; the way in which even incredibly intelligent women were trapped in domesticity while intelligent men made their way into the larger world; the power of reading & writing to bring happiness, intelligence and self-awareness to lives trapped in unfortunate circumstances. But Lepore’s style just really didn’t gel with me. She decides to make a lot of her points more explicit than they should be, in my opinion, and her lens is much, much too wide. She expands the Franklin history to generations before Benjamin & Jane came on the scene and follows the ever expanding family out into distant cousins and nieces and nephews. The book is occasionally incredibly confusing and I think the book needed to be shorter and more tightly focused. Jane is an interesting character, intelligent, witty & well-read in a time when women were expected to be none of those things. But the book meanders and occasionally just gets too flowery. Also, I understand the point Lepore is trying to make by leaving all the spelling errors in the letters and diary entries and such that she reprints, but it does make the book hard to read at times. I really struggled with this book; I loved the premise and wanted to love the book, but it was actually the book I’ve struggled the most with this year just in terms of making myself plow through it. Too bad. Strongly recommended against. 1 ½ stars.

tl;dr – biography of Ben Franklin’s forgotten sister has a great premise, but meanders aimlessly at times and hammers points home at others. 1 ½ stars.

More Book Reviews!

 

Currently reading The Poisoned Crown, book three of Maurice Druon's Accursed Kings/

 

I'm now on Book 2 of the Bounty Hunter Wars.

 

The Maze Runner by James Dashner

 

I have been curious about this novel. How is it?? Oh and I might as well contribute to this thread; I am reading Whiteout by Ken Follett

 

I have gone one full week without reading a book which is something I have not done in about 8 years.

 

^ crazy!

At this point I'm 22 pages in (3 chapters) It seems decent though very odd. I expected the weird though. I'm only reading it because the movie is upcoming on my Netflix queue.

 

This. Not reading=wrong.

 

It's only one week out of 400.

 

Excuses, excuses, excuses.

 

I read this over the past couple days...

...while I enjoyed it, I felt like someone compacted every possible music, TV, movie, game, and book reference from the 80's into 12-gauge shotgun shells and blasted you in the face every three or four lines. It was a bit excessive. I read a review prior to purchasing the book that said it "alludes" to many subcultures and geek references of the 80's. Allusion is subtle... this, though?

Pitfall... BLAMMO! ... *click click*
Falco... BLAMMO! ... *click click*
Highlander... BLAMMO! ... *click click*
Vonnegut... BLAMMO! ... *click click*
Battlezone... BLAMMO! ... *click click*

Also, the idea would have been much more novel if Snow Crash had not already covered a similar "realm" of fiction 20 years ago. Still, it was an enjoyable story and is super accessible.

 

Ya I heard the book was odd and the movie was just ok so I was curious. I like batsh!t crazy books

 

I liked the movie version of The Maze Runner. I thought it was better than any of the Hunger Games movies so far.

 

The Maze Runner series is great. The characters are really likeable and I like how everything is slowly revealed over the course of the series.

 

"Lords of the Sith" by Paul S. Kemp.

The bar for the newly re-launched EU is very, very, very low at this point. We'll see.

 

I didn't think that was too bad. I liked the Syndulla character.

 

Please tell me there are only the 3 books (plus prequel) as noted on his website.

 

SeveNeves by Neal Stephenson. 865 pages.

 

At that length I hope it's good..

 

It damned well better be. I loved Snow Crash by NS. I tried Cryptonomicon but even though it is incredibly well written, it was terribly boring. I have never experienced that before.

 

I slogged through Cryptonomicaon as well. If I read this one it won't be til it's out in paper.

 

The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek

A bumbling idiot marches into war.


Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata