Amph What book are you reading right now?

Finally finished Peter May's Runaway. For anyone unfamiliar with his work. One of his specialities is how he writes crime novels featuring Scottish characters and how he tells a story in the present day, interspersed with chapters from the past and how they link with the present day story. This particular book tells the story of 5 friends who runaway from home in Scotland to travel to London in 1965, it tells of their adventures on the way from rescuing a family member from a life of drugs to arriving in London and being taken in by a mysterious doctor to playing in a band and the tragedy that tore them apart. Meanwhile in the present day a murder sees the friends retracing the journey to London, discovering secrets kept in the intervening years and rediscovering their friendship. In many ways the journey back to London is like their journey 50 years previous, having to employ any means necessary to get there. I enjoyed this, he weaves the stories really well with the past and the present day and the relationship between the friends is convincing. He also manages to invoke the feeling of the time period he writies in too.

 

Legacy Volume II: Prisoner of the Floating World

 

I liked The Last Jedi novel. I didn't care for the idea that the tracking through hyperspace was a brute force calculation. Rey was quite a bit more adamant about Ren returning to the light than in the film.

Moving on to a book written by a non-active JCer, Misty Hayes: The Outcasts. This is no in stores but you can order it.

 

Legends of Luke Skywalker by Ken Liu

 

I just finished "Making Movies" by Sydney Lumet, I really enjoyed it. Some of the stuff is a bit dated (nobody is forced to deal with film now on a constant basis and some of this struggles have to do with how much film sucks lol), but his overall insight into filmmaking is fantastic.

Currently I'm reading a book titled "Daily Rituals" and I HIGHLY recommend it! It's honestly such a great book if you're someone who writes or does creative work of any kind. My GF gave it to me as a surprise gift and I wasn't sure what to expect, but it has about 1/2 page to 1 1/2 pages from famous composers, authors, poets, painters, etc. about what a typical day often looked like for them, based on research compiled from their biographies, friends of the time, letters, diaries, etc. The primary reason I enjoy it so much is because sometimes writing is such a solitary craft, you never know what anyone else does and whether you're doing well enough in your work ethic. In the business world (where my dad is, and where I feel most advice comes from), people love to say things like success is based on 12 hours a day of hard work 6 days a week maybe 7, grind, grind, grind.

I have long believed that at least for me it's simply impossible to motivate myself to write for more than 4 hours a day at best. Even that's a serious struggle most of the time, mentally speaking, and I mean 4 actual hours of focused writing not screwing around distracting yourself. What the book has illuminated though is that almost every single famous, successful, award-winning writer doesn't write more than a few hours a day. The most was about 6, broken up into two 3-hour sessions, and the least was a lady who wrote 30 minutes a day. Many "prolific" writers only wrote 2 hours per day, and the general window is about 2-4 hours. That was a huge relief for me to learn because I sometimes wondered if I was just slacking, despite almost finishing my 3rd screenplay of the year already, but I know I've only written about 4 hours a day. That was my goal going into the year. It was refreshing being able to say, ok, this is actually what everyone else has done throughout time too, nobody is writing 8 hours a day no matter who they are, so I don't feel so hard on myself now for a steady, consistent production. I have had times where I wrote almost all day for a week, but I can't keep that up month after month, it just burns you out. It seems the key for most of these writers was to find a few hours and be consistent about doing it every day.

 

I'm reading: "Last Shot: A Han and Lando Novel" -- it's superbly in-character and full of fast paced action but there's also character growth in there too. I hope this author Daniel Jose Older, writes for SW from now on. The only author I like MORE is Tim Zahn, so that is saying something.

 

Woah. That is high praise indeed.
I found Older's story in the 40th anniversary anthology to be one of the worst. So I was planning on staying far away from this.
I still may never read it, but you've peeled back a layer that's almost piqued my interest. I like to be proven wrong (in a positive way) with SW

 

Lt Leary Commanding by David Drake. Sequel to With The Lightnings, Drake's blatant scifi ripoff of Patrick O'Brian's Master & Commander series. It's moderately entertaining.

 

Bought a new book today in advance of an author signing.

Spoiler

(I put more pics in the Ahsoka thread of the TV forums)

 

I've recently read The Girl on the Train, The Other Boleyn Girl, and Shadows of the Empire. I'm now starting the Harry Potter books again.

 

Gumiguru
by Togara Muzanenhamo

 

Coolidge, by Amity Shlaes. Calvin Coolidge is one of our most underappreciated presidents. An unassuming man of principle, he entered office in the wake of World War I and relentlessly cut back government spending, balancing the budget despite massive pressure from Congress to spend indiscriminately, took his duties seriously, and acted with modesty and restraint. From an unpromising rural Vermont background, he ascended quickly through politics, his restrained demeanor and conservative values proving wildly popular with the American public at the time. In fact, Coolidge's reserve made him massively popular, but limited his ability to work with Congress to accomplish his goals, as it always resented his cool manner and demand for economy over the popularity that comes with disbursing money indiscriminately. Shlaes is ready to defend this often dismissed president by putting him in context and reappraising his performance, which I certainly appreciated. She's very much into Coolidge's thoughts on economic policy, sometimes focusing on them too intently. I would have liked to have seen her dig more deeply into other aspects of his presidency; even at over four hundred fifty pages, it still often feels like a fairly cursory treatment of his administration on any issue other than the budget and the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Shlaes just isn't in the first rank of biographers who bring vivid depth to their treatment of history. But it's a good book, aided by the fact that it's on such an interesting and underappreciated figure, and I tore through it.

 

I love "Silent Cal" quotes. My favorite is when he was at a big fancy dinner, seated next to a chatty lady who babbled at him all night with no response from him. Finally she said, "A friend bet me I couldn't get you to say three words to me." He answered, "You lose."

 

Hm, with today's purchase the reading list is 5 books deep but Assassin's Apprentice is next which is the first of a long series which could turn this into one looooooong reading list.

 

That's not long. I have a round hundred books sitting waiting to be read.

I have this problem with buying books.

 

My Name is Venus Black by Heather Lloyd

 

I have basically two bookshelves that are filled with Star Wars novel.

To paraphrase General Grievous, the upcoming Thrawn: Alliances novel will make a fine addition to my collection.

 

Took over a month to read Red Sparrow. What an exercise in tedium.

 

I know that problem well.

 

wouldn't it have been quicker to watch the film ?

 

Started Crazy Rich Asians. Probably take another month

 

Yeah, I had to develop an organizational system where I put new books on the bottom of the stacks to make sure I’m getting through stuff without letting it sit too long.

 

My Mortal Enemy (1926) – Willa Cather

In this novella, Cather examines the character of Myra Henshawe, a New York socialite over a period of a couple of decades and the arc of Myra’s life is not a happy one for anyone involved. In some sense, you might call this book a study of bitterness, its development, growth & ultimate flowering. Cather’s books are often tragic and even more often than that sorrowful, but My Mortal Enemy is ultimately really troubling to me. I can certainly say that it’s the least enjoyable of the fifteen books by Cather that I’ve read, even less enjoyable than her early poetry. Her early poetry was dull and uninspired, but it had none of the curdled unpleasantness of this book. I think it’s purposeful, most likely, on Cather’s part to make this story as dark and grim as it is. She seems determined to push her lens deeper into the darkness of frustrated humanity, but it simply doesn’t work. One of Cather’s great strengths as a writer is her ability to create empathy for the sadness that others feel; she brings her characters, when working at her best, to life as real, complicated human beings and this grace elevates even characters that are openly unsympathetic. But the characters here, particularly Myra and her longsuffering husband Oswald, are cartoonishly drawn and they’re treated with no nuance or grace. Cather’s books were often sad, but this one feels mean-spirited, as if even Cather ultimately, can’t stand Myra’s unstoppable selfishness and bitterness. Cather’s characters are always struggling with a riot of emotions and they’re often small-minded and sometimes petty, but I can’t recall a single character in any of her other books that comes across as genuinely hateful, but Myra does. Myra is a mean, unpleasant, needlessly cruel character and she’s given no leavening or humanity, which ultimately makes this book a real slog to read. It’s strange that this book comes between Cather’s two best (in my opinion), The Professor’s House & Death Comes for the Archbishop. Those books just glow with the warmth of human love, the love that sustains the characters even through the worst of times, and the genuine love and care Cather seems to take with the characters. I’m honestly not sure what to make of this book. Well, regardless of what might have caused this change, it remains a blip on the radar, a surprisingly unpleasant and unsatisfying one-off that shows us that Cather’s ability wanes when she tries to be truly hateful and that’s hardly a bad thing. 1 star.

tl;dr – character study is uncharacteristically mean-spirited, bitter and unpleasant to read; with none of Cather’s usual humanity & empathy, this is a weird, unfortunate one-off in her bibliography. 1 star.

 

Just polished off “A Higher Loyalty” in about three days. There is nothing quite groundbreaking in it if you followed the news closely but it was a interesting read to nonetheless. I do think Comey goes out of his way to make himself smell like roses over certain events but overall I think his attempt is to explain why he made certain decisions like coming forward with the re-opening of Secretary Clinton’s email case and to show a remarkable between things they were in the Obama WH and even the GWB WH compare to the Trump WH. It’s only 275 pages so it’s a pretty quick read for even those who are not political junkies.