Amph What book are you reading right now?

Just finished; Black Order (Sigma Force #3) by James Rollins. W/an author like Rollins, in a series like this, you know what you're getting before you crack the book open. It's fast food literature. Like fast food, the quality can vary a bit from book to book. Sometimes it's hot off the grill. Others it's been gestating under a heat lamp for a while. Three books in I'd say that Rollins hasn't mixed up his ingredients much, but he's improved his presentation. If it's not exactly fresh, at least it's hot. There's still an excess of info dumping, but the pace quickens and the story builds.

Reading Rollins' Sigma Force books aren't going to win you any nods of approval from discerning book critics, but if you want quasi-history, pseudo-science and far flung locales, they do the job. - 7/10

About to begin; Into the Storm (Destroyermen #1) by Taylor Anderson.

 

The Dictator Pope: The Inside Story of the Francis Papacy

 

"Lighten up, Francis."

 

One of the radio shows I listen to always uses that audio clip.

 

Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. Very interesting although I don't agree with a fair amount of it.

 

The Mothers (2016) – Brit Bennett

There’s not particularly a lot new about the story Bennett tells in her debut novel, but the sensitivity and beauty of her prose elevates things quite a bit, while also occasionally providing some problematic elements. Set in a world of affluent African-Americans and the church they frequent, the story is pretty simple. When the pastor’s son impregnates a girl from the church, there’s really only one option if scandal is to be avoided: termination of the pregnancy. But the ripples from this event will spread across the years. Bennett sketches her characters brilliantly. Nadia, the girl who has the abortion, is a complicated, often frustrating character. Luke, the pastor’s son, is a young man dealing with his own demons, robbed of purpose when an injury sidelines his sports career, casting about for any kind of redemption he can find. Aubrey, the third major character, is a friend to Nadia and eventual girlfriend of Luke, and Bennett has here created something even more incredible: a clear-eyed, but empathetic portrayal of a good Christian girl that feels absolutely real and true. Bennett tries something interesting with the prose; she often writes in the first person PLURAL, as “the mothers,” a group of old women from the church who bring their own feelings to the narrative as it unfolds. It’s an interesting idea and it’s incredibly rare to see someone attempt that voice, so it’s initially kind of exciting, but the reason no one tries to write in that voice is because it’s super hard and the sections narrated by the mothers become less and less compelling until they finally close the book on a very disappointing section. But the book is never less than thought-provoking and most often beautiful and emotionally moving. Even the flaws of the book are interesting and inspire the reader to thinking deeper about the book and about the characters. It isn’t a perfect book, but in some strange ways, the imperfections just complicate things in a good way and add to the book’s greatness. It’s a sometimes challenging read, but it’s infinitely rewarding and a powerful calling card from Bennett. 4 stars.

tl;dr – debut novel has some stylistic hiccups, but it’s mostly beautifully, empathetically written with characters that feel absolutely real and a serious emotional depth. 4 stars.

 

The Clues to Kusachuma
by Adam B. Ford

 

Death Dealer, by Robert Merle (original title: La Mort est mon Métier), a novel written in an autobiographical style about Rudolf Höss, the first and infamous camp commander at Auschwitz; the latter part of the novel is entirely informed by Höss' own testimony given within the frame of the first Nuremberg trial and then his own, while his early life is more fictonalized and written around what little was known of Höss' youth, as well as his WW1 military record.

 

Finished off the Wounded Kingdom trilogy of Age, Blood, and King of Assassins. It is actually a tragedy, a well told one.

Now, New Endless Quest books! There are currently 4 new books, I only have two for now, To Catch A Thief(Where you play the thief) and Big Trouble(Where you play a wizard).

 

Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser

It's slow, slow going. It's boring. Interestingly boring. Fraser goes off on random tangents about historical figures unrelated to Laura Ingalls Wilder.

 

Punisher: Welcome Back, Frank by Garth Ennis

After reading the darker Punisher MAX series decided to give this a go and ended up really enjoying it. Its black humor and the overall back to the basics theme really worked for me and this is now among my favorite Punisher comics.

 

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone.…
A convict with a thirst for revenge.
A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager.
A runaway with a privileged past.
A spy known as the Wraith.
A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums.
A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes.
Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction–if they don’t kill each other first.

 

@VadersLaMent Did you read the original Grisha books from Bardugo?

 

The Peoples of Middle-earth. Well, after about six months, my sojourn through The History of Middle-earth has come to an end. And what a great journey it's been. Things wrap up with a look at Tolkien's work on the appendices for The Lord of the Rings, which did a lot to solidify elements of the legendarium that he had been playing around with up to that point, plus several miscellaneous bits of late writing on various historical and linguistic topics that interested him. Those do a bit to reinforce my impression that in his last decade, Tolkien got a bit too caught up in rationalizing and systematizing what he'd already written and tinkering with the language, rather than forging the story into something approaching a whole. Perhaps most fascinating are two short beginnings of new stories that Tolkien abandoned, both from the fifties. There's the well-known The New Shadow, Tolkien's stab at a Lord of the Rings "sequel" that's really just him toying around for a few pages with the idea of the era of peace and plenty bringing on corruption in the form of men's forgetfulness and complacency as some kind of shadowy cult grows among youth ignorant enough to romanticize evil. It sets up an interesting conspiracy mystery in the midst of a lot of philosophical talk about the nature of evil, but Tolkien was probably right that it would be just a "thriller" -- there's nothing here of comparable narrative weight to the legends of the First and Third Ages. While who knows what could have developed out of it -- after all, The Lord of the Rings started just as Bilbo going away again because he was bored -- it's probably not worth moving "The End" further down the line just for this rather small-scale story, whose themes of corruption among the great could just as easily be fit into the Second Age. Less well-known, but intriguing, is Tal-Elmar, the germ of a story from the perspective of a youth among the barbarian tribes of the western shores witnessing the coming of the Numenoreans and realizing his kinship to them. It's interesting because it's playing around with some neat ideas and a new perspective in a fresh time frame, and it's just such a striking departure, but it's also not quite clear where this would actually go, even as a short story, and it doesn't really show Tolkien at his best, engaging in broad stereotyping of the barbarians versus the noble Numenoreans and their Edain-relatives. Still fascinating, though, as Tolkien always is.

 

Still reading Stonewielder and also started Outlander 4 a few days ago as S4 is soon to start airing. I need to be ahead of show each week.

 

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

 

The Hidden City, by David and Leigh Eddings, final volume of the Tamuli trilogy and of Sparhawk's hexalogy.

 

No I did not.

 

Halfway through Thrawn: Alliances Loving to bits the juxtaposition of Thrawn in two timeframes as well as Anakin/Vader. Also get a great look at Padme.

 

Just finished Neil Degrass Tyson's, "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry". He really is an amazing person. Other scientists with his knowledge might talk in lectures and make you feel stupid. He's so down-to-earth; and this book reads like how I'd imagine him at a typical lecture. In my review of it, I said something like, "it's essentially a closet textbook but reads like a coffee table book".

 

Time for Bed by David Baddiel. Funny book.

 

I don't read much modern fantasy literature, but someone recommended Half-Witch, by John Schoffstall. I guess it's a young adult novel, but it's delightful.

"I am aware of the horrors of the Asylum," God said soothingly. "Two of its recent Chancellors and any number of its inmates are now in Hell, and not enjoying it one bit, I might add. My advice to you is to brace up and make the best of the matter. Suffering is part of My Divine Plan. 'The Problem of Pain,' it's often called. It's a question that the greatest theologians have never satisfactorily addressed: why a loving, omnipotent Deity permits the innocent to suffer. Your time in the Asylum will allow weeks, months, even years of reflection on this important question, with the bonus of personal experience. Elizabeth, this is an unparalleled opportunity for spiritual growth. If worse comes to worst, and the Asylum ruffians try to make you a thief or a whore, think of it as a call to martyrdom."

 

IMO it's better than the duology.

 

The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays by Albert Camus

 

Circle Mirror Transformation (2009) – Annie Baker

This is a really wonderful play that’s structured around an acting class and the five diverse characters who find themselves there. The entire play takes place during acting exercises and the dynamic of that gives the play a weird energy. I like the fact that it really pulls back the curtain, no pun intended, to let audience members see the strange theater games and improv exercises and such that are typically pretty inside baseball for actors and performers. The five characters are all really well written and Baker finds really fascinating ways for their personal lives to spill over into the acting class. There’s a great scene where two of the characters are performing an improvised scene that is supposed to represent the parents of one of the other characters; but as they’re performing and improvising as those characters, suddenly the relationship between those two characters starts to inform their performances and some uncomfortable truths are revealed. Uncomfortable is a good word to describe the play really. There’s a lot of awkward, kind of cringy comedy. Baker has scripted in pauses and given approximate durations for those pauses, so that, for instance, a couple of characters who are feeling romantic attraction for each other just kind of stand in an awkward silence for ten or fifteen seconds, which doesn’t sound like much, but on stage is an eternity. Baker has captured the ebb and flow of awkward conversations to perfection. But as funny as the play is and as much as she pokes fun at the flaws of the characters, Baker finds a way to bring them to full human life and, even as you’re laughing at something or cringing at something, you’re also connecting with them and feeling with them and for them. The ending really kicks things up a notch and it achieves the kind of cosmic significance that only the best theater can. It’s a great, great play, one I’d really love to perform in one day. 4 stars.

tl;dr – lo-fi play is structured around five characters in an acting class; cringy, hilarious, awkward and ultimately surprisingly moving. 4 stars.