Amph What book are you reading right now?

The Boy Who Followed His Father to Auschwitz: A True Story of Family and Survival, by Jeremy Dronfield

I saw a soft-covered copy of this book at the local Target bookshelf not long ago, and when it was time for me to decide on a new book to read I borrowed the eBook through my library. As the title suggests, it is the true story of a young man who insisted on joining his father to be sent to the infamous Nazi death camp, Auschwitz. This is at the very beginning of WWII, so it is needless to say that they endure the worst of humanity; they're only method of survival is being there for each other.

 

Folly at the Fair
by Kari Bovee

 

How interesting to learn of a series starring Miss Annie Oakley!

 

Yeah! I got into her thru the “Rough Riders” series by AfterShock Comics, and am enjoying this fictionalized mystery series as well. Typical, the first and third are better than the second

 

Just finished When Life Gives You Lululemons by Lauren Weisberger. It's a light, breezy, read-it-by-the-pool kind of book and is also one of the sequels to the The Devil Wears Prada (the other sequel being Revenge Wears Prada). This book stars Emily (played by Emily Blunt in the movie), her friend, Miriam, and Karolina, a friend of Miriam's and former associate of Emily's. Overall, the book was meh, but easy to get through due to my experience with the other novels. On every page, there was a mention of some fancypants name brand item, which fits in with the Greenwich, Connecticut setting, but any critique of the town's wealth, pomp & circumstance is challenged by the fact that all of the main players are also of means. Granted, the critiques don't run that deep and mostly serve the purpose of criticizing the looks and sexual practices of other people.

Emily, the most financially insecure, I suppose, is written to be the caustic, hidden heart-of-gold individual who 'jokingly' gives her friend (Miriam) the business by telling her that she looks like crap, saying that she hates kids, undermining the parental authority of Miriam, and engages in not-so-harmless flirting even though she is married. She has good one-liners, but her whole character as the 'blunt' one (insert wink & nudge) in this book is too been-there done-that for my tastes.

Spoiler

Extra annoying was the fact that she ended up getting pregnant after saying the entire book that she did not want to have kids. I get that that is a real-life thing that happens, but it was such a cliche I nearly fell off my bed as I was reading it. I felt silly for not realizing that that was where the story would go, but, for a 2018 novel, it seemed a tad played out to have the character who complained the most about not wanting kids get pregnant and be in love with the idea. Though maybe since there are more instances in modern-day fic of female characters who don't want children remaining childless, a female character who doesn't want them but gets them is now a ground-breaking occurrence?

 

Domes of Fire by David Eddings.

 

It sounds entertaining but you've just had enough. I think we enjoy our comfort zone in reading material such as series fare, and need to stretch after awhile.

And the info behind the cut would grate on me, as well.

 

Yeah, it was one of those books I felt I had to read in order to finish up the series. I guess I'm a bit of a completionist. I'm still looking to finish the other three books in the Shadow Campaign series. The first one was really good.

I usually check out multiple books from the library. Some end up being comfort food/easy reading books; others end up being more of an involved affair.

 

Complaints of the Saints by Sister Mary Lea Hill, FSP

 

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This is one I haven’t read since my early teens, probably, but I picked up The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and decided to revisit the collection. I’m not sure if it’s quite as uproarious as I recalled it being as a kid, but it’s pretty darn funny and definitely holds up. Adams’s brand of wonderfully British humor is darkly witty and understated. It is tricky to get the balance of absurdist humor just right — zany, but in a way that works and doesn’t just feel like throwing a bunch of weirdness at the wall — and Adams nails it. It’s a sort of whimsical misanthropy that makes an odd but perfect mix with the rocket-paced sci-fi adventure that takes a while to find its groove but builds into an intriguing storyline on its own merits, not just an excuse for comedy. Very glad to be revisiting this.

 

Every couple of years I think I ought to reread Hitchhiker, but I never get around to it.

 

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Adams is in fine form here. Where the first book took a bit to get rolling, Adams is off and running into his universe of absurdity here, and really leaning into the lighthearted bleakness of his comedy, playing around with the end of the universe, dead worlds, the inevitability of Earth’s destruction, the ancestors of humans being the biggest bunch of useless idiots you’ve ever met. Nothing that happens in this book is delightful, but the book sure is.

 

I’m still on A Clash of Kings. Every night I tell myself I’ll read after basketball, and every night I find myself falling asleep by halftime of the late game.

I’ll say this. The villains are fun to hate. I find myself thinking of all the ways I’d like to kill them. I wish Sansa had pushed Joffrey off that tower and had done with him. It would have been very satisfying to imagine his teenage body flailing through the air before shattering upon the ground (poetic justice, as well). The author has succeeded in some way when he has me savoring the thought of murdering a child. Gregor? I would cut off his manhood and feed it to the goats. That story about the brewer’s daughter. I would have barricaded the exits and burned down the brewery with them all inside. I would have burned myself along with them if necessary.

No spoilers, please.

 

Just a little over 400 pgs left of Rhythm of War. Not near the slog that bk 3 was but this book certainly isn’t very good imo. It’s bad that I’m enjoying part 3 the most solely because

Spoiler

Shallan the headcase is absent so I don’t have to put up with her horrible character along with a depressed Kaladin. I mean it’s bad I’m celebrating only having to put up with Debbie Downer Kal for a few hundred pages.

The future of me buying this series in hardcover still is riding on these last 400+pgs. They are getting expensive and they are filled with ass segments. I love Brandon’s books but this series just leaves ashes in my mouth.

 

I'm only "liking" because it's a cogent comment and shows good hard thought about investing more time and money into the series. I'd likely be the one to buy up every drop of a series that I really liked the beginning of, though.

 

Life, the Universe and Everything. With the previous storyline having come to an amusing anticlimax, we’re off now on a new adventure, as Arthur and friends happen to be called upon to save the universe from destruction. Twice in one day. Adams gets to whip up a whole bunch of new misanthropic comedy while calling back quite heavily to past jokes and casting several of them in a new light and dragging them into plot relevance. It doesn’t feel quite as fresh as a result, but it’s still plenty of fun, and Adams’s writing style just doesn’t get old.

 

About to finish Oathbringer...book 3 of the Stormlight archive.

Then, on to The Last Druid, final book of the Shannara series.

 

Looks like there is a new Dragonlance trilogy coming

I did not like the original Dragonlance books. I enjoyed a few that came after though. I will give a new book a chance though.

 

The War Of Art
by Steven Pressfield

 

I finished Dave Barry Hits Below The Beltway (2001). The last four chapters homes in on the politics of his city, Miami, in detail as opposed to the broader thrust of the earlier part of the book, which includes a Washington DC guide: "Even though President Washington did not live to see his monument completed, his son Roger Washington claimed at the dedication that 'it looks just like him.'" (paraphrased) Presciently, Dave mentions Joe Biden on page 83.

 

I'm thinking of going through that collection of Ambrose Bierce works that I have on Kindle.

I'm a sucker for horror and weird fiction.

 

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. With the first main arc finished, the previous book became a good deal more focused on Arthur Dent. Adams doubles down on that here, with the book almost entirely focused on Arthur and only a bit of Ford Prefect and a Marvin cameo at the end. It also largely eschews galaxy-hopping in favor of a much more introspective story in which Arthur returns to Earth, which has mysteriously reappeared, and falls in love with the only other person who remembers its destruction. Arthur, the point-of-view everyman whose previous role largely consisted of saying “What?” in response to a chain of ever-more-outrageous happenings, makes a surprisingly effective protagonist now that he’s actually called upon to carry the story — a charmingly inept loser whose status as the eternal straight man to nonstop ridiculousness is now leavened by being a bit weird himself, now that he’s a galactic traveler back on Earth. Perhaps facilitated by being Earth-set, Adams’s cultural commentary is now about as open as ever, culminating in a truly stupendous final chapter in which Arthur at last sees God’s final message to his creation, which has of course become a hideous tourist trap — and culminating the series’ transformation of early throwaway gags into surprisingly intricate in-joke references in a plot that never quite manages to actually go anywhere with its storylines but sure gets a lot of mileage out of it.

 

Young Zaphod Plays It Safe. This short story, included in the collection, follows Zaphod as he explores a shipwreck where something dangerous has gotten loose. It is a short little piece, and there’s not much to it. But it’s nice to see Zaphod, who for my money is the funniest thing in the books, but was in the third fairly little and wasn’t in the fourth at all.