What are we reading lately?

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LostHighway said:
Maybe, his gift for the language is undeniable but his insanely high output (I can't remember the total number including his work for the stage but at his peak he was cranking out more than two books a year) doesn't suggest to me a laborious series of drafts.
The early Leave it to Psmith has always been a personal favorite. Very, very few writers can make me laugh out loud but Wodehouse is in that small company.
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Ah yes, Leave it to Psmith is a favourite of mine too. :) You make a fair point about his output - it doesn't suggest the meticulous crafting of every novel. I'd love to find out more about his working methods!

Are you reading anything enjoyable at the moment?
 
Lazily making my way through the whole Inspector Rebus series from Ian Rankin, while loosely picking out some of the latest Stephen King because they look better than his general output for the last 20 years or so, but rarely finding them any good in reality. Only one I've retained was Revival. Closer to the roots of his better works, but disappointing still. Don't know why I'm still trying. But it passes downtimes well.

I know these are not high-flying reads. Last nice book I've read was The Sisters Brothers, and while funny, good paced and well written, it wasn't flying that high neither.
 
Took me longer than it should have, but finally finished "A Soldier of the Great War." It was really quite good
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Nemo said:
Just read Hawking's Brief Answers To The Big Questions.

That guy had a wicked sense of humour.

Rest in peace.
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I am in a small book group and we picked our selections for the year a couple of months ago, this one is on it, I think slated for next spring (we read one a month), glad to hear you enjoyed it and I'm looking fwd to it.
 
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, I found it to be a fun quick read, it wasn't without flaws, but easy to suspend belief for the sake of the story. I'd label it lower-case 'f' fantasy.

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goodreads description:

"Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known."
 
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Marc Reisner published this book 1986. It's a great read, not dry at all, no pun intended.

From native Americans, early beaver trappers,
explorer's. Railroads it's a big story. How desert lands unfit for humans was transformed with thousands of dams both large & small.

How this & large under ground water have been tapped for agriculture & creation of whole cities. All on borrowed time. He died in 2000, his predictions clearly coming true in the new
millinium.
 
I just started reading David Wengrow's and the late David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity and, so far, I'm really liking it. There are some shots at Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of Our Nature) early in the book which helped to endear it to me. I've read two prior David Graeber books Debt: The First 5000 Years (great!) and The Utopia of Rules (worth a read but slightly disappointing) which led me to this, his last book. Graeber died suddenly at 59 in September 2020 from necrotic pancreatitis. I lost a good friend in December, also after a bout with necrotic pancreatitis which morphed into pancreatic cancer. Stay well people!
 
LostHighway said:
I just started reading David Wengrow's and the late David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity and, so far, I'm really liking it.
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My wife gave me a copy of this for Christmas, just cracked it open the other night, looking fwd to it.
 
I just finished a couple
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This is a historical fiction of the 'current wars' fought out in the labs and in the courts between Edison, Westinghouse, and Tesla. I loved it. I like historical fiction in general, but I have one big misgiving about it and that is it may mess me up on which part is true to history and which part is fiction. In this book it was nice that the author put in an afterword to disentangle all that for the readers.

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This Backman was ok, I don't highly recommend it. I liked his "Anxious People" better and would recommend it. I've only read the two of his. Although my wife has read more and this one it her favorite, so there you go...
 
captaincaed said:
Finishing this gem up. I've read the first two to the boys for nightly story time, always read them in advance. Wonderful ya lit, good for full adults too.

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I can't wait to read the Earthsea books with my son, he just turned eight, maybe it's time. Le Guin was one of my favorites growing up. And The Left Hand of Darkness is one of my favorite books, although that one's not for kids.
 
Beerzebub said:
I can't wait to read the Earthsea books with my son, he just turned eight, maybe it's time. Le Guin was one of my favorites growing up. And The Left Hand of Darkness is one of my favorite books, although that one's not for kids.
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Left hand is in my top 5 of all time. What a fantastic book.
 
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