What are you reading?

[FlyingMonkey]

I meant 13-20 of October. You should have been able to divine that from my ambiguous text, good sir.

Well, having fallen into your trap, it seems I'll be unable to avoid you in a city of 38 million people, damn! But seriously, drop me a line nearer the time. I'm going to be pretty much incommunicado between this weekend and October 7th as my family and I will be travelling from Copenhagen (where we are now) to Tokyo by trains and ferries with stops in various places inbetween.

 

[imatlas]

my family and I will be travelling from Copenhagen (where we are now) to Tokyo by trains and ferries with stops in various places inbetween.

That sounds like an amazing trip - I hope you'll post about it at some point.

 

[Fueco]

Eagles and Angels, by Juli Zeh.

I seem to have another writer whose work I really dig...

 

[FlyingMonkey]

I've been working my way through the 'Martin Beck' novels written by Swedish husband and wife team, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. They pretty much invented the modern Scandanavian police procedural and the critical social crime novel with this 10-book series which runs from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies. Most of the novels are excellent. There are a couple of not-so-good ones, including Murder at the Savoy and the The Abominable Man (6 and 7), in which the politics outweigh the plot and character development rather than balancing them, and the second one, The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, is just a bit of an oddity and doesn't really fit very well with the rest, but in general this series still stands up and is not a historical curiosity.

 

[Kaplan]

^ I grew up with my parents having a set of the Sjöwall / Wahlöö novels and I have fond memories of reading all of them in my early teens (though no detailed recollection of the individual books, as that was more than three decades ago).

Recently I finished The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories, which was quite enjoyable.

I plan to start Dune next.

 

[wojt]

Oedipus Rex

I will be seeing it next week in "traditional" Greek theater next week. It holds up well after 2500 years.

 

[edinatlanta]

@Kaplan is, like, super old.

So I'm bouncing between Caro's first LBJ book (still) and the Silmarillion. AKA: I got some slogs of books on my plate. I will probably break it up with something else I have when I get home tonight. What doesn't help things with the Silmarillion is that I have the Ted Naismith illustrated edition so it's a 40-pound book.

 

[Fueco]

I just picked up The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. This’ll be the next novel I read...

 

[edinatlanta]

I picked up this at home. Then I realized I just don't care enough about Karajan's biography nor do I know enough to appreciate the theory of Karajan qua conductor.

Honestly I'll probably just pick up a Crichton or James Patterson book.

 

[HORNS]

@Kaplan is, like, super old.

So I'm bouncing between Caro's first LBJ book (still) and the Silmarillion. AKA: I got some slogs of books on my plate. I will probably break it up with something else I have when I get home tonight. What doesn't help things with the Silmarillion is that I have the Ted Naismith illustrated edition so it's a 40-pound book.

I just got through reading the Silmarillion for, like, the sixth time in my life.

 

[FlyingMonkey]

I just got through reading the Silmarillion for, like, the sixth time in my life.

It was my favourite Tolkien by far, when I was a teenager; the only one that seemed to capture the genuinely mythic that he was aiming or. Haven't read it for years.

 

[edinatlanta]

It was my favourite Tolkien by far, when I was a teenager; the only one that seemed to capture the genuinely mythic that he was aiming or. Haven't read it for years.

Yeah it's incredibly evocative and more of the high fantasy than LOTR (and The Hobbit, duh). Just getting to when the Silmarils were hidden away. It's some dense ****, though.

 

[Big Pun]

Just finished Roman Honor by Carlin Barton

One of the best nonfiction books I've read. Very insightful, her theories might not all be correct but it's always interesting. Gives a history of Roman culture as well as relates concepts to our modern society.

 

[imatlas]

You might enjoy my current read as a follow up (assuming you haven’t already read it):

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[edinatlanta]

I picked this up in 2016 and couldn't get into it. For whatever reason now it is fantastic.