Books: And What Are You Reading?

[lizkat]

This week I'm indulging in a re-read of Paul Therooux's The Great Railway Bazaar. Love it not as a "travel book" per se --since really it's less about the places and more about the journey, i.e. the people he meets on all those legendary trains from west to east and back again by a different route-- but because it can be picked up and put down like a book of short stories. Reminds me of a cross between Dickens and Chekov.

 

[Huntn]

I read the first William Gibson Cyberpunk Sprawl trilogy starting with Neuromancer and got into it, thumbs up. I recently started his Bridge trilogy starting with Virtual Light and put it down as his writing style being a bit too helter skelter.

Then I remembered I really enjoyed Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy, and decided to give him another go, and was hooked in a matter of a chapter on Warbreaker. Not sure at this point if this is a trilogy or not. The first trilogy mentioned dealt with the ingestion of metal, creating personal power, Warbreaker involves colors, breath, and awakening. The term refers to instilling power into inanimate objects so they will become animated and do your bidding. At this point there seems to be a spiritual power element to “breath” such as a life force.

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Completed Warbreaker, and once again I enjoyed and am impressed with Brian Sanderson’s writing. He is not predictable…

On to City and the City, fingers crossed.

 

[Nycturne]

Haven't been reading much lately, unfortunately. Working through Bullet Train as I was curious.

Need to finish it before The Terraformers comes out at the end of the month. Found out that the author will be in Seattle on her book tour for the new book and trying to plan to show up.

 

[lizkat]

I've been reading some ebooks that are about to self-destruct as library loans, or else have to be renewed. One is Dina Nayeri's Refuge. It's fiction, but by the Iranian-American author's admission, is grounded partly in some autobiographical experience. The book is set in Oklahoma, Iran and the Netherlands. The author was born in Iran around the time of the Islamic Revolution and left at age 8 with her brother and mother (because the mom, a doctor, had converted to Christianity and had become a target of the ayatollah's morality police). Her dad remained in Iran. She did spent some time in Amsterdam before settling in the USA. I've enjoyed the book.

Returning after that to a book that I started long ago, Renata Adler's Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker. Of course The New Yorker is not at all gone, it's just that Ms. Adler did not care for the changes made when Tina Brown came in to rescue the magazine from decline in readership back in the early 90s. Adler's book was written in 1999. I am not the only person who has wondered if Ms. Adler was always just over the top in the severely critical angles of her writings, or perhaps I had missed something. There's a piece from 2015 in the Atlantic about her that's a stitch; the title alone made me at least feel better about my quandary.

Renata Adler: Troll or Treasure?

Weighing whether the writer is a real custodian of journalistic values or just an overqualified provocateur

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Huntn]

I have spent an embassisingly long time to read this book and am still working on it: 11/22/1963 by Stephen King. Bottom line, it’s because I’m not devoting enough time to my casual reading.

Anyway, this not a typical time travel story. As most of us know the date in the title is significant as when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas and the idea is the huge presumption by 2 characters who discover a time portal, that if Kennedy was not killed, how much better would the present be? And it just so happens this portal is fixed to a time a couple of years before the Dallas tragedy.

If you want no more info or spoilers stop here, but there are no revelations in my description.
I’ll say it finally grabbed me when the character because of the limited mechanics of time travel has to go back in time several years early than the target date (not an original idea for a time travel mechanic, saw something like this in Timeline) and basically establishes a life for himself getting involved with people living in a small town. This tied to his tracking of Oswald for when he is scheduled to arrive in Dallas with his Russian wife, and I‘m sure there will be surprises as there have been some already.

So far handles time travel paradoxes well, using the idea of a single time line (I think at least so far ) and discusses the worry of the Butterfly effect and unintended consequences. What I really like is the mechanic that if you go back once and return, the past and present changes, but if you go back a second time, all the changes from the last trip are undone. And I really like the idea that the past does not like change and will resist. Where I’m at in the story, this is a King book so I’m bracing myself.

 

[Huntn]

I have spent an embassisingly long time to read this book and am still working on it: 11/22/1963 by Stephen King. Bottom line, it’s because I’m not devoting enough time to my casual reading.

Anyway, this not a typical time travel story. As most of us know the date in the title is significant as when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas and the idea is the huge presumption by 2 characters who discover a time portal, that if Kennedy was not killed, how much better would the present be? And it just so happens this portal is fixed to a time a couple of years before the Dallas tragedy.

View attachment 24080​

If you want no more info or spoilers stop here, but there are no revelations in my description.
I’ll say it finally grabbed me when the character because of the limited mechanics of time travel has to go back in time several years early than the target date (not an original idea for a time travel mechanic, saw something like this in Timeline) and basically establishes a life for himself getting involved with people living in a small town. This tied to his tracking of Oswald for when he is scheduled to arrive in Dallas with his Russian wife, and I‘m sure there will be surprises as there have been some already.

So far handles time travel paradoxes well, using the idea of a single time line (I think at least so far ) and discusses the worry of the Butterfly effect and unintended consequences. What I really like is the mechanic that if you go back once and return, the past and present changes, but if you go back a second time, all the changes from the last trip are undone. And I really like the idea that the past does not like change and will resist. Where I’m at in the story, this is a King book so I’m bracing myself.

11/22/63 (2011)- This was one of the best time travel stories I have read. I man goes back in time to save President John F Kennedy. It handles time travel in a reasonable manner including reverberations, and it is interesting to take the trip back Including the event the story is centered on. Recommended.

I also discovered there was a mini-series made in 2016. I’ll have to check it out!

 

[Hrafn]

I used to read books avidly, but switched to doom-scrolling. However, yesterday I finished John Hodgman’s “Medallion Status”. It’s sort of a look at what life is like for a minor comedy celebrity.