Books Thread | Recommendations, in Progress, Etc
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I’m currently reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
And by reading, I frequently mean listening to on Audible, as is the case here, though I often am physically reading one thing and listening to something else (not doing both at the exact same time, of course, but listening while I work out or drive and reading before bed).
Anyway, so far at about a third of the way in, I like this (as the Audible algorithm insisted I would). Sort of like if The Andromeda Strain and Contact had a baby.
And by reading, I frequently mean listening to on Audible, as is the case here, though I often am physically reading one thing and listening to something else (not doing both at the exact same time, of course, but listening while I work out or drive and reading before bed).
Anyway, so far at about a third of the way in, I like this (as the Audible algorithm insisted I would). Sort of like if The Andromeda Strain and Contact had a baby.
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Merci, madam. I assume you started this bc of my post on the other thread. I guess I could've started it myself, but I've never started a thread before. Too timid. Anyway, for bookkeeping's sake, my post on the other thread was: I just realized (should've said theorized) that Blood Meridian is Cormac McCarthy's version of Lolita. The Judge is to the kid as Humbert is to Lolita. These are two of my favorite books of modern lit, certainly the two that I've read the most (by far). Kinda odd that I would never make that connection, however tenuous...
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Best books I’ve read this year
* Ghosts of Hiroshima — HIGHLY recommend
* I Must Betray You (Ruth Sepetys) — i don’t usually read youth fiction but this was outstanding, an account of a teen boy and his family in the last month of the Nicolae Ceaucescu regime
* American War (Omar El Akkad) — gripping story about the initial aftermath of a second American Civil War and the radicalization of the resulting refugees in America
* The Women (Kristin Hannah) — story of an army nurse in Vietnam and her struggle to return home; the protagonist’s poor choices and unraveling after she gets home requires putting up with someone who is emotionally demanding and increasingly unlikable
* The Nightingale (Kristin Hannah) — two sisters with different survival modes in WWII occupied France, absolutely loved this
* Ghosts of Hiroshima — HIGHLY recommend
* I Must Betray You (Ruth Sepetys) — i don’t usually read youth fiction but this was outstanding, an account of a teen boy and his family in the last month of the Nicolae Ceaucescu regime
* American War (Omar El Akkad) — gripping story about the initial aftermath of a second American Civil War and the radicalization of the resulting refugees in America
* The Women (Kristin Hannah) — story of an army nurse in Vietnam and her struggle to return home; the protagonist’s poor choices and unraveling after she gets home requires putting up with someone who is emotionally demanding and increasingly unlikable
* The Nightingale (Kristin Hannah) — two sisters with different survival modes in WWII occupied France, absolutely loved this
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I read Blood Meridian for the first time a year or two ago. I love Cormac McCarthy but had avoided it due to the violence. Which was dumb. Just a tremendous novel.
I haven’t read Lolita for decades, so have to think about the analogy a bit.
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I read a lot of horror and mysteries, so will add a few excellent ones separately since that is a specific genre taste:
The Reformatory (Tananarive Due) — unrelenting supernatural ghost story set in a 1960s boys reformatory in Florida; the horror is the place and the men who run it, but the ghosts are untrustworthy actors, too
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (Stephen Graham Jones) — easily his most accomplished work and I am a sucker for epistolary tales; this one follows the “confession” of a vampire from the Blackfeet tribe to a pastor in a small Wild West cowboy town in the early 1900s, framed by a modern scholar who has gotten her hands on the diary and letters in question
I could do a ridiculously long list of recommended 21st Century horror novels, but don’t want to detail the start of this general books topic.
The Reformatory (Tananarive Due) — unrelenting supernatural ghost story set in a 1960s boys reformatory in Florida; the horror is the place and the men who run it, but the ghosts are untrustworthy actors, too
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (Stephen Graham Jones) — easily his most accomplished work and I am a sucker for epistolary tales; this one follows the “confession” of a vampire from the Blackfeet tribe to a pastor in a small Wild West cowboy town in the early 1900s, framed by a modern scholar who has gotten her hands on the diary and letters in question
I could do a ridiculously long list of recommended 21st Century horror novels, but don’t want to detail the start of this general books topic.
Ddseddse
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I’m currently rereading The Adventures of Dr. Eszterazy by Avram Davidson.
I was stuck by this passage that starts off his short story Writ In Water. It’s kinda like a tiny self contained short story in itself.
Probably not everyone’s cup of tea, but interested if this passage strikes a chord with anyone else.
I’d read a whole novel about the eunuch, but I love that Davidson just tosses him out there like a literary amuse-bouche.
Plus the line about the "funny French gentleman" is just killing me. And the aside "(perhaps he was)". And the "one never knows" motif. Good stuff.
I was stuck by this passage that starts off his short story Writ In Water. It’s kinda like a tiny self contained short story in itself.
Probably not everyone’s cup of tea, but interested if this passage strikes a chord with anyone else.
I’d read a whole novel about the eunuch, but I love that Davidson just tosses him out there like a literary amuse-bouche.
Plus the line about the "funny French gentleman" is just killing me. And the aside "(perhaps he was)". And the "one never knows" motif. Good stuff.
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doctor_octopus
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I re-read BM about once a year. The paragraph where the Glanton gang is going up a mountain while a train of miners is coming down with their donkeys, and the the Gang just carelessly knocks them off the mountain is among my favorite paragraphs of prose in all the english language.
I also love the Passenger and Stella Maris.
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I also loved passenger and Stella Maris. In fact, reading those convinced me to drop my resistance to Blood Meridian.I re-read BM about once a year. The paragraph where the Glanton gang is going up a mountain while a train of miners is coming down with their donkeys, and the the Gang just carelessly knocks them off the mountain is among my favorite paragraphs of prose in all the english language.
I also love the Passenger and Stella Maris.
doctor_octopus
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My advice is to go Passenger --> Stella Maris --> Passenger a second time. The opening section of Passenger where she's hanging frozen is one of the most definitive gut-punches I've read, particularly after SM.
doctor_octopus
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Another fav is from The Crossing, describing the workshop of an old wolf trapper, where CM lays into his insane prose mastery:
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Yeah it is the bit where the reader is informed that these two weirdos won’t show up in the story again that makes the absurdity of both characters amusing …I’m currently rereading The Adventures of Dr. Eszterazy by Avram Davidson.
I was stuck by this passage that starts off his short story Writ In Water. It’s kinda like a tiny self contained short story in itself.
Probably not everyone’s cup of tea, but interested if this passage strikes a chord with anyone else.
I’d read a whole novel about the eunuch, but I love that Davidson just tosses him out there like a literary amuse-bouche.
Plus the line about the "funny French gentleman" is just killing me. And the aside "(perhaps he was)". And the "one never knows" motif. Good stuff.
Likewise, I audible'd this book a few months back. I thought it was pleasant enough and quaint: nowadays, the very idea that the world would bind together in order to fight off an existential threat seems so fantastical. But competency porn is my version of escapist literature.
Ro Laren
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I'm trying to read through Kristin Hannah in order. Just finished Winter Garden, a story of a mother telling her two daughters about her experience in Leningrad in 1941 as Germany sieged it. It was disguised as a fairy tale until she started mentioning specific Russian ballerinas and landmarks. And at some point it became obvious the "black knight" was Stalin.
I've been really impressed with her books. This one was her first stab at historical fiction I think. I've heard more than one person say The Nightingale is the best book they've ever read.
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The Nightingale is tremendous. Definitely in my top 10 of books written this century that I’ve read.
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I concur with the latter. This is one sentence from that paragraph:
The riders pushed between them and the rock and methodically rode them from the escarpment, the animals dropping silently as martyrs, turning sedately in the empty air and exploding on the rocks below in startling bursts of blood and silver as the flasks broke open and the mercury loomed wobbling in the air in great sheets and lobes and small trembling satellites and all its forms grouping below and racing in the stone arroyos like the imbreachment of some ultimate alchemic work decocted from out the secret dark of the earth's heart, the fleeing stag of the ancients fugitive on the mountainside and bright and quick in the dry path of the storm channels and shaping out the sockets in the rock and hurrying from ledge to ledge down the slope shimmering and deft as eels.
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I recall you finished it up as you were recovering from an illness, maybe Covid. It struck me that that was the perfect mood to be in whilst reading BM, a little gloomy, beaten down and faint of heart. All’s cheerless, dark, and deadly, as Kent said at the end of King Lear. One of the first few times I read it I was in the throes of my own self-imposed malady. I think that's when I really fell in love with the book...
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Did any of you see the piece about CM’s years long relationship with a much younger woman? I think it was in the New Yorker or Vanity Fair earlier this year. Really interesting in light of his writing. I’ll try to find a link.