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#1
19th January 2021, 08:37 AM
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What are you reading in 2021?
In observance of MLK day, I listened to Colson Whitehead's "The Underground Railroad" over the weekend. It was a good choice. I recognized the cover as it was advertised heavily on a blog I read (can't figure out which one now) back in 2016 when it came out and generated a lot of buzz. I'm seldom one to know what books are "current." From checking around here, I see Plumbean liked it. AuntiePam was reading in in 2019 - I hope it did live up to the hype for her.
I knew from a) history and b) plot summaries that his device of making the "railroad" into an actual subway was magical realism. What I didn't recognize and totally should have was
Reviews complain that the author is heavy-handed in pushing an agenda/lesson, but that's exactly what I read it for. I wanted the different perspective, and it delivered while simultaneously being really interesting. I hesitate to use the word "entertaining" because the horrors of slavery are anything but, but the story line itself was engaging and I didn't feel like I was being preached at. I've spent the day since finishing it mulling over its themes and allegories. I will add that when I say "read," I mean I listened to the unabridged audiobook version from my library's Libby app (best app ever!). The performance was very good - it added to the story rather than detracting from it. I'd never read anything anymore if it weren't for audiobooks. 
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#2
19th January 2021, 11:43 AM
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Current book is Planetary Spacecraft Navigation by James Miller. It is really terse and I need to look at better derivations for an explanation of why. (He does the rocket equation in 3 lines.) Hopefully as I get more mental velcro, this will get easier.
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#3
19th January 2021, 12:41 PM
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I suspect that doesn't lend itself to being an audiobook.
 Living through COVID has made me think of Myra Goldberg's "Wickett's Remedy." The 1918 Flu Pandemic features prominently in it. That was an odd conversion to audiobook because it contained vintage advertisements, newspaper articles, and margin comments from the dead. I'd recommend it to anyone who isn't completely pandemic fatigued.
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#4
19th January 2021, 01:19 PM
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The Cupola Furnace: A Practical Treatise on the Construction and Management of Foundry Cupolas, by E. Kirk, Consulting Expert in Melting 1899.
Its interesting to see how foundry practice has evolved over the decades. And some good tips and tricks for crazed handymen who might be considering a DIY version. Its amazing how much they didn't know about what was happening inside the furnace. And how much they were able to get done anyway. Each foundry typically had one or two old guys with a ratty old 3x5 notepad tucked into a shirt pocket. The lore on those notepads made the difference between profit and loss for the whole damn place, and helps explain why the industry was hidebound for so long. Productivity per man-hour today is something like 30 to 50 times higher, but sand casting is still the most common destination for hot metal.
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#5
27th January 2021, 01:44 PM
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Found a copy of Spacecraft Attitude Dynamics by Hughes for cheap. It's the paperback edition, but seems very readable. This is going to be a bit of a slog, a lot of it is going to be transposing vectors between reference frames.
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#6
27th January 2021, 03:19 PM
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#7
31st January 2021, 08:45 PM
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nonfiction = Breath: the new science of a lost art (hint: don't mouth breathe!)
fiction = the first Mercy Thompson book Moon Called which the reviews are calling Urban Fantasy despite the location being first a small town in Eastern Washington and then moving to rural Montana. so, not urban! 
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#8
31st January 2021, 09:48 PM
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Please update us later on Moon Called. I like urban fantasy a bit and I never heard of Mercy Thompson until now.
There was a Garrett Files character named Glory Mooncalled. But Garrett was a fantasy private detective series in a 'typical' fantasy city, not urban fantasy.
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#9
3rd February 2021, 05:56 AM
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I liked it, but then I didn't really think it was Urban Fantasy and I was wrong about that.
it's a fast read and the writing is good. I just read a review that said the world building was "stock-standard" but I would disagree and look forward to the next in the series. for comparison, I loved the Sookie Stackhouse series but that had much more "romance" and humor. this book was all business.
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#10
3rd February 2021, 03:30 PM
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I am reading 100s of books for a Best PBO competition.
I have just hit about 10 duds in a row and had to cleanse my palate with a book I read a couple of years ago. Salvage, by Steven Maher. I have possibly already mentioned it back then. The main character is a bit of a bad boy. He's looking for easy money, has sex with women to achieve certain ends even if those women happen to be married (sometimes that's the end). He's manipulative. But despite this he is not evil. The bad guys are worse and he's out to get them. And he sings sea shanties to himself as he does so.
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#11
6th February 2021, 05:10 PM
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I'm reading the second Mercy Thompson, Blood Bound, and it's really good - I don't expect I'll be able to go to sleep tonight until I'm done.
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#12
17th February 2021, 05:00 PM
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Christopher Plummer recently died. I found his memoir, In Spite of Myself, in our local used bookstore, so I bought it. It's good. He certainly had a full life. There are issues.... he was a man of his time and he was a young "man about town". He also seems to not have had a thought for his daughter, at least he's mentioned her precisely twice: her birth (which he missed; he was swapping stories in a bar) and one other time when he thought she might be 2.
 Maybe that gets better; I'm about halfway through.Despite these caveats, his anecdotes are mostly funny, and his self-deprecation is refreshing. IOW, at least he knows he's being a jerk at times (and he's not always being a jerk; some of his stories are wonderful). And he changed his mind about The Sound of Music. He really didn't like the movie or his character or the plot.... but he had a chance to rewatch it several years later and he expressed respect and admiration for what he and Julie Andrew et. al. had accomplished. He managed to give the good Captain some depth, unlike the stage play. Hey, I see the weaknesses in the movie (there is one scene with the Captain and his kids which I find unwatchable because it's not only so unlikely, but also so treacly), but it's still one of my favorites, due to the chemistry between Plummer and Andrews. Anyway, after this, I'm reading the Letters of Leo Lerman, the Vogue film critic (or was he the theater critic? I don't recall), and then, who knows?
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#13
17th February 2021, 05:19 PM
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I'm about to start the second book in the Sentinels of the Galaxy series by Maria V. Snyder. The basic premise is that 500 years in the future, explorers and scientists keep finding terra cotta soldiers (like the ones in China) on new planets they visit. Either they were made by aliens or humans actually have been there in the past. The first one was very good and the second & third are even better, according to my brother.
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#14
9th March 2021, 05:29 AM
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I blew through the 3rd Mercy Thompson book and couldn't believe it - the author is really doing a fantastic job and each book is even better. I've seen this classed as a "romance" and it sure the hell isn't, "not that there's anything wrong with it".
interesting characters and brilliant plotting and the world-building isn't just done well, it's local to me. very cool. currently reading Bone Crossed which is number 4 in the series. I'm not sure if I should just read the whole thing or slow down to savor it. I started anther series by the same author, Alpha & Omega, and that's good, too.
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#15
9th March 2021, 05:31 AM
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I'm picking up a book about my new town later today from the library. There is a second one I should get next week.
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#16
21st March 2021, 09:28 AM
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I just started The Castle on the Hill, my first Elizabeth Goudge. folks in the retro reads group like her, so I am likely to and will be stoked to find a new author.
it's set in 1940 London, so it's bound to be exciting.
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#17
3rd May 2021, 05:28 AM
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just finished A Better Man, number 15 in the murder mystery series by Louise Penny and it was one of those books you "can't put down" so I read it in about 3 gulps over the weekend.
I am going to choose the first in the series for my book group the next time it's my turn, and was reading some reviews of that. some folks actually call it a "cozy" mystery which is insane. it is not just a murder mystery, it's somehow MORE, but cozy implies all kinds of things that aren't happening here. it's god damned literature is what.
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#18
26th May 2021, 05:56 PM
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geez, I know other folks on the Geeb read, why don't more post here?
I just finished Kindred by Octovia E Butler. holy crap. I don't think I could have finished it if the author hadn't told us what the ending was right at the beginning. I need to read her Science Fiction.
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#19
27th May 2021, 05:26 AM
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No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War
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#20
5th July 2021, 05:59 AM
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I'm going to re-read Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose, about the Lewis & Clark expedition. I'm heading to the PNW in a couple of weeks and of course there's quite a bit of history up there. It's probably been 20 years since I read the book.
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#21
5th July 2021, 06:42 AM
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I decided to restart a book I was reading. But on looking at it, it's been so long that I'm restarting from the beginning. The book is "All The Devils Are Here" by McLean and Nocera. It's about the 2008 financial crisis.
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#22
6th July 2021, 05:17 AM
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Over the weekend I read "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl. It rose to the top of a reddit thread on "what is the most influential book you've ever read."
I found it really interesting and wish I'd found it a couple years back when I was having small existential crises. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the premise that meaning can be found in suffering. The underpinnings for that seem to be tied very closely to faith, and I feel like "meaning" should be able to stand with or without a belief in a divine master plan. But I'm fortunate enough not to have experienced profound suffering, unlike the author.
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#23
10th July 2021, 03:35 AM
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I'm reading Silence Fallen, the 10th Mercy Thompson book, and the series continues to be stellar.
Quote:
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Unitarian Universalists are always attempting to find meaning without having to "believe" in a certain way.
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#24
10th July 2021, 06:06 AM
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#25
10th July 2021, 06:28 AM
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I an audiobook person and here are some of the things I've listened to this year:
* ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer * How Few Remain * The Postman * The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women * The Testaments: The Sequel to The Handmaid's Tale * Midnight in Chernobyl I'm currently listening to: * Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America
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#26
9th August 2021, 01:04 PM
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I feel a little embarrassed to admit I just finished Billy Summers, by S. King.
It isn't fine literature, but entertaining, nonetheless. It's not his normal supernatural blood bath. It does have a nod or two to some of his other, more frightening things, but all in all it's the story of family, maybe not the one we're be born with, or even the one we choose.
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#27
9th August 2021, 01:53 PM
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Aw, picunurse, don't be embarrassed, what makes a work Fine Literature, anyway? Dickens wrote pulps that were published chapter-per-month. It's just that what is pulpish now are different sub-genres than then.
Most of Fine Lit is in the same areas as non-Fine Lit but English majors have decided to declare the Fine Lit to be Fine Lit (presuming that it is old enough.) The rest that they declare to be Fine Lit is either boring, indecipherable, or both. You should check out NAF's Ulysses book club thread! Joyce is hard to parse! Oh! I should add that I have always liked Clive Barker more than I liked King. More supernatural, less next door psycho.
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#28
10th August 2021, 03:07 PM
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#30
19th October 2021, 06:50 PM
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I just finished Eleanor Oliphant is Absolutely Fine and I'm not sure how I feel about it. not without flaws, it was brilliant in some ways. well, I'll read the reviews and think about it. 
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#31
22nd October 2021, 05:14 PM
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A coworker has loaned me a copy of Alcoholics Anonymous, or The Big Book, as they call it. So far it's pretty fucking fascinating.
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#32
8th November 2021, 10:56 AM
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Linear Mode
