Brad Meltzer’s Book of Lies. Meh. Kinda Dan Brownish without the far-fetched over-elaborate puzzles. Doesn’t leave much Dan Brown though, does it?
Anyway, alternate title: Quest for the Weapon Cain Used to Slay Abel which is Also the Mark of Cain ànd a Book for some Reason while the Proto-Nazi Cult of Thule Wants it Too!
And Superman comics. Because Übermensch…
Trying to summarise it for this forum just made me realise more how ridiculous this book is.
Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry:
Grandfather Nariman has alzheimer’s disease. Coomy Aunty dislikes caring for him. When Grandfather breaks his leg, Aunty seizes this opportunity to shove him into her sister Roxana’s small apartment, “just until the break heals”…
This sets in motion a chain of familial, financial, and social consequences. The familiy tries, fails, halfway succeeds,… in adapting to this new situation.
Tragic in its depiction of people’s inability to overcome emotional boundaries and (re)connect, comedic to almost Allo, Allo-levels in the schemes to make a bit more money, heartwarming in the family’s love for each other.
My current main reading, on my Kindle, so I can read with the utterly gargantuan font that helps me keep reading with my progressive neurological illness. The 6 books shown are the ones I’m currently mainly cycling through. A mix of fiction and non fiction reads.
Screenshot of a Kindle Paperwhite e-reader in portrait mode with a black and white screen. The view shows 6 book covers, in 2 rows of 3. At the top are “The King of Elfland’s Daughter” by Lord Dunsany, “Stone & Sky” by Ben Aaronovitch, and “Echolands: In Search of Boudica” by Duncan Mackay. Then on the second row are “Wintering” by Katherine May, “Restoration London” by Liza Picard, and “The Black Archive #72: Silence in the Library / The Forest of the Dead” by Dale Smith. Each book has a percentage number showing progress so far. Some are further through, e.g. 26% on “Wintering” and 17% for “Restoration London”, while others are newer started.
This is the sort of font I read on my Kindle. On the left is what it started up with by default when I set up a new Kindle a while back. On the right is how I adjusted it for my preference. I don’t need a humungous font for visual impairment so much as brain impairment (cognitive). For the last 25 years or so I’ve found I can read much more easily with a gigantic font. Bigger than typical large print.
This is also why I tend to play IF with gargantuan fonts, and get very distressed when I can’t adjust them. My favourite parser IF interpreter (Lectrote) is set up with a huge font!
Two screenshots side by side of Kindle Paperwhites. On the left is a Sherlock Holmes story, in the default font, with nearly 20 lines of text visible. On the right is the same story with just 9 lines of text, much bigger and more spread out.
@vivdunstan : Thanks for sharing! I’m definitely going to look for Echolands. Boudikaa is a very intriguing personality.
I read two novels set in and around early 20th century New York:
New Rochelle, New York, in the United States of America.
The beginning of the 20th century.
A time of progress.
Flying machines, telephones, electric trams, skyscrapers, land of hope and Houdini.
Racism, poverty, child labour, snorting and stomping and chestpounding capitalism.
They were ragged times. Scott Joplin wrote the music.
Ragtime, by E. L. Doctorow.
There is a short and funny sequence in Ragtime describing Sigmund Freud’s visit to the USA. This reminded me of another novel that was somewhere in my stack of unread books: The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld.
Coinciding with Dr Freud’s visit to New York, where he will be staying to give his Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis at Clark University, a gruesome murder is committed. A day later, a young woman is attacked in the same manner as the murder victim. She survives, but has lost all recollection of the event. Dr Stratham Younger, an American devotee of Freud’s who is acting as the great Doctor’s guide in New York, takes it upon himself to help the young woman regain her memory through analysis.
Very clever mystery novel. A great sense of early 20th century New York, a good deal of (fictionalised but true in spirit) conflict between Freud and Jung, and a psychoanalytic perspective on Shakespeare’s Hamlet as an ongoing motif throughout the book.
-Freud: Five Lectures on Psych-Analysis (Internet Archive link)
-The Interpretation of Murder (Jed Rubenfeld) - Wikipedia
Freud: Penis envy!
Jung: Mandalas!
Freud: PENIS ENVY!
Jung: MANDALAS!
-Wade
Inspired by The Complete History of Trinity podcast, I’ve been reading The Little White Bird by J.M. Barrie. In a word, it’s frickin’ weird. The three-chapter digression about Peter Pan seemed particularly pointless and out of place, and the protagonist himself is a straight-up creep. A number of bits that are evidently intended as charming just annoyed me. I’m not done yet; maybe it gets better.
I thought Jung was the proto-Myers-Briggs guy… Mandalas feels more like new age misinterpretations of non-judeochristian religious traditions if we’re going to be using it to psychoanalyze people…
When diving into the depths of Dark Parody Fantasy Adventure, I’m a strong believer in thorough preparation. So I just read Sign of the Orc, the accompanying novella to Knight Orc, which I intend to play over the next week.
Knight Orc Novella & Playguide (Level 9 Computing) – Internet Archive
The Bjørndal Saga by Trygve Gulbransen. The slow and deep history of an extended farm/village overseen by the men of the titular family.
It mostly leaves the events in the outside world aside, keeping its focus steady on the development of the characters in the great house. The ability of people to change throughout their lifetime while staying firmly rooted in their personal character and their family traditions is the main theme of the book in my reading. (My reading/interpretation tends to underemphasize the Christian message that is also very present, since I think every lesson of value in this book holds just as true in the absence of a religious frame.)
Slow reading, many repetitions, cyclical movements through the years, deep emphasis on nature and its importance for the spirit.
Technically an audio dramatization and not the original book, but I did my annual listen to the Focus on teh Family Radio theatre rendition of a Christmas Carole this evening.
I am currently reading Sally Green’s "The smoke thief. I just finished “The Demonata” by Darren Shan and “The Mirror Visitor” by Christelle Dabos. My favorite book series, is… It’s so out there i’m not saying it.
La Passe-miroir ! Love the series.
The serious “Dorothy Must Die” by… I forgot who, is a meh parody of Wizard of OZ
I used to read books voraciously until computers and smartphones took over my life, but I actually got a Kindle earlier this year (because on my job we can’t have smartphones or pen/paper/books during downtime, but Kindles are allowed as you can’t take photos or make notes easily) and I have slowly made it most of the way through Stephen King’s Holly.
I was chilly on it at first - a non-supernatural private-investigator novel jumping around time - in and out of the pandemic - that introduces the antagonist immediately and arcs on how everything will eventually cross together, laden with clues and Chekhov’s Gun that initially played close to the vest and is now going insane in the way I remember King does. I appreciate how well he does internal monologue in a way that works only in print and really doesn’t translate well to TV or film media. I like the themes of mortality and bigotry and how many unlikeable characters have understandable motivations. I’m in the endgame of Holly and I’m actually reluctant to get to the end wanting to savor it in a good way, even though there are more in the series but I ruined it possibly by reading out of order. I’m so out of the reading habit I’m inexplicably afraid that I won’t find another book I like!
It’s been so long I don’t really know what I want to read, so I kind of default to Stephen King. I picked Holly because I didn’t recognize it and now realize it’s #3 in a series I’m reading out of order apparently! I’m digging King’s mature work that’s a bit more digestible than the cocaine-phase meganovels. Not that I won’t read longer books or series, I’m just out of practice and am not ready to plunge into a narrative with an endpoint months away.
I did go ahead and queue Dark Matter by Blake Crouch to read next based on good reviews and because apparently it’s now a series. I loved season one of Wayward Pines but have not read his book it’s based on. I also considered Recursion and Famous by him based on the blurbs.
Recursion is one of my favourite books of all time. I just love the premise and I think it definitely pulled it off. So if you are considering what to read next, I’d recommend it.
Started writing my end of year annual reading recap. 58 books finished this year, over 16,000 pages worth. Mostly read on my Kindle with an utterly gargantuan font. Delighted to still be managing to read, albeit with ever increasing difficulty, as my neurological disease progresses further.
I’ll post a link here to my full reading recap in due course.
The original Frankenstein novel. Having read it, I’m not surprised it regularly appears as the #1 downloaded book on Project Gutenberg. It helped that I went into it completely sheltered from anything about the real story, knowing nothing more than Halloween costumes and a cheesy 60’s-like image of a mad scientist in a basement.
Besides the one great leap involved in accepting Frankenstein’s eventual success with reanimating dead matter, the story is not centered around showcasing either horror or sci-fi sensationalism; instead there’s an impressively complex and riveting interplay of motives and emotions experienced on the side of both the creator and the created. There’s nothing lighthearted about it, but it’s not a grim and gruesome type of horror at all. I like feeling moved.
I’m going right on to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, so we’ll see how that goes…
Just blogged my annual recap of the books I read this last year.
