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What Are You Reading?

It's not great literature, but right now I'm reading early Steve Ditko and Wally Wood anthologies. Ditko before he began at Marvel and Wood the non EC comics of the 1950's.
 
Not until I've cleared some of the backlog :D I think I've got at least 16 unread books lined up here already 🤓
No kidding! Same with me and this thread isn’t helping. 🤬

I have tried to 3017 my stack(s) of unread books with some success. More keep showing up though. Audiobook piles may be the worst though, especially when you have a 47 hour volume of Lyndon Johnson from Robert Caro staring you in the face for 4+ years.
 

AimlessWanderer

Remember to forget me!
I have tried to 3017 my stack(s) of unread books with some success. More keep showing up though. Audiobook piles may be the worst though, especially when you have a 47 hour volume of Lyndon Johnson from Robert Caro staring you in the face for 4+ years.

Audiobooks are something that don't work for me. My mind wanders, either processing what my brain just took on, or visiting a memory prompted by something said. Words on a page wait patiently for my mind to return, but an audiobook keeps rambling on while my mind is elsewhere.

As for the backlog of books, part of the problem for me, is having bought cheap book bundles, only to find that some of them are from a series of novels, and not necessarily in the right order. As such, there's some I won't read until I've sourced and read the preceeding ones in the saga.
 
Audiobooks are something that don't work for me. My mind wanders, either processing what my brain just took on, or visiting a memory prompted by something said. Words on a page wait patiently for my mind to return, but an audiobook keeps rambling on while my mind is elsewhere.

As for the backlog of books, part of the problem for me, is having bought cheap book bundles, only to find that some of them are from a series of novels, and not necessarily in the right order. As such, there's some I won't read until I've sourced and read the preceeding ones in the saga.
I am the same with Audio books. I bought a few from Audible for the car and my mind wanders. “Oh look, a butterfly!” 👎
 
Audiobooks are something that don't work for me. My mind wanders, either processing what my brain just took on, or visiting a memory prompted by something said. Words on a page wait patiently for my mind to return, but an audiobook keeps rambling on while my mind is elsewhere.

As for the backlog of books, part of the problem for me, is having bought cheap book bundles, only to find that some of them are from a series of novels, and not necessarily in the right order. As such, there's some I won't read until I've sourced and read the preceeding ones in the saga.

I can only listen to them when I’m doing something that requires some concentration but not too much, like driving, cleaning and yard work.
 

Whilliam

First Class Citizen
Finally finished Pat Conroy's "Prince of Tides." "Prince of Tedium" is more like it. Gaseous, inflated writing ill served by maladroit editing. Stick with the motion picture. Streisand did a good job, both on the screen and at the helm.

The latest . . .

  • "Our Man" by George Packer. A big bio of policy architect Richard Holbrooke. Illuminating overview of Holbrooke's career and foreign policy decisions as they have help shape today's world.
  • "Countdown 1945" by Chris Wallace. An almost week-by-week (and sometimes day-by-day) account of Truman's decision to drop the bomb. Nothing new, but a solid refresher.
  • "The Way We Live Now" by Anthony Trollope. Not much different from the way we live now, but lots more fun. (I confess to reading this in intervals, as I am easily distracted by shiny things.)
 

JWCowboy

Probably not Al Bundy
I have tried to 3017 my stack(s) of unread books with some success. More keep showing up though. Audiobook piles may be the worst though, especially when you have a 47 hour volume of Lyndon Johnson from Robert Caro staring you in the face for 4+ years.

Caro's magnum opus is likewise on my "to read" pile, as is Edward Gibbon's as is Winston Churchill's. So many books......
 
Just finished this terrific book. Very well-written and fast paced. It will help you to understand the inability of the US to coordinate a response to any health crisis.

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JWCowboy

Probably not Al Bundy
Finally finished Pat Conroy's "Prince of Tides." "Prince of Tedium" is more like it. Gaseous, inflated writing ill served by maladroit editing.

I share a similar opinion of Conroy. When I was younger I enjoyed "The Lords of Discipline" and his early nonfiction memoir "The Water is Wide" - actually I thought his other non-fiction "My Losing Season" was pretty good, but "South of Broad" goodness what a bombastic novel. I want to like Conroy because of my affinity for Charleston and the SC low country, my wife and I honeymooned at Kiawah and we typically take 1-2 trips a year to somewhere in the general area as it's an easy drive for us. I love the town and most everything about it, so of course I've wanted to read his stuff, but yes he has a tendency to be way over the top and is often exasperating to read.
 
The Madness of Crowds: A Novel (Chief Inspector Gamache Novel Book 17) by Louise Penny
I need to pick this series back up. I lost interest when Gamache had work issues and his main detective was always stoned, etc. I wish Penny just stuck to the unusually high number of murders in the tiny town of Three Pines.

I just sent my mom book 2 - Fatal Grace and she is hooked.

Very fun series with great character development.
 
"Chips" Channon's diaries, the new complete edition. Channon was an American-born social butterfly and Alpine social climber who lived in the UK from the Twenties until his death in 1958. He loved royalty, titles, jewels, beauty, his friends. Long and solid gay relationships notwithstanding, he married the Guinness heiress Lady Honor.

He never did a thing except enjoy himself and keep this diary. I have the two first-printed volumes, one more to come, out of a 2 million + word total. I cannot begin to explain why I like Channon so much. He's not a very nice guy, really. I do love diaries in general: Virginia Woolf, Harold Nicolson, Duff Cooper, etc.
 

JCinPA

The Lather Maestro
Reading a new novel by Mark Dawson, British author of thrillers based on a character named John Milton. Book #20 in the series. I'm part of a reader group for him that proofs it for him before release to catch typos, inconsistencies, weapons faux pas, etcetera.
 
Am loving this one. Entirely different format for a book. These guys were interviewed mostly about 1975, so thirty years after the war. Recollections are sharp and it feels like it happened the day before as you read. The book is a transcription of the recording of the interviews. So you can "hear" their voices as you read. You hear how each fighter performs or does not perform against the Luftwaffe. Listen in as Jimmy Doolittle, Curtis LeMay and three others talk about their experiences first hand. Robin Olds was one who fought at the end of WW 2 as well as in Viet Nam. He is also probably the most profane fellow around! So you get lots of personality which makes it seem as if you are listening in rather than reading. Amazing stuff and you get it straight up, not filtered through an author.

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Finished Asimov’s Forward the Foundation today. This completes my read of his Foundation cycle. For those who haven’t read it, it is an impressive piece of world building. The writing isn’t the greatest, but the stories are good and worth the time. I recommend reading them in chronological order (start with Prelude to Foundation and end with Foundation and Earth).
 
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