His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life - Alter. I was born in the 80s so I don’t have much knowledge of Carter. I thought it was very good, and some of Alter’s writing I haven’t cared for. The treatment of Carter seemed fair.
Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia - I still want to know how Polynesia got sweet potatoes, but I guess we’ll never know. Author did a nice job of trying to get a sewed together history, as best as can be done for a people without writing.
Demon Copperhead - Kingsolver - just gutting. The only other book I’d read by Kingsolver was her non-fiction book about her farm. I’ll read more by her.
Dungeon Crawler Carl - I decided this year to read slightly fewer bummers. I read a fair amount of tragic non-fiction and fiction, and I was going to bed sad too often. My nephew said to read this, went into it blind. Premise is Earth is turned into a 18 level dungeon instantly (billions are killed). Carl and his Ex-GFs cat go into the dungeon, and they’re on an intergalactic game show, where they’re living in a dungeon crawling RPG. They fight mobs, bosses, get loot. It’s dumb, cotton candy, fun. Sure, Billions die in the first few pages, but it’s certainly not a sad book.
So I finally finished Misery and I will give it an (8.5-10)
I read that book slower than any King book so far. I think I spent a good 30 mins reading and re reading a handful of pages when Paul left his bedroom and entered the rest of the house. It was almost OCD for me but I wanted to do my best to really create an accurate mental display of the house in the same way I had done with the bedroom.
It felt like a mistake from King when Paul was going through the scrapbook and thought that he would likely find himself somewhere in the book because for some reason, i wasnt expecting to see that and i thought it would have been much more chilling to just have that happen by surprise. It defintitely feels like a goos reread candidate to pay a bit more attention to Annie’s attitude.
I ordered Bag and Bones, Dreamcatcher and The Long Walk. My next book will be one of those.
I’m going to start Bag of Bones hopefully wed or thurs. I picked up dreamcatcher in a packaged deal on an ebay auction and thought that the story sounded interesting but I can definitely see it being a particular story that kind of goes off the rails. But sometimes that’s okay too. BoB always sounded like a cool story to dive into.
I think I mentioned this before but I’ve been watching the tiered SK rankings on youtube and It’s always cool to see a handful of books get completely different rankings from someone else. Books are very personable and contextual , and I like that.
So I finally started Bag of Bones last night and are currently up to chapter 5 - 56 pages in. I put in a little additional time and mental power to create and imagine the Sara Laughs cabin and environment and I am only at the point to where it seems obvious that both Mike will be visiting that home once again, and that maybe Joanna wasn’t the perfect person after - although definitely still could be, idk.
I think I am going to like this book a bit more because it doesn’t appear to be another gruesome horror novel where I get chills from reading that someone runs over someone else four times in a lawnmower or a car to point to where they look like a red Soumak on the pavement. That just doesn’t really do it for me and I’d much rather prefer a more psychological scare. I am definitely eager to read more.
I just finished Moby Dick, which I had never read before. I had a college English professor who told us you should wait until after you’re 30 to read it. Well I’m over 50 now, so it was time.
In some ways it was a difficult read. Melville goes off on tangents about whale anatomy and things like that, often for whole chapters at a time. There are lots of allusions from the Bible and mythology that took time to track down. There’s a lot of nautical terminology (my version had an appendix with nautical terms which really helped). There are also a fair number of misc. archaic words to look up.
However in another sense it was easy to read. He’s a wonderful writer and despite some of the terminology and references, a lot of the times the writing felt very modern. The narration is ostensibly by Ishmael, but many chapters switch perspective and have different narrative structures (e.g. some chapters are sort of in the format of a play). Also, his writing style is very fluid and often beautiful, especially in descriptions of the sea. Most of the chapters are short, which makes the book flow nicely. There are many philosophical asides that I liked quite a bit.
I agree with my college prof; this is best read when you’re older. If you’re wondering if you should read it, the answer is an unequivocal yes. Just be prepared to go through it slowly.
Also recently read A Tragic Honesty which is about the author Richard Yates. I give it a 5/10: well written but ultimately long and dry (600+ pages!). The author of the bio is Blake Bailey. I am not sure why I tackled this. It’s very long and I don’t even have any experience reading Richard Yates. (I mean, I know why I bought it. I was in a used bookstore and it had rave reviews on the back cover.) The only Yates novel you probably have heard of is Revolutionary Road, which was made into a movie starring Leo and Kate Winslet. Yates writes realist novels based in large part on his own life. Most of them sound depressing.
The bio was an overly detailed account of his life and writings. Yates was a hardcore smoker and alcoholic, and was mostly a childish asshole to boot. He treated women as if they were there to take care of him. He didn’t have much life outside of writing. This bio sure didn’t make the life of a writer sound appealing. Anyway the bio is very well written, but it’s too long and detailed and there’s no reason to read it unless you’re a big fan of Yates, or interested in the literary establishment of the 50s/60s/70s. Yates was kind of a writer’s writer and hung around other writers like Vonnegut.
I gave my mom a cheap tablet so she could watch youtube and use it to read books. I downloaded Spanish language translations of classics for her, mostly because they were free. It was kind of unpredictable what she would like but she enjoyed Moby Dick.
The whale encyclopedia parts were brutal for me. I enjoyed it overall though. It has biblical references that can be kind of esoteric. Melville was a big inspiration for Cormac McCarthy and I can see how based on Moby Dick.
Old Man and the Sea much better, but damn are these Dungeon Crawler Carl books fun. I’ve blown through the first few. Just dumb fun. My nephew gave me one on Audible, I’m not a big audiobook guy, but the voice actors did a great job. Might have sold me on listening to the rest.
I didn’t mind the book Battlefield Earth, though I think I found it before I knew who L. Ron Hubbard was. The movie is pretty trash through.
I didn’t care for Dark Matter much at all. A multi-verse story where the hero’s horrible decisions drive the plot forward and if they made just normal human decisions there would be no story.
