Weekly “what are you reading” Thread #23

I am reading Down From the Hills, 1 & 2, by Orval Faubus. A few weeks ago I was reading his autobiography about WWII. These books are more political than the WWII book, and instead of keeping it clean from politics, he instead is lavishing the reader with his takes, stories and other somewhat scrapbook oriented materials that can be found in his book. His writing is good, but he seems to mount a scattered defense of what his actions did and how he justified it. The content is fascinating from a historical perspective, but has little redeeming value beyond that.

I find at this juncture Faubus to be a sad character, perhaps even tragic. His only son killed himself, his wife murdered in Texas. It's sad to see someone go from high of governor and trying to claw their way back into power as their personal life shreds from political and personal upheaval. He is notably unrepentant for his role in segregation politics, something that sets him apart from even George Wallace. While not evil, he does somewhat reject the common sense, good neighbor politics in exchange for reinforcing a racial hierarchy many at the time found distasteful. Faubus in the end fades out of the limelight and dies, as most segregationists did. You end up feeling bad for the guy, while not feeling particularly bad that he and his politics lost.

I could not put Blood Meridian down last night. I had to literally force myself to stop reading. It's so good, I'll be pissed when I run out of pages. I genuinely love Westerns bc I grew up watching them with my dad but I've never read one before so I'm having fun and am so glad this book won!!

I'm still reading Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages.

One of the chapters was about technology diffusing from the east, both from the Arabic world in the middle east and the Chinese/SE Asian world farther. The author was describing how the Arabs actually translated much of the older Greco-Roman texts, and really developed on that technology. But there's one off-hand remark that stood out - apparently, they didn't translate everything, just some books. And the stuff they largely ignored were the dramas, because "they didn't have any kind of theater" so they just didn't think they had any value.

LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring

It's rly good

Havent read it for like 20 years

Finally finished 7 Pillars of Wisdom. Most of the first half was and I've been really busy the last month or two so I haven't been able to read as much. The second half was much better though. I'm going to watch the movie sometime soon to see how they compare. Wonder if they kept the bizarre out of place scene

I'm reading the Three Body Problem series and love it. Smart scifi that doesn't compromise itself for brainlets.

Tour de Hesse: Steppenwolf, Siddhartha.

The Black Company by Glen Cook

This week I read The Big Short. I love reading about r-slurs and autismos with hundreds of millions of dollars. Destroying the world economy was worth it for the lols.

Just finished This is the Way the World Ends by James Morrow. It's 1980's sci-fi about the cold war going hot, and follows a small-town yokel who's one of the few survivors. Just really solid writing the whole way through. Read the last 80 pages in one sitting. Then I went looking for more books by the author, and turns out he got TDS and co-authored a dystopian novel about how Trump's America becomes a fascist hellhole. Guess they can't all be bangers.

The Expanse is my beach holiday read and I'm loving it. The only problem is that I'll have to read the first six books before I start on the TV show.

I'm reading a novella by Derek Kunsken called Pollen from a Future harvest.

Pretty much no one has heard of Kunsken or his Quantum Evolution series, but I think it's some of the more enjoyable recently published sci-fi.

Reading "Holly", King's new foray into politicized vomit, was hilarious

Virtually every paragraph has the main character having a panic attack about people nearby being vaccinated, and then immediately orgasming over how good the first 12 cigarettes of the day feel. Heavily recommend it for lols.

Finally finished The house of leaves

It's ok. The secrets/Easter eggs are cool, but I am not neurodivergent/interested enough to dive into different theories, so I just read some forum threads about them.

Will start working on Blood Meridian

About to finish Children of Memory, I have really enjoyed the series, pretty bummed it's coming to an end but maybe there'll be more books and if not at least it hasn't overstayed its welcome.

No Longer Human by osamu dazai

Moby Peepee is so kino, I smashed through 3/4 of the book in 2 days, but have been slowly finishing it over the last week. The prose is beautiful, it reminds me of modernist novels despite predating them. All of the little asides from the story are great, especially chapter 32 where he goes into 19th century cetology. I do wish Ishmael was an actual character, there's a bit of development between him and Queequag but he just kind of disappears into the background after a while.

Road of Bones by Christopher Golden

I'm reading The Ethereal Aether by Lloyd Swenson. It's about the Michelson-Morley experiment, how it tied in with Einstein coming out with special relativity, and Miller's continued experiments to try and prove the existence of aether even after Einstein published his papers on special relativity. It's a much more complex story than most people give it credit for being, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in turn of the 20th century physics.

Started Dungeon Crawler Carl. Needed a junk food palette cleanser series before taking another stab at Malazan. Last time, I got to book 6.

As usual, staying current The Wandering Inn by Pirateaba. Slice-of-life epic fantasy. I'd like to do a reread after the current Volume wraps up, but that will take months.

Also working on Tim Dorsey's Serge Storms books for my non-fantasy sidepiece. Kind of like Dexter but more schizo and with a fetish for obscure Florida trivia.

I need to take a break from overly long series at some point. Have a ton of good trilogies built up, like The Belgariad.