What are you reading?

[NoahLutz]

23 hours ago, NoahLutz said:

I enjoyed Sir Gawain and the Green Knight a lot more than the last time I read it.  Tolkien’s translation was really fun and playful, which I felt played into the poem a lot better.  

 

I went on and finished his translation of Pearl, which I had never heard of before but it was interesting.  It’s like a mini Dante’s Paradiso except with a man who lost his 2-year old daughter.  I don’t have the comparison for the translation, but it really worked as a mini-epic poem.  

 

I also finished his translation of Sir Orfeo, another medieval long form poem.  I didn’t enjoy that story quite as much.  I was familiar with the Greek myth regarding Orpheus, and this is a play on that but made more English (and more French).  Still, I’m glad I was exposed to this as I haven’t read much medieval work outside of Dante, Chaucer, Beowulf, and Gawain.  Though I do have Le Morte d’Arthur in my backlog.  

 

Next up will probably be Project Hail Mary, Hillbilly Elegy, or Much Ado About Nothing.  We’ll see how I feel tonight.  

I reread Much Ado About Nothing.  I need to go over some of the Shakespeare plays because they are so short I don’t spend enough time thinking about them.  Similarly, I started the Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.  I’m not sure how many tropes this play started, or whether they were already so by the time it was written, but the play is packed with imagery, characters, and situations which have been played upon since in almost every medium.  It is interesting to see the much earlier version.

[NoahLutz]

Marlowe was really uneven.  The narrative didn’t really make a lot of sense, though the writing and perspectives could be beautiful and compelling.  

 

I’m almost through Hillbilly Elegy.  It is a fascinating book on a part of American culture that I read about in the news but never really have learned about.  The narrative itself is compelling, but I find the emotional, social, and anthropological insights the most interesting.  None of it is revelatory, but it is a good reminder with a different perspective.  

[NoahLutz]

I will start Project Hail Mary tonight, I think.  

[NoahLutz]

Project Hail Mary was exciting and interesting.  It’s basically the Martian 2, this time with weirder and more science and less believable situations.  I wish the book were about 25% shorter: sometimes in the “science out the problems” section I grew bored, just wanting to get to the explanation, especially in the last third of the book.  I enjoyed the structure of the narrative, and there were a few twists which caught me off guard.  I do wonder how people knowledgeable about science would react to this as there were several times where I would figure out an answer before the main character, and the main character starts the book solving problems faster than the best minds on earth.  Also, I had a hardcover of the book, and I always take off the jacket before reading.  When I put it back on after reading it, the inside jacket had about 9 words in 3 phrases in huge letters on the top, and those would have ruined 2 huge surprises for me, so I am really lucky I didn’t read it.  Generally, I try to avoid spoilers in everything: when I go to the movies I sometimes leave the theater until trailers are finished.  That instinct really saved me for this book.  

 

I will tackle a Shakespeare play or two before getting back into longer, more difficult texts.  First up, As You Like It, which I don’t believe I’ve ever read. 

[NoahLutz]

As You Like It was fun: Shakespeare was the king of wit and humor, and that’s the real highlight of this play.  The story is nothing new, and the redemptions are fast and unearned, but it’s a comedy, so who really cares.

 

Now for Romeo and Juliet, which will be at least my third time reading it.  

[NoahLutz]

Romeo and Juliet is far better than I remember.  Truth bombs left and right, jammed into some of the most beautiful language possible.  I think I liked it less in my youth where I focused on the plot or characters’ motivation rather than the ideas and art of the play.  

 

I’ve decided to go after one of my whales: Plutarch: Parallel Lives.  It’s about twice as long as War and Peace.  Only Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is longer on my list.  I’ve read Theseus, Romulus, and Lycurgus.  It’s interesting to read something most consider myth as history.  But, then again, much truth lies in myth, and people are often best understood by their myths - what they decide to venerate, to despise, how they define themselves as a group.  

[Bahamas]

Been very busy lately, so I need a real ten tonne hammer of a book to get me to sleep. Something familiar, right?

Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is an amazing fiction of retired Texas Rangers who decide to run a couple of thousand cattle up to Montana in the late 1800s.

Not a huge western fan and this is not a story about lonely pigeons. Lonesome Dove is a tiny hamlet on the southern border. If you ever read a western and maybe wanted to read more, this is one of many.

It get's gory and the trail is not easy (it takes months), but the way characters align and the general journey is just so well written - IMO.

I have likely suggested it before, but it's what I am reading now.

[Richard Reyes]

250 pages into The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter. I'm very much enjoying it so far. I was only 10 years old when he took office. He was neither the president nor the man I thought he was. Recommended. 

[blueschica]

On 1/19/2025 at 9:05 PM, Bahamas said:

Been very busy lately, so I need a real ten tonne hammer of a book to get me to sleep. Something familiar, right?

Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is an amazing fiction of retired Texas Rangers who decide to run a couple of thousand cattle up to Montana in the late 1800s.

Not a huge western fan and this is not a story about lonely pigeons. Lonesome Dove is a tiny hamlet on the southern border. If you ever read a western and maybe wanted to read more, this is one of many.

It get's gory and the trail is not easy (it takes months), but the way characters align and the general journey is just so well written - IMO.

I have likely suggested it before, but it's what I am reading now.

 

Read it many years ago and it was excellent!  It may be time to pick it up again. 

[Rhyta]

Finished my first book of 2025.  The Lost Birds by Anne Hillerman.  Love these stories, get a view of life in Dinetah ( Navajo Nation) and glad Anne is carrying on the series her father Tony started in the 80's.  This is her 9th book in the series total of 27. Glad to see Joe Leaphorn take a major role in this one.  The title refers to the phenomenon of Native women disappearing in large numbers in recent years.  Has become a big concern and she is not the only one to address this. I believe one of the Longmire books dealt with this too.

Edited yesterday at 12:02 AM by Rhyta

[TheAccountant]

The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs. The American Empire by Matt Kennard

 

This originally came out in 2015 but I was lucky enough to snag a 2nd edition that was released in 2024.  I say lucky because my edition contains the original book, plus an addendum that the author wrote in 2016 plus a new forward that Chris Hedges wrote for the book in 2024.  The drawback to it having been original written in 2015 means that some parts of what Kennard wrote about (e.g. the Arab spring) are a bit dated.  But that does not take away from his descriptions of what neoliberal capitalism has done to Haiti, Palestine, Mexico, Bolivia, Turkey, Columbia, Egypt, Tunisia, West Virginia & native Americans (among others) and how some have tried to resist it.

 

The front of the book has praise for it from Noam Chomsky, Julian Assange (of WikiLeaks), Asa Winstanley (now with The Electronic Intifada), Owen Jones and Naomi Klein.  Get them praising it, plus the amazing (IMO) Chris Hedges writing the forward, and the topic its on and you bet I would read and enjoy it.  Did I learn a lot?  Not really - perhaps it gave me a greater distrust of the IMF and World Bank then I already had.  But again, I am fairly well versed in the thinking from the author, Chris Hedges and those who praised the book.  So its meat and potatoes for me - it may not be for others.