Read:
Mafia Republic: Italy's Criminal Curse. Cosa Nostra, 'Ndrangheta and Cammora from 1946 to the Present
By Professor John Dickie.
Fascinating and quite disturbing book which plainly shows just how thoroughly (and by that I mean on a mind boggling level that's rather hard to digest) Italy's three mafias have completely infiltrated Italy's state institutions such as its government and judiciary and how they are essentially a shadow government.
Well recommended read.

Reading:
The Franklin Scandal
A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse & Betrayal
By Nick Bryant.
Half way through this interesting book on the alleged Franklin child abuse cover up. Dunno what to make of all this but am inclined to suspect that something dodgy was going on anyway.

Just finished listening to the full cast audiobook of American Gods by Neil Gaiman. It was of the author's preferred text, so was 12,000 words longer, and at some points I could see why the editor choose to cut it down. However overall I enjoyed it, and also enjoyed reading into some of the back-stories and lore of the Gods in it.

I was excited to see Starz has recently greenlit a TV series version, which, if done well, I think could be really good.

I, personally, enjoyed the concept of "American Gods" (worshipping a God brings it into existence and it's still around even after the worshippers are gone) more than I enjoyed how the plot actually played out.

It may be that I read it after having read "Good Omens" and "Stardust", so was expecting something more lighthearted and less serious.

Just finished The Three-Body Problem .
Thought it was kindof slow and while it had some good moments overall I found it a bit dissapointing. Seems like there was much more possible with the book/subject.

Started in:
If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens... WHERE IS EVERYBODY?
Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life.

Just finished listening to The Universe in a Nutshell by Steven Hawking (although not narrated by him). It's basically a whistle-stop tour of current (well, 2001's) ideas in theoretical physics, with a bit on the theories and people that helped shape them, touching on topics such as time travel, aliens, and multiple dimensions.

I thought it was brilliantly written, with anyone with a little knowledge of physics being able to understand the book. Of course, the fun part is then trying to understand the ideas, then failing that, just trying to conceive trying to understand the ideas.

Basically it made my head hurt but I loved it anyway. It was only short (~3.5hrs) and I can definitely see myself listening to it multiple times in the future.

I just finished Arthur Phillips' Prague (2002). Set in the year after the collapse of the USSR, the novel follows five expats -- four Americans (one of Hungarian heritage), and a Canadian -- in Budapest. (The novel is not set in Prague and the title is an ironic joke, part of the book's pervasive irony.) The novel begins with the five playing a game called “sincerity” in which each tells four lies and one true statement and the others try to identify which is which. That sets up the larger question of what is invented in terms of the stories and personas of each of the characters throughout (the never-confirmed possibility that one is a spy gives particular resonance to this question), while the expatriate scene provides a stage on which these individual strive to reinvent themselves.

But these are a new kind of self-conscious expat, chiefly because “English majors had almost no options in the United States after graduation and were forced to become a sort of refugee themselves, deployed to the four corners of the world to teach the only skill they had, which was valuable proportionally to how far from home they wandered.”

I found it a very enjoyable reading experience: nicely told and frequently witty. I plan to read Phillips' later fiction when I get a chance. (Prague was his first novel.)

I am now reading Henry Green's Party Going. Having just taken on a couple of big projects, when I finish that book almost all of my reading will have to be Canadian for the next while (something I don't post about very much here).

tell us more about your Canadian secret identity

I'm only about 50 pages in but, to me, it seems like basically a high brow word salad.

That's pretty much what I was getting at, just dancing around it more. Why did it get so much hype from the New York Times?

Has anybody read The Third Man? It's short and was supposedly written more as a treatment for the film than as an actual standalone novella. Wondering if it's worth reading...

I...I have no idea? Is he considered the second coming by insider illuminatis or w/e and they all want to get on the bandwagon even if his book isn't good? I'm glad it wasn't just me, I was starting to think I wasn't 'literary' enough for this book or something Some of the Amazon user reviews are hilarious.

Sick brag. Don't be so shy about your heritage. I don't care what they say, Canadians are alright in my book.

Reading Station 11. I am enjoying it. The pace is a bit slow, but I'm really enjoying how the book jumps from location to location every chapter.

Interesting discussion going on about a new novel, and whether or not Pynchon has been publishing books under pseudonyms ...

1) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/12/bo...ttom-well&_r=0

2) http://harpers.org/blog/2015/09/the-...op-the-fiction

That Pynchon's a sneaky one. I wouldn't put it past him.

Interesting re: pynchon

I wonder if we'll ever find out who Evan Dara is too

I read this in what must have been close to 2002, and I recall not much other than liking it. It's on the shelves somewhere.

I'm also loving the Flavia De Luce books. Thanks whoever mentioned them!

For a while now I've been looking forward to reading Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey, narrated by Jefferson Mays, the second book in the Expanse series, and the book did not disappoint. So far this series is basically the Platonic Ideal of what military scifi should be. Excellent all around. I'm probably going to go through the rest of the series during the next few weeks.

I just finished nemesis games. I enjoyed it.

I also read the 3 short stories that go with the novels. I enjoyed those as well.

I finished Station 11. It was fantastic. I've really enjoyed the books I've read recently (Ready Player One, The Martian, Just Mercy) and I think Station 11 is my favorite of the summer.

The Expanse has been fun. I haven't read the short stories yet. I'll try to do it this month.

Does anyone know if it's possible to search on Amazon for specific deals on eBooks by category? I'm looking for some good cardiology and nephrology textbooks, but most good ones are 150 - 200$, so I'm wondering if anyone knows if they have sales for these kind of books? I found Digital deals --> Kindle eBooks, but I can't search by category.

Your best bet is actual physical copies of textbooks. Once the latest edition comes out, previous ones sell for a pittance.

Just in the finishing process of writing an essay on Beckett's Molloy. I would like to mention that I think one of the best things about writing about something you have read, is that it really does improve your understanding of the text. Having just drafted and re-drafted and re-drafted until me head exploded on Beckett's characterisation - I feel that I have just understood some measure of the brilliance of the work.

To summarise my experience of the text: the more I read it, the more deeply I want to read it which in turn makes me more deeply admire the work. It is really quite an affective text.

Does anyone else feel the same way about Beckett? Or about the relationship between writing about a text and reading the text?

Listening to 'The Martian' recently, about halfway through. It's pretty awful tbh, I can see how it could be a good movie though.

This. If you get one that's only a year or two old hardly anything will have changed. Enjoy your light reading.