I know I'm going against majority opinion, but I found Shuggie Bain so dreary that it was difficult to keep reading. And I didn't find the description of domestic violence in the second chapter or the other scenes of a woman being beaten and/or raped particularly artful. I don't think I would have finished this tale of a gender-confused Scottish lad growing up in poverty with an alcoholic mother if not for the overwhelmingly high critical regard.

The self-pity of the major characters doesn't help. Shuggie’s mother's “voice cracked with the poor me’s.” Later Shuggie “pushed big grains of dirt with his toe and started to cry again, sore grating gasps of tears, big angry self-hating poor me’s.”

But Colm Tóibín’s very rich review in Book Forum suggests I may be failing to appreciate an important novel ...

I'm still on my Robert Silverberg binge, finished Tower of Glass a few days ago, one of his very best! The Man in the Maze and The Stochastic Man are also very good.

Reading [I]Fall[I] - a biography of Robert Maxwell. Last night it won the Costa Book Award for best biography of the year. Maxwell had one of the more interesting lives of anyone who has lived and Preston is an excellent writer. Recommended.

How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens

Solid read despite the boring topic. I wish I'd read this when it came out, or even better knew about the system previously.

My Dad told me a funny story about Maxwell while I was home for Christmas. Dad's friend was running the sports desk at one of Maxwell's papers and offered my Dad a job... but Maxwell then personally rejected his application because he hadn't worked on Fleet Street before. The friend then added my Dad's middle name to his application and polished up his experience a bit... a couple of weeks later Maxwell happily approved the 'new' application.

While I'm here... any thoughts on 'Never Let Me Go'? Maybe it didn't land because I'd already seen the film but I found this incredibly dull and gave up about halfway through.

I loved it, but I read it before watching the movie and felt like the movie was a bit of a letdown. Might be one of those stories where knowing the plot takes away a lot of the enjoyment.

https://www.eapoe.org/works/essays/philcomp.htm

Thanks for bringing this up, I had no idea it existed. I was not expecting Poe to be so methodical, he seems like a writer who works from inspiration and spur of the moment puts whatever thoughts he has onto paper. There are some movie and especially TV directors I wish would read this line specifically: The wikipedia page on this is a fun read as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ph...of_Composition

Before reading Poe for Your Problems I would have thought it very odd that some of his contemporaries considered this essay a hoax, but the book talks about some of his actual hoaxes so I suppose it makes sense; I 100% believe he followed the method laid out in the essay though. Also love the bit at the end of the wikipedia article about his friend offering "charity" to publish the poem for $15 because he thought it wasn't very good.

I consider Never Let Me Go to be one of the very best novels around, but his other books haven't hit me nearly as well. I still haven't read Remains of the Day but I love the movie to death and have seen it at least 4 times so far.

Remains of the Day is far better then Never Let Me Go imo.

The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe

This was my first time reading anything by Gene Wolfe, so it was a pleasant surprise. He's an excellent writer and I've never had a world unfold as fluidly as this one before. He has an interesting writing style with chapters never longer than 10 pages, and usually closer to half that. Will definitely be finishing the other 3 books in this series and then checking out his others.

Wolfe's A Borrowed Man is well worth checking out.

I'm into The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. It's impressive as hell and whip-smart, invigorating that way after all the old sci-fi I've been blitzing thru recently.

Funny thing, it was the beautiful book design that got me to fork over $1.99 at my Goodwill for a pristine trade paperback copy. Just a beautiful book, orange and yellow with handwritten print etc. The only thing better than looking at it closed is opening it up and reading the words!

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I've always loved mysteries - I thought I had read all of the great ones but I was wrong

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I just read David Goodis's "Shoot the Piano Player"_____________it was really great - I just happened onto this guy - I didn't know him

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now I plan to read all of his stuff


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Loved both, 4* across the board. 2nd half of NLMG really picks up the first half is scene-setting.

Almost finished Box 88 by Cumming, an unconventional spy thriller. Fairly good so far.

Started The Gift by Nabokov, I think his last Russian novel. Excellent as you'd expect.

3rd Jade City book is out. I just need to finish up another 12k pages of the Wheel of Time before I can get back to that one.

Anyone read that Ken Liu series?

3 body problem i went through in a few days, really good book. i’ve had the second one (dark forest) for a couple weeks now and i’m like 100 pages in. i’m sure it’ll get better and i haven’t given up on it, but so far it’s really meh.

3 body problem is def worth it though.

May be a different Ken, but I bogged down in the 3rd, but eventually really liked it. The other Ken did the dandelion saga.

Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail, by Ezra Meeker. Ezra recounts his adventure with his young family traveling on the Oregon Trail in 1852 and also all his trials and tribulations after settling in Washington. His adventures farming in the new land are just as fascinating as his first travels. He also , in 1906-1908, returned to the Oregon trail and traveled back to St Joseph in an authentic wagon pulled by Oxen. He then traveled to Washington D.C. and met The president and pitched that the Oregon Trail needed markers and remembrance. A worth cause fully endorsed by President Roosevelt. Excellent read about a fascinating time and a fascinating character.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2954...-h/29543-h.htm

Yeah the dandelion saga, anyone try that series?

Shoot the Piano player is fine, but not loving it, about 75% done, maybe the ending is superb.

Re-Re-Reading Carry on Jeeves.
The thing I find astonishing about Wodehouse is not just the “Drop dead”
Quotes, but the absolute mastery of language that he displays in nearly every sentence.
“You would not enjoy Nietzsche sir, he is fundamentally unsound “

Rinker Buck’s [B]The Oregon Trail[B] is a modern re-run with authentic equipment and his odd brother who is a mule whisperer from Maine. Along the way the same thieves who robbed the old timers still at work in St Joe, and the same pioneer spirit and help from strangers along the road