Topic: Books You're Currently Reading?

I am quite interested in this, a new translation of Dante's Inferno by Lorna Goodison that resituates the language within the Jamaican Vernacular. (Read: not patois, from what I've seen/heard of it)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781800174665/dantes-inferno/

@FuriousMachine Do you think you'd be interested in the book in the post above?

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN It's definitely intriguing, but I've yet to read a single word of "The Divine Comedy", so I wonder if this new re-telling (which I interpreted the blurb it to be) wouldn't simply be lost on me.
Dante's "Inferno", along with Milton's "Paradise Lost", are two works I've long wanted to read, but find too daunting, so I keep putting it off. I think the language may be too dense for me and I struggle with poetry in general, so the format is a bit of a stumbling block as well.

The Dark Hours, another Ballard/Bosch novel done and, while not quite as good as their previous outing, it was nonetheless a very solid entry in the series. I like Ballard and her unofficial partnership with Bosch and I hope they keep it up for a long time to come. I also like that Connelly wasn't afraid of making his position on COVID, the handling of it, BLM, the insurrection and all the madness that went down at the time clear, instead of shying away from it. Four stars.

Now it's straight on to the next one: Desert Star

@FuriousMachine Sorry for the belated reply, but I was pleased to see that you've added the U.S.A trilogy by John Dos Passos, to your list, and I am happy to advise about Russian Literature at a later date, when you feel like tackling one of those meaty Dostoyevskian classics! .I haven't actually read any Tolstoy ,unfortunately, so I can't help out there, but I am familiar with Dostoyevsky and a handful of other Russian authors.

I finished The Big Money the third book in the aforementioned trilogy, today, so that is Dos Passos all done and dusted. Dark and chaotic, it was a fitting conclusion to the story, I found.

Next up: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald!

The Last Kingdom is really bloody good. Never doubted it would be, but it is perhaps even better than I expected.

It kind of makes me want to revisit AC Valhalla too, but that would be a terribly stupid idea. Having played it though, it really helps the mind wander to visualise the different towns and locations in much better detail and really get a feel of how the Danish controlled three quarters of England functioned back then (even more so than the actual Last Kingdom adaption, I feel) and also how the crumbling remnants of the Romans were kind of just a backdrop as no one had any idea how to recreate any of it or even maintain anything that was left 😅

It's such a fascinating era

I've recently finished 'Lost in a Good Game' by Pete Etchells. I really enjoyed this, I never expected to be moved by a book asking the question "Why do we play video games?".

Fullmetal Alchemist: Fullmetal edition volume 13 was excellent. I now have all 18 volumes but still to get the art book and anniversary book, which is the same format as the Fullmetal editions.

Now I'm onto The Fall of Hyperion. Plenty sci-fi & fantasy books to get through. I've picked up my first P.K. Dick novel (The Man in the High Castle) so looking forward to that, when I get to it.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN No worries I'm not too far off for setting up a prioritised reading order of the next 10-20 novels I want to read from my to-read list, so I will put at least one of the "American greats" on there. I'm leaning towards either Gatsby or "Of Mice and Men". Maybe both, seeing as Gatsby is quite short, if memory serves.

@Ravix Happy to hear it, it is also on my reading list. Those damned Danes... mad, mindless brutes... the Norwegian Vikings, though, fine class of people, just ask the Scots (sure, there were some... hmm... misunderstandings... along the way, but these things happen to the best of us).

@MightyDemon82 Added Etchells. Sounds intriguing! "The Fall of Hyperion" is quite good, but not the best in the cantos, I think. The third one, "Endymion", really clicked with my and was easily my favourite in the series.

@FuriousMachine You will never take back Orkney, or the powerhouse that is Mann and the Isles, you swine. For he who controls Mann, controls the world 😅

But in the end I guess everyone ended up f***ing and marrying everyone else anyway, and everyone is related, so it doesn't really matter that you got swiftly booted out of power by the mid 1200s 😛 and God only knows the complexities to follow haha. But I do love that those nutcase modern Brits think of themselves as this weird specific race that isn't at all a mix of Celt, Germanic, Viking, French etc etc and on and on it went forever and ever and suddenly people are all threatened like we ever had this default set identity to start with 😅 you'd have to go back a long way to find anything remotely native

What kind of history did/do they teach in Norway? Does it lean heavily into 'Vikings'? Or are only those that returned to Norway relevant, because those that settled became a part of the history of where they settled more than the history of where they were from initially.

I guess kind of how American history was Native American, until Europe popped in, and then at some point all that just became whatever the f*** America thinks it is now. But we in Europe don't really care about the fact it was a bunch of Europeans that went to settle there because it became this new thing and it is the settlers' history more than it is ours here.

I'm rambling, of course. Just a weird thought about how different cultures view their own history and identity. And a little sprinkle of the idiocy of modern times because I can't help myself 😅

@Ravix I promise you this: After having visited the Orkneys twice, I've decided that if I ever win the EuroJackpot (or come into a similar amount of money), I will buy a nice plot of land and a house there and thus take back at least a little piece of it

It's way too far back for me to remember exactly what we were taught of the Vikings when I was in school, but it was never a heavy focus on the era. We were taught about the period in general, Leiv Eriksson was a big thing. the rather brutal introduction of Christianity, local battles, the most famous jarls and maybe a trip to the Viking ship museum in Oslo (though I'm not sure if that was for school or not). That was pretty much it, I think. The period was also for the most part taught from a Scandinavian perspective, rather than strictly Norwegian, and there wasn't all that much about the settlements in Britain. I think I learned more about the Vikings travelling around Scotland than I did in school
I have no idea how it is taught today.

@FuriousMachine It is quite short, just under two hundred pages. Good luck with it, if you do choose to read it, not that it's hard to read or anything. 😃

@FuriousMachine just a little plot of land... uh, oh. That's how it always begins. A little plot of land, currently inhabited, politely asking them to leave. They refuse, which you really don't like... A church on the horizon filled with treasures. Now without treasure it's not like the priests need to keep on living anyway... What is that? Witnesses? A little too noisy for your liking with their constant screaming. A lit torch and a barricade, that will help send the message.

Next thing you know you're on a ship to the mainland and you're wondering if it will still have the same thrill...

It does 😬

Honestly though, good to hear how the place resonates, and that'd be an excellent use of lottery winnings, so I wish you luck in winning for that reason, over the other more common and much less worthy dreams of a sh*** tacky new-build mansion and a place in Magaluf, Oi Oiiii.

@FuriousMachine Finished The Great Gatbsy by F. Scott Fitzgerald and loved it. Would highly recommend.

Now onto Maldoror and Poems by the self-styled Comte de Lautreamont, with the main portion of the text, 'Maldoror' ,apparently being the artist, Modigliani's favourite text while he was alive. Dark and gothic. Good times.

@Ravix Thank you. There will of course also be a winter place in Magaluf (well, maybe not Magaluf, but someplace warm).

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN Sweet, glad to hear it. It has been "slotted", meaning that it's now practically locked in place among the next 30 books I will read. I do this every now and then in order to make sure that I get a decent balance between "ooh, shiny" new titles that's caught my eye and titles that have been languishing in the deepest dark of my reading list for years. There may be other books that come and jump the line, but I'm typically quite faithful to the plan once it's laid

The Bible. REALLY good book!

Currently reading Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang.

Just finished Michael Connelly's Desert Star, yet another solid Ballard/Bosch novel. I'm glad to see that their respect and trust with each other is growing, though I'm getting increasingly worried that Harry is nearing End of Watch. This naturally injects a real sense of uncertainty of whether he'll make it through the novel or not, which is something that wasn't really a worry earlier. Smart move by Connelly. Four stars

And with that I'm ready to get stuck in on "Bosch Legacy" s3 and "Ballard" when she arrives this summer

I also read Night Surf from Stephen King's Night Shift collection, a short and somewhat empty story about a small group of survivors of "Captain Trips", the virus that wiped out pretty much everyone in "The Stand". Two stars.

Now I'm going to start N.K. Jemesin's "Broken Earth" trilogy with The Fifth Season. Jemesin is an author new to me, but I've had the series on my reading list for a long, long time, so I'm happy to finally get to it

Recently finished Erasure by Percival Everett about a black author whose books aren't black enough for his agent and publisher so, out of anger, he writes the most stereotypical, cliché ridden black book that he can, and it becomes a huge success. An excellent novel with half of it taken up by the fictional book that the main character writes, 'My Pafology', later retitled to simply '*****'. This was recently adapted as the equally excellent film American Fiction.
Also finished Stephen King's 11/22/63, the story of a teacher and writer (surprise surprise) who travels back in time in order to prevent the JFK assassination. Typical pulpy fun you'd expect from King, this is an easy read with a fantastic take on time travel and its limitations however I did tire of the constant boomer memberberries and descriptions of how much cheaper things used to be. This does have a great ending though, something that King usually struggles with.

I'm currently reading Will Self's book of short stories Liver and James Ellroy's hardboiled crime thriller The Black Dahlia.

@LimeGreenLegend The Black Dahlia's pretty good. Do you plan on reading the entire quartet?
Looking forward to reading more Everett after having read James recently, so Erasure is on my list. Been holding off watching the adaptation until I've read it.

@FuriousMachine I do, and I'm really enjoying the first half dozen chapters. Erasure is the only Everett I've read, and I did so on the strength of the film. The two are very different but complimentary. I'll have to check out James next.