What are you reading?

Worm said:
^I used to do .mp3 books while walking the dog, but I kept getting distracted and missing bits and couldn't figure out a quick and easy way to back up to where I lost concentration. It would have been nice if I created a bookmark when I was about to get distracted and could just jump back to it.:meh:
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That's why I don't do audiobooks. I can't listen and do anything else at the same time.
 
Worm said:
^I used to do .mp3 books while walking the dog, but I kept getting distracted and missing bits and couldn't figure out a quick and easy way to back up to where I lost concentration. It would have been nice if I created a bookmark when I was about to get distracted and could just jump back to it.:meh:
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That has happened to me a few times so far. One minute I'll be listening intently, and a minute later I'm deep into thought about something else and I have no idea how much narration I missed. Sometimes, I can feel my attention waning and I snap my mind back to attention.

On the bright side, I'm telling myself that forcing myself to pay attention is keeping my brain sharp. The downside is I know this old buzz-saw is rusty, dull, and bellowing smoke. But at least my mind doesn't linger on that realization for long before it skips off to wistfully consider something else.
 
Carl Sagan - Contact

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Recently saw a list of best Sci Fi books of all time - not a genre I gravitate towards - though for really no particular reason (I certainly enjoy sci-fi films and shows). Turns out I had read a number of the top novels (Dune, Brave New World, Foundation, 1984, Hitchhiker's Guide, etc) but going down a bit on the list, saw this one. Happily I have not seen the Jodi Foster film of this either so going in fresh

Was also intrigued by A Canticle for Liebowitz by the plot summary so picked up that one too
 
Walter Mosley - Little Scarlet

I'm almost certain I can count the number of books I have read twice on one hand. With so many gazillions of great books, I always feel it would be a waste of opportunity to read a book a second time. I know that is ridiculous, but the notion has an intractable hold on my decisions of what to read.

With the social unrest that has arisen from the murder of George Floyd, I felt an intense need to read books about other periods of significant social unrest. This opens just a day or two after the end of the 1965 Watts riots, smoke from burnt out buildings is hanging in the air, soldiers are patrolling the city.

This is not simply a story with social unrest as its backdrop. Though there is a mystery to be solved that has nothing to do with the social unrest, the entire novel is truly about all the American history that led to the Watts riot. The mystery part of the book is not the point at all. The point of reading this is to get in the skin of a Black LA man originally from the deep south who works primarily as a school custodian, who has assembled a family of the human throwaways of LA, and who is relentless.

I am a fan of Walter Mosley and most of his books have high ratings from me. Still, I was pleased to see that my initial impression of that was already as a 5-star masterpiece. This repeat performance was also a 5-star experience. Honestly, it was almost like reading a book for the first time, I had forgotten so much of the ebb and flow of it. Up next, this went so well I think I will definitely re-read that George Pelecanos novel set during the DC riots a few years later.
 
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If you have watched The Ring or The Grudge, there is a single, classic Japanese ghost story / folk tale that unites them both.

A-Yokai-A-Day: Oiwa (The Ghost Story of Yotsuya) | Matthew Meyer

We've made it! The final A-Yokai-A-Day painting for October 2010! For Halloween I wanted to present something special. Today I bring you the story of Japan's scariest and most famous ghost of all time! Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan, the Japanese name of this story, is by far the most popular, most well...
matthewmeyer.net matthewmeyer.net
 

Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching For James Brown and the American Soul - James McBride (2016)​



I thought about reading this for a long time, but kept having this feeling I would not enjoy it. Then I got my hands on it and the feeling continued, so I avoided it. Now that I'm halfway through, I'm neck deep in love with it.

Instead of a simple biography retelling the facts of Brown's life and music, author McBride (that's Mr "National Book Award" winner to us peons) realizes he can't tell the story of who Brown really was without telling the story of where Brown was born, the family he was born into, the times and ways of society during those times, and how his great grandfather's life laid the groundwork for what James would go on to do and how he would live.

McBride made the only right decision here. This is magnificent so far. Some highlights so far: Mick Jagger didn't like James Brown, maybe stemming from an early concert where an already dynamic & successful Brown was forced to play in the lineup immediately preceding a young Rolling Stones (who were chosen to close the show) but Brown (not even given the courtesy of a dressing room) put on such a fantastic show the Stones paled in comparison. The biopic "Get On Up" was financed by Jagger and is 40%-50% false and much of the truth is insultingly presented. Jagger owns(ed?) the rights to Brown's music. While living in NYC, Brown unofficially adopted a teenaged Al Sharpton and was very influential in young Al's life - Now I understand Sharpton's choice of hair style!!!

The older I get, the more amazed I am how different books unintentionally tie into one another and how random it is that I read book A, which influenced how I thought about book B, which also was enlightened by what I read in Book C. In this case "Kill 'Em And Leave" is book A, and several passages in it reminded me of the nonfiction book B, "Slavery By Any Other Name" which discussed how Jim Crow police laws led to racist convictions/sentencing and defacto slavery, when a teenaged Brown was sentenced to up to 16 years in prison starting at a prison for black youth, and my comprehension for the horror he must have felt at that time was enhanced by my having read book C, (Pulitzer prize winning) "The Nickel Boys" which details the horrors of such "Boys' Homes" work prisons in the south during the first 70+ years of the 20th century. I'm only halfway done and my appreciation and respect for James Brown the man is now off the charts.

There is much more great stuff in this biography. I can't wait to finish.
 
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