What are you reading this week?

sr71plt said:

I rented (for a year as a vacation house) the villa in Cyprus where Lawrence Durrell wrote much of the Alexandria Quartet (my landlady was Justine from his quartet)

Click to expand...

What - what - what? Please PM me and tell me more?

I recently finished Durrell's "Justine" for the first time since ages ago and I'm halfway through "Balthazar" now, in my mission to complete the Alexandria Quartet, which is absolutely fascinating to me. I picked up a used copy of his selected travel writings and I'm snacking on that in between. -- BTW, Does anyone else explore their influences in the erotica they submit here? I've noticed that the more overtly stylistic stuff tends to get less attention from my readers, but that's okay. My latest story ("Love is a Kind of Madness") is stylistically Durrell's "Justine" with a narrative inspired by Louÿs' "The Woman and the Puppet" and was great fun to write.

Just finished enjoying "As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" and "A Moment of War" by Laurie Lee. He was an english writer who left home in England in 1934 and went to London, then decides to go to Spain where he walks the country, before being caught up in the Spanish Civil War. "As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" is his story of his travels around Spain and it's a really good look at the country just before the outbreak of the Civil War.

In "A Moment of War", he describes his joining the Republicans after the outbreak of the Civil War and fighting with them.

Voboy said:

Rereading Bernard Fall's "Hell in a Very Small Place." I've read it several times; the man was a prophet in all his books, but this one? Knowing the outcome of the siege, you read about the French optimism and efforts and just shake your head in sorrow.

Saddest book I've ever read.

Click to expand...

Isn't it. I lifted that one a while ago and also read "Street Without Joy" at the same time. It's interesting talking to my vietnamese granddad about the French colonial period and what happened - he has his own perspective on all of that.

"Devil's Guard" by Robert Elford is also one I've always found fascinating. I have an old and battered copy I lifted from my granddad years ago - I was a bloodthirsty child, I admit it - and I found it fascinating. Both my granddads said it was BS but it's sure an interesting book.

I have been searching for my copy of "Friday" by RAH for my first summer book. I can't seem to find it, but I found "Darker Than Amber" by John D. MacDonald. Travis McGee awaits.

ChloeTzang said:

Love Eric Nylund. He's written a few Halo novels which I don't enjoy that much but the Mortal Coil series are great if you like YA fantasy. Mortal Coils and All That Lives Must Die are books 1 and 2 in a proposed 5 book series.

Click to expand...

Big fan of this series. I'd recommend them to urban fantasy fans even if you don't like YA fantasy. Interesting setting and characters (with some nice guess-the-mythological-figure games) that he does fun things with.

Shame that the series got stuck in limbo, though I'd recommend others trying the first book out even with that: Omit its last few chapters, and it would have worked as a standalone.

Never really got into his other books, though. I rated these two as borderline 5 stars, while the best his other books got were a borderline 3 stars (though, to be fair, my rating system is pretty harsh ).

Valint said:

Big fan of this series. I'd recommend them to urban fantasy fans even if you don't like YA fantasy. Interesting setting and characters (with some nice guess-the-mythological-figure games) that he does fun things with.

Shame that the series got stuck in limbo, though I'd recommend others trying the first book out even with that: Omit its last few chapters, and it would have worked as a standalone.

Never really got into his other books, though. I rated these two as borderline 5 stars, while the best his other books got were a borderline 3 stars (though, to be fair, my rating system is pretty harsh ).

Click to expand...

Yes, borderline 5 stars. I think part of his issue with the publisher over the series was the target market. He inclined to urban fantasy and I think the publishers were pushing YA and they didn't agree and won't relinquish the rights so he can go elsewhere. It is a shame it's stuck.

And today's relaxing read is "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" followed by "Sin City"by Ralph Shaw. "Sin City" looks fascinating - Shanghai in the 1930's, a real-life memoir by an english journalist who lived and worked there

ChloeTzang said:

And today's relaxing read is "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" followed by "Sin City"by Ralph Shaw. "Sin City" looks fascinating - Shanghai in the 1930's, a real-life memoir by an english journalist who lived and worked there

Click to expand...

You have an interestingly eclectic taste in books. Have you considered putting up your reading list on Goodreads?

Valint said:

You have an interestingly eclectic taste in books. Have you considered putting up your reading list on Goodreads?

Click to expand...

I just signed up on Goodreads. I should look at doing that.

Write Naked:A Bestseller's Secrets to Writing Romance & Navigating the Path to Succes by Jennifer Probst. - found some interesting insights into the writing process here but it is also heavily autobiographical. It's funny and well written, so easy to read. The best was probably the honest personal experience, there's not a lot about writing romance in here at all. I won't say it's going to be on my bookshelf (I borrowed it from the library) but it did give me some good insights.

Probably the best was her reference to Michael Ventura's essay, "The Talent of the Room" which she quotes in full and seeing as it's been published across the internet, I've pasted in a few excerpts here - and here's a link to the essay if you're interested in reading in full.

“The only thing you really need,” I tell these people, “is the talent of the room. Unless you have that, your other talents are worthless.”

Writing is something you do alone in a room. Copy that sentence and put it on your wall because there’s no way to exaggerate or overemphasize this fact. It’s the most important thing to remember if you want to be a writer. Writing is something you do alone in a room.

Before any issues of style, content or form can be addressed, the fundamental questions are: How long can you stay in that room? How many hours a day? How do you behave in that room? How often can you go back to it? How much fear (and, for that matter, how much elation) can you endure by yourself? How many years — how many years — can you remain alone in a room?

and...

Remember, even if you’re financially successful at writing, and even if success comes early, you still have to spend the rest of your life in that room. Money and recognition make many things easier, but they don’t change the basic conditions of writing. You may furnish the room better, but you still have to enter it alone and stay there until something happens.

That really resonated with me because I think we all feel the truth in that. When you write, you write alone. It's only yourself and the words and the story, nothing else, and you just need to sit there and write. By yourself. Alone. For as long as it takes.... The book was worth it to me, just for that one insight.

Shanghai Grand: Forbidden Love, Intrigue, and Decadence in Old China by Taras Grescoe

The true story of a British aristocrat, an American flapper, and a Chinese poet who found themselves trapped in an unlikely love triangle amid the decadence of Jazz Age Shanghai.

On the eve of WWII, the foreign-controlled port of Shanghai was the rendezvous for the twentieth century’s most outlandish adventurers, all under the watchful eye of the fabulously wealthy Sir Victor Sassoon.

Emily “Mickey” Hahn was a legendary New Yorker journalist whose vivid writing played a crucial role in opening Western eyes to the realities of life in China.

At the height of the Depression, Hahn arrives in Shanghai after a disappointing affair with an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter, convinced she would never love again. After checking in to Sassoon’s glamorous Cathay Hotel, Hahn is absorbed into the social swirl of the expats drawn to pre-war China, among them Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Harold Acton, and a colorful gangster named Morris “Two-Gun” Cohen. But when she meets Zau Sinmay, a Chinese poet from an illustrious family, she discovers the real Shanghai through his eyes: the city of rich colonials, triple agents, opium smokers, displaced Chinese peasants, and increasingly desperate White Russian and Jewish refugees―a place her innate curiosity will lead her to explore firsthand. Danger lurks on the horizon, though, as the brutal Japanese occupation destroys the seductive world of pre-war Shanghai, paving the way for Mao Tse-tung’s Communists rise to power.

You Know You Want This by Kristen Roupenian. Dark, funny, and some of the stories hit very close to home.

The Undead and Theology - Kim Paffenroth and John Morehead

Just finished The Thief and the Dogs by Naguib Mahfouz.

Still reading Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

Just started reading Hunting Season by Andrea Camilleri

Just finished Sarah Gailey's "Reynard is coming" and Chuck Wendig's "Blackbirds", and rereading Stjepan Šejić's "Sunstone".

Sunstone: graphic novel (aka "comic") about two women who meet online and get into BDSM play, then things get complicated as it turns into a relationship. Really love this one - the visuals are great, but also it's well written, funny and touching. If I wanted to explain BDSM to somebody, I would give them this story.

Blackbirds: by touching people, Miriam can see how they're going to die. This has made her cynical, to say the least - every time she tries to save somebody from an untimely death, she just ends up making it happen. But then she finds somebody she likes, and wants to save him - is there any way to work around the rules of her visions?

I liked this one, read it in two sittings, and at some point I'll have to go hunt down the other books in the series. While it has a self-contained arc, it definitely feels like the opening to a longer story.

Reynard is Coming: one of those short stories that takes something utterly commonplace and makes it magical and creepy.

That time that you were sitting at your desk and you looked at the clock and were shocked to find that three hours had passed -- where did the time go?

Don’t be foolish. You know exactly where it went. Reynard has it.

Reynard took it.

Click to expand...

Just finished reading "All Woman and Springtime" by Brandon Jones. Started last night and didn't stop until I finished. It's riveting.

I really do recommend reading this, although it's not something that'll leave you feeling all happy and smiley. The author paints a vivid picture of first love, betrayal and the loss of everything in a society where even dust on a picture can get you sent to the prison camps for "re-education", and where individual thought is discouraged. Two girls in a North Korean orphanage, are abducted, moved across the border to the South, sold into the sex trade, and eventually shipped to Seattle.

It's gritty, very moving, leaves you horrified at times at the callousness of those working in the criminal underworld of sex slavery, but also a rather moving ending. I have no idea how how the author researched all the details, but you don't ever get that feeling that something's been made up from thin air. The entire book reeks of a rather painful reality. For all that, it's really well written.

My physical book is J.K. Rowling's Ickybog, and my ebook is Allyson K. Abbott's Last Call, part of the Mack's Bar mystery series wherein the main character has profound synesthesia which I had never heard of but am finding incredibly fascinating.

John Grisham's The Rooster Bar





and


John Burdett's Bangkok Tattoo

It’s Christmas!

I like murder mysteries because I like to pit myself against the author and try to solve the case before the end of the book. Although the plot in some stories is so convoluted Hercule Poirot couldn’t solve them. Because of the time of year I’ve just read 19th Christmas by Paetro/Patterson and now on with 20th Victim by the same writers.

KeithD said:

....John Burdett's Bangkok Tattoo

Click to expand...

I love John Burdett's Bangkok books. I have them all.... read the first one, and after that I couldn't stop. Had to work my way thru the series.

ChloeTzang said:

I love John Burdett's Bangkok books. I have them all.... read the first one, and after that I couldn't stop. Had to work my way thru the series.

Click to expand...

I pick one up when I want to relive my "Bangkok period."

There are too many interruptions these days to concentrate on long reads. Or bear anything depressing. So light and fluffy short stories it is!

At the moment I'm enjoying B.J. Novak's collection of tiny stories One More Thing. Great fun.

And Alan Doyle's All Together Now was under the tree. For a musician (of Great Big Sea fame), the lad can tell a tale. Most Newfoundlanders can. It's genetic.

Not been reading a ton because I have ben writing. Re reading Time enough for Love by RAH as it was .99 Cents on Kindle.

Reading this week

I just finished "The Silver Witch" a Ki-Gor adventure. The best of the Tarzan clones, he was published in "Jungle Stories" magazine, the last hero pulp to go out of business in 1954. Ki-Gor lives in a fantasy Africa with his friends Masai warrior Tembu George and Pygmy, N'egesso as well as his wife, Helene. While Ki-Gor may be an imitation of Tarzan, Helene is NO jane. Flame-haired, athletic, and beautiful, she was often skinny-dipping with her mate. She was a tigress, never meekly accepting her fate even when she was captured by slavers, crazed queens, or strange cults. Quite often she ended up naked. In any event ...
My review of “The Silver Witch” This is my second favorite Ki-Gor tale. This one really delivers! After a chapter that serves as prologue, it begins with Helene skinny dipping with Ki-Gor and ends with a massive amount of blood and guts featuring almost nonstop action! The idyllic swimming session is interrupted by the arrival of Timbu George and N’egesso quickly followed by the arrival of some of the undead minions of the Silver Witch. Reading carefully it is clear that Helene took off her leopard-skin bikini but it is not so clear that she put it on once the action starts, her clothing is somewhere off in the distance — but she couldn’t be spending this entire adventure in the buff, could she? In front of Ki-Gor’s friends? Anyway, the four soon travel to the Silver Witch’s odd kingdom. The head of this dissolute and decaying empire is impossibly old and seemingly immortal. She is beautiful and glowing silver everywhere. She attempts to seduce Ki-Gor who gives into momentary weakness and kisses her deeply. Helene is sent off to the slave pens along with N’egesso. Ki-Gor is put into an impossible situation in order to preserve the life of Helene, whose contaminated body is already beginning to turn silver! Will Ki-Gor and his friends overcome incredible odds to save the day and bring about the downfall of the sensuous but deadly Silver Witch? Is there any doubt?
Ki-Gor, Tembu George, and N’egesso really fight as a team in this one and all take their licks. Naturally, there is a thug with designs on Helene’s choice anatomy. She takes a licking in this one as well from a lash across her back from the cruel and scheming slave master to literally fighting for her life. I can see why almost every source cites this as one of the all-time best Ki-Gor adventures.

Reply

Half-way through 'The Secret Garden' by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I've inherited a liking for Edwardian and Fin de Siècle children's literature, especially E. Nesbit and Frances Hodgson Burnett, from my stepdaughter, so I'm reading (and re-reading) some of the classics. Whwn I'm finished this book I'm going back to 'A Little Princess', or perhaps my perennial favorite, 'The Wind In The Willows'.

I've started the Bridgerton series of books after watching the Netflix series.