What are you reading at the moment?

[Tabithablack]

Eyes of Darkness. A horror novel written by Dean Koontz, but years ago and under his alt name of Leigh Nicols. I found an original "Leigh" version at a used bookstore last week.

 

[KeithD]

The Best American Mystery Stories: 2018, edited by Louise Penny

Lit It Bleed, Ian Rankin

 

[ChloeTzang]

Tom Kratman - “Carnifex”
Hunter S Thompson - “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (thx to MS Tarot)
Anais Nin - “Delta of Venus”
Georgette Heyer - “The Corinthian”

 

[Bramblethorn]

Before that, Ben Aaronovitch's "Lies Sleeping", the latest addition to his "Rivers of London" series.

He has a more recent novella, "The October Man". Set in Germany, with a different narrator, though I found the voice very similar to Peter Grant.

He's also been doing a bunch of RoL graphic novels, which I think is part of why the main series has been slow of late. They're fine, mostly a bit lighter-hearted than the main novels.

 

[Maggie118]

I'm currently reading...

The Anatomy of Dreams by Chloe Benjamin

 

[BeautifulBlueSky218]

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

 

[JJonah]

On Desperate Ground by Hampton Sides.

It's a good popular history of the Chosin debacle, though it tends to gloss over unit movements a bit too readily for my liking.

 

[UsuallyPresent]

Rereading FinalStand’s "Life as a New Hire" here on Lit. Seeeeecret societies, hyperactive Fates, unlikely coincidences, and other fun. Writing gets messy in places, but a very fun story nonetheless.

 

[MsLead]

Circe....a gift

 

[eroticstoryspinner]

I'm recovering from a (minor) medical procedure, so I'm doing a bit of comfort reading. Cedar Sanderson's "The God's Wolfling" (YA, but good).

I was just talking to Cedar yesterday. She is doing the cover for a SF novel I am trying to finish. She is going to be publishing a lot in 2020/ Wonderful lady and a great writer and artist to boot.

 

[eroticstoryspinner]

I usually have several at once, Jennifer Estep, Protect the Prince; Peter Grant, A River of Horns; Nathan Lowell, Suicide Run; Ilona Andrews, Sweep With Me (free weekly serial on the Innkeeper series) . Starting The Pioneers by David McCullough Next week going to jump into Gunpowder and Embers by John Ringo, Kazy Ezell, and Christopher Smith

 

[wickedangeleyes]

Sin and Lightning

 

[Porkwarrior]

Wisconsin Supper Clubs: An Old Fashioned Experience
Ron Faoila

 

[ElectricBlue]

Janis

A biography of Janis Joplin. I didn't know much about her, except being a member of rock and roll's dead at twenty-seven club. I probably should go buy some of her albums.

 

[SamScribble]

How Fiction Works - James Woods

I thought I had better find out.

 

[MsLead]

An alanon book.... eye opening!

 

[SimonDoom]

How Fiction Works - James Woods

I thought I had better find out.

What a coincidence! I started reading this book this evening as well, and I hadn't noticed your post until I pulled up this thread. I'm reading the section on narration right now. Next time I write I think I will do so more conscious of my intrusiveness in the narration as an author.

 

[trysail]

"...The big Wall Street firms— Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and others— had the same goal as any manufacturing business: to pay as little as possible for raw material (home loans) and charge as much as possible for their end product (mortgage bonds). The price of the end product was driven by the ratings assigned to it by the models used by Moody's and S&P. The inner workings of these models were, officially, a secret: Moody's and S&P claimed they were impossible to game. But everyone on Wall Street knew that the people who ran the models were ripe for exploitation. 'Guys who can't get a job on Wall Street get a job at Moody's,' as one Goldman Sachs trader-turned-hedge fund manager put it. Inside the rating agency there was another hierarchy, even less flattering to the subprime mortgage bond raters. 'At the ratings agencies the corporate credit people are the least bad,' says a quant who engineered mortgage bonds for Morgan Stanley. 'Next are the prime mortgage people. Then you have the asset-backed people, who are basically like brain-dead.' Wall Street bond trading desks, staffed by people making seven figures a year, set out to coax from the brain-dead guys making high five figures the highest possible ratings for the worst possible loans. They performed the task with Ivy League thoroughness and efficiency. They quickly figured out, for instance, that the people at Moody's and S&P didn't actually evaluate the individual home loans, or so much as look at them. All they and their models saw, and evaluated, were the general characteristics of loan pools..."​

-Michael Lewis
The Big Short
New York, N.Y. 2010.​

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I saw it up on the library's shelf and thought that it would be instructive and a good idea (on the 10th anniversary of the "Great Recession") to re-read Michael Lewis' The Big Short.

It is beyond mind-boggling to see just how stupid and/or dishonest people can be when part of an organization/tribe/mob/group. I find it nearly impossible to believe that anybody could be so gullible as to think it possible to magically transform BBB credits into AAA credits. Nobody was thinking. Nobody was reading the fine print. It's a story (and a lesson) for the ages.

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[KeithD]

Ian Rankin, Black and Blue

WEB Griffin, The Captains: Brotherhood of War

Louise Penny, ed., The Best American Mystery Stories: 2018

 

[SimonDoom]

Still reading James Wood's How Fiction Works, and I'm starting Rick Atkinson's The British Are Coming, the first of his three-volume series on the American Revolutionary War.

 

[Misshotndeep]

The book is silk; Philippa Scott

It the history of silk and how it affected trade and moved the world forward culturally. It has lots of pretty pictures and wonderful historical facts.

 

[Scareltt]

Untrue?

I just started Untrue by Wednesday Martin. Has anyone else read it?

https://i1.wp.com/thefuriousgazelle.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/untrue-wednesday-martin-cover.jpg?w=331&ssl=1

 

[ChloeTzang]

Collette - The Claudine Novels
- Claudine at School
- Claudine in Paris
- Claudine Married
- Claudine and Annie

 

[trysail]

"...hove-to outside the Tahitian reef awaiting the daylight visibility necessary to safely follow the entrance passage..."​

-James S. Rockefeller, Jr.
Wayfarer: A Memoir
Yarmouth, Maine 2018.​

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Knowing my sailing background, a friend lent this book to me thinking I'd enjoy it. You can guess from the author's recognizable patronym that he was never in danger of missing any meals. Born in 1924, a member of the "poor" side of the family (i.e., a descendant of William, rather than John D.), he had a privileged childhood. After service as a blister gunner in the Army Air Corps during WWII, he was at loose ends until he purchased Mandalay with the intent of sailing her to the Pacific. Along the way, he has an intense relationship with well-known children's book author, Margaret Wise Brown (who dies prematurely), fathers an illegitimate son with a Tahitian woman, marries the wife of Thor Heyerdahl, fathers a couple more children, buries his wife, takes up flying and marries again, eventually settling in coastal Maine.

The book is mainly self-indulgent, boring, and I don't recommend it to anyone except voyeurs and those somehow connected to the author or the subject.​

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[SimonDoom]

Just finished Wood's How Fiction Works.

Now it's on to some fiction (Elizabeth George, The Punishment She Deserves) and nonfiction (Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming).