What mainstream book are you reading now?

[AG31]

Powers of Darkness: The Lost Version of Dracula, based on Bram Stoker's Dracula, translated to Icelandic by Valdimar Asmundsson, in Iceland in 1901, but also edited and reimagined.

Are you reading it in Icelandic?

 

[MillieDynamite]

No, it's an English Translation and it is totally different, but oddly familiar, to the original story.

Are you reading it in Icelandic?

 

[ericalauren]

I’m about to start a biography of Vittoria Colonna! She was an Italian noblewoman who wrote poetry during the Renaissance.

 

[sirhugs]

A Darkness More than Night an early Michael Connelly novel. Not sure if I've read it before. Not getting that feeliung before. but Michael Connelly usually holds up to a reread.
Just ordered a copy of Hotel New Hampshire from Amazon because I'm a huge John Irving fan and can't source that one from anywhee else. I did read it back in the day, but feel the need to reread it now that my views on suicide are miore *ahem* personal. Afraid I might have to abandon it if it is too intense, but I feel compelled to try.
Also thrilled that Irving has a new novel out. Though he is past his peak, so are a lot of us. A true master can slip a few wrungs as long as they hold onto the ladder. Again, don't know what I'm going to get, but excited to find out. That one I'm hoping to get for my birthday. If not, will see if I can hold out and see about Christmas.
To digress even more, I am amazed that this year for the first time in memory, I have a surplus of birthday and Christmas ideas. Just a shortage of people to buy for me.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Read the first in the Expanse series, having watched all the TV series. Good, but a little grim and hasn't got into the politics yet, so people say I'll enjoy the next ones more.

Among our Weapons is another Rivers of London book. A lot of fun if you like them, not grim.

Sex in Elizabethan England was a great read, especially for explaining all the sex scandals that Shakespeare and colleagues were obliquely referring to.

John Buchan's Mr Standfast and The Three Hostages - sequels with Richard Hannay to The 39 Steps and Greenmantle. Brilliant reads, if obviously dated. Standfast is based on the Pilgrim's Progress and manages to be half thriller, half about acceptance of forthcoming death, in a way that isn't too sentimental not annoying for a non-Christian. Three Hostages is set in 1920, so just after WW1 and the 1918 flu, and the similarities to our political situation - a time of madness after an epidemic - are stark and it ends up being much more moving than you'd expect from a melodrama.

Recently started Neal Stephenson's Anathem, which has the problem of being very heavy. And Westward Ho!, which is dense Victorian swashbuckling but quite fun so far. Much better than the bloody Water Babies which we had to do at school - kill the lot of them!

I plan to get the Mick Herron Slow Horses books for Christmas.

 

[lc69hunter]

Re-reading "The Fountains of Paradise" by Arthur C Clarke

 

[Djmac1031]

Currently listening to the audio book version of Good Omens. Sacrilegious fun, especially as the voice cast includes David Tennant and Michael Sheen.

 

[SmilingLez]

Cyrus the Great

 

[Wonderer67]

Gods Lonely Men. An autobiography of Pete “Esso” Haynes and the Lurkers.

Really solid book about late 70s punk and essos life and philosophy in general!

 

[StillStunned]

Cyrus the Great

Over the past few years I've listened to a bunch of audiobooks about ancient history, covering everything from Egypt and Mesopotamia to Persia, Israel and the Roman Republic.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Rereading Dracula at night, trying to get in the mood to do book 2 of Written in Blood.

 

[NaughteeDragon]

Polysecure.
I don’t know if it’s main stream, but I had to wait 4 weeks for it to come off hold at the library. I’m reading it for background for a story I’m working on. Since one of the MC’s is reading it, I should probably have some idea of what he’s learning.

 

[MrPixel]

I just finished Careless People, by Sarah Wynn-Williams. It's a total conceit written by one of Mark Zuckerberg's henchmen. No surprises, they're all bad people with too much power and too much money at everyone else's expense. The author seemed to want to cast herself in the role of a white-hat. Nope.

 

[FeldGasden]

Over the past few years I've listened to a bunch of audiobooks about ancient history, covering everything from Egypt and Mesopotamia to Persia, Israel and the Roman Republic.

History is my main hobby. What are your favorite audiobooks? Have you tried podcasts? I heard that there were a few very good ones on Rome and the Byzantine Empire?