Forgot to mention - almost done with William Hogeland’s The Hamilton Scheme. It’s a history of the Revolutionary War-era but centered around Alexander Hamilton, high finance, and the class war surrounding America’s move to become an imperial power, of which public debt played an important part.

Hogeland is such a good writer that he delivers without ever losing the historical angle and is good about pointing out every self-flagellating slave owning rapist that graces its pages - spoiler, these are the founding fathers, so there are a lot.

Elephant in the room - I’m not sure if Hogeland was necessarily inspired to write his book as a correction to the popular musical, but I’m sure the association didn’t hurt getting a book deal.

Either way, I haven’t (and normally wouldn’t) read anything like this about that particular era of history before, but I give this one a high recommendation.

jimmy spako wrote: Tue Nov 19, 2024 8:31 am

horse_laminator wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2024 11:42 pm Almost at the halfway mark re-reading Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. I last read it years ago and wish I hadn't waited as long to re-read it.

Cheers – I'd somehow never heard of this and picked it up after seeing your post, sounds brilliant.

It is and I hope you enjoy it. It's a puzzle, a cycle that shouldn't be rushed and most Wolfe fans agree it demands a reread. The Alzabo Soup podcast takes Wolfe's work chapter by chapter and is a useful companion but some find the two hosts annoying - I'm ok with them as they really know the text even if they usually waffle on in the first ten minutes of each podast before getting to the main discussion.

zircona1 wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2024 10:52 am Infinite Jest

It was $1 at the library. I've never read it, it's not too late to make a New Years' Resolution is it?

Hey, I finally finished this. It took a while, I'm a slow reader. Overall I'd say it was worth it. If I ever read it again, I'm keeping a third bookmark with names and chronology.

Currently about halfway done reading The Future by Naomi Aldermann for the December Books and Bars meetup in the Twin Cities. It's about tech billionaires hiding out and surviving the end of times, or something. I've got a feeling plot twists are coming. I'm also slowly, slowly, slowly slogging through Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders.

On deck for a long holiday break are:

• All Fours by Miranda July (January's book club book)
• Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
• The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

germ war wrote: Mon Dec 02, 2024 5:01 pm [*]The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
[/list]

This one was tricky for me. In some ways easier than Infinite Jest because it's not a shuffled timeline strained by hundreds of footnotes, it's just vignettes which create a clear thematic focus but not an overall plot. I enjoyed the vibe and message but had to muscle through. Posthumous work is interesting because you always wonder what it would be.

zircona1 wrote: Mon Dec 02, 2024 1:29 pm

zircona1 wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2024 10:52 am Infinite Jest

It was $1 at the library. I've never read it, it's not too late to make a New Years' Resolution is it?

Hey, I finally finished this. It took a while, I'm a slow reader. Overall I'd say it was worth it. If I ever read it again, I'm keeping a third bookmark with names and chronology.

That’s cool! It’s great, even if it gets a bad rap lately. But so what, find anything else written in the last couple decades as prescient as that one

Bloodstone by Karl Edward Wagner. Supplies everything i want from heavy metal, but dont often get. It's like the book itself has B.O. I will read everything i can get my hands on by Karl Edward Wagner.

El Protoolio wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2024 1:33 pm

Gramsci wrote: Sun Oct 27, 2024 4:48 am Grinding through The Sillmarilion… Christ it’s tough. Like reading the bible but less crazy. The first third is almost unreadable. The “story” kicks from there but it’s still a hard read.

Reading it is very much like that. It is like reading a translation of an ancient text, like The Iliad and Odyssey or Livy's Roman Histories or Caesar's Gallic War reports or Greek classics. A stilted translation of a dead language.

I finished it!

Now I’m even angrier about The Rings of Power.

Other than the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the Gene Wolfe books are the only books I have read more than once. Book Of The New Sun is DENSE, as is Long Sun, and Short Sun. In New Sun when Severian is in the House Absolute there is this passage -

"The picture he was cleaning showed an armored figure standing in a desolate landscape. It had no weapon, but held a staff bearing a strange, stiff banner. The visor of this figure’s helmet was entirely of gold, without eye slits or ventilation; in its polished surface the deathly desert could be seen in reflection, and nothing more."

He is describing a picture of an Apollo astronaut on the moon next to the American flag in the world of the story's distant past. And that's one of the reasons the books demand a reread. You have to figure that out. The key is the use of the word "desolate". Some of Buzz Aldrin's first words after setting foot on the moon outside the lunar lander and viewing the landscape were "magnificent desolation".

Currently reading "Laughter In Ancient Rome" by Mary Beard.

https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/6e8 ... 107a9ee2ba

Well worth reading. Utterly bleak and maddening, but suffused with warmth.