what are you reading?

[kkimura]

I can't recommend The Reckoning. For me, JG's ending was just way out of left field. The Guardians didn't completely alter my views about capital punishment but JG forced me think about the process and its implications in an entirely different way.

If I may, try “A Painted House”. No lawyers or courtrooms.

 

[Oldscruggsfan]

If I may, try “A Painted House”. No lawyers or courtrooms.

I unintentionally omitted that one. It’s also a keeper.

 

[Patty]

I look forward to hear what you think of Theatre. Ciao!

Loved it, Yukio! The actress who’s the principal character can’t seem to stop playing some kind of part—her life isn’t grounded in reality. Maugham must’ve been a misogynist. He seldom creates sympathetic women characters, though I admit he writes brilliantly about them. He often writes very brutally about lopsided love affairs, in which one (whether man or woman) is made to suffer agonies of unrequited love.

I’m now reading another period piece, a comic novel in the form of a fictitious memoir, The Autobiography of a Cad (1931), by A. G. MacDonell. But the humor wears off because the narrator is such an a**hole. It’s a bore and I may not finish it.

Just downloaded one my husband liked, A Man Called Ove. Eager to read it.

 

[Yukio]

Loved it, Yukio! The actress who’s the principal character can’t seem to stop playing some kind of part—her life isn’t grounded in reality. Maugham must’ve been a misogynist. He seldom creates sympathetic women characters, though I admit he writes brilliantly about them. He often writes very brutally about lopsided love affairs, in which one (whether man or woman) is made to suffer agonies of unrequited love.

I’m now reading another period piece, a comic novel in the form of a fictitious memoir, The Autobiography of a Cad (1931), by A. G. MacDonell. But the humor wears off because the narrator is such an a**hole. It’s a bore and I may not finish it.

Just downloaded one my husband liked, A Man Called Ove. Eager to read it.

I am glad that you liked reading 'Theatre', @Patty. I really got caught up in that book much more than I expected.

I can see how the comedy could wear thin in something like an 'autobiography of a cad'.

 

[bbkobabe]

Finished Water for Elephants... It's a love story, of course... and the heroine is NOT who you expect from the flash-forward opening chapter. There are a ton of sex scenes so certainly not for my 14 YO students, but it's a charming story with an ending that is both tear jerking and hard to believe at the same time. Worth the time if you can handle the sex and violence, of which there is plenty, so hop this train and give it a ride.

Started a re-read of the YA whodunnit mystery The Westing Game. I'd read it to a previous class and recall that it didn't go over all that well... but I couldn't remember why... now I remember the reason:

The structure of the book resembles the game Clue. There are a ton of active named characters, and the story is so interwoven it's almost hard to follow. If you are reading it to yourself, you can always go "Huh? What just happened?" and reread that part. Harder to do when reading out loud.

When I read it last time, I had to make a chart on the chalkboard to keep track of the action. Remember the CLUE scorecards, with a matrix of of characters and possible weapons that you checked off as you discovered the clues? It looked a lot like that: Character, apartment number, knowledge level and so on. It was the only way the students could keep up with the unfolding tale.

Anyhow, it's an older book (Ellen Raskin, 1978) but it has held up well and avoids dated stereotypes. I honestly can't remember how it ends, so I'm enjoying it all over again.

But I probably won't be reading it to my class.

 

[mikelz777]

Finished An Innocent Client by Scott Pratt. This is the 2nd or 3rd book I've read in the Joe Dillard/legal thriller series and I've enjoyed them. The author has an easy to read style and doesn't take disappointing plot shortcuts. I'll definitely come back for more of this series.

 

[Yukio]

I, too, just finished a YA title: "Dead End In Norvelt" by Jack Gantos.

I picked it up because it looked fun and Dave Barry was quoted on the cover saying it was 'brilliant' or some such. I later learned that it won the Newberry Medal for the year that it was published.

The story opens with the main character, a twelve year old boy, accidentally discharging a round from an old rifle. He was playing with the gun and pulled the trigger, only to have the gun go off, sending the bullet in the direction of a distant drive-in movie screen. I think the author intended this scene to be humorous? It kind of made me upset. It would have been easy for the author to insert a few lines about proper gun safety into the story, because the father later gives the kid a 'lecture' on the matter, but the advice in the lecture was rather weak. The character of the father could have easily said that one must treat all guns as if they are loaded, and that one must open up the action and visually check that the chamber and magazine are empty before you do anything with it.

So I guess I found it a little disturbing. It even ends up becoming a murder mystery but doesn't seem to make a very strong case for murder being wrong and morally abhorrent. Strange.

If you just focus on the quirky parts, I guess you could consider it a fun book. But there were a lot of things in it that made it lose it's charm for me. I don't know how some books deserve the praise that they receive.

 

[joo]

I, too, just finished a YA title: "Dead End In Norvelt" by Jack Gantos.

I picked it up because it looked fun and Dave Barry was quoted on the cover saying it was 'brilliant' or some such. I later learned that it won the Newberry Medal for the year that it was published.

The story opens with the main character, a twelve year old boy, accidentally discharging a round from an old rifle. He was playing with the gun and pulled the trigger, only to have the gun go off, sending the bullet in the direction of a distant drive-in movie screen. I think the author intended this scene to be humorous? It kind of made me upset. It would have been easy for the author to insert a few lines about proper gun safety into the story, because the father later gives the kid a 'lecture' on the matter, but the advice in the lecture was rather weak. The character of the father could have easily said that one must treat all guns as if they are loaded, and that one must open up the action and visually check that the chamber and magazine are empty before you do anything with it.

So I guess I found it a little disturbing. It even ends up becoming a murder mystery which doesn't seem to make a very strong case for murder being wrong and morally abhorrent. Strange.

If you just focus on the quirky parts, I guess you could consider it a fun book. But there were a lot of things in it that made it lose it's charm for me. I don't know how some books deserve the praise that they receive.

wow. this is really helpful review on this book.
I ordered this book for my children library because his Joey Pigza series was considered superb by an English teacher at the school. The series (2 of the books in the series, if I am not mistaken) was also award-winning.
I try to find out as much as I can about books that I order for the library, but there are details you can't know unless you have read the book.
The few older students (age 11-12) who have read this book told me it was "funny, strange but good".
I will give this book a read soon.

 

[joo]

Finished Water for Elephants... It's a love story, of course... and the heroine is NOT who you expect from the flash-forward opening chapter. There are a ton of sex scenes so certainly not for my 14 YO students, but it's a charming story with an ending that is both tear jerking and hard to believe at the same time. Worth the time if you can handle the sex and violence, of which there is plenty, so hop this train and give it a ride.

Started a re-read of the YA whodunnit mystery The Westing Game. I'd read it to a previous class and recall that it didn't go over all that well... but I couldn't remember why... now I remember the reason:

The structure of the book resembles the game Clue. There are a ton of active named characters, and the story is so interwoven it's almost hard to follow. If you are reading it to yourself, you can always go "Huh? What just happened?" and reread that part. Harder to do when reading out loud.

When I read it last time, I had to make a chart on the chalkboard to keep track of the action. Remember the CLUE scorecards, with a matrix of of characters and possible weapons that you checked off as you discovered the clues? It looked a lot like that: Character, apartment number, knowledge level and so on. It was the only way the students could keep up with the unfolding tale.

Anyhow, it's an older book (Ellen Raskin, 1978) but it has held up well and avoids dated stereotypes. I honestly can't remember how it ends, so I'm enjoying it all over again.

But I probably won't be reading it to my class.

We have this book in our primary school library too(I am the librarian there). I tried reading it but it was a little hard to follow! Love the cover design.
Dunno about you all, but I sometimes, more than sometimes, judge books by their covers.....

Another book to pick up to read!

 

[mikelz777]

I stopped by Goodwill today and I can't seem to leave that place without picking up a few books. I think it may be some kind of sickness! I just discovered that one of the books I picked up today was part of a series. I seem to have a lot of hanging series out there with another one on the way from an online seller. So now I've read one or more books from about 4-5 different series ranging from 2 to 10+ books. When you start a series do you like to plow through and read them all or do you move to a different (non-series) book and come back to the series later? I feel like I'm getting too many dangling and feel like I should finish a few off.

 

[Steedy]

After seeing Yukio's description above (post #1359), I just finished reading 'Theatre' by W. Somerset Maugham, and really enjoyed it. Julia Lambert was a very compelling character, and I loved the depictions of English life and society in the early 20th century. Guess I'm a bit of an anglophile like that. The book wasn't available from my local public library system, so I bought a used copy online for a trifling sum, and it was well worth the price.

 

[Patty]

Finished A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman, and loved it. Plays on all the right heartstrings. Grumpy old Swedish guy works his way into the affections of one and all, despite himself.

Then read a fabulous novel, Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto. Thrilling. This is a literary novel of the first rank. Just couldn’t put it down. There’s some hair-raising suspense, but lots of music as well. A chief character is a world-famous soprano. No, not a ukulele, silly—an operatic soprano!

After that, I read a novel written in 1924, The Green Bay Tree, by Louis Bromfield (not to be confused with the play by the same name). I wish women’s studies folks would revive this. It’s quite a feminist statement.

Just started a newly translated novel, The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard, the Norwegian author of the “My Struggle” series of memoirs (which I haven’t read). No doubt it will be, as they say, strong meat!

 

[TimWilson]

So now I've read one or more books from about 4-5 different series ranging from 2 to 10+ books. When you start a series do you like to plow through and read them all or do you move to a different (non-series) book and come back to the series later? I feel like I'm getting too many dangling and feel like I should finish a few off.

Funny you should mention this! One of my favorite series, I'd somehow fallen off track, and just caught up on the four I'd missed, out of twelve. What a treat! So after being somewhat cavalier about series, I'm trying to be more diligent about following through!

The series that I just caught up on is the Incryptid series by Seanan McGuire. I've been scratching my head how to describe it, so I swiped this from the Goodreads description of the first book in the series, Discount Armageddon:

Cryptid, noun: Any creature whose existence has not yet been proven by science. See also "Monster."

Cryptozoologist, noun: Any person who thinks hunting for cryptids is a good idea. See also "idiot."

Ghoulies. Ghosties. Long-legged beasties. Things that go bump in the night...

The Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity—and humanity from them.

Enter Verity Price. Despite being trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, she'd rather dance a tango than tangle with a demon, and is spending a year in Manhattan while she pursues her career in professional ballroom dance. Sounds pretty simple, right?

It would be, if it weren't for the talking mice, the telepathic mathematicians, the asbestos supermodels, and the trained monster-hunter sent by the Price family's old enemies, the Covenant of St. George. When a Price girl meets a Covenant boy, high stakes, high heels, and a lot of collateral damage are almost guaranteed.

To complicate matters further, local cryptids are disappearing, strange lizard-men are appearing in the sewers, and someone's spreading rumors about a dragon sleeping underneath the city...

For tone, think maybe something like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, minus the vampires, with a lot more creatures, and with a family of adults rather than high school friends? And both funnier and less violent than Buffy? Maybe? LOL But in any case, a true gas for anyone who enjoys urban fantasy.

Seanan McGuire is a genuine master of the craft, holding the record for most Hugo nominations in a single year (5, in 2013), and has been nominated for the Best Series Hugo every year since it was introduced in 2017, either for this series, or her October Daye series, which is the one nominated for Best Series this year.

I'd been skipping these just for lack of time, but I recently thought I'd try one....and I wound up reading all 16 in a row! That was early summer, then number 17 just came out, and I devoured it too. (It was a split two-parter, and number 18 will be out in a couple of weeks. I'll be ALL OVER IT.) Absolutely astounding, and NOT AT ALL like the Incryptid series, which is enough of a feat in itself.

(To make it even an crazier feat, every couple of Incryptid books has a different member of the family narrating and as the central character, so they're a linked set of mini-series if you will. There are obvious things in common, but the narrators/protagonists of each are different enough that you'd never think that the same person could possibly be writing them!)

October Daye is half-human, and half-fairy, and is a sort of detective/bounty-hunter working mostly in a part of Faery that sort of dimensionally overlaps with the San Francisco Bay area (say, from Half Moon Bay up through Berkeley, but mostly in San Francisco, with some significant detours). Each of the titles comes from Shakespeare, and one of the longer-lived characters was both a contemporary (and acquaintace) of Shakespeare's, but still very much alive and youthful today. A number of fae folk are close enough to eternal that it's a HUGE deal when one of them dies, hence the narrative weight placed on our October trying to solve all these.

Again, not even vaguely like the Incryptid series, and some folks who like one don't like the other, but I love them both. The Incryptid books are lighter, but the emotional impact of the October Daye books is unlike anything I've read by anyone. They really hit hard for fantasy mysteries, but hey, good fiction is good fiction, and true in its own way, right?

The other series that I recently devoured in one go is the Wrexford and Sloane series by Andrea Penrose, a London-set Regency-era mysteries featuring a political satirist/artist (I guess you'd say a political cartoonist, except that they're paintings sold as prints?) who has to hide her identity as a woman (that would be Sloane), and a scientific dilettante of an earl (Wrexford) who find themselves solving murders with an extended set of irregulars that includes, yes, good ol' street urchins, but also shopkeepers, surgeons, scientists, and aristocrats. There are a lot of familiar ingredients for anyone who enjoys this kind of thing, with a lot of terrific twists.

One of my favorite twists is that the obvious chemistry between the two protagonists is mostly admiring, and only very, very slowly becomes romantic. The author gives carefully considered weight to the potentially catastrophic stakes in a relationship that crosses class boundaries, but also a genuinely heartwarming deference to each of the characters' desires not to mess up a friendship that they both recognize meets more of their needs than any romance possibly could, such that when the romance arrives (to nobody's eventual surprise of course), it remains secondary to the friendship and the working relationship of mutual respect. I don't see nearly enough books balancing that, but these also work really, really well as mysteries.

The first in the series is Murder on Black Swan Lane, and I can't imagine anyone reading it and not jumping on all six. The seventh, Murder at Merton Library, just came out, and while I'm on the waiting list at my local library, I haven't gotten to it yet.

Anyway, there ya go. I feel like my last few recommendations (Elmore Leonard, Randy Wayne White, and Steinbeck) are all more serious and frankly manly than most of what I actually read, so I'm glad to take a few steps to restore the balance with these.

 

[bbkobabe]

There was an author who wrote a murder mystery for every letter of the alphabet... Grafton? No thanks! My mom was a bit of an obsessive and read them all... not for me!

 

[Joyful Uke]

Finished A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman, and loved it. Plays on all the right heartstrings. Grumpy old Swedish guy works his way into the affections of one and all, despite himself.

Then read a fabulous novel, Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto. Thrilling. This is a literary novel of the first rank. Just couldn’t put it down. There’s some hair-raising suspense, but lots of music as well. A chief character is a world-famous soprano. No, not a ukulele, silly—an operatic soprano!

After that, I read a novel written in 1924, The Green Bay Tree, by Louis Bromfield (not to be confused with the play by the same name). I wish women’s studies folks would revive this. It’s quite a feminist statement.

Just started a newly translated novel, The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard, the Norwegian author of the “My Struggle” series of memoirs (which I haven’t read). No doubt it will be, as they say, strong meat!

I really like Fredrik Backman's books. I think the last one that I read was My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You I'm Sorry.
I'm not a big fiction reader but like Backman's books.

I'm currently reading a book on Bernie Madoff, (by Andrew Kirtzman).

Just finished Easy Money (by Ben McKenzie) on crypto, but I still can't explain a blockchain to anyone. LOL.

Also just finished Untold Power by Roberta Boggs Roberts which is about former First Lady Edith Wilson.

Made it about 1/2 way through The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah, which a friend had recommended. Very well written, but too depressing. I asked my friend if it gets less depressing at any point and was told no, so I stopped reading it. But I still think about it and would have finished it if it had been less depressing.

Also recently read Twilight of the Gods, (Steven Hyden).

 

[mikelz777]

Funny you should mention this! One of my favorite series, I'd somehow fallen off track, and just caught up on the four I'd missed, out of twelve. What a treat! So after being somewhat cavalier about series, I'm trying to be more diligent about following through!

The series that I just caught up on is the Incryptid series by Seanan McGuire. I've been scratching my head how to describe it, so I swiped this from the Goodreads description of the first book in the series, Discount Armageddon:

Cryptid, noun: Any creature whose existence has not yet been proven by science. See also "Monster."

Cryptozoologist, noun: Any person who thinks hunting for cryptids is a good idea. See also "idiot."

Ghoulies. Ghosties. Long-legged beasties. Things that go bump in the night...

The Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity—and humanity from them.

Enter Verity Price. Despite being trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, she'd rather dance a tango than tangle with a demon, and is spending a year in Manhattan while she pursues her career in professional ballroom dance. Sounds pretty simple, right?

It would be, if it weren't for the talking mice, the telepathic mathematicians, the asbestos supermodels, and the trained monster-hunter sent by the Price family's old enemies, the Covenant of St. George. When a Price girl meets a Covenant boy, high stakes, high heels, and a lot of collateral damage are almost guaranteed.

To complicate matters further, local cryptids are disappearing, strange lizard-men are appearing in the sewers, and someone's spreading rumors about a dragon sleeping underneath the city...

For tone, think maybe something like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, minus the vampires, with a lot more creatures, and with a family of adults rather than high school friends? And both funnier and less violent than Buffy? Maybe? LOL But in any case, a true gas for anyone who enjoys urban fantasy.

Seanan McGuire is a genuine master of the craft, holding the record for most Hugo nominations in a single year (5, in 2013), and has been nominated for the Best Series Hugo every year since it was introduced in 2017, either for this series, or her October Daye series, which is the one nominated for Best Series this year.

I'd been skipping these just for lack of time, but I recently thought I'd try one....and I wound up reading all 16 in a row! That was early summer, then number 17 just came out, and I devoured it too. (It was a split two-parter, and number 18 will be out in a couple of weeks. I'll be ALL OVER IT.) Absolutely astounding, and NOT AT ALL like the Incryptid series, which is enough of a feat in itself.

(To make it even an crazier feat, every couple of Incryptid books has a different member of the family narrating and as the central character, so they're a linked set of mini-series if you will. There are obvious things in common, but the narrators/protagonists of each are different enough that you'd never think that the same person could possibly be writing them!)

October Daye is half-human, and half-fairy, and is a sort of detective/bounty-hunter working mostly in a part of Faery that sort of dimensionally overlaps with the San Francisco Bay area (say, from Half Moon Bay up through Berkeley, but mostly in San Francisco, with some significant detours). Each of the titles comes from Shakespeare, and one of the longer-lived characters was both a contemporary (and acquaintace) of Shakespeare's, but still very much alive and youthful today. A number of fae folk are close enough to eternal that it's a HUGE deal when one of them dies, hence the narrative weight placed on our October trying to solve all these.

Again, not even vaguely like the Incryptid series, and some folks who like one don't like the other, but I love them both. The Incryptid books are lighter, but the emotional impact of the October Daye books is unlike anything I've read by anyone. They really hit hard for fantasy mysteries, but hey, good fiction is good fiction, and true in its own way, right?

The other series that I recently devoured in one go is the Wrexford and Sloane series by Andrea Penrose, a London-set Regency-era mysteries featuring a political satirist/artist (I guess you'd say a political cartoonist, except that they're paintings sold as prints?) who has to hide her identity as a woman (that would be Sloane), and a scientific dilettante of an earl (Wrexford) who find themselves solving murders with an extended set of irregulars that includes, yes, good ol' street urchins, but also shopkeepers, surgeons, scientists, and aristocrats. There are a lot of familiar ingredients for anyone who enjoys this kind of thing, with a lot of terrific twists.

One of my favorite twists is that the obvious chemistry between the two protagonists is mostly admiring, and only very, very slowly becomes romantic. The author gives carefully considered weight to the potentially catastrophic stakes in a relationship that crosses class boundaries, but also a genuinely heartwarming deference to each of the characters' desires not to mess up a friendship that they both recognize meets more of their needs than any romance possibly could, such that when the romance arrives (to nobody's eventual surprise of course), it remains secondary to the friendship and the working relationship of mutual respect. I don't see nearly enough books balancing that, but these also work really, really well as mysteries.

The first in the series is Murder on Black Swan Lane, and I can't imagine anyone reading it and not jumping on all six. The seventh, Murder at Merton Library, just came out, and while I'm on the waiting list at my local library, I haven't gotten to it yet.

Anyway, there ya go. I feel like my last few recommendations (Elmore Leonard, Randy Wayne White, and Steinbeck) are all more serious and frankly manly than most of what I actually read, so I'm glad to take a few steps to restore the balance with these.

Sounds like some interesting series!

I've read the first 3 of 9 in Scott Pratt's Joe Dillard series which are legal thrillers. These are like stand-alone books with the same character so it's easier to take a break from them and come back to them so I'll continue this series between other books.

I've read the first two books of Neal Schusterman's skinjacker trilogy, Everlost and Everwild. Two children do not survive a car accident but their souls are stuck in Everlost (a shadow of the living world) where they are neither alive or dead. They soon find that they are not alone... An interesting YA trilogy!

I'm currently reading The Time Travelers, the first book in the Gideon trilogy by Linda Buckley-Archer, another YA series. Due to an experience with an experimental antigravity machine, two children fall from the 21st century into 1763 where the Tar Man steals the machine which is the only way for the children to return home. They soon meet Gideon, a thief and gentleman and get swept up into a journey to 18th century London.

I just picked up The Last Child by John Hart at a Goodwill store. It's apparently the first of two books featuring the character Johnny Merriman. The Washington Post describes it as Huck Finn channeled through Lord of the Flies. Johnny's twin sister disappears and after a year is presumed dead. Johnny has a plan to find his sister even if he has to track down every dangerous character in the county. His mission troubles the police detective who is also searching for his sister. He can't imagine how far Johnny will go to find the truth or what he will find when he gets there.

I'm really hoping this series is a good one because the premise sounds very interesting combining fantasy with vampire mythology. I bought the first book, Necroscope by Brian Lumley which currently stands at 18 books! Harry Keogh is a Necroscope, someone who can communicate with the dead and what they are telling him is horrifying. In the Balkan mountains of Rumania, vampire Thibor Ferenczy is trapped in unlife, neither dead nor living and he hungers for freedom and revenge. His human tool is Boris Dragosani part of a secret Soviet spy agency and eager to learn of the depthless evil of the vampire's mind. Ferenczy teaches Boris the skills of the necromancer which enables him to rip the secrets from the minds and bodies of the dead. Rather than work for the vampire's freedom he seeks world domination using secrets from the dead. The only thing standing in his way is Harry and to protect Harry, the dead will do anything, even rise from their graves!

I'm sure there are other series in my big pile of books but those noted above are my current priority.

 

[bbkobabe]

This book I'm re-reading now is a bit of an odd bird... I’m not going to recommend it, actually. But I'll tell you how I came to it:

I was working at a school in Northern California, a private school, and part of the school hosted an unauthorized Llamastery. It was a semi-secret training center for Tibetan ex-patriot monks. I met the Rinpoche Lama there once... he wasn't even supposed to be in the U.S. I have no idea how they smuggled him in... It was a pretty active training center. People would work on yantras and other art projects in the courtyard while listening to Alan Watts lectures on KPFA. It was a lively place.

It was an interesting place to work to be sure! You never knew what would happen next, there under the towering redwoods. An example: This group wanted to send computers to Tibet and were asking for the locals to donate their old unwanted machines. I showed up at my woodworking classroom one morning, rolled back the sliding door... and... The entire room was filled waist deep with computers. Just a typical day!

They were also trying to start a catering business, called Yellow Hat Catering, after these ginormous saffron yellow hats they wore. I only taught there one day a week, so they used my room as a prep kitchen sometimes... Always something!

So, one day I show up for work, and there is something cooking on a small BBQ in the courtyard. "What now!?!" I'm thinking. The smell of cooking food prevails and I'm wondering how I'm supposed to hold the kid's attention with these lovely smells of cooking food around us.

But it's odd that there is no one around, so I walk over to check it out… and it’s clear that this is no ordinary cookout.

The BBQ sits in the center of the remains of a sand painting. The sand has been pushed into a pile, but some remained. I knew a bit about these… it resembled one known as the Sri Yantra, and the four portals were still intact. I had briefly studied Tibetan chanting in college, so I had some practical knowledge of Tibetan religious practices. I felt drawn to the energy of the sand painting.

Something about the scene gripped me, and I followed my instincts. I went to the four portals, bowed to the four directions, and waited a bit. Then I noticed a white chalk spot about 3’ in diameter nearby. I stood on the spot and said the first thing that came to my mind:

Om Sri Maha Kali - Hum Putz Vaha!

(Venerable Maha Kali – may your will be done! Search up an image of the goddess Kali if you need a nightmare!)

I was launched into another place entirely.

I then entered into a process that lasted two weeks. I could not work, could not drive, was totally immersed in what was happening inside of me. I slept very little. My “mind” was now split into two parts, each with their own separate viewpoints. My body formed the third part, and each was distinct. I was filled with intense joy, and I cast two separate shadows in the moonlight. I underwent a Tibetan initiation ceremony. I had gained Moksha, or release, from the spell of Maya (illusion). I was a Philosophy minor in college, so I had an intellectual understanding of what was going on, fortunately, so I knew that I wasn’t going crazy. But now that it was actually happening to me, it was a whole other thing. Not just an idea…

This event formed a distinct before/after point in my life. My life began to change direction after that point…

A fellow employee showed up an hour later and was aghast at how things had been left by the event of the night before. “This thing is dangerous… we must keep the kids out of it”. He told me it was a Fire Puja that had been held there several times in the past, and he said had attended one in the past. He covered up the white spot with a wheelbarrow and cleaned up the rest before any students arrived. I told him what I had done and he gave me a curious – and visibly concerned - look.

I’m not going to write up everything that happened during the next two weeks… I have handwritten notes that I will get cleaned up someday and publish. I had many hard to explain and difficult to describe experiences. I didn’t really know how to understand all that had happened at the time.

Skip forward about 10 years. I decided to become a Waldorf teacher and entered a training program. We were given a book to study by Rudolph Steiner called Theosophy.

Steiner was a visionary, an author and lecturer who died a century ago. He is best known for creating Waldorf Education and Biodynamic agriculture. His ideas are way far out there, and exceedingly difficult to understand. Not for the faint of heart or the short on time. His books can take years to process and penetrate.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. An exact description of what I had experienced lie within the pages of this book. Everything that I had experienced was written right there on these pages. I was totally surprised to see my experience, in print, down to the last detail.

So, I’m starting it again now to see if it still resonates with me… twenty-one years later! Steiner felt that out lives carry out in distinct 7 year long phases, so maybe it’s time to revisit this book and this time of my life.

 

[TimWilson]

There was an author who wrote a murder mystery for every letter of the alphabet... Grafton? No thanks! My mom was a bit of an obsessive and read them all... not for me!

The coolest thing about that series is that each begins as the previous one ends, so that dozens of years went by for us reading, but only a couple of years for the characters.

That said, I admired this series more than enjoyed it, and gave up around G I think.

That said, I just finished #30 in Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. There were some clunkers along the way, but the last couple have been among the very best. She very self-consciously leans into genre tropes, in an affectionate way, so they're light and breezy in a way that occasionally conflicts with the subject matters inherent in murder mysteries, but still fun.

I don't think of reading 20-something books in a series as any more obsessive than watching 20-something hour-long episodes of a TV series, because that's what each book in this kind of series represents. An episode.

Figure the original seasons of, say, X-Files, or Gray's Anatomy are 22-26 episodes each. It takes me 3-4 hours to read one of this kind of book, so roughly equivalent in time to watching 3 or 4 seasons of X-Files or Gray's Anatomy.... again, over 30-something years of you were reading then at the pace she was writing them.

That's not anything close to obsessive, right? A fan of either show might say that I'd quit before the really good stuff.

Reading all of Sue's books is also roughly equivalent to the time to watch, say, any combination of a dozen James Bonds and Mission: Impossible movies (not even half of total) over a 30-something year span (Sue Grafton's timeframe). I've seen more of this movies than that, and I kinda hate James Bond. LOL (I do love the MI movies though.)

Now, binge-ing 16 October Daye books in a row, that IS obsession, but I already admitted that. LOL Best urban fantasy series ever, imo... but it still only took me maybe three weeks, reading an hour or two at night to help me fall asleep. (A lifelong insomniac, me, but hey, I get to read regularly. LOL) Well, I'm reading SOMETHING every night to fall asleep, so why not some series?

And what's three weeks in the binge-ing scheme of things? Not much, really. I'd still argue that compared to binge-ing TV or movies, watching for an hour a day for 3-4 weeks doesn't even make the cut for being that much of a fan, much less obsessed.

I should note that my reading speed picked up dramatically when I got a Kindle Paperwhite, and I'd already been pretty zippy. The combination of flat internal lighting (the "paperwhite" effect), reverse text (light text on dark background)., and, especially, being able to adjust the size of the text has made all the difference. Plus, if I nod off while reading (not exactly the goal, but not NOT the goal, either), the Kindle is far lighter than any book (heck, it's lighter than some magazines!), and I haven't been reading with the light on, so the room is dark (I get wildly out of control nightmares if there's much more than moonlight). Plus, my enjoyment and retention are higher too. It really has been transformative for me, such that 2-3 books a week, maybe a few more or less depending on what I'm reading (YA: more, lit: less), so I get to also be less obsessed about the whole process in general.

Let's call it enthusiastic.

 

[bbkobabe]

I don't think of reading 20-something books in a series as any more obsessive than watching 20-something hour-long episodes of a TV series,

I quit watching TV or any video back when I was in my twenties... that was... er... a long LONG time ago. Just don't have the time for that. I'm too busy reading!

 

[Patty]

Just started a newly translated novel, The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard, the Norwegian author of the “My Struggle” series of memoirs (which I haven’t read). No doubt it will be, as they say, strong meat!

Well, I jettisoned this one after 40 pp. Unbearably dull. Life is too short.

I quit watching TV or any video back when I was in my twenties... that was... er... a long LONG time ago. Just don't have the time for that. I'm too busy reading!

Same here. We haven’t had a TV for many years. Even when we had TVs we never watched (except for election returns and extreme weather activity) because it ate into our reading time.