New! Reading Anything Thread 2.0

[chainsaw midget]

Just finished "My Best Friend's Exorcism".

It's a story about two young teenage girls in the 80s who are bets friends.  One of them from a poor lower class family, the other from a upper class family that pretty much places image above everything and doesn't believe in fun.  The upper class girl ends up getting possessed and starts doing various evil stuff while he friends does everything she can to try to save her.  However nobody believes her and the possessed girl keeps setting her up to take the fall for everything. 

it's actually a mostly fun book with some good character work.  Not as much horror as you'd expect though, and the ending just falls flat.  Rather than have some big climax and celebration, the story just slowly deflates. 

This is actually the THIRD books I've read from the author and everytime, I've enjoyed the book right up until the last few chapters were it just all seems to fall apart.The guy just can't stick the endings. 

[Alex]

Tigers in the Mud by Otto Carius: The Experiences of a German Tank Commander during the Second World War. Most of the book takes place on the Eastern Front, although after recovering from a serious injury, he does end up spending the last few weeks of the European war fighting against US forces. I've read a few books written by tankers from the war, and it is interesting to see their different opinions on the different enemies they faced. This one is one of Germany's top tank aces with over 150 kills credited to his name (although, as he refused to count any kills that were achieved when he was the tank commander rather than the gunner and quite often gave credit away for shared kills his actual total would have been much higher). I found his meeting with Himmler particularly interesting. He doesn't seem to be a nazi, but consider himself a German patriot and an anti-communist (at one point he muses that people in Eastern Europe would have been much happier and better off had the Soviets not won the war. I am not sure I agree with that as they'd have been mostly dead).

[FatFreddysCat]

The Radioactive Boy Scout by Ken Silverstein

...the true story of David Hahn, a teenage science whiz from Michigan who attempted to build a working nuclear reactor in his backyard shed for a Boy Scout project. Unsurprisingly, it didn't end well.

[FatFreddysCat]

Vagabond: A Memoir by Tim Curry

Graphic novels:
Star Wars: Dark Empire and Dark Empire II by Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy

[chainsaw midget]

Loch

It's a "young adult" novel about a kid who's nicknamed Loch due to an ... encounter at Loch ness when he was young. 

He and his sister encounter ANOTHER lake monster in America, a little baby one, and have to save it from greed rich dude who wants to have it stuffed. 

About what you'd expect, but there are some nice scenes where monsters eat people. 

[M.10rda]

I tried to start watching a 1930s Russian adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov, then paused when I noticed how briskly the 90 minute film was moving through just a couple of scenes involving just a few characters. So, I finally started reading Doestoyevski's novel. I'm 100-ish pages in and it's just barely alluding to the events that open the movie.  So I'm glad I decided to read the book first.

As w/ Crime And Punishment, Doestoyevski writes like he was getting paid by the word. He never says in a dozen what he can say in 300.  But, I don't mind it. There's some funny bits so far. These characters are less up their own bums and depressing than Raskolnikov. The father reminds me a bit of Der Orange Fuhrer... less plotwise and more in general mindless demeanor.

[Rev. Powell]

Finished "Njal's Saga." Difficult, but not as rough going as "The Tale of Genji." There's a pretty hilarious review of it here that I wish I'd written: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-njals-saga

Taking a break from the , now on to this one:



Robert Anton Wilson was a fascinating guy and one of the world's greatest bulls**tters.

[Rev. Powell]

I'm about to launch into the complete works of the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi. Wish me luck.

[Alex]

I'm about to launch into the complete works of the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi. Wish me luck.

Good luck with that one.

[Rev. Powell]

Also started a lighter read, "The Richest Man in Babylon."

[Rev. Powell]

Continuing the basic financial literacy theme:

[lester1/2jr]

I'm reading Bart Ehrman's newest one "Love Thy Stranger". He compares Jesus' ideas to people who came before him, including some other Jewish guy also named Jesus! Ultimately, he feels that Jesus' sort of moral innovation was the idea of caring about people you don't know, more or less.

[Rev. Powell]

"Gone Like a Goldfish" by Anonymous. A tiny bit uncomfortable because I know who Anonymous is and I'm not sure how much of the story is actually autobiographical. It's about the death of his kids. He says he wrote it while drunk and high.

[indianasmith]

REGIME CHANGE: INSIDE THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY OF DONALD TRUMP by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swann

  It is very difficult to write history as it happens, but I will give full props to these two NYT journalists for trying to keep their narrative as balanced and fair as their chaotic subject allows.  Interviewing dozens of White House insiders - with some of their accounts so accurate they left the President's staff scrambling to find who leaked what - they take us from the inauguration through the events of March, following the Trump administration as it dished out tariffs left and right, sought vengeance on all the President's perceived enemies, tried to defer the release and limit the fallout from the Epstein files, negotiate an end to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and cut deals left and right that seemed far more designed to line the pockets of Trump's family than to advance America's national interests.  Fans of the President will regard it as a hack-written attack piece; his more inveterate enemies will say it was too soft on his criminality and utter lack of ethics, but overall, this is a fascinating account from inside the White House of the most controversial President in American history.  Highly recommended!