What are you reading at the moment?

[xianjiro]

I'm reading Comanche Moon currently. Finished Dead Man's Walk a couple weeks back. Plan to read McMurtry's other Lonesome Dove books in chronological order (not order written/released). I'm also watching the mini-series of each title after reading. I wasn't too big on the filmed Dead Man's Walk though. It seemed way too rushed, given the source material, it probably could have been twice as long. Some great acting in it though.

[blocho]

Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham, The Riders Come out at Night: Brutality, Corruption, and Cover-up in Oakland

This book has not yet been published. That will happen next January. I got a galley copy because one of the authors is a friend of mine.

This is a great book for anyone who wants to understand American policing in our current era or how the widespread paradigm of violent, criminal, unaccountable police departments came to be. It's crammed full of all the typical problems: brutal cops, police unions who fight accountability at every level, craven politicians, startling class and racial inequities. But it's also a story of reform. Very slow reform full of stops and starts and the occasional murder of a civilian by the police, but reform nonetheless. The book is focused on Oakland in particular, but the example is instructive for understanding the police on a national level.

[peeptoad]

I'm reading Comanche Moon currently. Finished Dead Man's Walk a couple weeks back. Plan to read McMurtry's other Lonesome Dove books in chronological order (not order written/released). I'm also watching the mini-series of each title after reading. I wasn't too big on the filmed Dead Man's Walk though. It seemed way too rushed, given the source material, it probably could have been twice as long. Some great acting in it though.

I enjoyed all of those when I read them. LD is my favorite and I'd put Comanche Moon second. Streets of Laredo was by far my least favorite... I read them in the order written back when they were new. It would be interesting to re-read them sometime in chrono order instead. Enjoy!

[mightysparks]

Currently listening to Jane Eyre (chapter 27). I was surprisingly enjoying it (the writing flows so nicely) until it got real into the romance. Possibly one of the worst ‘romances’ of all time. Rochester is revolting and abusive and Jane is an idiot. Can’t stand any of the dialogue or interactions between them after their feelings are admitted to each other. Really annoyed because I thought it could be a new favourite until it turned into Twilight.

[blueboybob]

This year has been really good for books. 39 books done so far.

Currently Reading:
Jim Thorpe, Original All-American

Recently Finished:
The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps
The United States of Absurdity: Untold Stories from American History
Who Ate the First Oyster?: The Extraordinary People Behind the Greatest Firsts in History
I'd Like to Play Alone, Please: Essays
With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture Since 1830
12 Books That Changed the World

[mightysparks]

Audible has really helped get me back into books this year. I'm at 23 for the year and my previous record was 27 in 2013.. I finished Jane Eyre yesterday but the last half was pretty horrible. I liked the book overall but the romantic elements were off-putting and unlikable. I listened to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde today and didn't like it much more than I've liked any filmed adaptation (though the mini-series was pretty good). Just seemed to focus on all the uninteresting aspects until the end and it wasn't really worth the wait.

I'm now listening to Man's Search for Meaning which I'm liking so far. I've also been reading The Hidden Life of Trees and discovered trees are pretty cool.

I also found this group a few months ago which might interest the list planning fanatics here: Around the Year in 52 Books . The prompts for 2023 are being sorted out at the moment and I'm still hoping I can make it to 52 this year but I don't think I'll quite get there. This is my 2022 plan.

[gunnar]

That looks like a pretty interesting challenge. I've been doing the regular Goodreads Challenge the last few years. My niece and sister-in-law challenged me back in 2020 to read one recommendation from each of them every month. They would each give me two choices and I'd pick one from each. That's what led me to read Station Eleven plus other books like Doctors from Erich Segal, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, Master of the Game by Sidney Sheldon, and others.

I see that you have books by Becky Chambers and Martha Wells book coming up soon. I liked the Wayfarers series from Chambers quite a bit. It's fairly laid back, but that seems to be her style for the most part. Her Monk & Robot novellas have been good, though not quite as good as Wayfarers. To Be Taught, if Fortunate was my least favorite of her books.

I started reading Martha Wells when I stumbled across her Murderbot novellas years ago. I loved them and have been keeping up with them ever since. It also inspired me to go check out her earlier books. I'd had a copy of her early novel, City of Bones, for 25+ years, but had never gotten around to reading it. Thanks to Audible, I gave it a go and loved it. I also really enjoyed her Raksura series (7 books) and Ile-Rien series (5 books), each of which fall into the fantasy genre. This week, I got around to reading her two Emilie novels which are more young adult fantasy, but still fun to read (listen to).

[Minkin]

I decided to expand Cinema Safari once again into the realm of books!

So I spent quite awhile trying to find a book for the current location: Inyo County, California - where Death Valley and a good portion of the Sierras are. I was going to go with a book from this immeasurably helpful website (for my purposes), but in the process of research, I discovered that the author Mary Hunter Austin wrote a book whilst living in the county - and so that's what I'm currently reading: The Land of Little Rain. It's a series of essays on different aspects of life in this rain shadow high desert - that's still rugged and full of life, right before most of the boomtowns faded, and Los Angeles bought all the water rights (see Chinatown), and with the Indians still living nomadic lives off of the land. It's a celebration of the delicate balance of nature and how everything is so intertwined - from the scavengers who clean the country of waste, to the inhabitants who take their life here for granted. It's a great poetic read, and I've really been enjoying it and glad I came across it. She ended up moving to Santa Fe and put out a book with Ansel Adams about Taos, New Mexico. She's an excellent writer, who's quite knowledgeable about the plants in the area and her observations on just the goings-on of the life all around her. It turned out to be quite the read, I'm glad I stumbled upon it.

BTW, if anyone's interested here's my GoodReads account - I'd like to friend more people on it and see what everyone else is reading.

[mightysparks]

I finished my Tree book the other night and enjoyed it. Felt a little un-scientific at times but I feel like I learnt to appreciate trees more.

I also listened to The Hobbit. The narration by Andy Serkis was amazing, I’d listen to him narrate anything after that, and I liked the book for the most part but found the climax disappointing.

I read All Systems Red and it took me a bit to get used to the main character but then I got into it and read it in one sitting. Definitely keen on checking out the rest of the series and other works by Martha Wells.

I’m now reading Leviathan Wakes (I haven’t watched The Expanse) and listening to Anna Karenina. Liking both so far but once Leviathan Wakes got going I was hooked and didn’t want to put it down. AK I’m happy to take in at a slower pace.

[3eyes]

Chris Stirewalt - Broken news (about the antagonistic nature of the media)
Paul Hawken - Regeneration (about strategies for reducing and reversing atmostpheric CO2)

[BulldogDrummond]

I've got a eBook of Steve Fisher called 'Selected Stories'. I've realised how many films I've seen written by him, it's only fair I give him a shot.The short stories suit me best in the same way as noir with short running times suit me best. Just brilliant pulpy goodness from what I've read so far.

[blocho]

I fell for Mike Davis' City of Quartz by the end of the first paragraph:

The best place to view Los Angeles of the next millennium is from the ruins of its alternative future. Standing on the sturdy cobblestone foundations of the General Assembly Hall of the Socialist city of Llano del Rio — Open Shop Los Angeles’s utopian antipode — you can sometimes watch the Space Shuttle in its elegant final descent towards Rogers Dry Lake. Dimly on the horizon are the giant sheds of Air Force Plant 42 where Stealth Bombers (each costing the equivalent of 10,000 public housing units) and other, still top secret, hot rods of the apocalypse are assembled. Closer at hand, across a few miles of creosote and burro bush, and the occasional grove of that astonishing yucca, the Joshua tree, is the advance guard of approaching suburbia, tract homes on point.

Nothing in that paragraph’s an accident. Every word is poised, every sentence a product of careful design. The prose feels sharp, like a weapon. Consider the final phrase: Walking point means taking the lead in a military patrol. In this case, it’s suburban houses that are on point, and the imagery suggests the fashion in which Davis in this book transforms typical Southern Californian landscapes into sociopolitical narratives.

I originally read the first chapter of City of Quartz after being assigned it in grad school, and decided to return to finish the book now after hearing that Davis is gravely ill and in hospice care. Despite my overall enthusiasm for the book, I should note a few problems. The first is a tendency to pour great heaps of facts on the reader without the necessary context to understand all of those facts. For example, in the space of one paragraph in the first chapter, Davis refers without further explanation to the “Julian Petroleum swindle” and to a bank president as being the “Colonel House” for Herbert Hoover. I have studied American history for enough years that I understand the reference to Colonel House — he was a close, informal diplomatic advisor to Woodrow Wilson — but Julian Petroleum was beyond my ken. Davis expects his readers to know these things, or barring that, to at least look them up, an easy enough task these days but far harder when his book was published in 1990.

Another problem is prose that's elegant but occasionally too abstract. Here’s one sample sentence, referring to the work of Dalton Trumbo, Joseph Losey, Jules Dassin, and others: “In their hands, film noir sometimes approached a kind of Marxist cinema manque, a shrewdly oblique strategy for an otherwise subversive realism.” I understand every word in that sentence, but I don’t know what the sentence means. And the context of surrounding sentences yields no greater clarity. 

This also isn’t much of a book for character study. Though thousands of historical figures are mentioned, from the famous to the forgotten, almost none receives thorough explanation or description. Davis prefers the view from far above. Individuals are just dots in a larger historical drama.

But I hope those misgivings don't detract from my overall admiration for this book, which is composed of seven discrete historical essays, united by a focus on the Southern California megalopolis (for Davis, this covers the territory from Santa Barbara down to Tijuana, though his primary focus is Los Angeles). The highlights are the initial chapter about Los Angeles as a cultural construct, an essay about the LAPD as a counter-insurgency force of overwhelming brutality, and the final chapter, which traces the history of the Inland Empire city of Fontana from agrarian smallholders' paradise to steel city to post-industrial real estate mirage.

[mightysparks]

The challenge I posted above has now revealed all the prompts for 2023. Here's my list though I may tweak it: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/22 ... 3-aty-plan. I'm about halfway through this year's so I don't think I'm going to complete it but I didn't start on it until late. Still been fun.

I finished Leviathan Wakes a while ago and loved it. I found the last 10 chapters or so a bit underwhelming though I'd barely been able to put it down until then. The ending was interesting though so I still want to check out the rest of the series.

I also read one of the The Great Courses series on Audible, The Story of Human Language which was good. I quite like these 'Courses' series. I've been interested in reading more about the history of language and this seemed like a good start. It didn't quite cover what I was thinking I wanted but it covered a lot that I didn't even know was a thing so I feel like I learnt a lot of cool stuff and is a springboard for further investigations on the subject.

I'm still listening to Anna Karenina (near the end of Part 3 I think). I go up and down on that book. I'll really enjoy it for a while then struggle to focus or care about it. I really don't like Anna at all and all her chapters bore me. Vronsky doesn't do much for either but I like all the other characters enough. I think my favourite chapter was the one where Levin mowed the grass.

Also reading The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Some interesting insights so far. Also interesting how different each person's trauma is even when they're suffering from the same thing.

[gunnar]

The challenge I posted above has now revealed all the prompts for 2023. Here's my list though I may tweak it: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/22 ... 3-aty-plan. I'm about halfway through this year's so I don't think I'm going to complete it but I didn't start on it until late. Still been fun.

I finished Leviathan Wakes a while ago and loved it. I found the last 10 chapters or so a bit underwhelming though I'd barely been able to put it down until then. The ending was interesting though so I still want to check out the rest of the series.

That looks like a good list for 2023. I've read 16 of the books and watched movies based on 6 of the others that I haven't read.

I'm glad that you liked Leviathan Wakes. I think my favorite books in the series were books 5 and 6, though I did enjoy all of them, including the short stories.

[mightysparks]

The challenge I posted above has now revealed all the prompts for 2023. Here's my list though I may tweak it: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/22 ... 3-aty-plan. I'm about halfway through this year's so I don't think I'm going to complete it but I didn't start on it until late. Still been fun.

I finished Leviathan Wakes a while ago and loved it. I found the last 10 chapters or so a bit underwhelming though I'd barely been able to put it down until then. The ending was interesting though so I still want to check out the rest of the series.

That looks like a good list for 2023. I've read 16 of the books and watched movies based on 6 of the others that I haven't read.

I'm glad that you liked Leviathan Wakes. I think my favorite books in the series were books 5 and 6, though I did enjoy all of them, including the short stories.

Trying to catch up on some Stephen King next year since I love so many films based on his books and I've only read like 5.

Have you seen The Expanse? Is it as fun as the books?

[gunnar]

Trying to catch up on some Stephen King next year since I love so many films based on his books and I've only read like 5.

Have you seen The Expanse? Is it as fun as the books?

I've only read a couple of Stephen King books - The Eyes of the Dragon and Different Seasons. I've thought about trying others, but never really worked up the desire.

I started with The Expanse tv show and didn't read the books until around season 3. The first season took a while to get into, but by the end of the season I was hooked. I thought the show got better as it went along and is very solid. Since I started with the tv show, I visualized the actors when I read the books. There are a few changes from the books, including one character that I think is an improvement (she's a combination of two characters from the book in her role), but things are much the same and the show is very entertaining. The authors of the books played a big role in shaping the series. Unfortunately, the tv show only covers the first six books and some of the short stories, but it does reach a good stopping point since the books are divided into three sub-trilogies.

[OldAle1]

blocho's review of City of Quartz puts that on my to-read list; books on urbanism are like candy to me. Well, I don't eat candy much at all, but... I want it. So like that. Will I ever actually read it? If the gods will it.

I just finished something that I just picked off the shelf sort of at random a few weeks ago -



Rebirth by Thomas Calvert McClary.

It’s an *extremely* obscure science fiction novel, first published in shorter form in Astounding Stories in 1934, then in it’s short novel form by Bart House in 1944 (that's the copy in the pic above), and finally — as far as I know — in a Hyperion Press reprint in 1976. There is very little about either the author or book online — McClary is listed as a “speechwriter” among other occupations, but what kind? For whom? There's a single 1-star review on Goodreads lambasting the book for it's misogyny and racism but not really giving much information, and there don't seem to be any other real reviews that a quick search can find.

I actually have that Bart House copy - I think I have two, actually, from back in the days when I haunted library book sales and just grabbed everything old and weird - and I've always loved that cover, and it's what attracted me to the book in the first place. It's an odd sort of dystopian/utopian novel, very much a "high concept" work, and that can be appealing to me - it's always interesting to read somebody's vision of some strange idea that nobody else seems to have had, even if the way they work it out isn't very successful. And that was the case here. Essentially we have a scientist here in the New York of 1958 - why 1958? Probably the book was written in 1933 and the writer liked the idea of setting it a generation in the future, though there is nothing futuristic about what little we see of 1958 society before...before the scientist, more or less on a dare, puts into action a machine that will wipe out the memories of all human beings on the planet, instantly. Wipe them out to the point where men will begin again literally not even knowing how to eat and drink, having no speech, not knowing anything whatsoever about anything. The book spends almost no time arguing about the (a)morality of such a cataclysmic operation, instead setting it into play 3 chapters into a 19-chapter, quite short book. There are several characters that we saw sitting around drawing rooms (ok, perhaps not the correct term but... this feels very old-fashioned and stuffy in some ways so why not) in the first couple of chapters who go on to become protagonists in the main part of the novel, including a wealthy, elderly banker, Brent, who rapidly becomes the leader of an initially savage, deeply primitive band struggling to make it in the chaotic ruins of a New York City abandoned of reason and design. Mostly this is a pulpy, action-packed story, in keeping with what magazine science fiction was in the 1930s, so it's no surprise that the philosophizing and rationales for what was going to happen are minimal at first, though as mankind slowly emerges from the ashes, more serious ideas do come into play, if pretty minimally explored. But the author seems most to enjoy scenes of blood and carnage (basically the middle half of the book), which read a bit like some of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, published during the same period as this was originally.

The writer essentially ascribes entirely to the nature side of the nature vs nurture debate, and nearly all of the people who become successful and survive in this new post-apocalyptic world are those who were, like Brent, names and successes in the previous one. The author describes a civilization emerging over a decade or so that is a curious mix of absolutely brutal, police-state attitudes - with capital punishment the prescribed method for dealing with nearly all crimes even once things like reading, writing, and machines have been rediscovered and a legal system is starting out, but this going hand-in-hand with a kind of communistic economy that develops. To take the Goodreads reviewer's points, there is an element of racism to the book, though it is mostly one of just ignoring racial minorities, with a single quick odd insult to an (apparently) Chinese character and a nearly as brief stereotypical look at Native Americans late in the book; not sure there were any references to people of African descent at all. As to the misogyny, well, this on the other hand riddles the book through and through - though women are a few times seen as useful members of a rebuilding society, time and again they are shown as being more vain and flighty and much less intelligent than men, and incapable of ruling or leading. One seemingly major female character is murdered for a trivial reason early on with the full approval of the main protagonist. So all in all it's a pretty regressive book, and it's most interesting idea - the rebuilding of civilization from the ground up, after mankind's minds have been wiped clean but the material civilization still lying mostly intact - just isn't very convincingly or imaginatively worked out. Time and again old ways of acting and doing things are simply repeated, because the author apparently believes that most of what the USA in the 1930s represented wasn't really to be improved on - except for, as I said, some of the rather vague socialist economic impulses. But ultimately we end with a dog-eat-dog world run by and for the benefit of the most powerful men that would have made Ayn Rand proud in many respects, and I have to wonder if she might have read this book - we know that she read science fiction, and the Bart House paperback was published not long before she began Atlas Shrugged. Of course the cooperative elements in this book would have been abhorrent to her, but the misogyny and the notion that a few men are just born to lead seem right up her alley - and of course, AS is essentially about the deliberate destruction of civilization just as this book is.

In the final analysis this is a poor book with generally wretched politics, and is notable only for it's crazy premise. I haven't said anything about the writing; I guess it's above-average for 1930s pulp genre stuff (and I've read a fair bit of it's competition) but certainly not remarkable in any way. For me it'd be a 2/5, not a 1/5, but I certainly couldn't fault anybody for really hating this. Not one of the better excursions into early sci-fi I've made, and not really entertaining enough to make up for it's problematic social vision.

[blocho]

Jesse McCarthy, The Fugitivities
It's been about a decade since I last saw Jesse. He was an acquaintance, a friend of a friend. Our mutual friend, Gabe, is a high school buddy of mine and a college buddy of Jesse's. I heard that Jesse went off to get his PhD at Princeton and had published a novel and a book of essays. When I heard the novel was partly based on Gabe and Jesse's raucous travels in South America about 15 years ago (I ran into Gabe in Buenos Aires on that trip), I knew I had to read it.

And, well, it's not a good book. I didn't like the writing, full of abstruse, indulgent philosophizing and overburdened by dialogue that sounds exactly like something written by a novelist and not at all like anything someone would say in a real conversation. The only reason I kept reading was for the depiction of Gabe, who in this book is awarded the hilarious pseudonym Octavio Cienfuegos. The character of Octavio is recognizably my friend Gabe but with all his idiosyncrasies exaggerated by 50 percent. I was laughing out loud during the sequence in the middle of the book when Octavio, beset in Brazil by some tropical fever, goes slightly insane, shouting wild imprecations at the narrator: "I would have you tried like Che did the counterrevolutionaries at La Cabana." Unfortunately, that was the only thing I enjoyed in the entire novel.

[frbrown]

1930s pulp genre stuff (and I've read a fair bit of it's competition)

Do you have any favourites? (Although, if 2/5 is above average...)

I'm slightly interested in pulp literature, but I've barely read anything - a bit of Conan, Lovecraft, Hammett.

[OldAle1]

1930s pulp genre stuff (and I've read a fair bit of it's competition)

Do you have any favourites? (Although, if 2/5 is above average...)

I'm slightly interested in pulp literature, but I've barely read anything - a bit of Conan, Lovecraft, Hammett.

No, I mean the writing or style was perhaps above average within that sphere - given how abysmal the content is, that's not enough. You do have to kind of give up on caring about style too much with a lot of the pulpier stuff - Lovecraft, Hammett, Howard, Chandler, Clark Ashton Smith to name a few are the exceptions, not the rule, in writing with some significant style and craft. I think the work that has gotten the most acclaim over the years and has been most likely to be rescued from oblivion has mostly been of the hardboiled/crime genre - Hammett, Chandler, James M Cain would be the big names who were active before WWII. I've honestly read very little of that stuff; much as I like film noir, for whatever reason I just haven't explored the literature. But I did read The Big Sleep a few years ago and absolutely loved it, and I've read a few short stories by Hammett and Chandler that I liked almost as much, so I intend to get to more of that kind of thing.

Most of what I've read from the pulp era has been science fiction and fantasy. I started out by reading a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs when I was a kid and he's still a favorite - I think the first Tarzan and John Carter books are still as good as anything in that vein. Other stuff I liked a fair bit would include what I've read of A. Merritt (The Moon Pool), Charles Tanner's "Tumithak" series, Lawrence Manning's The Man Who Awoke, E.E. Smith's The Skylark of Space, pretty much everything I've read from Lovecraft but especially his longer work like The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. I love what little I've read from Clark Ashton Smith but it's just a couple of stories so far. In some of these cases, I find the writing decent enough - in others, like E.E. Smith and Tanner, and S.P. Meek and Murray Leinster to name a couple more, the writing is fairly primitive, and I'm really going for the crazy stories or just a feeling of nostalgia; given that I more or less grew up on this stuff, even though I was reading it in the 1970s-80s, that's a big pull for me - for those who weren't raised on it, I think it'd be a different story.

The above are all things from the 1910s-30s; Burroughs was first published in 1912 and I think it's fair to say that his influence held great sway up through that whole period, being one of the very few pulpy writers of fantastic fiction who actually was getting published in hardcover, becoming wealthy, and even getting movie deals - everybody wanted to be like him. But while the styles and tastes did change quite a bit starting just before WWII, plenty of stuff from the 40s on still qualifies as "pulp" to my mind - up to and including Star Wars and much of what's really popular in SF/fantasy today. Some of my favorite later writers that I would call "pulpy" would include Jack Chalker and Philip José Farmer, both of whom I think were consciously trying to work in pre-war modes at times. And I just started re-reading, for the umpteenth time, Roger Zelazny's "Amber" series, first published in the early 70s, which while pure fantasy has a style that is often very much reminiscent of hardboiled crime fiction - picture Philip Marlowe as an immortal and amoral demigod narrating his story about battling with his equally self-centered brothers and sisters for control of the One True World. All while smoking endless quantities of cigarettes and tossing back endless belts of whisky.

[frbrown]

Thanks, OldAle

Several people I never even heard of: Tanner, Manning, Meek, Chalker. You do know your pulp!

And when it comes to noir, I, too, prefer movies to books.

[mightysparks]

Currently reading/listening to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Hyperion and The Fifth Season. I found a copy of 'Tattoo' when we moved out, idk where it came from must've been my dad's, and have been keeping it in the toilet as a way to not use my phone on the toilet. Instead I read at least one page every time I go. Haven't toilet-read for a long time and it's been kinda nice. I've seen the original film adaptation but remember nothing and didn't like it much but I'm getting increasingly sucked in to the novel and look forward to needing a wee so I can get a bit further lol

Hyperion has a pretty cool format and the world and story is nice. The first story was awesome and so far the others haven't been as exciting but I'm still enjoying it. The voice of the female character is awful though and sounds like a robot

I just started reading The Fifth Season today and I'm loving it. I loved Jemisin's Emergency Skin and wanted to check out more of her work and this is not disappointing. Her writing style is my kinda thing and everything about the world and characters and tone of this book is cool.

[prodigalgodson]

I'm on Anna Karenina atm. Maybe some of you more literarily knowledgeable folks can help me out with a confusing passage (this kind of thing happens to me with Tolstoy, whose characterizations I sometimes find kind of counterintuitive).

Kitty was unmarried and ill, ill from love for a man who had scorned her. This insult seemed to fall upon [Levin]. Vronsky had scorned her, and she had scorned him, Levin. Consequently, Vronsky had the right to despise Levin and was therefore his enemy. But Levin did not think all that. He vaguely felt that there was something insulting to him in it, and now was not angry at what had upset him but was finding fault with everything he came across.

My question is, why would you rightly despise someone who the person you had rejected had in turn rejected? Wouldn't you just feel pity or contempt, depending on your personality, if anything at all? Levin's resentment feels perfectly natural, but I don't understand why Vronsky should feel enmity toward Levin. Is this some code of honor specific to 19th century Russian courtiers? Or is Tolstoy just being ironic?

I think that even in current times, with still a lot of men objectifying women, I could see why a Vronsky would feel “superior” to a Levin. On the flip side, since Levin is the one we are told that should feel rightfully miserable and despicable, I think you are right to assume this is the product of conventions and code of honour of the times, although Tolstoy is sort of both denying and amplifying them with Levin wider resentment.

What are the part and chapter it is taking from ? Curious to compare with my French version as I don’t completely recognise Tolstoy style from the English above.

There was another time "despise" appeared later that made me think this was just the way the translator rendered something like the verb form of "contempt," which cleared it up a little.

I don't have the book in front of me but it was from when Levin first returned home after getting rejected by Kitty, before Vronsky's race. I want to say the beginning of Part 2? This translation was by Pevear and Volokhonsky, who are pretty acclaimed modern translators of Russian classics into English.

[prodigalgodson]

The Zebra-Striped Hearse -- Ross MacDonald

This was written about two-thirds of the way through MacDonald's career, if I'm not mistaken, and judging by what I've read from before and after this was the absolute sweet spot of his sharp, witty, concisely poetic style. Given how evocative his jaunts through California are, he kind of wastes Baja California despite an excellent series of character exchanges taking place there. But once he's back up north he's utterly in his flow state. The titular car is such an evocative piece of imagery it's kind of a shame it ends up being a mostly superfluous stepping-stone to solving the mystery, but it's also an awesome emblem for the times as seen from MacDonald's eyes. The family drama/mystery is up to his expert standards, with a very last-minute twist I didn't see coming.

The Wycherly Woman -- Ross MacDonald

One of his most unsettling and bleak character portraits and an apt title, with its hint of the supernatural and ghoulish in a conventional old money family name. The psychological detail and abstract descriptive style are still, in my limited experience, unparalleled in genre fiction. I saw the heavily telegraphed primary twist coming about halfway through -- the first time for me with MacDonald, The Chill being the only other time I guessed the twist, and there not til much closer to the ending -- though I didn't guess who the culprit was. (I don't put much effort into trying to figure that out ahead of time, the whodunnit aspect is almost an afterthought with these.) The final paragraph is a stunner, redolent of understated, habitually suppressed horror.

I got McCarthy's new book The Passenger the day it came out, barely started it but very excited.

[Minkin]

I finished The Land of Little Rain, which I quite enjoyed - as it gave an interesting perspective to life in the desert, and right at the cusp of major changes in the area (all the water was diverted to Los Angeles) + the American Indians were still living largely nomadic lives still, so it's fascinating to see this dive into flora and the ever changing beauty of the area.

Anyway, here's my review, which I plan to include on the Inyo County Safari page

A collection of poetic essays on living close to nature in Inyo County, California. This was actually written right on the cusp of major changes in the Owen’s Valley – as just a few years later, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power purchased most all of the land and water, (which ended up forcing most of the people to move away), for drying up an entire 100 sq mile lake, and starting a brief rebellion of angry farmers. This was a time where American Indians were still living largely nomadic lives in the valley as well, so this book encapsulates some of the last remnants of a California that’s now only relegated to history. Austin manages to capture a fastidious dive into the competing elements and lives within the valley – and you really get great insight into the beauty and wild nature of the county, and ultimately, how fragile it is (even then). As she explores early environmental issues, like overgrazing animals, and people not cleaning up after leaving their camps (campoodles as she calls them). Quite the botanist, Austin is never one to shy away from describing a wildflower or examining the habits of a buzzard – as she goes to great lengths to get a real sense of the unspoiled remnants of nature. She does admit that you need to take your time to truly appreciate the landscape though, as it takes a tree 50 years to flower, and the valley is always changing colors, so too must you enjoy a slower pace to fully grasp the entire scale of this land. At its heart though, is this tremendous awe of nature – how it looks after itself, and even recycles (like a coyote cleaning up the scraps of a carcass) – and how much we lose our connection to the land and mountains by living in these square rooms of comfort that insulate us from the views and beauty. There’s a great deal of truth to those words – as we need nature in our lives in order to ground us and keep us stable, and we do a disservice to ourselves by holing up inside for long periods of time. For humans are the visitors here, and they all leave their marks on the landscape, some worse than others, but it’s the life here that is ultimately so fascinating to study and appreciate, for how interconnected it all is, and how humans upset those balances. This book is therefore a call to action – to not only protect the land, its plants, and animals (I’m sure Austin would be happy to hear that 98% of Inyo County is now protected), but to go out, study and be amazed by this country of unending beauty.

I'm not quite sure what I'll read next. Berlin is next on the Safari docket, so I've been leaning towards a re-read of Berlin Alexanderplatz, but I might also just go with Stranger in a Strange Land, so that I can have a book club out of it with friends who've read it recently.

[mightysparks]

Finished a few more books recently. Still trying hard to finish off the 52 prompts (39/52) but I have read 46 books this year which is nearly double my previous high. I've enjoyed getting back into reading this year.

The Fifth Season - amazing. I loved the writing style and themes and plot and world and everything. Want to read everything of NK Jemison's now. Really interesting reading a book from a black POV too where the majority of characters are black and it's 'weird' to come across a character described as white.

The Robert Sheckley Megapack - I read the first story last year and then binged the rest in a couple of days. I can't remember who on here recommended Sheckley (Leopardi?) but man he's so good. He's an easy read with fun stories and ideas and he can make a fairly generic or predictable plot super fun and fresh. Another author I'm keen to read everything from.

The Maltese Falcon - The film is a 2/10 from me though I remember nothing about it except the pain but I thought this was fairly decent. It felt very noirish and the mystery was kinda fun. I went between thinking Sam Spade was cool and smooth and an utter douchebag which was a bit of a struggle for me. Didn't love this but I enjoyed it.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History - Bit too 'layman' and anecdotal at times but intriguing and kinda scary.

Franny and Zooey - not that good. I thought Franny was ok but Zooey was painful. Was too theatrical and I don't like endless monologues from obnoxious young people.

Coraline - Didn't like the film much and this was slightly better but I just can't get into this story. It seems to have all the elements I would like but none of it works for me.

Gone Girl - Loved this. I don't remember the film much except the main twist and I didn't like the first half and liked the second but didn't go crazy over it. Didn't expect to like the book but I was into it immediately and the second half was fantastic. The unreliable narrators and the way it drops information and getting pulled in every direction with the characters (they're relatable, sympathetic, disgusting, hateable, likable, insane--sometimes all at once). Very well paced too, long slow chapters building up the characters and their lives in the first half to shorter faster info drops in the second half. Nice rollercoaster ride.

I'm nearly done with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (which I'm only reading on the toilet). Sometimes I just hang in the toilet to read more because it's easy to get lost in it and things are starting to get spicy now. Didn't intentionally pick two books whose film adaptations were directed by Fincher (haven't seen his version of 'Tattoo' though). Didn't like the original film and remember nothing but the book is nice.

I'm also reading The Three Body Problem which I can't get into at all. I'm struggling with it. I don't get it and I'm not enjoying it. Normally I can see everything in my head when I read and the more I connect with the book the stronger the images are. I only see text with this one. My dad mentioned this book a while ago and had the same reaction and he assumed it was the Chinese angle that made it more difficult and that's definitely possible.

[gunnar]

Franny and Zooey - not that good. I thought Franny was ok but Zooey was painful. Was too theatrical and I don't like endless monologues from obnoxious young people.

Coraline - Didn't like the film much and this was slightly better but I just can't get into this story. It seems to have all the elements I would like but none of it works for me.

The Three Body Problem which I can't get into at all. I'm struggling with it. I don't get it and I'm not enjoying it. Normally I can see everything in my head when I read and the more I connect with the book the stronger the images are. I only see text with this one. My dad mentioned this book a while ago and had the same reaction and he assumed it was the Chinese angle that made it more difficult and that's definitely possible.

I disliked Franny and Zooey. My niece loves it so I read it, but the best thing about it was that it was fairly short, though it seemed longer.

Coraline was okay, though among the least favorite of the Gaiman works that I read.

The Three Body Problem seemed highly regarded so I read it a few years ago. I didn't dislike it like I did with Franny and Zooey, but I didn't really like it much either. I decided not to read any more of Liu's novels, though I have read some of the graphic novel adaptations.

[blocho]

Elizabeth Samet, Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness

I was quite disappointed with this book. That's partly because it began so well. The topic is one I've long been fascinated by: the historical memory that has developed in the United States around World War II. I think it would be difficult to live in America and not notice how this war mythology is so widespread and influential. Furthermore, the subject of historical memory has always captured my interest. As compelling as historical events are, it can be doubly fascinating to learn how the memory of historical events are constructed in the public sphere and what ends such memories serve.

The introduction and first chapter of this book were quite good. Samet establishes at the outset some of the hallmarks of World War II mythology and pokes holes in much of the sanctimony surrounding the war. But after that, the book gets worse. Samet is a professor of English, not history, and most of the later chapters are devoted to examining postwar novels and movies. The irony here is that this is similar to some of the work I did in college and grad school. My honors thesis was about Westerns. I did a research project in grad school about World War I movies of the interwar era. Samet runs into the biggest problem I encountered -- reception. It's one thing to analyze cultural content, but without understanding how that content was received, it's impossible to say anything definitive about their historical impact. Without such analysis, one can only say that certain ideas were circulating. You can't prove that people cared about them. Audience reception is hard to measure. I tried to get at it by looking at reviews and public discourse. For example, I once found a great back-and-forth about The Big Parade in the letters section of a Chicago newspaper. Samet doesn't even try to understand reception. What she does instead is summarize the plots of dozens of films noir and explain how many of them featured veterans readjusting to civilian life. Yes, that's true. But it's neither surprising nor revealing.

The other problem is Samet tends to fall in love with information. The book is crammed full of historical episodes that are occasionally fascinating on their own but have little to do with the central topic. By the last chapter, Samet has truly lost the thread, most notably in a 15-page section about the popularity of Shakespeare during the American Civil War. If you read carefully, you can find the connection back to World War II, but the book has become lost in no man's land.

[3eyes]

I enjoy seeing what youse are reading. some unfamiliar, some old friends.

The trouble with Audible is it doesn't have subs, nor is it conducive to lip-reading.

Been rereading the satirical mysteries of Ruth Dudley Edwards.

Wish I could figure out how to navigate Goodreads. Been looking for children's books on invertebrate paleontology.

[mightysparks]

Anyone else on StoryGraph? I joined a while ago but don't use it as much as Goodreads. The stats page is really nice though: https://app.thestorygraph.com/stats/mig ... ?year=2022

I finished my 53rd book this year today. I've always wanted to hit 52 in a year so I feel pretty cool. And a few more I want to finish before the end of 2022. Also found quite a few new favourites this year.

[matthewscott8]

I am reading a collection of short stories by Dino Buzzati. I got into his stuff, when I looked further into one of my favourite films, The Tartar Steppes, which he wrote the novel for. In Italy he is also famous for his 60 tales or Sessanta Racconti. That has never been fully translated and published in English, I'm guessing because he's so often been anthologized that there are rights issues. However 20 of the racconti are presented in the English volume "Catastrophe and other stories". These are stories of unease and foreboding related to modernity in some part and also to our roles as humans and how they distort us. The story catastrophe concerns a journalist who is sent to cover a landslide, if you already read the story or don't mind spoilers:

Spoiler

when he arrives, there is no landslide, his frantic attempts to discover where the landslide is lead him firstly to being shown a landslide that occurred hundreds of years ago and secondly a small landslide that has covered a portion of a farmer's field, the point is perspectival, both of these are very interesting / serious in their own way, the old landslide was vast and geologically / historically interesting, the second is of huge significance to the farmer himself, who will be left clearing the field for months; however the journalist is distorted by his professional duties and cannot see either of those perspectives, he needs an "if it bleeds it leads" story. The perverse ending is that a landslide actually appears to be happening as he drives away, his professional duty again distorts him, he should feel the tragedy, but all he feels is the excitement of a developing story.

Buzzati is a really smart guy, he sees through everything. I felt anxious reading his stuff but also a strange solace and kinship. It might not have been the best follow up read to George Simenon's The Burgomaster of Furnes (which has become a favourite, and a book I reviewed in the film festival) as that was also very dark, and I need to stay mentally healthy.

[blocho]

After watching the Olive Kitteridge miniseries a few months ago, I decided to read the book and was surprised to find that the miniseries is better. The book is definitely good, and there are some brilliantly written evocations of its central themes: depression, loneliness, and old age.

But there are also some gaps in the story. To take just one example, the character of Olive's son, Christopher, is barely described in the book, and when he suddenly becomes loquacious near the end, it's a mysterious and unexpected development. Another problem is the book's structure, which is a series of short stories mostly set in the same fictional small town in Maine. The title character is the focus of several of the stories, but for most of them she appears or is mentioned only briefly, as a peripheral figure, and it often feels like the book is struggling to shoehorn her into these disparate stories.

One of the foremost achievements of the miniseries adaptation, written by Jane Anderson (a veteran playwright and screenwriter) is how it subtracts from the book until a more cohesive narrative emerges and then adds a few details -- to the depiction of Christopher, for example -- to make the story stronger.

[Knaldskalle]

Last week I made the mistake of going to a "Friends of the Library Book Sale". Paperbacks were $0.50 and hardbacks were $1. I walked out with $10 worth of paperbacks, including 10 of Jo Nesbø's "Harry Hole" detective novels (Nordic noir). So I think I'm set up pretty well for the foreseeable future, I'm already most of the way through the first one, "The Bat."

[mightysparks]

Had to push myself to read a bit more than I wanted in the last couple of weeks but I managed to complete all my prompts for the ATY challenge and I read a total of 62 books this year! My full list is here: https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/33711058.

My top 10:

1. Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir
2. Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
3. The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris
4. The Fifth Season - N.K. Jemisin
5. And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie
6. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
7. The Girl With All the Gifts - M. R. Carey
8. Bloodchild - Octavia E. Butler
9. Leviathan Wakes - James S.A. Corey
10. Hyperion - Dan Simmons

I'm much more generous with book ratings than films--I think it's harder to not get somewhat invested when you're spending so much time with a story. There were only 5 books which I didn't really like.

[gunnar]

I've read 25 of the books from your full list, including #1,9,10 from your top 10, all of which that I enjoyed quite a bit.

I managed to (barely) reach my goal of 150 books from the year, though I had to toss in a few shorter books to reach it. This is down from 158 in 2021 and 175 in 2020. Many of the books that I 'read' are audiobooks which I can listen to while walking the dog, driving, etc., though I still enjoy reading paper books as well. This past year was a little more one sided with audio vs paper.

Most books end up getting 4 stars from me because I enjoyed them, though some will get less than that (and a very few get more). My full list is here: https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/32655298.

My favorites from 2022 are:

Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa
Chain of Command by Frank Chadwick (reread)
Ship of Destiny by Frank Chadwick (reread)
Merchanter's Luck by C.J. Cherryh
Growing Up Weightless by John M. Ford (reread)
Deliverer by CJ Cherryh

Deliverer is part of Cherryh's Foreigner series which I burned through (all 21 books) during the last 3 weeks of 2021 and the first 6 weeks of 2022. I also read a number of other books from Cherryh in 2022.

Martha Wells is another author that I spent some time with in 2022 with her Ile-Rien and Emilie series.

I enjoyed the second and third Cobra trilogies from Timothy Zahn.


There were also entries in a number of series that I've been reading for years:

The Jigsaw Assassin by Catherine Asaro (Skolian Empire)
Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London)
Resolute by Jack Campbell (Lost Fleet)
A New Clan by David Weber and Jane Lindskold (Stephanie Harrington)
A Call to Insurrection by David Weber, Timothy Zahn, and Thomas Pope (Manticore Ascendant)
Centers of Gravity by Marko Kloos (Frontlines)
Imperium Restored by Walter Jon Williams (Dread Empire's Fall)

[brokenface]

I've put my log from the year in spoiler, made it to 74 this year.

Novel highlights: No One is Talking About This, After Midnight, The Remains of the Day, Piranesi, The Cellars of the Majestic
Short Story highlights: The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, The Illustrated Man, Cursed Bunny
Non-Fiction highlights: Entangled Life, Empireland, The Emperor

Favourite new discoveries of the year: Mariana Enriquez, Irmgard Keun, Patricia Lockwood, James Tynion IV

Worst read of the year:
All My Cats - avoid at all costs if you like cats, or indeed any animals. Harrowing.

Spoiler

Jan 2022
Dashiell Hammett - Red Harvest
Merlin Sheldrake - Entangled Life
Richard Condon - The Manchurian Candidate
Ian McEwan - The Cockroach
Ruth First - 117 Days
Julio Ramon Ribeyro - The Word of the Speechless

Feb
Anthony Boucher - The Case of the Seven of Calvary
Martha Wells - All Systems Red
Mariana Enriquez - The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
Ryszard Kapuscinski - The Emperor

Mar
Max Frisch - Homo Faber
Bohumil Hrabal - All My Cats
PG Wodehouse - Carry On, Jeeves
George Orwell - Essays
Daisy Johnson - Everything Under
David Byrne - Bicycle Diaries

Apr
Hiromi Kawakami - People From My Neighbourhood
Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan of the Apes
Elif Batuman - The Idiot
James Tiptree Jr - Ten Thousand Light Years From Home
Donna Tartt - The Little Friend
Stanislaw Lem - The Futurological Congress

May
Raymond Chandler & Robert B Parker - Poodle Springs
Michael Chabon - A Model World
Robert Harris - V2
Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels
Patricia Lockwood - No One is Talking About This
Cho Nam-Joo - Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

Jun
Georges Simenon - The Cellars of the Majestic
Jeff Vandermeer - Hummingbird Salamander
Haruki Murakami - First Person Singular
Cornell Woolrich - The Bride Wore Black
Peter Pomerantsev - Nothing is True and Everything is Possible
John Le Carre - Silverview
Mieko Kawakami - Heaven
Mona Awad - Bunny

Jul
Stephen King - Billy Summers
Susanna Clarke - Piranesi
Cesare Pavese - The Beautiful Summer
Philip K Dick - Our Friends from Frolix 8
Graeme Macrae Burnet - Case Study

Aug
Patricia Highsmith - The Blunderer
Irmgard Keun - After Midnight
Allen Ginsberg - Howl, Kaddish & Other Poems
Jonathan Wilson - Behind the Curtain
Ray Bradbury - The Illustrated Man
Philip Kerr - The One From the Other
James Tynion IV - The Nice House on the Lake Vol 1 (GN)
JG Ballard - A User's Guide to the Millennium
Anna Kavan - A Scarcity of Love

Sep
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day
Quentin Tarantino - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Georges Simenon - The Flemish House
Penelope Fitzgerald - Offshore
Susan Hill - The Man in the Picture

Oct
Alejandro Zambra - Multiple Choice
Larry McMurtry - The Last Picture Show
Richard Yates - A Good School
Jack Kerouac - Big Sur
Bora Chung - Cursed Bunny
James Tynion IV - The Department of Truth Vol 1 (GN)

Nov
James Hawes - The Shortest History of Germany
James Tynion IV - The Department of Truth Vol 2 (GN)
Stephen King - The Langoliers
Damon Galgut - The Promise
Hanna Bervoets - We had to remove this post

Dec
James Tynion IV - The Department of Truth Vol 3 (GN)
Georges Simenon - The Late Monsieur Gallet
Elana Ferrante - My Brilliant Friend
Claire Keegan - Small Things Like These
Jason Rerulak - Hidden Pictures
Irmgard Keun - The Artificial Silk Girl
Karl Stevens - Penny: A Graphic Memoir (GN)
Sathnam Sanghera - Empireland

[blocho]

Marilyn Johnson, Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City

When I was halfway through this book, I mentioned it to a friend (the same fellow who wrote a book about the Oakland Police Department), and he said it's the only book about NYPD history.

"Really, the only book?" I asked. "Surely, there must be more."

"Everything else is copaganda" he replied.

And indeed, when I got the book from the library, its shelf was filled with books that had similar chest-thumping titles -- Blue Pride: How a Bunch of Tough Guys Saved New York. Stuff like that.

This book, written by a history professor at Boston College, tells a much different story and one that's easy to summarize: 150 years of massive, unrelenting brutality, corruption, and oppression that has only somewhat lessened in recent decades. The audacity and openness of NYPD malfeasance through the years has been startling. The police of the 19th and early 20th centuries hid nothing. Yes, they broke bones and cracked skulls with their nightsticks. Because that's what the victims had coming to them. Yes, they took payoffs from various criminal elements. Because it helped to maintain order, and besides the cops deserved the extra pay for their hard work. Yes, they infiltrated and arrested political movements. Because socialists and civil rights campaigners are basically criminals anyway.

That being said, things have changed over the decades and centuries. Corruption in the NYPD is still widespread, but it's mostly petty corruption that usually involves bilking the government rather than taking graft from drug dealers. And the notorious application of the "third degree" -- the beating of arrested suspects in order to elicit confessions -- has mostly vanished. Johnson explains that brutality can only be countered by "consistent citizen oversight" that involves thorough journalism, investigative committees, and recordings of police action. And reform is most likely to occur when the reform will make policing easier and safer. The "third degree" dissipated less because of legislation and more because it made cops into targets and suspects could use their maltreatment to avoid prosecution.

[mightysparks]

And indeed, when I got the book from the library, its shelf was filled with books that had similar chest-thumping titles -- Blue Pride: How a Bunch of Tough Guys Saved New York. Stuff like that.

Sounds like those awful romance books with a shirtless guy on the front

[mightysparks]

So far this year I've read:

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka
The Measure - Nikki Erlick
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures - Merlin Sheldrake
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson

Couldn't get into the Kafka, a couple ok stories but everything else felt unfinished and was just not interesting or evocative and just bleh. The Measure was a really fun idea but the writing was awful and the characters are pointless and the dialogue all sounded so fake and preachy. It was annoying. Entangled Life was really nice, I feel like it didn't delve far enough but it was a solid overview of the different things fungi can do and used for etc. It was also kinda nice finishing this days before The Last of Us show premiered because I had fungi and cordyceps floating around in my brain at the time. Treasure Island was just not really my kinda thing but if you like pirates and mutinies and skeletons holding maps and treasure then I assume it would be a fun ol' time.

I'm also currently reading:
It - Stephen King
The Damnation Game - Clive Barker
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Brontë

It is my 'toilet book' so it's likely going to take months to finish. It's very slow but I do look forward to reading a little more every time nature calls. The Damnation Game had an amazing opening and has otherwise been a drag. I don't care for the characters, the horror isn't really that horrific and it doesn't delve into the gambling stuff much. Wildfell I'm quite enjoying although I find those types of books start well and then go on far too long and I stop caring.

[blocho]

Alan Weisman, The World without Us
The central concept of this popular science book is the question posed by the title: What would happen if all humans suddenly disappeared from the earth? I find this question fascinating, though I'm not exactly sure why. I think it's linked to my interest in history and the passage of time. There's a reason I spend so much time at historical sites when traveling or like taking pictures of decaying structures.

Unfortunately, though Weisman provides answers to his driving question, it's not really the point of his book. It's merely an excuse to explore the topic that really motivates him, the environmental degradation caused by human civilization. So I enjoyed learning that, should humanity disappear entirely all at once, most buildings would collapse within a century and the most enduring human artifacts would be bronze sculptures, plastics, nuclear waste, the Voyager spacecrafts, and radiowaves (the latter two are the only artifacts that will outlive the Earth itself after it is swallowed by the Sun in 7.5 billion years).

But the majority of the book was an exploration of environmental harm, which is a worthy topic but one that I and many readers have heard plenty about already. There are also other science topics that are throw in randomly and for no clear purpose: a history of hominid evolution, for example. Finally, Weisman has the unfortunate tendency to saturate his prose with descriptions of landscapes. Clearly, he's a guy who loves nature, but I don't need a list of 20 different plant species every time he goes to a new place.

Allie Brosh, Solutions and Other Problems
Any Allie Brosh fans here? Solutions and Other Problems is the much-delayed follow-up to Brosh’s debut, Hyperbole and a Half, which itself was adapted from Brosh’s blog. Her methodology remains intact: crudely drawn but charming images dawn with Paintbrush are paired with self-deprecating text that explores the quirks of Brosh’s own life, with a particular focus on pets, emotional health, and her childhood. Unfortunately, Solutions and Other Problems is very much a sophomore effort. There’s good stuff here, but plenty of filler as well.