What Are You Reading 4

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Tonyblack

Super Moderator
City Watch
Jul 25, 2008
30,841
3,650
Cardiff, Wales
I just finished reading Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals about Death by Caitlin Doughty. This is the second book that I have read by her (first being Smoke Gets In Your Eyes). These books are fascinating look into one of the most natural experience of human beings, that is perhaps the most misunderstood - Death and what comes next.

Now I'm reading "Quartered Safe Out Here" by George MacDonald Fraser (the author of the Flashman books). This is his autobiographical book about his wartime experiences in the British Army during WW2. He was in the war against the Japanese in Burma, which was the same theatre as my dad. So many of his experiences were very, very similar to that of my father. Sadly, I found this book just too late for my father to have read, as I know he would have enjoyed it.
 

=Tamar

Lieutenant
May 20, 2012
11,961
2,900
Burma, now known as Myanmar. Coincidentally, I just read a small book set in 19th century Burma, based on some of their traditions. It's Death by Effigy, by Karen L. Abrahamson. She is from "West Canada", and the book, although published by a UK publisher, is printed in the USA.
The story is a little unexpected to me as a Western hemisphere fantasy reader. There are Burmese nature spirits, and a mystery to solve, but what I had expected would be the primary issues are not changed at all. So for me as a Westerner, there is a behind the scenes tragedy. But as Daniel Hand says at the end of his introduction, this story takes the 'other' by the hand and embraces it.
 
Likes: Tonyblack
Jul 27, 2008
19,425
3,400
Stirlingshire, Scotland
Still on a cyberpunk kick, Just finished The Prometheus Trap: A Cyberpunk Techno Thriller#3 which I thought was really good, I've just bought #4 out of five in the series
From the first one, Attacked and left for dead, she wakes up in a cyborg body, and a corporation is hunting her down.

I will start it after I have read, Neo Cyberpunk Volume 2: The Anthology which has been good so far.
 
I enjoyed Quartered Safe Out Here, Tony. Have you read Fraser's McAuslan stories? That's how I was introduced to his writing.

I just finished Christopher Moore's Noir and Kevin Hearne's Blood and Paper. Carl Bernstein's Chasing History is next in line.
 

Tonyblack

Super Moderator
City Watch
Jul 25, 2008
30,841
3,650
Cardiff, Wales
I enjoyed Quartered Safe Out Here, Tony. Have you read Fraser's McAuslan stories? That's how I was introduced to his writing.

I just finished Christopher Moore's Noir and Kevin Hearne's Blood and Paper. Carl Bernstein's Chasing History is next in line.
I read a bunch of his Flashman books and had a compilation of the McAuslan books, but I didn't get around to reading it and have no idea what happened to it. :)
 

Quatermass

Sergeant-at-Arms
Dec 7, 2010
7,736
2,950
I've only read one or two of the Flashman books. I'll be honest, I got more into stories that were basically homages to that series. There's the Ciaphas Cain novels from the Warhammer 40K franchise by Sandy Mitchell, aka Alex Stewart, and the isekai novel series The Saga of Tanya the Evil by Carlo Zen (presumably a pen-name).
 
Likes: Tonyblack

=Tamar

Lieutenant
May 20, 2012
11,961
2,900
The Post-Utopian Adventures of Darger and Surplus, by Michael Swanwick. it's a collection of short stories, practically vignettes in some cases. I hadn't realized that they were characters in two novels that I haven't come across, Dancing with Bears, and Chasing the Phoenix.Surplus is a dog-headed humaniform creation, which is not unusual in that alternate universe. (As a New Englander I am mildly amused that he claims to be from the new nation of Western Vermont.)
They are conmen, which is a genre I'm not entirely fond of.
 

Quatermass

Sergeant-at-Arms
Dec 7, 2010
7,736
2,950
Alright, so, just to bump this thread a little, I am currently halfway through the very excellent Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I just wish it wasn't so long, my attention span isn't good for books in excess of about 350 pages these days...
 

ThinkingFox

Administrator
City Watch
Jul 20, 2017
339
2,425
UK
www.thinkingfox.com
I'm halfway through the Slow Horses series from Mick Heron about a bunch of Mi5 washouts. The first book has been filmed (cast includes the superb Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Horses ) and is on Apple TV as a series (paid subscription) with the 2nd book filming in the works. If you like laugh-out-loud spy thrillers then you're in for a treat.
 

RathDarkblade

Moderator
City Watch
Mar 24, 2015
15,992
3,400
47
Melbourne, Victoria
I just finished reading How To Be A Tudor by Ruth Goodman. Not my cup of tea, since she goes in detail into how Tudor housewives made all kinds of food, and I'm not that good a cook. ;) OTOH, she does go in detail into what Tudor people wore, which interested me more.

Before that, I read Puritans at Play by Bruce Daniels. I enjoyed this one a lot more; it's all about how the Puritan generation in New England (roughly 1621 to 1720) spent their leisure time, and how it changed over that century and into the Revolutionary years. Spoiler: Puritans were not such killjoys as they're usually made out to be. :)
 

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