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General Book Thread 2023


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So what are you all reading in 2023.

I'm currently reading The Mysterious Affair At Styles by Agatha Christie.

Also have a few of the Wrestling book's that are out to get through and a few self help book's with some history one's thrown in for good measure.

Have to have a few book's on the go in case my interest in one wanes. Book Bud has been fantastic at me finding some very cheap daily deals. :happy:

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I'm going to log my year through Literal.

Currently reading: 'The Satsuma Complex' by Bob Mortimer, about 30% of the way through. It reads exactly how you imagine for a book from Mortimer - in fact, the setting, the character's background, etc, I'm fairly sure he has lifted verbatim from his autobiography 'And Away...'.

Having a good time with it so far, even if I highly doubt an editor would allow some of the non sequitur and wild similes from anyone other than him. I've seen comparisons to Spike Milligan. If anything, it's more like what would happen if Grandpa Simpson was coherent. :lol:

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14 minutes ago, Mx. Canadian Destroyer said:

Reading The Dragon Reborn, book #3 in The Wheel of Time series. While I loved book 2, I thought it was very slow until the end, whereas this one has been hard to put down., 

Whenever I've looked at starting The Wheel of Time, there always seems to be a bit of a suggestion that Book 1 is pretty derivative and that things pretty much get going in Book 2. Does that sound like a fair judgement?

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Currently reading a biography on James Madison, have about 100 pages left. Next up will be a book by a travel blogger, Alyssa Ramos. After that, I'll be back to my goal of reading a biography on every US president, with James Monroe. My goal for this year is to finish that book faster then I've read the last three presidential books. 

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4 minutes ago, Tall Boi Byrne said:

Whenever I've looked at starting The Wheel of Time, there always seems to be a bit of a suggestion that Book 1 is pretty derivative and that things pretty much get going in Book 2. Does that sound like a fair judgement?

For a 14 book series (or whatever), I think that's probably pretty fair. I tried the first book way back and couldn't get into it. It was only once the show came out that I was able to go back and get through it. I thiiiink I liked Book 2 more than Book 1 but the first one is definitely a lot of these kids leaving their small town and us being introduced to the world, so I can see how some might think it's a little slow.

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On 05/01/2023 at 08:39, Pooker said:

Currently reading a biography on James Madison, have about 100 pages left. Next up will be a book by a travel blogger, Alyssa Ramos. After that, I'll be back to my goal of reading a biography on every US president, with James Monroe. My goal for this year is to finish that book faster then I've read the last three presidential books. 

Oh, I have the same eventual goal. I've read Edmund Morris' trilogy on Theodore Roosevelt, His Excellency for George Washington, and David McCullough's excellent John Adams. But it's been over a year and I'm due to start working on American Sphinx about Jefferson later this year. Which Madison book did you go with?

I used to keep track of what books I was reading by finding new spaces to read them in and taking photos once I was done reading for the day but that's really fallen off. Last year I only finished In Europe by Geert Mak, Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson, and Tishomingo Blues and Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard (who I usually read as a palate cleanser after a lengthy fantasy book). Might try one of those apps next. I started The Devil in the White City last month so that'll probably be what I'm reading for the next month or two.

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1 hour ago, GoGo Yubari said:

Oh, I have the same eventual goal. I've read Edmund Morris' trilogy on Theodore Roosevelt, His Excellency for George Washington, and David McCullough's excellent John Adams. But it's been over a year and I'm due to start working on American Sphinx about Jefferson later this year. Which Madison book did you go with?

I went with Ralph Ketcham's biography on Madison. Pretty sure I found it at a bargin store and grabbed it. Although I've read books on Grant and Lincoln in the past, I really started a few years ago with Washington, A Life by Ron Chernow, followed by McCullough's John Adams. I can't remember what Jefferson biography I read, but I paused from the presidents and read Hamilton by Chernow. Reading it really helped add a lot of filler to what was going on with Washington. Adams, and Jefferson.

I'm thinking that after I read Monroe's biography, I'm going to go back and find one for Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon, Samuel Adams, and possibly King George, to really flesh out the world around that time. And after that, I'll pick back up the presidents.

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Last year, I started reading again for the first time in years like properly. Currently been reading through the Song of Fire and Ice Series, I'm currently on the third book A Storm Of Swords 1 Steel And Snow, been enjoyable so far. I've also got Jon Moxley's book lined up to read through as well as Tom Felton's book so I'll probably read them when I fancy a break from GRRM

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On 05/01/2023 at 08:58, GA! said:

I'm going to log my year through Literal.

Currently reading: 'The Satsuma Complex' by Bob Mortimer, about 30% of the way through. It reads exactly how you imagine for a book from Mortimer - in fact, the setting, the character's background, etc, I'm fairly sure he has lifted verbatim from his autobiography 'And Away...'.

I really enjoyed it, it was a quick easy read and very Bob - as you say, a lot of the names and frames of reference seem like in-jokes around stories he's told before, but they're funny, so I'll allow it. I don't normally go in for celebrity fiction, but it was a fun one to read over the Christmas break.

I'm reading Faith, Hope and Carnage by Sean O'Regan and Nick Cave. It's basically a series of conversations between the two, and it's sometimes fascinating - Cave talks very eloquently about the nature of creativity - and it having taken place around the pandemic, and not long after the death of Cave's son, means it deals with some really intense emotions and big issues. Problem is, it just cements the feeling that Nick Cave is someone I'd hate to be stuck in a lift with. He talks endlessly as if the last Bad Seeds album, Ghosteen, is some grand step forward not just in his own career but in popular music in general, and I thought it was a bit rubbish. Most of all, it's just a constant reminder of something quite obvious that still seems to take a lot of Cave's fans by surprise - he is, at heart, a conservative Christian, and increasingly a somewhat reactionary one (a recent Red Hand Files letter included, unironically, the phrase "Jesus was cancelled on the cross"). I don't expect artists whose work I enjoy to match up to my own values at all, and it doesn't have much impact on how I listen to his music, but it does mean I don't really enjoy reading a whole book of his opinions that much.

 

According to Goodreads I read 43 books last year - it was probably one or two more than that, as I read some small press and self-published stuff that I couldn't add on there. Looking back over that list, it is a bit more varied than I remember - my chief memory of reading last year is that I read far more for research and background information on my own book than for pleasure, though perhaps that was more the case in 2021.

I'm looking forward to that not being the case next year, and moving on - I still have a huge pile to read of stuff bought while writing and researching; four or five books on social media (for a chapter that no longer exists, yay), a couple of books on vaudeville and music hall theatre, biographies of 19th century sports promoters, a book on the history of Lucha Libre, and so on. But I'll try and intersperse those with other stuff - expand my horizons when it comes to non-fiction, and try and read a lot more fiction again. I have an unread Yukio Mishima and the Silmarillion sat on my bedside table.

Though as I'm saying that, I have an idea for a book/story germinating, and have already bought four different books about the Cambridge Five spy ring in connection to that, so maybe I'll just end up falling down a different rabbit hole this year.

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