So, What Are You Reading These Days? (besides comics)

[Alan M.]

Just bringing this discussion over to ning...

What books are you reading right now that don't have a narrative driven by images as well as words?

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"I'm happy for the digression to Twain (via Cooper), especially because it loops me back to where I was going anyway."

Speaking of which...

A STUDY IN SCARLET: I have attempted to read all of Sherlock Holmes twice before, but never quite completed. I have this "thing" when, if I abandon a project in the middle, I'm supposed to pick up where I left off rather than starting over at the beginning... again. Problem is, it's been so long since I last attempted to read Sherlock Holmes, that I no longer recall where I left off, so it's back to the beginning for me. 

Regarding A Study in Scarlet, I may never have finished it previously, because the early chapters are familiar but I didn't remember the end at all. Holmes sets out to solve a double homicide, and has the perp captured by the end of chapter seven. The next five chapters tell the murderer's backstory, then the murderer retells the first seven from his POV, then Holmes reveals how he solved the crime. I'll admit: I was on the edge of my seat for the backstory (although the story itself effectively foreshadows how that part is going to end). 

I don't know if I'll read the rest of Holmes before I read anything else (probably not), but my plan is to throw a Sherlock Holmes story into the mix every so often. 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

THE SIGN OF THE FOUR: The second Sherlock Holmes novel. I didn't like it as well as the first, but that's purely subjective. This is the one which introduces the cocaine and morphine (but still no deerstalker cap and inverness coat). Watson's war wound has mysteriously migrated from his left leg to his arm. As with A Study in Scarlet, after Holmes has solved the crime, Doyle fills in the backstory in a tale all its own. This is a natural breakpoint as Watson breaks up their partnership in the end to  get married. 

[Travis Herrick (Modular Mod)]

American Daredevil: Comics, Communism, and the Battles of Lev Gleason - I'm almost half-way through this book now. So, far I would call it good, not great. Sometimes I have to remind myself the author is Gleason's great-nephew, so that explains the, so far, constant high praise. What I really enjoy though, is all of the history I didn't know. This isn't a just another retread that we've all seen before.

[JD DeLuzio]

Apart from all of this, I just finished Karen Russell's Vampires in the Lemon Grove, a collection of short fiction that we would call fantasy but gets called something else because it's literary. She's a brilliant wordsmith and her best stories are extraordinary.  A few of them are too much like effect rather than actual stories, but there's no denying the power of her words and her ability to create worlds.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"The Masque of the Red Death": I don't remember what it was, specifically, that inspired me to reread this Poe short story a couple of days ago, but I've been meaning to ever since COVID hit. I've read it before, once, when I was in junior high, didn't get much out of it, and didn't return to it until now. I can see why I didn't retain much of it as a boy: it's pretty dense. Also, even today, I can't really tell you the point of the story. (I studied Poe in college, but not this story.) The thing about Poe is, he often uses untranslated phrases in foreign languages (Latin, French, etc.), and sometimes those phases reveal the theme of the story. Although that is not the case here, I have owned many collections of Poe over the years, most of them incomplete and unannotated. I did have a pretty nice (but incomplete) annotated version at one time, but I culled it when I acquired the complete (but unannotated) collection I use today. 

The internet is a little help, but most of the previous questions Google supplies answers to are obviously high schoolers cheating on exams. (The clue is when someone types in a question then add "Give examples.") Still, it's an interesting COVID-era read. And it's only five pages long (I remembered it as being longer). 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES: I took a little break after The Sign of the Four, which worked out because, as Adventures of Sherlock Holmes opens, Watson hadn't seen him for a while (having gotten married at the end of The Sign of the Four). After two short novels, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of a dozen short stories. As I recall from having read them in the past, I preferred the short stories to the novels. But I'm not nearly as big a fan of Sherlock Holmes as I am of James Bond (I have previously read approximately half of Sherlock Holmes once each), and I found myself approaching Doyle's work in much the same way Cap is approaching Ian Fleming, reading James Bond for the first time well into adulthood, that is with a more critical eye.

I am only four stories into Adventures of Sherlock Holmes ("A Scandal in Bohemia," "The Red-Headed League," "A Case of Identity" and "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"), but so far I have found them to be quite formulaic. Most of them are "one-trick ponies" which begin with Holmes making some kind of outrageous (and quite improbable but for writer's fiat) observation, which is much the same formula Poe used with C. Auguste Dupin. They are still entertaiing (in the same way logic puzzles are entertaining), but not particularly realistic. I do plan to continue reading them, however, but I may read them interstitially with other things. 

[Mark Sullivan (Vertiginous Mod)]

I started an advance copy of Nick Harkaway's new novel Titanium Noir (which comes out on May 16th). This is the third book of his that I've read, and I'm enjoying it just as much as usual. As the title implies, this is a noir detective story, but with a science fiction angle. Titanium refers to a genetic modification therapy that heals, extends lifespan, and makes the patient larger than normal (larger with each dose): so, they are referred to as Titans. An interesting idea, with ramifications that the story explores as it goes. And Harkaway's hardboiled detective language is a delight.

[Travis Herrick (Modular Mod)]

That sounds pretty good, Mark. I notated that for myself. I always like a twist on detective stories.

Mark Sullivan (Vertiginous Mod) said:

I started an advance copy of Nick Harkaway's new novel Titanium Noir (which comes out on May 16th). This is the third book of his that I've read, and I'm enjoying it just as much as usual. As the title implies, this is a noir detective story, but with a science fiction angle. Titanium refers to a genetic modification therapy that heals, extends lifespan, and makes the patient larger than normal (larger with each dose): so, they are referred to as Titans. An interesting idea, with ramifications that the story explores as it goes. And Harkaway's hardboiled detective language is a delight.

[The Baron]

I found my mother's old copy of My Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis.  I'm not a believer, but I remember seeing this book around the house when I was little.  I must have idly picked it up when I went through their stuff after they passed.  I'd never read it, so I decided to see what it had to say.

I confess that when I was a kid, I saw this book's title and imagined someone like Rich Little doing a Jesus impersonation.

[Captain Comics]

The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft.

I'd never read all of them. Maybe most them. Now I will.

[The Baron]

Fun Game:  Find a female character with a name in a Lovecraft story.

Captain Comics said:

The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft.

I'd never read all of them. Maybe most them. Now I will.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I have been spending time lately in 1981. It all started, I suppose, with March's "Cover a Dat" theme, "Detectives and Murder Mysteries." I posted a lot of Dick Tracy covers, which in turn led me to reread the Collins/Fletcher Dick Tracy circa 1981. 1981 is not a year I think about often. Indeed, the more years I accumulate, the less likely it is that I think of any past year in particular, but once I opened up that compartment of my mind, other memories from that year came bubbling to the surface. I don't know when it was, exactly, that I transitioned from MAD paperbacks to actual novels, or when I started buying them for myself, but it was sometime during junior high school I suspect. I do know exactly when I began to transition from paperbacks to hardcovers, however: 1981.

I was an avid newspaper reader at the time (still am), and the first new hardcovers I bought were were written by two of my favorite syndicated columnists: The Best of Dear Abby and A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney, both published in 1981. When I pointed this out to my wife she said, "Oh, so you've always been old." Be that as it may, I've been skipping back and forth between these books (and Dick Tracy) for a few weeks now and I just finished them up today.

THE BEST OF DEAR ABBY: If I found this book entertaining in 1981 (which I did), I find it absolutely fascinating now: what  in society has changed (and how it's changed), what hasn't, what's gotten better, what's gotten worse. Many of Abby's answers, I have discovered, were less than helpful to the letter-writer; she often had a tendency to go for the joke rather than good advice (although she herself admits the letters/responses chosen for the book kind of skew that way). She was very progressive in her thinking and I see that many of the opinions I hold today have been shaped by reading her column.

A FEW MINUTES WITH ANDY ROONEY: I have always aspired to be a curmudgeon; the only problem had always been that I was too young. I'm getting closer to being able to (convincingly) pull it off now, but I have come to realize that my desire came directly from Andy Rooney. This book contains transcripts of his 60 Minutes pieces. I hadn't realized that; I thought they were reprints of his newspaper column. Because they were originally written for television, some of them have a different cadence than one might expect. Some of them are pretty dated, particularly the ones on "Telephones," "Gender" and the cluster of winter holidays around the end of the year. Man, I would love to hear his thoughts on those subjects today. I would love to rewrite those essays myself.

Digression: I like to read books on airplanes. I use my boarding pass as a bookmark, and I often will simply leave it in the book. I will often choose books such as these, ones that can be picked up and put down easily without a plot to be lost, while on trips. (Whereas I like reading on the plane, I seldom read during vacation, so I might go for a week between outbound and inbound chapters.) According the date/destination of the boarding pass, I last read A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney on out tenth anniversary trip. 

When I was younger (and had fewer books), I used to shelve them, not by subject, but in the chronological order I acquired them. When I filled a shelf (and had more available floorspace), I'd simply buy another. At one point I had three or four bookshelves in my front room, and it was possible to trace my interests simply by examining the bookshelves (starting at the door) and moving around the room clockwise from shelf-to-shelf. That was three or four moves ago, and some 30 years. These days, my earliest books are in boxes, still beloved but less accessible. When I was looking through my paperbacks yesterday (for Dick Tracy and the Nightmare Machine), I came across and more by Andy Rooney and Ask Marilyn (by Marilyn vos Savant), which shows I was still reading books by syndicated columnists into the '90s.