July 2016: What Have You Been Reading?

GOLLUM

GOLLUM

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Hi everyone.

Please post here what you have been reading in the month of July.

I'm continuing with the fascinating work Night Walking by Matthew Beaumont that explores the nightly perambulations of English poets, novelists and thinkers in London over the centuries that translates ultimately into a refutation of the Enlightenment period.

Meanwhile..on the fictional front I've embarked on a challenging ascent of Mt. Proust, currently at base station with Volume I Swann's Way as part of the classic 6 volume modernist work "In Search Of Lost Time".
 
I am about finished with issue number 115 (Summer 2016) of the anarchist journal The Match! (published since 1969, at very irregular intervals) and am about to start on Scott Fitzgerald (1962) by Andrew Turnbull, a biography. (I wonder if the author will explain why he didn't call his book F. Scott Fitzgerald.)
 
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Never been much of a post-apocalyptic fan but this is superb.
 
I just finished Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. I found it one of the best portrayals of PTSD I've seen, even though that term was never used. It is a strange book, alternating between scenes from a WW2 vet's life and some absurd aliens who could fit into the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (which I believe are the main character's mechanism for coping with his life). Yet this works in the story, which uses themes of fate and death to try to find meaning in life.

I'm interested in reading more by Vonnegut, so I'm starting The Sirens of Titan.
 
Im reading Guns of the Dawn by Adrian Tchaikovsky and it's just great. Absolutely enjoying it. I think it's a stand alone which I kind of like right now too since I have so much in my TBR pile.
 
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Got behind in posting my June reads - finished off the rest of that Cornell Woolrich omnibus - The Phantom Lady, Rear Window, Waltz into Darkness

Then July's - Slaughter in the Cotswolds, Trouble in the Cotswolds and Shadows in the Cotswolds, all part of Rebecca Tope's cosy crime series.

and Book 1 in the Alan Bradley Flavia du Luce crime series - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.
 
I finished Guns of the Dawn and I really liked it, and found it a simple story but one I am glad I found. Actually inspired me as an author, so that's good.

I picked up Legends and Liars from my bedstand, and realized I hadn't finished it! When did that happen? I have a few chapters to go, and got back into it last night. Can't wait to read the third of this trilogy.

Other than that, I'm waiting for my library to get the latest Stephen King book...because I really want to read it.
 
Finished Tom Holland's Persian Fire (fabulous book) and decided I wanted to read some fiction set in that period, so I thought I'd give Christian Cameron another go. I tried reading his Alexander: God of War last year but bounced off it. Now I've started Killer of Men (the first in his series 'The Long War') and so far I'm finding it much better.
 
Frank Tayell Wasteland. Second in a series Surviving the Evacuation, recently read the first one London. Was surprised I enjoyed it centres on one man who is alone in a world of zombies. We don't meet anyone else although there are signs of other survivors.
 
The Big over Easy by Jasper Fforde - a bit of absurd fun but more wry chuckling than load guffawing. More here.

I'm currently reading Cauldron of Ghosts by David Weber and Eric Flint and I'm frankly struggling big time. I'd have probably given up and thrown it away by now if I wasn't too committed to the Honorverse and didn't want a big hole in the story.
 
I finished the biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald (an intimate, sad tale, written by a fellow who actually knew Fitzgerald when he was in his decline and the biographer was a boy.) Before I go on to more Fitzgerald (I've got This Side of Paradise, his first novel; Babylon Revisited, a collection of stories; and his incomplete last novel The Last Tycoon on my shelf) I will take a break with a silly little book called Bum Fodder: An Absorbing History of Toilet Paper by Richard Smyth (2012), which should be just what it sounds like.
 
Trying to finish a couple books I have bookmarks in around my bed this month, and have started Liberators by our very own @Quellist It sure is fast paced and fun so far! 7% in...

Still trying to get through the Armada audio book, which I am enjoying but feel like there is way too much dialogue and unnecessary scenes with an imminent invasion coming...It's very YA
 
I am about to start This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1920), his first novel. It should be interesting to see this pre-Jazz Age, pre-marriage-to-Zelda, pre-Gatsby work. This is supposed to be the "definitive, authorized" text, with notes and such.
 
I've gone back to try The Lies Of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, again, but I'm struggling, again.
 
Reivers, I like Lies, really liked sequel, Red Skies (or what ever it was called), and the third fell flat to me, but still looking forward to the new one this year. I hope you stick to it, quite a neat world.

I finished Legends and Liars by Julia Knight, which is a great second book, and have moved on to The Fireman by Joe Hill. Seems cool so far.
 
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