Why I don’t read novels anymore
This article claims that giving up novel-reading can be a sign of senility:
Fiction, on the other hand, requires you to exercise your memory, as you proceed from beginning to end and retain a variety of details, characters and plots.
Incidentally, I’ve noticed over my years as a neuropsychiatrist that people with early dementia, as one of the first signs of the encroaching illness, often stop reading novels.
Then again – anecdotal evidence, not worth much. I bet people who are getting senile give up a lot of things – like dressing in anything but sweatpants.
Hmmm – that’s what I wear to blog.
At any rate, I stopped reading novels many years ago. I never was a very keen novel-reader in the first place, except for some of the classics: Moby Dick, a ton of Russian novels, David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, you know the drill. And Milan Kundera. I think I would enjoy re-reading them, but new ones? Not so much.
I’m still in a book group, and I usually at least try to read the assigned book – unusually a novel – every month. It’s rare that I can get through the book or even past page 30 or so. That’s all it takes to learn what I need to know: it’s about another noble and beleaguered heroine from a third-world country. Prose that is uninspired and a story that is repetitive. No thanks.
I also lack the patience I used to have – perhaps as a result of reading too much short-form stuff online – and I’ve also lost the sense of unlimited time I once had, even though that was an illusion. In addition, because of my chronic arm injuries, I have a holding-the-book problem. Plus, for most of my life I’ve had a mind-drifting-with-audio-book problem, and now I also have an I-hate-ebooks problem. There’s just something about an actual book that an e-book doesn’t capture, and although I’ve tried, I haven’t been able to get used to electronic books. But even if I did get accustomed to ebooks, I doubt I’d be reading many modern novels that way or any other way.
I’ve been a voracious reader in periods of my life, but it comes and goes in waves. Not sure what brings it on, or causes it to dissipate.
I generally really enjoy classic literature. I suppose that’s why they call them classics.
When I’m not in one of my classical literature waves I still read a great deal, but it’s all non-fiction; science, current events, politics… I know neo does a lot of that also. Hard to imagine that takes less brain power than novel reading. I agree that the post’s theory sounds hyperbolic and unfounded.
Modern American novels are not that interesting anymore there was one about rita hayworth that was sort of interesting another about the real life model behind moneypenny
My mom was a life long reader who in her prime would read 3-4 books a month but in the last few months of her life she stopped reading and it definitely coincided with the steepening of her mental decline. She was still mostly OK for in person conversations and even on the phone but she was clearly struggling and we all talked among ourselves about this one development.
I think it was that she just coudn’t track the story anymore but that’s just my theory.
I’ve noticed the same thing. The cause seems to be a simultaneous lack of patience caused by consuming so much short-form internet content, and disappointment that almost all novels have lost their ability to enchant me. I like Action/Suspense themes, but they seem to now be based on the “Female protagonist suffers some crisis or attack and will have to re-visit her past to uncover what REALLY happened twenty years ago on that night she has worked to hard to put behind her…” Blech!
I’ve noticed the same thing. The cause seems to be a simultaneous lack of patience caused by consuming so much short-form internet content, and disappointment that almost all novels have lost their ability to enchant me. I like Action/Suspense themes, but they seem to now be based on the “Female protagonist suffers some crisis or attack and will have to re-visit her past to uncover what REALLY happened twenty years ago on that night she has worked to hard to put behind her…” Blech!
As far as your difficulty holding a book due to your arm injury, might a book-holder designed for one-handed use help you? I just came across this device and got one for a friend of mine who was going through a lengthy convalescence after eye surgery: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PHZRMVC?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1
I read novels still (at my also advancing age), but they tend to be scattered from over the last 150 years or so. Not many contemporary novels make the cut, although I’ve enjoyed those by Amor Towles and Neal Stephenson.
On e-readers, I’ve taken well to reading on the Kindle. I find that I’m a better reader on it than I am with physical books. For one thing, I pay attention better (esp. since I don’t know how close I am to the end). The ability to look up characters whose names reappear, search text, and highlight passages (that I can easily find again) help me too.
YMMV of course.
RigelDog, that book-holder looks like an excellent idea! I like to read in bed, and it would be just the thing.
Neo, I am glad to know I’m not the only person who was never able to adjust to e-books. I tried. When Amazon went into censorship, I put my Kindle away and never took it out again.
I still enjoy reading detective novels, partly because they tempt me to figure out not only whodunit but also how and why theydunit. I was also drawn to some detective writers for their style and insight– I’ve reread most of P.D. James’ stories more than once because her writing “purrs along like a Rolls-Royce engine,” as one critic put it, but also because she had incisive insights into human nature– no doubt sharpened by her experience working as a hospital administrator during WWII and as a civil servant in the Home Office after her husband’s death in 1964. Tony Hillerman, who died in 2008, is an American detective novelist whose stories feature Navajo Nation Police officers– and offer an introduction to the various cultures (including the “culture” of the FBI!) as well as the geography of the American Southwest. His novels have been continued by his daughter Anne, who weaves the social changes affecting Native Americans into her stories as well as the latest developments in forensic science and police training.
I still have a respectably sized collection of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh whodunits. It must be the combination of puzzle solving and human interest that makes well-written detective novels so satisfying to me.
I also rarely read novels anymore. I’ve read most of the great classics, including a few from the 20th century (my son being an English prof doesn’t hurt…he teaches a class on American lit). He’s the reason I’ve ever read Faulkner and some others like that. He got me on a Tim Powers kick for a while many years ago. Those were fun reads (if weird).
But in the past 15 years or so I’ve read almost exclusively non-fiction. I don’t dislike fiction, there are just so many books I want to read about so many subjects that I try to prioritize the ones I just HAVE to read, and that is almost never a novel. I read around 40-50 books a year, always an actual book. I too dislike reading ebooks.
“Fiction, on the other hand, requires you to exercise your memory, as you proceed from beginning to end and retain a variety of details, characters and plots.”
I’ve been making my way through Vanity Fair, one chapter a day. It definitely challenges my memory, as there are dozens of characters (many with the same first name), and extended families over several generations. I find myself consulting online lists of characters to keep it all straight. Thackeray also had some artistic ability and had his own illustrations in the original.
I’m enjoying it, though. Very lively and humorous, and I love the way he frequently “breaks the fourth wall” and addresses the reader directly with his observations about human nature.
There’s also a 7-part BBC miniseries from a few years ago that I started to watch. Not bad, but condenses a lot and adds dialogue not in the original.
I love my kindle. First the price is lower than the print. Second, I no longer have an ever growing pile of books.
95% of what I read is for pleasure and relaxation. I read every night in bed before going to sleep, and at the beach when we head over there. From the previous comments I assume most here would consider me a lightweight. I read mostly fantasy and sci-fi. Occasionally a nonfiction thrown in. I read the classics in high school, college, and early adult. I almost never reread anything. The exception is the massive Wheel of Time series which I consider a masterpiece. Jordan put so much detail and hints on what would happen 3 books later, I kept discovering new things with each rereading.
I read almost exclusively non fiction at this point in my life. Newer fiction just doesn’t interest me anymore.
I also only read physical books often bought at second hand book stores.
There is also this for all you digital book readers:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/roald-dahl-books-rewritten-remove-142549561.html
Try some R. A. Lafferty. His short fiction is more popular, but he also wrote some great novels; right-wing, funny, and like nothing else you’ve ever read.
Past Master: Thomas More recruited from the past to rule a future “utopia” on the planet Astrobe.
The Reefs of Earth: Alien pooka children in Oklahoma aim to exterminate humanity.
Space Chantey: The Odyssey in space; Captain Roadstrum’s long journey home from an interstellar war.
Fourth Mansions: Secret societies, conspiracies galore.
Annals of Klepsis: The beginning of history on a pirate planet.
Okla Hannali: Historical novel about a fictional Choctaw.
Just the opposite. I have always read addictively and almost omnivorously, fiction, non-fiction, biography, autobiography, popular science, the backs of cereal boxes, whatever — but willingness to explore non-fiction is relatively recent. I started with fiction very young and, despite explorations along the way, have stayed with novels all my life. I’ve written a couple of novels, though not recently, and as for reading novels, have never stopped. I always have one in progress and have a daughter who loves them as much as I do, so we can find and recommend and share. Right now it’s a well-loved children’s novel I’m revisiting with joy, on audiobook so I can listen on my daily walk — while, at the same time, reading nonfiction in the form of a mind-expanding memoir that has the same grace and insight you might hope to find in a novel. (Okay, it’s “All the Beauty in the World,” by Patrick Bringley.)
Neo, I hear you about eBooks — they certainly aren’t real books and can’t replace them. BUT. I also saw what you said about your chronic arm issues. EBooks solve that problem. They’re so light and portable. And they also solve the tired-eyes-late-at-night problem, because you can always make the font bigger or alter the way the text is displayed. I fully agree that they never quite seem like Real Books, and I have trouble sometimes remembering what I’ve read. But at the same time, I can carry my Kindle everywhere. It contains hundreds of books, maybe thousands by now. When I broke my hip some years ago, it was so hard and fatiguing for quite some time to lift or hold or manage anything the least bit heavy or awkward, not to mention holding up a heavy book and managing somehow to turn pages — but I needed distraction from pain and boredom, and I needed to read, and my Kindle was right there, a stalwart friend, so light and easy and available and full of just what I needed. So I have succumbed. I don’t say you should, too. I just say that I’m glad that I did.
I need novels. I don’t know why, exactly, but I do. I do love non-fiction, with all its multitudinous possible forms — but novels, with their leaps of imagination and windows into other lives (and that’s the main thing, isn’t it — how, other than through a novel, can anyone experience so almost-fully what it is to be someone else?) give me something that I don’t think I could live without.
I read Belgravia, which is downtown abbey about a century earlier by the author of the series, most of these I read in at least soft back,
I’m not sure what the ordinary run of novels is, but whatever it is or has been never interested me.
I liked McDonald’s Travis McGee series. I like David Drake in any of his genres. Ruth Downie’s Medicus series–protagonist is an army doctor in second-century occupied Britain.
Dorothy Dunnett’s two series about men of affairs in Renaissance Europe, excellent and deep.
Although YA historical fiction, Sutcliff’s works are still interesting. I once went into a bookstore and asked for something by her. Got a nasty look and an intro to a bunch of warrior princess novels. Her Sword at Sunset is an adult novel and, as far as I can figure, the closest fictional treatment of the real Arthur. Morris, in his “The Age of Arthur” doesn’t find Arthur in his quite detailed history but, in a sense, finds an Arthur-shaped hole. Somebody had to do that stuff.
Tried the Great Gatsby and….booring people doing pointless stuff….
More to non-fiction.
It’s funny that I only like non-fiction on TV – documentaries, sports, reality shows. And unlike most, I stick to reading fiction (with the exception of the news).
Mrs Whatsit:
Unfortunately, ebooks don’t solve my arm problems at all. I find them uncomfortable. And I already have a special way to prop up regular books. The bigger problem for me is increased impatience.
Mrs. Whatsit:
“(and that’s the main thing, isn’t it — how, other than through a novel, can anyone experience so almost-fully what it is to be someone else?)”
I agree completely. I’ve always thought of it as eavesdropping on someone’s inner monologue. Something that I find fascinating, presuming the character actually has interesting thoughts.
My earliest memories reading are of the Mort d’Arthur and the Chanson d’Roland. Never much interested non-fiction except technical manuals when needed. Since childhood I’ve gravitated to what some call heroic fiction. This can science fiction, fantasy, historical or present day. I never have been able to wade through big L literature. Most of the Literature books I have been exposed to are so heavy handed with their message I just have to put them down. Reading a lot of science fiction opened my mind to many modern cultural changes. In my teens I accepted that some people were homosexual and that was fine. Not mainstream for a Catholic boy in the ‘70s. I don’t think anything is wrong with changing your sex, I just think the technology isn’t there yet. Same with electric vehicles. My reading has given me that. My love for heroic fiction has shown me that what a person IS doesn’t matter while what a person does is what matters.
My grandmother had some kind of dementia for years. She mostly did circle the word and crossword puzzles but she also read novels pretty much up tell the end. In fact a couple of time when I would visit my parents who she lived with I left a book I was reading on the table and she all of the sudden was reading it. I lost a couple of books that way but it was ok with me.
I rarely don’t have a new book I am reading, and go through them quickly I think.
Finished Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception and Infiltration by Paul Kengor, excellent showing how old Marxism has moved to Cultural Marxism.
I’ve always read obsessively. At first it was comic books, science-fiction, mysteries, non-fiction, high literature and poetry.
Then I started working long hours at software start-ups. I stopped reading books aside from tech books I needed for my job. Then the internet happened and I got used to reading short web page articles.
After I stopped working at start-ups, I discovered science-fiction had become boring franchises or woke messaging. Poetry and literature had also gone the woke route.
Meanwhile, movies, emerging on VHS, then DVDs, then streaming, also sucked up more and more of my energy which had gone into novels.
I’d like to get back to novels — at least older ones — but I’ve lost the habit.
Physicsguy: In full agreement about the Wheel of Time novels. A rereading of them always turns up something new. I understand that Robert Jordan (his pen mane) had an undergraduate degree in physics from The Citadel.
Now that I’m learning French, I recall how desperate and determined I was in 5th grade to read Big People books in English.
I kept getting books from the library or paperbacks from the drug store and hurling myself at them, trying to scale that wall. I would read these adult books, like I’m now trying to read children’s books in French, and get only some of each book.
Then, bloodied but unbowed, I would gird my loins to try again with the next book.
I remember how exhausted I was when I finished “The Man in the High Castle” (Philip K. Dick), “Dune” (Frank Herbert) and “The Lord of the Rings” (Tolkien). I didn’t get through LOTR until 8th/9th grade.
I’ve never heard anyone else describe such a struggle. Perhaps I was too impatient and if I just relaxed I would have gotten there a year or three later without so much effort.
Anyone else?
I tend to read fiction on a kindle fire. Since my work involved technical, boring reading (accounting & tax stuff), relief was with the lighter stuff. I usually read mysteries and historical fiction.
Somehow, I just can’t go back to the non-fiction stuff. I will buy it, but I just can’t get through it all. I guess that reading current affairs blogs are enough for me at this time.
I like reading a book series where the characters can be developed, but I dislike when the author uses the first chapter to recount the previous x number of books.
I use a Kindle Fire since I can read books, access the web, and get movies – something that my original kindles can’t do. I have a few and I keep them charged, just in case. I read the kindles in my bed, but the kindles don’t hurt as much as a hardback falling on your face!
I am not buying books since I have enough stuff to deal with, but I do have a lot of “real” books. There are some things you just can’t get rid of…
Thanks to posters who have given me some new names to investigate. Some that I have liked – Dick Francis (horse racing) and Susan Albert Wittig (herbs and historical topics). Having Kindle Unlimited means that I can try and give up easier than when I buy a hardback book.
Wow – I took too long to type this comment – lots of other comments to process – just thanks to all that give author suggestions.
Second edit – I carry a Kindle with me at all times – if I have internet access then it’s great that I can catch up with the world. Otherwise, I am reading something that I want to see.
Agree with Gregory Harper agreeing with Mrs. Whatsit.
I read a lot of both, fiction and non-fiction. But it’s only in novels that I feel like I’m really reading. I love how one can get thoroughly lost and absorbed into the best of them.
One of my favorite feelings in the world is having an entire day to myself with nowhere to be and nothing to do, which doesn’t happen often. Then about three hours in you realize you’ve chosen exactly the right novel. You’ll know it’s truly great if you get past the halfway point and think, “Damn! I’m on the wrong side of this.”
Liz
Ref Dick Francis. I believe he was a steeplechase rider, much different from our flat racing. His books always have some of that in them, some more, some less. But the plot involves some other item, carpentry, film making, so forth. So you get an inside view of such things.
McDonald’s Travis McGee did the same thing; his adventure was with some issue which needed to be explained–emphatically NOT infodumps–and was done skillfully.
Last Francis I read was mostly by his son and had far, far, far too much about calling races from the television booth and assorted details.
I worry about and believe that years of online short-form reading have stunted my patience for novel (or extended nonfiction) reading.
Nevertheless, I’m currently reading Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy series, and while the prose is challenging and the form long, I’m finding I haven’t lost my old knack for concentrated, enjoyable reading.
The above on a Kindle Paperwhite (Signature). Wonderful display and ergonomics.
To answer huxley:
I think it was around 6th grade that I started reading DH Lawrence and Dostoevsky. Sex and darkness (respectively), oh my! I was quite determined to plow through many classics with diligence. People have complained about grasping or getting through Faulkner, but I loved it and at least thought I understood it.
As I’ve mentioned previously, while I loved Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist and Dubliners, I met my Waterloo with Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses. Those two took up an enormous amount of time and I really got nothing out of the latter. At least it was later in high school that I attempted those, but it didn’t help much.
Interesting commentary on the topic of patience. I believe that I had an enormous reservoir of patience in my youth, but somehow used most of it up along the way. I had conversation about that with a good friend a year ago and she said that I never had much patience. I responded that we had first met when I was about 33, so she didn’t know my younger years. It’s also possible that she is more correct than I think she is.
Love my old Kindle with the pushbutton keypad. Going on a longer trip? Take a few books or a couple dozen if you wish.
TommyJay:
Wow! You were more ambitious than I was. Lawrence and Dostoevsky in the 6th grade. That didn’t occur to me. I don’t think I even knew who they were!
Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov were the top shelf for me then.
Read books by the score. . . .
Telemachus,
Yep, the WoT is full of QM references
For those who like ebooks, I wish you the best. For long reads, I still like paper much better.
As for content, I’m in despair at the politicization of the novel in English. It’s so repulsive that I’ve been tempted to write a novel of the counter-revolution. Don’t worry, I know my limitations.
So what novels do I like? The Russians, British, and Americans of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries left us many books that I can read over and over again. My eyes aren’t as good as they once were, so I now read hardback books, instead of those cheap little paperbacks with smeary typeface.
Otherwise, the test of time has proved their worth.
P.S. To measure the progress of my own senile dementia, I rewrite the speeches of Joe Biden. When the practice becomes plagiarism, I’ll start to worry.
Huxley,
I suppose you could always write non woke Sci- Fi.
Perhaps about a small colony on the one of the dwarf planets trying to escape the madness that is Globalist Earth….what is that icy one in the main asteroid belt? Not sure it has officially been declared a dwarf planet yet.
Ceres
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/dwarf-planets/ceres/overview/
My fiction reading has been mostly SF, Fantasy, and Historical Fiction.
I would suggest you might find the latter of interest, if you don’t like SF/Fantasy.
Two series to consider towards that end would be
Hellenic Traders (Harry Turtledove — 5 books)
https://www.amazon.com/Over-Wine-Dark-Sea-Harry-Turtledove-ebook/dp/B00F7LGGZA
Post Alexandrian Greek, in the Mediterranean
Menedemos, the young dashing sea captain, and his helper, the scholarly Sostratos, are sea-traders from the Greek island of Rhodes. Fearless sailors, they will travel any distance to make a profit or to search for rich treasures.
While they trade in fineries such as wine and silk (and even, to the chagrin of many, peacocks), they live in dangerous times with pirates, thieves and barbarians. As if avoiding death by the hands of these miscreants isn’t enough (particularly the barbarians from an obscure town called Rome), they are also caught between the political intrigues of Alexander’s former generals.
Bonus: Single book by Harry Turtledove: “Household Gods”
https://www.amazon.com/Household-Gods-Judith-Tarr/dp/0812564669
Middle-Roman empire, at the height of its power (ca. 150 AD), near modern Austria
Nicole Gunther-Perrin is a modern young professional, proud of her legal skills but weary of the daily grind, of childcare, and of sexist coworkers and her deadbeat ex-husband. Then after one exceptionally awful day, she awakens to find herself in a different life, that of a widowed tavernkeeper on the Roman frontier around A.D. 170.
Delighted at first, she quickly begins to realize that her new world is as complicated as her old one. Violence, dirt, adn pain are everywhere; slavery is commonplace, gladiators kill for sport, and drunkenness is taken for granted. Yet, somehow, people manage to face life everyday with humor and goodwill.
No quitter, Nicole manages to adapt, despite endless worry about the fate of her children “back” in the twentieth century. Then plague sweeps through Carnuntum, followed by brutal war. Amidst pain and loss on a level she had never imagined, Nicole must find reserves of the sort of strength she had never known.
and then….
Sharpe’s (Bernard Cornwell — 22 books)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074CDXDFW
Napoleonic Era British Military, also tied to Wellington
Richard Sharpe. Soldier, hero, rogue—the man you always want on your side. Born in poverty, he joined the army to escape jail and climbed the ranks by sheer brutal courage. He knows no other family than the regiment of the 95th Rifles, whose green jacket he proudly wears.
I can also recommend a lot of SF and Fantasy, depending on what would appeal, if anything. While there is SF which has been infected with “woke” garbage, there is at least one publishing house (Baen Books) which does not truck with woke garbage. It’s either written well or it’s not in their publications.
huxley,
I read a fair bit of Asimov short stories and some his science non-fiction as well as couple George Gamow books. High quality material for kids as I recollect.
I only learned of P.K. Dick through the movies such as Blade Runner. In fact, that was the last fiction novel I read in 2015: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? That’s a fun comparison between the novel and film.
They struggled mightily with the script going through several versions. Dick himself consulted on the film and was relatively happy with it in spite of the great liberties taken. About a quarter of the way through the novel I thought the film was much better than the book. Upon finishing the book I reversed my opinion.
______
I didn’t start out at the beginning as a 6th grader deciding on a quest to read many great classics. As it happened, Crime and Punishment and Lady Chatterley’s Lover were just sitting there on the bookshelf in our home and I read them. Whoa! I was hooked. An advantage of having older parents and siblings I suppose. A couple more Lawrence and Dostoevsky books, and then I began the quest in earnest.
Offhand, I’ve read at least 8-10 feet “thick” of physical books in the last 3-4 years, as well as a considerable number of e-books (there’s a price-point after which I go for hardcover or paperback — I don’t have the issue with e-books others have mentioned, I choose between them based on the price-difference. In general if it’s less than 5 bucks, go e-book, unless I can get a VG+ physical book for under 5 delivered, which is unusually cheap… If it’s more than 5 bucks, probably going hardcover, then trade PB, then regular PB, whichever is cheapest — though I usually go for “VG” or better condition…).
I will be most unhappy when I get so old that I can’t read books any more. I have a visual learning style, so audio does not work for me.
After spending a good part of most days reading news and blogs on my desktop computer or iPad, I enjoy reading a real book during late afternoons or evenings. It is easier on my eyes, and I like the tactile feeling of holding the book and turning the pages. After needing to read technical books and articles during my working years, I rediscovered fiction after I retired. I also find a real book to be handier on a plane flight or in a doctor’s waiting room.
I used to read – mostly – SciFi and Fantasy.
The last few years SciFi seems to be only about humans destroying the Earth and Aliens, kind or otherwise, repairing the damage.
Fantasy these days seems almost 100% woke.
So now I read – mostly – “historical” fiction of all genres. OBloodyHell mentioned the excellent Hellenic Traders series by Harry Turtledove. +1000!
And also another great series, the Sharpe’s books by Bernard Cornwell,
I will add that if you enjoy “period” mysteries you might also like …
The Railway Detective series (1850ish) by Edward Marston
Inspector Hardcastle series (WWI England) by Graham Ison
Athenian mystery series (Pericles era) by Gary Corby
And if you like Space Opera ANY of the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold!!!
I last found time to read fiction was during the lock down. I read La Débâcle (The Downfall) by Émile Zola, something I had wanted read since jr high. Fit the mood.
I generally read a novel at least every 1 or 2 weeks. Recently read some of Charlotte Bronte’s lesser-known books, of course she si best known for Jane Eyre, which I actually have never read, but probably will one of these days.
I always like to put in a plug for Thomas Flanagan’s incredibly wonderful historical novel The Year of the French, which I reviewed here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/65548.html
For those who like fantasy but don’t like Wokeness, check out books by my friend Margaret Ball, such as A Pocketful of Stars:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/57661.html
I understand some reluctance to get in ebooks, but there’s a simple solution to the Kindle censorship problem: Don’t use a kindle. I have a couple of tablets, one being an Amazon Fire which I have bootlegged Play store onto, so that I have downloaded an ebook reader (Lithium, to be specific), which Amazon, in a classic walled garden monopolistic move, doesn’t allow through the Amazon Apps store. Find and download your books in epub format, archive them in multiple locations. They’re yours, as much as any print book.
I read a lot of SF/fantasy and baen.com is the cat’s pajamas. I wouldn’t say anti-woke, just that they publish a lot of authors that have been cancelled or frozen out for not being sufficiently leftist. On the principle that “First hit’s free, kid”, they offer a bunch of free downloads of the first book in an established series. AND, everything they offer is DRM free. There’s plenty of software out there to allow DRM removal, but they don’t force their readers to flirt with the legal gray area of personal archiving.
I saw the post Neo linked (by the 81-year-old doctor) earlier this month, and have used it as an excuse to keep reading when I should be doing other things.
His belief that fiction is more challenging than non-fiction had some good points, but I think that depends on what fiction, and what non-fiction, you are actually reading. As PA Cat said, detective novels have an element of engagement that isn’t always found in other genres, although keeping up with names in Russian novels might be analogous.
Lots of familiar authors in the lists by Neo’s salon.
Dick Francis has long been a favorite of mine, not to slight Christie and Sayers; and I am glad to see that, thanks to Richard Aubrey, I’m not the only fan of Dunnett’s picaresque heroes Francis Crawford and Niccolo. I also recommend her mysteries starring Johnson Johnson (the Dolly series in America) to get the best of both worlds.
As for the science fiction field — I stick to the Old School, except for a few contemporary authors who are not subsumed by Wokeness (although not conservatives by any means).
Lois Bujold has a swash-buckling space opera series about Miles Vorkosigan, self-promoted to Admiral as a teen-ager when he hijacks a space courier and saves a planet or two, which ought to be heroic fantasy but is pure science fiction, and very perceptive about human nature and social constructions.
Connie Willis IS woke, but her stories are so riveting and her writing is so entrancing that I just read past it (and to her credit, most of the wokeness is personal — based on a public appearance I attended — not authorial).
When I turned 60 (now 10 years ago), I decided I only had 20 good years of reading left, and decided to at least try for 50 books a year (one a week, with time off for Christmas), which would give me time for 1000. I am alternating fiction and non-fiction, because I enjoy both, and read for about an hour at bedtime (or less, if it’s physics).
I’ve kept track in a library data base where I’ve cataloged my books (LibraryThing.com), and exceeded my target most years, until 2020 — when I couldn’t go out anywhere and had nothing to do but stay home and read!
I do read about 6 hours a day on-line, which is also a mix of non-fiction and fiction (some of which pretends it is non-fiction, as someone noted above), so I’m not lacking in brain exercise, although it’s all short pieces, not novels.
My current book is The Complete Short Stories of Arthur C. Clarke, some of which I have already read, many I have not, especially his earlier work (which I enjoyed very much). There are at least 150 of them, and I’m half-way through, so that may take up 2 weeks of reading or more.
Apropos of books and reading, see my comment here for an excerpt of a New Yorker piece by John McPhee on how writer’s use cultural frames of reference with varying degrees of effectiveness.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/02/18/chatbots-gone-wild-havent-we-already-seen-a-movie-about-this/#comment-2667376
buddhaha’s recommendation for Baen is good.
If you like SF and fantasy, check out Sarah Hoyt’s blog every Sunday for promos directly from the authors of newly-released books, many independently published (as are hers).
The censorship of the Wokerati in book publishing has been very well covered in her blog posts. It’s worse than most people know, and especially egregious in the Young Adult and Teen segments of the industry.
The hits on Dahl are the tip of the iceberg.
The post Griffin linked implicates paper books as well as electronic, and the changes are IMO totally unnecessary and take a lot of the flavor out of the books.
I don’t mind light editing for changes in reader’s sensibilities in the younger ages, especially if approved by the author, but the examples there and at Not the Bee are ham-handed and plebeian.
This is NOT like the continual updating of the Nancy Drew & Hardy Boys books for new generations; that’s more akin to the cultural references problems that McPhee elucidates. It’s Snowflakery, like the furor about Dr Seuss last year.
https://notthebee.com/article/why-do-you-need-to-own-so-many-books-they-ask-heres-why
Short answer: because they are changing the content.
At least the firemen in Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” burned the whole book, instead of tampering with the innards.
@ gwynmmir > “He’s the reason I’ve ever read Faulkner and some others like that.”
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/02/a-faulknerian-interlude.php
Obsessive reader since the summer between 1st and 2nd grades. I was at the bottom of my class starting into that summer. My mother read with me every day. I thought it a pain, but by the tie I started back to school in the fall, I was at the top of my class. Never looked back. Every month or so in HS, I would stay up all night reading a book, cover to cover, then fake being sick, so I could skip school and catch up on my sleep. That age it was Heinlein, Asimov, etc. In my latter 20s, and through my 30s, it was very often computer manuals. Then law. Got divorced, and flew back to CO every other week to see my daughter, and read a book a weekend as a result. Back to sci-fi/fantasy. Got worse when I was flying every week, at least. One wall of the garage, maybe 300 linear feet, is bookshelves for that genre.
Now, I use my iPads as e-readers. Mostly Kindle, though I still share a BN account with my daughter. I have a day and a night iPad Pro, with one on the charger while the other is in use. And a charged up regular iPad as a backup. I get my nonfiction reading Neo’s blogs and the like, and doing research on various subjects. Thus, most of what I read in the Kindle and Nook apps is fiction. Change of pace from the reality of the country, and world, we live in falling apart around us. And the great thing is that if I wake up in the middle of the night, and read until dawn, no one cares. I am retired, and that is one of the benefits of retirement.
I am having fun reading the comments! Something that hardly happens to me anywhere. I can’t say when the last time I read a paper book. I was a very early adopter of e-books, does anyone remember the Palm? I read now on my phone. And I am all over Kindle Unlimited. Yes there is a ton to the 10th power of bad books there, but I also had that problem with paper books.
Aesopfan, thanks for reminding me of Connie Willis. I don’t remember anything woke in her books, but it would have been called PC when I read them. She is such a good writer that I was 3/4 though one of her novels before I realized it was a romance novel. A science fiction/historical story, but a romance novel all the same.
}}} The last few years SciFi seems to be only about humans destroying the Earth and Aliens, kind or otherwise, repairing the damage.
Only the woke garbage.
Try looking for books from Baen.
Or authors:
Christopher Nuttall
Evan Currie
Larry Correia
Marc Alan Edelheit
Charles Gannon
David Weber
Jack Campbell
Taylor Anderson
“The Bobiverse”
Michael Z Williamson
All the above write great non-woke fiction. Some fantasy, some SF. A chunk of it is military in nature, but not always.
I see I’m not the only commenter on this thread who likes to read as much of a specific author’s output as they can find. I started binge-reading certain writers in high school. I smile when I see huxley’s screen name on comment threads because Aldous Huxley was the first novelist I couldn’t get enough of. The summer before my senior year of high school, I moved past Brave New World to Huxley’s lesser-known novels, like Antic Hay, Eyeless in Gaza, Crome Yellow, and After Many a Summer Dies the Swan. I read The Devils of Loudon (history rather than fiction) in college but stopped short of The Doors of Perception because Huxley’s fascination with mescaline and LSD was already causing problems for a lot of students who followed his experiments.
Other binged authors of novels: Ayn Rand, Oscar Wilde, Franz Werfel, Thomas Mann, Émile Zola.
Short story writers: Katherine Mansfield, W. Somerset Maugham. Maugham’s collected short stories fill two thick volumes of over 800 pages. I binge-read both volumes over a weekend while I was visiting a friend, and I remember feeling as if I had just downed a full gallon of undiluted vinegar. Maugham dealt not only with the usual topics of “daring” 1920s writers (alcoholism, drug addiction, abortion, infidelity, etc.) but also with some that were then still outside the pale, like brother/sister incest.
huxley the budding Francophile will be interested in why I started reading Zola. I took a course in the nineteenth-century French novel at the local college during my senior year in high school. The edition of Zola’s Germinal that the class was given included a foreword by the American editors to the effect that certain portions had been cut because they were deemed too violent and shocking for the sheltered collegians of the 1960s (IOW, woke revisionism is just the latest form of literary modification). So naturally I decided to look for an unexpurgated copy of the novel in French– and found that the sections that had been cut from the college version were straight out of Stephen King. After Germinal I moved on to Nana— which huxley probably would not want to practice his French on unless he likes such things as a detailed description of a prostitute (a man-eater, BTW, who destroys six different male characters in the novel) dying of smallpox.
I’m not sure why I was drawn to writers who would be considered either decadent or (in Zola’s case) brutal realists. I’ve always been conservative in religion as well as politics, and I know I felt a need to test my convictions against different perspectives. The other reason, I think, was my interest in history (which was my college major). These particular novelists and short story writers were an open door to the social and intellectual currents of the Belle Époque and the 1920s, times and places very different from my 1960s solidly Republican home town; or as the French would say, Autres temps, autres mœurs.
I listened to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts when I was driving truck. Now that I have retired I almost never do that kind of listening. I have gotten used to reading on the Kindle for linear sorts of things eg. novels, biography, narrative history. I much prefer paper for technical non-fiction or anything where I might want to flip back a few pages to re-read something or take another look at in illustration. The Kindle solves the book hold open problem but needs a holding accessory of its own. I have mine in a sort of sleeve that slips over one side and gives a larger holding area.
For choosing what to read I have given up on anything from major publishing houses. They are incapable of telling the difference between readable fiction and unreadable dreck, mostly producing dreck. Larry Correia brought me back to reading fiction when I had all but given up on it. I mostly read authors who have some connection to Correia, either recommended by him or by Sarah Hoyt or who have been disparaged by the Sci-Fi establishment. Right now the authors whose work I like are producing new fiction faster than I have time to read it.
C. S. Lewis had some very positive thoughts on reading novels, and good literature. Very much mind work, requiring diligence and perseverance. While electronic forms make good substitutes, a hard copy, hand held is a special experience.
At least we have clear, convincing, and consistent evidence that withdrawal from the novel IS NOT a side effect of the COVID -19 miracle vaccination. Might be one more symptom of the dreaded long COVID, are we glad so many are vaxxed?
Was there a discussion about re-reading previously read, and loved novels? After reading how reading royalty cheques helps Rawling sleep, I purchased the Harry Potter books, one at a time, and read them, again. Brilliant books.
I’ve been a reader all my life. As a child my mother often told me to stop reading and go outside so the only time I’m able to read during the day without feeling guilt is when I go somewhere on vacation. I do my pleasurable reading in bed before sleep. About 15 years ago (oh, oh) I stopped reading fiction and turned to memoir. I read for the writing so If I like something I don’t mind reading it two or three times. I have tried fiction a few times, especially by some previously favorite authors but political bashing and wokeness never fails to make an appearance and ruins them. One of my favorite memoirs was Agnes DeMille’s. You might like that, Neo, if you haven’t read it, with your dance background.
in college I missed reading brideshead revisited, I read sone some of goytisolo and cortazar, I took a crack at blame the way the curriculum is structured, in the modern languages department, later in life I read up on many of the new ‘crack’generation of latin american literature like volpi and vasquez gomez, with the very able anne mclean as translator,
A next morning comment: the one series I REALLY enjoy is Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series. I’ve devoured all 20+ of them. Since I read now for entertainment, they hit that chord exactly…true beach books. Unfortunately, he seems to be stepping back. The latest Reacher book was co-authored with his son and doesn’t quite hit the same level as all the previous books.
BTW, the Prime Reacher series was quite good. Not like the terrible Tom Cruise Reacher…why anyone would think Cruise at 5’7” would make a good Reacher I don’t know. Alan Ritchson was cast as the perfect Reacher.
Latest fantasy author I like is Sarah J Maas.
Some of my favorite fiction authors:
C.J. Box
Michael Connelly
Dean Koontz
Karin Slaughter
Thomas Perry–especially the Jane Whitefield series
Craig Johnson—starting to get into the Longmire series
I have a Kindle for fiction. My library fills five bookcases and is almost all nonfiction. I like novels that have some technical material in them so I learn something. I have read all of WEB Griffin (Butterworth’s) novels except his CIA series. Recently, I have read everything Andrew Wareham has written and am now into PT Dueterman. The later spent 26 years in the Navy and his father was a Vice-Admiral in WWII. He has a series of WWII novels that are great, Wareham has a long series on the Industrial Revolution in England. He taught history and economics for years.
If prose has betrayed you, there’s always poetry…well, for some.
“A TARDY SALUTE TO MARIANNE MANTELL”—
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/02/a-tardy-salute-to-marianne-roney-mantell.php
Chock Full o’ Anecdotes….
yes the CIA series, was a throwback to his earlier collaboration with richard hooker of mash, butterworth had used elements of his bio, his service in the paratroopers, his german wife, as components in his earlier series, notably his Vietnam and Korea series, so it’s essentially MASH in Germany, with a Liam Hemsworth (Thor) type as protagonist, another writer brian andrews is taking up the world war two series again
Anthony Trollope.
Librabox.org
Anthony Trollope
Librivox.org
If you like Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe series, you probably will like B.V. Larson’s Undying Mercenaries series, which starts with “Steel World.” The difference is that the hero is in first person, it’s set in the future, not 200 years ago, and McGill is southern, rather than English.
I have also noted that my attention span is decreasing. It’s a challenge for me to watch an hour of TV. I still read and listen to books, but as others have noted above, Kindle Unlimited and awareness of mortality combine to make me much more willing to give up on books that don’t resonate, early.
huxley,
I was like Mrs. Whatsit as a child; had to read all the time; cereal boxes, billboards, instruction manuals; anything available. When I was able to go to the library on my own (2nd grade) I started reading every and any book. I didn’t care if it had pictures, was 10,000 pages; just read, read read.
Then around age 14 I got interested in Astronomy and switched to science and since then only read one or two novels a year. It’s weird, because I read so many books at a young age I don’t remember having read half of them. Someone will mention something about a book, maybe “Last of the Mohicans,” then I’ll pull forth a detail, or quote, or plot summary and realize, “Oh, that must have been one of the books I read when I was 9.”
So, I’m really handy at trivia contests, but I was too immature to understand the major themes of much of what I read, and missed a lot of the wisdom to gain from the great works.
For those who think they’ve lost the patience for the reading of novels I’d suggest giving audio books a try. Yes, they can be highly dependent on the quality of the narrator, but there are some great ones out there, and they usually give you several minutes of free sample time to decide if you’re going to like it.
Fiction? Na, I was never a big fan. I have read some of the classics; and have a few more on my “books to read when I retire” list.
I think the last piece of fiction I read was “The Help” and that was mainly because it was made into a movie and I wanted to read the story before seeing the movie.
Otherwise, I have mostly found fiction to be a “waste of time” – I’m not learning anything new except people/stories in that novel.
History on the other hand I read all the time! Even if it is another book about a subject that I have read many other books on – it is enlightening to get a different viewpoint on the same historical event.
And while it is true that fiction can be enjoyable; I find history to be more enjoyable and more fascinating simple because it is real. The old adage truth is stranger than fiction holds very true.
Recently, being at home under FMLA I have had time to read about 3-4 books a week. Often I’ll read a book, notice some source in a footnote and then look for the original source book.
As for ebooks I think there are two advantages. The first being that my local library doesn’t always have something available except as a downloadable. The second is that when I was commuting into work I would take into consideration the size of the book – if it was too big it would be too bulky to carry on the train. The downside for ebooks to me is that I don’t like any of the screens – they are too hard on my eyes.
And, one last thing – it is no surprise that so many of Neo’s readers seem to be voracious readers themselves! To me, that is a sign of intellectual curiosity and self-education.
I started ready more history the last few years like the civil war and John Adams. In one civil war book Lincoln referred to Fort Sumpter and the war itself as an insurrection. That was a real insurrection. J6 pales in comparison. A book with NYT articles during the civil war also referred to the civil war as an insurrection. These are convincing thoughts of what J6 really was.
For those of you who mention you are “faction” readers, and rarely read fiction; I highly recommend Andy Weir’s, “The Martian.” Tons of real facts and science in there! Really well written. It’s almost like an actual documentary or diary. The only reason it’s not, is we haven’t put a man on Mars, nor stranded him there.
My current reading binge is purchasing the old Rex Stout Nero Wolfe novels. I’d like to get some Heinlein’s to reread, but I’m on a fixed income so I have to pick my spots.
“…it’s about another noble and beleaguered heroine from a third-world country.”
Well, that explains it.
I use a kindle and get books from the local library consortium.
I rarely read a book twice and thus don’t want to keep it.
My current rate is one or two per week (I have no cable tv or Prime)
When selecting a novel, I steer clear of any that are described as x+2 of a series or have in the blurb something like “it’s about another noble and beleaguered heroine from a third-world country.”
Should say David Drake covers a lot of ground.
Straight forward SF. Mil sci fi. Adventures in alternate–near alternate worlds with fantasy. He has an alternate Rome with senators and togas and legions and…fantasy.
And none of his fantasy does duty as deus ex machina, where he gets himself out of a plot dead end. Always fits well, never cheats.
One, I had trouble with. Fractured ribs and I read it in sections defined by how long it took the last handful of Extra Strength Tylenol to kick in. Tough on the continuity.
I mostly read history, but two novel series are good as, Patrick O’Brian Master and Commander movie books and in middle if, as said above, Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series.
Re: Sharpe books
Interesting. That’s four separate mentions…
The series I’ve gone back to most often are Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster, and Zelazny’s Amber books.
Though now I’m more prone to the audiobook versions.
what an interesting thread. I too read alot. I read history and politics but mostly I enjoy good detective fiction- like PD James, Peter Robinson or Michael Connelly. I think reading a lot helps keep your mentle acuity. I am 63 and find that there is nothing I enjoy more than spending an afternoon reading a book. I read to my children every night until they were in the pre teens. Talking to them now, those moments; after their baths and before they went to sleep form some of their best memories.
huxley. I got a copy of, possibly the entire collected Jeeves and wooster. Read most of it one rainy afternoon. My face felt odd. I’d been grinning for hours and not known it.
Tried it again a decade later. Absolutely flat. Weird.
I like Sharpe. You can see the world Cornwell wrote about in Forester’s earlier
The Gun, and Rifleman Dodd. Much different in tone. Grim and unhappy and likely more accurate as to how things went/still go in an insurgency with regular forces on both sides as well.
I also like O’Brian. He has a singular faculty for naming his heroes.
There are an awful lot of pretty poor novels being published, lately; that’s one of the downsides of the modern ease of publishing. If after a couple of dozen pages, I have seen no reason whatsoever to care about the characters, I stop. There are much better ways to spend my time. But there are still some really good ones coming out as well; the trick is to find them. If your book club keeps on selecting the same types of book over and over, maybe it’s time to find a new book club.
jd:
Long ago I read every single book Agnes DeMille ever wrote.
The mother of a friend of mine is suffering from dementia and one of the signs is indeed that she can’t read novels anymore; she is unable to remember what she has read long enough to finish a book.
However, some people just don’t read novels, so it’s hard to see how “not reading novels” would work as a sign of dementia for everyone. My brother, for example, just doesn’t like most fiction and rarely reads fiction. (He worked for many years as a museum curator and mainly reads history.) The only work of fiction that he likes, as far as I know, is Puddnhead Wilson by Mark Twain.
I am a constant reader of novels, but I rarely enjoy contemporary ones. Previous commentors have mentioned many books that I’ve enjoyed: books by Bernard Cornwell, Larry Correia, C. S. Forester, Patrick O’Brian. If you’ve read the Sharpe books, try Cornwell’s nonfiction book about Waterloo–I finally understood the infantry tactics of that era after reading it, and the narrative is as gripping as the best fiction.
I’ve been reading a lot of mid-20th century British fiction in general, particularly Georgette Heyer and D. E. Stevenson, and including mystery writers: Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, and Patricia Wentworth. Dorothy Sayers has been a longtime favorite.
I reread Lord of the Rings about once a year, and I also often reread the fantasy novels of C. S. Lewis.
I like my Kindle because it takes up little space and because so many bargains are available. Classics are often free if they are old enough. I’m a re-reader, so I do like to own books. I still have many hard copy books, but I’m running out of shelf space!
general consensus: “had to read all the time; cereal boxes, billboards, instruction manuals; anything available”
I resemble that remark.
Back in the days of the door to door salesmen, I had a couple of responses.
If the product was newspapers, I declined with the explanation that if I took the paper I would read it all, and I couldn’t spare that much time.
Got some odd looks.
If the product was encyclopedias, and the salesmen persistent after the first no, I would bring them in and point to my library, which even when we were “young marrieds” exceeded a couple thousand volumes.
Nothing more was said.
(We have owned several sets over the years, for ease of reference pre-internet; my prize is a 1911 Britannica that cost me all of $5 about 10 years ago.)
Some friends have remarked that we didn’t get married so much as we merged libraries.
@ Alan Colbo > “I’m on a fixed income so I have to pick my spots.”
That’s what libraries are for!
I try out new authors for free before buying their works, but I’m a re-reader and also like to make notes in the margins, so I try and support the industry with purchases whenever I can.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
We have a winner, hands down: Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe books.
After Germinal I moved on to Nana— which huxley probably would not want to practice his French on unless he likes such things as a detailed description of a prostitute (a man-eater, BTW, who destroys six different male characters in the novel) dying of smallpox.
PA+Cat:
Sounds like a great way to build vocabulary!
Now that I can sort of read real French, I’m all about the vocabulary.
@ Barry > “If prose has betrayed you, there’s always poetry”
Here is a good companion piece, also from Powerline, to the history of the founders of Caedmon Recording (“A TARDY SALUTE TO MARIANNE MANTELL”), who began by selling vinyl records with poetry read aloud by the authors.
https://www.thefp.com/p/introducing-a-sunday-series-from
It’s a very Russian story, starring Boris Pasternak and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30, which Murray reads to the accompaniment of one of my favorite pieces of music.
(Satie – Gymnopédie No. 1)
Coincidence or inevitable?
Comment to a Youtube of Satie’s music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WfaotSK3mI
@rager5243
This song was performed in 1890 by a French artist named Erik Satie. During his prime he produced three works, this being the first. The title in French is “Lent et douloureux” which literally translates to “transforming slowly with pain/grief”
His solos are amazing and they really redefined the romantic era.
(I’ve heard better recordings; this is just the first that came up on the search.)
More by Satie, and the pianist is much better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pyhBJzuixM
Erik Satie: Gymnopédies & Gnossiennes (Full Album)
Sarah Hoyt’s Sunday Promos, just to get you started if you like SF and Fantasy.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2023/02/19/book-promo-and-vignettes-by-by-luke-mary-catelli-and-nother-mike-7/
I know whose novels I won’t be reading…
“Trans author Gretchen Felker-Martin said she wants to slit J.K. Rowling’s throat in since-deleted tweet”—
https://nypost.com/2023/02/18/gretchen-felker-martin-tweets-that-she-wants-to-slit-j-k-rowlings-throat/
In praise of the criminally insane…!
(Alas criminal insanity in our post-Covid age, is not limited to only certain “segments” of the population….:
“Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai: ‘Democracy can only be restored via bloodshed’ “—
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/367381
Indeed, the virtuous among us…
I have been a voracious reader since childhood. I have a handful of mystery writers that I follow: C.J. Box, Michael Connelly, the late Sue Grafton and Peter Lovesey. I have been going back and reading the books I HAD to read in high school like Great Expectations (it’s really good) and some of the older classic science fiction like The Stars My Destination. I re-read 1984 last year and was amazed at how true it was. But more and more I find myself reading biographies and non-fiction especially about history. Most modern fiction is simply not that interesting.
WRT “1984”, it is reputed that readers of the novel(?) from the former USSR, presumably when they were able to leave the country, were astonished, wondering…”But how did Orwell know?”
I have to say after reading all these comments, I now understand why so many here have such a great depth of understanding of the current scene. Certainly much more than I have. It looks like the majority favor non-fiction and trending towards history, biographies, etc. That sort of reading will naturally lead such people to have a more, I hate to use the word, nuanced view of current events. I’m not going to change my book selections for my reading, but I wanted to say I appreciate the level of of self-education here.
I do read some non-fiction, but it comes from magazines that cater to my interests. Specifically, America’s Civil War, Civil War Times, Aviation History, Flying, and Sport Aviation (EAA publication). I read each of these cover to cover.
PA+Cat — see above for my comments on Harry Turtledove and Bernard Cornwell, if you have not, and/or are unfamiliar with one or the other. They both write from a good historical perspective one of the Brit side of things vs. the rise of Napoleon, and the other about Greco-Roman times. Turtledove has a PhD in Byzantine history, and his multiple series about “Videssos” is essentially “Tales of The Byzantine Empire” (if you flip his map of “Videssos” you see it’s basically a left-for-right version of the Med). One of his series, the trilogy “Krispos” is a retelling about the rise of the Byzantine emperor Basil I from peonage to the imperial throne, ca. 900 AD. And a quadrilogy “The Time of Troubles” is a retelling of the events on both the Byzantine and the Sassanian Persian side, that is usually defined by historians as the point when it switched from being the “Roman” empire to the “Byzantine” empire, ca. 600 AD.
As a historian, you can bet his chops are decent with such things. If anything, one flaw I find with Turtledove is that all too often he’s just re-telling actual history with a fictional overlay. He’s told the US Civil War at least twice, and WWII at least 3 times. I mean point-for-point retellings of the events without major changes other than some aspect of setting or context… He’s also dealt with the Civil War 2x more with differing macguffins to end it. And none of that includes much of anything he’s written in about 10-15 years. But his early stuff is really pretty good, and of interest if you like history.
fastrichard Pretty much anything by Baen qualifies as good SF (e.g., “non-woke”), and LC is one of their authors. You might check the list I gave in an earlier comment for some authors to consider which includes some indies.
}}}BTW, the Prime Reacher series was quite good. Not like the terrible Tom Cruise Reacher…why anyone would think Cruise at 5’7” would make a good Reacher I don’t know.
Works for the large number of people who never actually read the books, and so had no idea about Reacher. Being as there are more people in the category “never read” than “read”, it works for movie ticket sales.
I suppose the tricky part there would be getting someone the size of Richardson who also had even a significant fraction of the box office draw of Cruise… Not a lot of them, I will give them.
The movie is not awful if you can divorce yourself from the actual source, just as a non-reader clearly manages to come to it in the first place.
}}} AesopFan: Short answer: because they are changing the content.
At least the firemen in Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” burned the whole book, instead of tampering with the innards.
I think it was singularly ironic that Amazon inadvertently revealed, with 1984, that they had the power to actually change the content of books in your Kindle library.
That is, they can actually re-word it without your knowing or being warned that it is happening.
What happened is that there was a difference in the copyright rules for Orwell for Canadian purchase and American purchase, and some Americans bought off of Amazon.ca — and when Amazon realized it, they reached into the Amazon purchaser’s Kindles and removed the purchase (while giving a refund, so not directly morally repugnant, still questionable — the actual proper way to handle it would have been to take whatever loss was involved in paying the royalties required by an American purchase).
The thing was, they acked at the time that they also had the Big Brother-esque capacity to reach in and quietly change the content as well as remove the content itself. So just because you read a passage that said one thing right now does not mean it will have the same words next week.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100527182901/http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html
Money Quote:
Digital books bought for the Kindle are sent to it over a wireless network. Amazon can also use that network to synchronize electronic books between devices — and apparently to make them vanish.
Consider carefully what is meant by “synchronize“.
Also note how you can use Archive’sWayback Machine to get past the NYT’s paywall.
“…the Big Brother-esque capacity to reach in and quietly change the content as well as remove the content itself….”
Indeed.
Several good years ago, I believed that this was THE CRUX of the Orwellian potential of converting ALL books (and other printed materials) into pixels…and then at some point burning ALL the originals…or placing them in some ultra-secure vault deep underground where they would stay untouched…or perhaps be displayed as some kind of antiquary or museum of the “once upon a time”—when humans were so primitive…before the “BIG RESET” occurred—THANK SCHWAB!—in the fourth decade of the 21st century…
How would anyone know that the content had been changed, altered, cleverly rewritten, purged? Of course one WOULD know in some cases and suspect as much in others…but how to prove it? If, indeed, trying to prove it and/or publicize it would make you an enemy of the people.
What I didn’t imagine, however, was the massive censorship of written material AND PEOPLE by corporations/governments and web providers, universities, libraries, schools and media organs that has taken place so that both the books/articles/papers and their authors (and their enthusiastic, or less even enthusiastic, readers) would be for all intents and purposes “disappeared”.
One wonders if we are the cusp of a techno-totalitarian epoch the likes of which may only have been imagined in Soviet (or other) science fiction.
Which, if true, will call for a new kind of samizdata (“neo-sam”?) run by the preternaturally courageous amongst us.
File under: Read it NOW, or forever hold your peace…?
+ Bonus:
https://tinyurl.com/yvarez3s
Um, should be “samizdat”…
(…but hey, maybe “samizdata” is actually more apt…)
Thanks AF for that link to Douglas Murray’s new venture.
Fabulous…but at the same time, eerie…exuding, as it does, that “time-capsule-ish”, “voice-from-the-distant-past vibe”…
(Which I think may be intentional…since with it, Murray may well have vanquished mortality…)
Gordon Scott
It’s not inconceivable you might find Christopher Nuttall’s “Cast Adrift” ongoing series of interest. as well as “Empire’s Corps”. The former is a similar scenario to Undying mercenaries but the “other end” of it. That empire is decaying, and sets the Terrans loose to fare for themselves after centuries of control. It’s more space opera than individualist story, you might find the scenario entertaining. Empire’s Corps is more individualist story, with a company dumped on a frontier planet just as the (Terran-based) empire abandons it, cashiering them in-situ and leaving them to fend for themselves on a rough planet.
Nuttall is a neutral indy writer — he’s smart enough not to tick off half his readership with political undertones (He’s even commented on this in Afterwords). I think his content would fall slightly right of center but there is very little of modern political issues in it. He’s also a one-man book-a month club, one of the most prolific SF&Fantasy authors since Asimov. He’s a light read, so you may find him easier to read as you noted reduced patience with books. I contrast that to, say, David Weber, whose prose is excellent but very dense, one reason Weber produces a couple books a year, while Nuttall has released 9-22 books a year from 2012 onward, with most years in excess of 12, and all I think, pretty good… Not shabby output at all.
A similarly indy but less prolific writer is Evan Currie, who has about half to a third of Nuttall’s output but is pretty good… and, like Nuttall, about half and half SF/Fantasy.
Warning: Reading the wrong books is hazardous for your health….
“British Taxpayer-Funded Anti-Extremist Study Finds Shakespeare, Orwell, Tolkien “Key Texts” For “White Supremacists”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/british-taxpayer-funded-study-finds-shakespeare-orwell-tolkien-key-texts-white
Opening grafs:
“Several of the UK’s most respected TV shows, movies, and works of literature have been included in a list of works that could potentially encourage far-right sympathies, compiled by the taxpayer-funded and government-led ‘Prevent’ counter-terrorism program.
“As The Daily Mail reports, works by some of the world’s greatest writers were included as examples of warning signs of potential extremism, including Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Tennyson, Orwell, Huxley, Kipling and Edmund Burke….”
Cultural war to end all culture? Or to save it….
}}} (We have owned several sets over the years, for ease of reference pre-internet; my prize is a 1911 Britannica that cost me all of $5 about 10 years ago.)
I’d love to find something like that. Been looking for one for a long time. Lots of knowledge in those that has been eliminated due to “no longer being relevant”, including basic skills like metal working with pre-modern equipment.
Also, as to encyclopedia salesmen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIarMy-Q58o
Turtledove has a long short/novella, “A Different Flesh” in the person of Samuel Johnson. The diff is that H. Erectus got to the Americas and H. Sap didn’t. So the megafauna extinction didn’t happen and the development of, among other things, maize and potatoes, which helped the population-replacement model of the history of North America didn’t happen.
And H. Erectus are being captured for slaves in England.
Interesting.
prevent is one of those outfits like the ministry of silly walks,
a friend who has since passed, recommended poul anderson’s lt flandry, essentially james bond in the 30th? century, the paperbacks had very pulpy covers of a decidedly binary bent,
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7841345-sir-dominic-flandry
RigelDog, your list of authors mimics mine for the last several years with the single exception that I haven’t tried Karin Slaughter yet–so I’ve just added one of hers to my Audible list. Lately I prefer listening to a nice mystery while I drive, garden, or crochet. I usually keep a traditional book upstairs to read for a few minutes before I fall asleep.
Other authors I obsessively re-read are Jane Austen, Robert Heinlein, John Varley, and Patrick O’Brian. The latter author, by the way, wrote half a dozen or more excellent stories outside the Aubrey-Maturin series. That series probably still is my favorite, except that O’Brian’s “Testimonies” is completely different and one of the most compelling novels I’ve ever read.
But non-fiction is good, too. I highly recommend anything by Nick Lane. Too many popular-science authors lack the ability to construct a coherent book-length argument, but Lane is a very fine writer with a gift for explaining his technical material to non-specialists.
For those who think they’ve lost the patience for the reading of novels I’d suggest giving audio books a try. Yes, they can be highly dependent on the quality of the narrator,
With Sharpe series by Cornwall I used to commute from Tucson to Phoenix a couple of times a week. It’s about an hour and a half drive (If you drive 90) and I listened to all the Sharpe series on audio. One problem was that the narrator was so good he could do accents in conversation, switching from India to Scotland to England. I had to read the books to make sense of it.
Re: Baen Books
Baen won my heart when they reprinted Keith Laumer’s Retief stories from the 60s about a human galactic diplomat with The Right Stuff, getting around red tape and sycophant foreign service types, against wily proxy commie aliens.
In my mind’s eye I pictured Retief played by Bob Crane from “Hogan’s Heroes.”
Any Heinlein/Hoyt fans unaware of Laumer and Retief have a real treat in store.
My usual rereads are O’Brien’s Aubrey/Matarin, Tolkein’s Hobbit and Ring Trilogy, Orson Scott Card’s Ender/Bean series and Katherine Kurtz Deryni books.
Chris pratt is probably too old to play flandry but hes of the type
When I saw the topic of neo’s post 2 days ago, and knowing her commenters, I had a hunch this thread would go well into triple digits. 🙂
I’ve stopped reading fiction since my 20s. I read lots of history, however.
History makes you struggle to recall more than fiction in my experience. Real historical events are not as neat and tidy as fiction, and can involve considerable amounts of actors, facts, etc.
Periodic reader here but, with my schedule, I rarely have a chance to get a comment in before the thread runs down.
Some observations:
(1) I don’t e-read. For me, the experience of classical hard text is still the best overall And it verifies a lot of studies I see regarding retention of information, knowledge, etc. Plus, I already spend -way- too much time behind screens. There is one possible exception, which I’ll eventually get to.
(2) Sadly, most postmillenial fiction doesn’t work. In large part due to the ideological demands of the current publishing elite. Too much of what I see is (a) endless variations on formulaic themes, (b) woke to the max and (c) written at what would previously been considered a level suitable for juvenile books. (Note: this tends to be reinforcing as proseletyzing youth….but I digress)
(3) There is still a good mine of pre-millennial work, some of which is off the beaten track.
(a) In fiction, try out Martin Amis (preferably “The Information”) – Amis is Brit literary, writing for Brits in Briticisms, so some level of work is required but the characterizations and wit are savage. TI is set in late Thatcherite Britain and this will clear up some of the more arcane references. Going backwards, a lot of old Melville and Conrad has been crossing my desk lately. Vintage LeCarre seems to stand up well.
(b) switch to historical fiction. Best recent example is Mantel’s “Wolf Hall” trilogy. Sharpe and Aubrey-Maturin series hold up well but that may not be your ouvre [sic]
(c) In science fiction, there is very little good new content…as I stated earlier, it’s woke, it’s juvenile and it seems intentionally targeted at young adult. It’s also formulaic (zombies, doom, fairy/magical romance and explicit LGBT etc, oh my) (Sturgeon’s Law – 80% of everything is crap, should now be up to about 95%). Still there are exceptions: some (not all) Neal Stephenson – the classics being “Cryptonomicon”, the Baroque cycle and there is the most recent “Termination Shock). The more recent William Gibson : the Zero History sequence (2000-2010) and the recent “Peripheral” and “Agency”. Library of America has been republishing some of the classics from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s and the selection judgement is usually sound. If you do pursue the postmodern, I’d go out (very far) on a limb and suggest Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota sequence – warning: it’s very woke, very explicit and very dense but Palmer is able to sneak in an exploration of some important philosophical trends from the ancients through Enlightenment to the post-Modern. (Should be noted that Palmer is a philo prof from UChicago)(And I won’t be offended if you decide to cut off the branch behind me). There is also Emily St. John Mandel with a recent trilogy (starting with Station Eleven) that barely qualifies – but what it lacks in hard science it gains in sheer writing standard. Good airplane read.
(4) Switch to history: One of the discoveries I made during the Great Library Purges of the last decade or so is that there is a vast volume of 1940’s-1950’s history that is extremely well written. Some examples: The American Lakes Series (published in the 40’s – 10 volumes covering, individually the Great Lakes and the larger continental lakes – a tremendous amount of Americana lore that is rapidly being discarded). Another: “The Great River” (Paul Horgen) (1954) – a 2 volume history of the Rio Grande based Southwest from Indian through (relatively) current day – the quality of the writing exceeds anything current….it is a writer’s gem. Davis Hackett Fischer, selectively – Albion’s Seed (which I suspect you’ve already read),and his follow up on Champlain are best overall. The recent “African Founders” is excellent but exhausting (there is a story behind this but it can wait….)
(5) Contemporary history: Pekka Hamalainen’s series on the Native Americans – revisionist but well researched and presented. (Start with “Comanche Empire”)
(6) And, since I can’t let it drop, contemporary affairs:
Two very recent books that are worth examination:
“Doom, the Politics of Catastrophe” Niall Ferguson – written around Covid, but there is a deeper critique of a declining capacity to manage sudden complex events.
“Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War” (Paul D’Anieri) – the current version provides a detailed and objective(!!!) history from the dissolution of the Soviet to Minsk 1 (2018) – it does a good job of presenting almost all of the history without bias and puts a lot of the current talking points back into context. (@ Turtler – this ones for you also – many thanks for your comments in this space)
Because most public libraries have systematically been purging their content, usually by thoughtless algorithm, a lot of quality material is now only available through (a) a -major- (and I do mean -major-) central library, (b) a college or university library, or (c) as e-copy. For this reason, even when hard text is preferable, you might need your Kindle or analogue.
I used to inhale science fiction. It’s the prime reason I bought a Kindle many years ago — Amazon had lots of free stuff, mainly written by new authors trying to showcase their talents (and admittedly, some of it was obviously amateurish, but free stuff), and I’ll read anything to pass the time.
But several years ago, I just stopped. It seems that all the new sci-fi stories had the same format: a young, pretty, independent female protagonist, perhaps with some military experience (at which she rose to nonbelieveable high rank before moving on). If there was a major male character, he was usually there as a potential love interest who frequently got her sidetracked from Her Mission. Or he was the villain and still a potential love interest. And the female lead was a heck of an engineer, who could field-strip and reassemble her spaceship in minutes.
But always, a female lead. There is no male-centered sci-fi anymore. Go check Amazon.
Don
And may presume you know some history the author didn’t think necessary to mention.
I like history, kind of eclectic. Here and there. Who’s read “Nature’s Mutiny” by Blom about the Little Ice Age? See?
Simon Winchester is a find. He even made the history of Oxford English Dictionary interesting.
Will and Ariel Durant are good reading, even if some of their work has been more recently disputed.
Barry:
I recall a case where they had fish keep disappearing from a tank. Finally, they put up a camera to catch the culprit stealing the fish from the tank, and were quite surprised to find out that an octopus in an adjacent tank was lifting the lid off its tank, crawling over to the other tank, lifting its lid off, feasting on the fish, putting the lid back on, crawling back to its own tank and replacing its own lid.
Sneaky little bastard… 😀
If you’re looking for possible…Scifi novels, with male heroes, try THIS page at Fantastic Fiction:
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/genres/?gp=S
}}} But always, a female lead. There is no male-centered sci-fi anymore. Go check Amazon.
I agree, female leads have become common, probably making up for the many decades when there were no male leads.
I can offer some exceptions, in both fantasy and SF.
Larry Correia usually has male leads with strong female counterpoints.
Jack Campbell is the same (although he also has female leads for some things)
Christopher Nuttall has both, in both F & SF.
Evan Currie has both, also in F&SF.
Charles E. Gannon has pure SF, with lots of alien interaction a la Niven.
Marc Alan Edelheit, which is, admittedly, military Fantasy, but strong male leads.
Larry Correia, try Hard Magic (magic-as-sf), and/or Saga of the Forgotten Warrior (fantasy, but borderline, as you feel there is probably a technological explanation for the magic that you encounter). He also has Dead Six, which is more military fiction, it’s still very much male-oriented.
Jack Campbell has The Lost Fleet, which is pure space opera, and multiple series… I would suggest that you consider Legacy of Dragons series — while the lead is female, and there is a male “love interest”, but the male is critical to the advancement of the story, so he’s not just arm candy for her. And it’s probably more steam punk than anything else. There is “magic” (the role of the male) vs the female (engineer), the feel is that it’s quantum stuff, not really “magic”.
Christopher Nuttall has a multi-series set of books in the same universe, with some male leads and some female protagonists, but mostly space opera/navy action, starting with Ark Royal. He also has a military SF series as Empire Corps. And female stuff as well.
Evan Currie has the only SF series I am aware of which utilizes Doc Smith’s “Inertialess” drive concept, starting with Into the Black, and has a “superhero fantasy-as-SF series where the first 3 books involve a marine-turned-superman, Superhuman.
Charles E Gannon should certainly be interesting to you, with his Caine Riordan series, starting with Fire with Fire. Think Laumer’s super-competent Retief crossed with Niven seriousness and aliens. He’s also a regular writer for the late Eric Flint’s 1632 series, if alt history is at all enjoyable.
Almost all the main characters of Marc Alan Edelheit’s Last War series, which is military fantasy — roman legions with elves, dwarves, etc…. look intoStiger
That might keep you busy for a bit.
For those of you looking for authors writing great, non-woke, historical literature I highly recommend Lars Walker. You can find his books here; https://brandywinebooks.net/
Lars is a genuine expert in Norse history and even does translation work for television and film.
}}} Lars is a genuine expert in Norse history and even does translation work for television and film.
Ah. That reminds me of the excellent alt-history (male) Harry Harrison series, The Hammer and the Cross, taking place in the English-vs-Viking era, ca. 850-900 AD, with Ethelred the Unready and Albert the Great as side-actors. Basic premise: Suppose the Viking religion had priests, who proselytized and converted for the Norse religion, to match those of the Christians?
Yes, it’s fantasy/AH, but it’s pretty good and male-centered.
I second much of MidwestObserver’s comment. Martin Amis can flat out write. He’s wonderful. And lately I’ve been seeking out histories written from the 30’s to the 60’s. I assumed much of what was written then had been supplanted by newer and better research. I was wrong.
Midwest Observer,
Nitpick: the original Sturgeon’s law was 90% of everything is crap.
https://sfdictionary.com/view/328/sturgeons-law
So, Rufus, what book of his do you recommend for a start?
I’ll mark it for later consideration.
Bof: I initially heard it as “90% of everything is Crud“, and it was “Sturgeon’s Revelation “, as opposed to his “Law “, which, as your link shows is “Nothing Is Always Absolutely So “.
That link does suggest that “crap” was the initial predicate adjective, not “crud”. Probably a matter of polite company, as in the late 50s, “crap” still bordered on a four-letter word, if not qualified as one, in some circles.
You reminded me of harry harrisons other series the stainless steel rat bolivar degriz is a character a little like peter quill a thief who becomes a hero of sorts
@ bof
Point taken, I think…….
The song, however, remains the same.
I liked the 1632 series for maybe the first two books and then it got to characters explaining history to each other so that the reader would know it.
Because so many here have identified as historical fiction buffs, I’ll make one recommendation: The Alienist by Caleb Carr.
And it’s not even historical fiction, but it is written by a military historian who goes to great lengths to get the details of the period right.
Synopsis: A serial killer is on the loose in late 19th century NYC, preying on young male prostitutes, a segment of society that most wanted to pretend didn’t exist, making it a happy hunting ground for a serial killer. The police won’t investigate until a new, very young, progressive chief of police chief named Teddy Roosevelt green lights an investigation led by what we would now call a psychological profiler. Psychologists back then were called Alienists because they studied those alienated from society.
It’s the kind of book that will keep you up until the early hours of the morning. Read the first chapter. You’ll finish it.
No love for Harry Flashman (G. M. Fraser)? Easily the funniest history course you’ll ever take.
Also, Gavin Lyall’s flying novels. I’m not even a flyer.
No love for Harry Flashman (G. M. Fraser)?
sonny wayz:
Great stuff! I read the first Flashman volume in high school, believing it to be a legitimate memoir. That cat escaped the bag soon enough.
Back in the 00s I listened to several of the audiobooks. One particular narrator, David Case, was pure curmudgeon gold, the perfect voice for Harry Flashman.
I get audiobooks from Audible. As long as you are a member of Amazon Prime, you get one free Audible credit per month until a maximum of ten credits.
Don and Richard: I find that when I read history, I have to already know some of the related history to put or keep things in proper context. Frustrating at times when I don’t have the appropriate background already, and thus end up feeling the author is cheating me somehow with an incomplete portrayal.
The other thing that can be a pain while reading history is when the author conveys a theme or sequence of supposedly related events in rapid succession, but the events are occurring years or decades apart, with little sense of the amount of time that has actually past in absolute terms, and possibly that generations have lived and died during those spans. While as a reader, you are “experiencing” those events in 3 to 5 minutes or so.
OBH: does that Hammer And Cross venue mean we would see competing arguments between monotheists and polytheists?
@ R2L > “I find that when I read history, I have to already know some of the related history to put or keep things in proper context. ”
The problem is even more acute when reading ALTERNATE history, which is a massive genre stuck sideways into either SF or fantasy.
I have a good enough grounding to spot most of the deviations, and enjoy the “what if” aspect, but I wonder about the effect on readers who don’t actually know the real-world history, and may take away some of the fiction as fact.
Movie histories I always consider to be alternate history, they muck around so much with timelines, characters, locations, and other facts for “dramatic effect”.
Some documentaries are slanted enough to qualify as well.
@ physicsguy > ” I’m not going to change my book selections for my reading, but I wanted to say I appreciate the level of of self-education here.”
And I appreciate your insights into the physical sciences, and your number-crunching on the Covid data.
I do try to read one physics book a year, hoping that THIS TIME I will understand more than just the bare basics of quantum theory and relativity.
Most of the time I just wave at the particles as they saunter through the universe.
@ huxley > “Baen won my heart when they reprinted Keith Laumer’s Retief stories from the 60s”
I should have guessed — you always seem to know which side of the bread substitute the icky wax is on!
Would that our bureaucrats were more Retief and less Mister Magnan, who seems to be a direct descendant of Dilbert’s Pointy Haired Boss.
(Although I have noticed on recent re-reads that he isn’t quite as stupid as I used to think; some advantage in adult perspective, perhaps).
I see he has made an appearance in one of my prior comments.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2022/02/24/bidens-speech-on-ukraine/#comment-2609381
@ OBH > “Also, as to encyclopedia salesmen:”
Brilliant! Thanks for the link. I must admit to never having encountered The Two Ronnies before. Classic British humor.
OBloodyHell @ 7:21pm,
“West Oversea” would be my recommendation (but, of course, purchase using neo’s Amazon link):
“I find that when I read history, I have to already know some of the related history to put or keep things in proper context.”
I have the opposite problem: when I read real history, it helps me enormously to have read some historical fiction about the period. Without believing the fiction, I still gain a loose time framework to fit the serious account into, absent which I have a hard time processing and especially remembering the events. The fiction helps me keep milestone events in chronological order. It also helps me keep in mind that the people in the historical account didn’t know what was going to happen next and were still processing events though the filter of what had happened in the generation or two before.
Wendy.
To keep in mind what people didn’t know is also useful in reading history. While one may make, for example, a moral case against interning Japanese Americans during WW II, thinking about making a practical case to the decision makers why it was a bad idea is harder if you figure the decision-makers didn’t know how the war was going to turn out.
And, since they knew about the Black Tom explosion and you don’t, and the–admittedly accidental–Halifax explosion of 1917 was twenty-five years before their decision and a hundred and five before today….
Aesop, if you wave at the particles, do you then also particle to the waves? 🙂
Almost all of my reading is now Ebooks. I find Ebook fonts easier to read than hard copy books. I recently purchased a hard copy of Warren Carroll’s The Last Crusade, about the Spanish Civil War, because it isn’t available in Ebboks.
I tend to go for non-fiction, especially autobiographies-memoirs-biographies. The Spanish Civil War is one of my current interests. For decades we got sold a bill of goods regarding the “democratically elected” Popular Front versus the “Fascist” right.
Javier Cercas’s Monarch of the Shadows/Monarca de las Sombras has an interesting narrative: the author, a good socialist who abhors Franco, investigates the life of his great-uncle, who died in the Spanish Civil War at age 19 fighting for the Nationals/Nationalists/Franco. Turns out that most of his family supported the Nationals/Nationalists/Franco during the Civil War- as did most of the people in the town where they lived in Extramadura in the southwest. Yet, nearly all or all of the people he interviewed were on the left. He couldn’t find any Franco supporters?
Javier Cercas and his cousin operated on the assumption that their great-uncle made a mistake in fighting on the Nationals/Nationalists/Franco/Right side. Yet the reasons they give for that are specious, as they make assumptions about how Spain would have turned out had the Popular Front won. Given the range of the Popular Front, from Anarchists to Commies to supporters of democracy, it is very problematic to predict how Spain would have turned out.
I note that Javier Cercas made no mention in this book of the kidnap and murder of Jose Calvo Sotelo, one of the leaders of the Right in Parliament, at the hands of government police. That event is, for me, the bullet point for supporting the Right (Apparently that was also the deciding point for Franco). If “democratically elected” legislators are being killed by government police, anarchy has replaced the rule of law.
TommyJay
Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses have been on my bookshelves for decades, but have read very little. That you tried those as a kid is amazing.
Mike Plaiss
I purchased that from Half Price Books for $1 in the early 00s. Love his books.
Huxley
Mike Plaiss
For Spanish language books, I have combined a Kindle for text and a Fire HD for audio for books in Spanish. ( I don’t like the screen or the fonts for the Fire HD, so use a Kindle for text). The Fire HD speaks at about 200 words per minute, which is also about as fast as I read in Spanish. I keep saying I am going to start Don Quixote, but haven’t yet done so.
Huxley…
Have you read Mr. American? Or any of his other work (McLausan, etc)?
Not for any literary merit. But boys’ books from the twenties… Garry Grayson, Roy Blakely, Baseball Joe. Poppy Ott.
What is interesting is finding out what the writer(s) or committee(s) expected their readers–young boys–to know. Or, at worst, to find out by asking their parents. Something about the cultures.
Poppy Ott, a kid in a dusty Illinois river town…. Heard about river pirates. That Niagara wasn’t always doing its current thing–see Starved Rock state park or Shawnee National Forest.
Don Sturdee….learn about other countries.
Roy Blakely and the Haunted Camp. Echoes of WW I, PTSD, poor farm,
Not for literary merit but for a kind of historical exploration.
Nice discussion. I don’t read novels anymore, and the reading I do tends to be on line. Technology has something to do with it. When I was younger, I read a lot and watched TV a lot. Later, when I had my own place and my own money, I went to the movies. Now that I can get just about anything at home, I don’t do that either.
Novel reading takes a lot of time. I have a natural resistance to entering the writer’s world. It’s hard for me to overcome my hesitation about entering the fictional world and my resistance to staying in it. Movies, television, and theater take you automatically into the action.
Novels also seem too controlled. In novels, everything is the author’s creation. It seems a bit arbitrary, like a product of the writer’s whims without any reality behind what’s written. With nonfiction, I can also skip around more and engage with what I’m reading. I feel more like a collaborator than a passive recipient.
And of course, education didn’t help. To be forever looking for meanings and interpretations makes it hard to simply enjoy the story. Having to come to a conclusion about a book or its style can spoil the reading experience. I am still up for audiobooks, though, if I can find something I like. For me at any rate, they bring back the experience of just enjoying a story, rather than puzzling out what it means or how good it is.
The American Lakes Series
I’m not aware of that, but the Rivers of America series was a familiar feature of libraries for years. Through the books you could learn about the history and folklore of dozens of American rivers. They gave one a more expansive view of the country, its history, and its regional diversity.
As I child, I loved the Bobbs-Merrill’s Childhood of Famous Americans and Random House’s Landmark Books and World Landmark Books. Both series petered out in the 1970s about the same time as the celebratory view of American history did. Simon and Schuster has revived the Childhood series, but it’s not the same. American Heritage and Time-Life books were also great. I wish I had read more of the latter when I was growing up.
Have you read Mr. American? Or any of his other work (McLausan, etc)?
sonny wayz:
Can’t say I have. Should I?
Checking GM Fraser’s wiki entry now, I see he wrote into the 2000s. Had no idea.
Re: Laumer / Retief
AesopFan:
I was sure my mention of Retief would resonate with someone(s) here. I’m not surprised it would be you! Bread-substitute-icky-wax-wise.
I do miss those no-nonsense, red-blooded American, yet no one’s fool, heroes and occasionally heroines of Laumer’s era. I think WW II had something to do with it.
There was also a bumper crop of remarkable American poets who were born in the mid-1920s.
Re: Reacher
physicguy mentioned Reacher and I’m now re-watching the Amazon Reacher series and enjoying it.
I got to Reacher through the Tom Cruise movies. I can understand how a Reacher book fan would be disappointed, but Cruise made it work well enough. He may be a complete nutbar, but he can do larger than life, even if larger than life is almost a foot taller than Cruise’s actual size.
I’m wondering now how a Reacher character could survive or even exist in Joe Biden’s America. I realize Reacher is fictional, but anyone remotely like him today would end up in the same cell block as the J6ers.
AesopFan:
Strangely enough, while I was aware of the Two Ronnies, I was actually looking for the Monty Python Encyclopedia Salesman sketch, but (curiously, I think) I only found a scripted version of it.
No version of the video from the series popped up… which is just… odd.
Found the Two Ronnies sketch, though, which was still good. SMH, though…
Also, regards physics, you might find Sabine Hossenfelder worth watching:
https://www.youtube.com/c/SabineHossenfelder/videos
}}} I have a good enough grounding to spot most of the deviations, and enjoy the “what if” aspect, but I wonder about the effect on readers who don’t actually know the real-world history, and may take away some of the fiction as fact.
Well, as long as one is aware that it is alt-history, one hopes one is capable of grasping, and thus assuming, that they may NOT know what the history is upon reading, and — hopefully — becoming curious about the history. I’ve often gone digging into a Wiki history article upon reading alt-history, just to see how it was different.
Also, I have found myself learning things just by knowing there was an inflection point.
For example there are two interesting Alt-History books about the Civil War (one is actually a trilogy, mind you):
1862, by Robert Conroy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1862_(novel)
(Note: I enjoyed the late Conroy a lot because he often chose “other” inflections points upon which to base his stories, BUT, he does suffer from a pretty monolithic plot, most of his stories seem to work out along the same lines, with very similar characters, etc. Perhaps if he’d lived another 10 years he’d have gotten better at that aspect of his writing, but he started fairly late and passed away less than 10y after his second book was published. He often named his books by the year the inflection took place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Conroy
1862 plays off a serious international incident (“The Trent Affair”), when the USA offended the rights of the UK by intercepting a UK ship that happened to have a couple Confederate agents on board. Lincoln succeeded in placating the UK sufficient that they did not come in on the side of the Confederacy, but it was a possibility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trent_Affair
The other is
Britannia’s Fist, by Peter G. Tsouras
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1628736763
A historian, like Turtledove, he details a later inflection point, when some UK shipyards were producing ironclads for the Confederacy, in direct violation to their own legal policies — the ships were “not warships” when launched, but were easily turned into warships by sailing them into another port where weapons were added to make them into the warships that the CSA needed. In Britannia’s Fist, the US intercepts the warship in UK waters, and shots are fired between the US ships and UK warships, leading to the UK, and France, coming in on the side of the CSA.
These were both quite interesting books, because no one ever mentions these incidents in High School classes about the Civil War, and both could very well have changed the state of the UK’s position on the CSA/USA conflict.
====
}}} a friend who has since passed, recommended poul anderson’s lt flandry, essentially james bond in the 30th? century, the paperbacks had very pulpy covers of a decidedly binary bent,
Oh, yes, for the “older” middle-era authors (Niven, Gerrold, Pournelle — Anderson is certainly one of the best of them.
I think my favorite little story of his was “The Three Cornered Wheel”, in
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/638985.The_Trouble_Twisters
But that was far from the only one of his I liked. And yeah, Flandry and Retief seemed cut from a similar cloth, to me — both the kind of men that today’s “woke” culture would vilify.
And yes, the Three Cornered Wheel is an actual thing, and plays a nontrivial part in the story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuleaux_triangle
Math Lovers Take Note!
}}} No love for Harry Flashman (G. M. Fraser)?
I have no direct familiarity with it but I am aware of it — there was, in fact, a Flashman movie, “Royal Flash” with Malcolm McDowell in the titular role. No idea how well it does the character justice. Directed by Richard Lester, of Three/Four Musketeers & Superman fame.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073639
I gather the author was not fond of the movie. The IMDB reviews speak well of it, however.
Abraxas.
I feel your pain, so to speak. I am particularly allergic to the deus ex machina as a plot device. And that’s whether it’s what’s necessary to get the story going or to get out of a plot dead end. That’s one of the reason for the private eye story. Everything comes to them; it’s a convention. Nothing too outlandish to break the willing suspension of disbelief.
Loved Landmark books. My folks had them coming once a month when I was in junior high. Yeah, the US as the good guy was allowed back then. But there was a book on the RCMP….
@ huxley > “There was also a bumper crop of remarkable American poets who were born in the mid-1920s.”
List???
@ OBH > “Also, regards physics, you might find Sabine Hossenfelder worth watching:”
I’ve seen several of her videos, and she has a definite future as a stand-up comic if she ever gets tired of particling the waves.
h/t ? Philip Sells
Flashman!
OBH, thanks for the suggestions. I do know Christopher Nuttal and have read most of the Empire’s Corps books.
In a lighter vein, Peter Grant is a former South African soldier turned author. His western Ames series starting with “Brings the Lightning” is simple entertainment. So is his Maxwell Saga about a young spaceman, starting with “Take the Star Road.”
Both leads are earnest, honest but no fool, likeable characters. Nothing in either series would make a nun blush.
OBH,
That’s probably why they’re banning octopus farms left, right and center.
You don’t want too many of those critters congregating.
Before you know it they’ll figure out a way to take over the government.
“Armed and dangerous”, etc….
(No doubt be a far sight better than “Biden”, OTOH…)
https://news.yahoo.com/hawaii-washington-move-ban-octopus-191602435.html
Huxley;
Can’t say I have. Should I?
Mr. American: not as funny as Flashman, but well done. McAuslan: From memory funnier than Flashman.
OBH;
…“Royal Flash” with Malcolm McDowell in the titular role…
I did not know that. Thanks much!
AesopFan:
The remarkable poets I had in mind born in the mid-twenties:
Denise Levertov 1923
Philip Whalen 1923
Robert Bly 1926
Robert Creeley 1926
Allen Ginsberg 1926
Frank O’Hara 1926
John Ashbery 1927
W.S. Merwin 1927
Ann Sexton 1928
Adrienne Rich 1929
IMO these poets have done well with the test of time. Though I’m not sure what 20th C poets are being read currently
Creeley, Ginsberg, O’Hara, Ashbery and Merwin were crucial when I started learning to read and write poetry. I noticed how they were all jammed into 1926-1927.
I never read too many novels (outside of school where they were assigned) because I prefer non ficiton (History and contemporary books) and I do not want to read a novel more than 300 – 400 pages. I like good writing which is concise and fast paced.
MikeK, I also enjoy WEB Griffin’s books. I initially read his series on Argentina.
physicsguy, I have also read about 20 of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series. Last year I read a review of Frederick Forsyth. Authentic Immediacy—A Tribute to the Political Fiction of Frederick Forsyth. Reading that review prompted me to reread The Odessa File and to read his autobiography.
I prefer Forsyth to Lee Child. Forsyth is more realistic, perhaps because he has incorporated parts of his life into his novels- such as his time in Biafra/Nigeria in the ’60s. Publication of The Odessa File helped capture the villain depicted in the book, but he died of a heart attack before he was put in jail.
OBloodyHell, I likewise liked Robert Conroy’s and Peter Tsouras’s alt-histories. An interesting point about the Confederacy in Europe is that Theodore Roosevelt’s uncle, James Bulloch, was the Confederate Navy’s primary agent in Europe.
https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Blog/Item/Theodore%20Roosevelts%20Confederate%20Uncles
It does seem like writers who were born in the 1920s and early 1930s were the last generation with a shot at real greatness. Is that because those were the writers who were publishing back when I was a more active reader? Or is it because they were the last generation not to have television? Or the last to have a real literary education? Literature could be everything for adults back then, so writers then could do more in literature than writers today can, when books are just one distraction among many others.
My mind wanders more with a printed book than with an audiobook. Maybe that’s because I am usually doing something else when I listen to an audiobook. It’s true that I have that distraction, but I’m also not looking for other distractions. The voice keeps speaking whether I’m fully engaged or not, so I’m not staring off into the distance and daydreaming or wondering what else I could be doing. And I can always rewind to hear what I missed.
@ huxley – Thanks for the list!
I recognize a couple of names, but they were neither old enough or modern enough for any of my school assignments, and I took a very long hiatus from poetry after graduation.
While we’re talking poetry, this is as good a modern poem as many I’ve seen around.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/02/20/roundup-75/#comment-2667734
om on February 21, 2023 at 9:32 am said:
At the self checkout
balance is not everything
mass keeps watch for code counting ones and naughts.
Welcome valued customer chimes the daughter of Hal.
I used to bookmark some of Artfldgr’s comments, when he was really on a roll, as being very poetic, kind of Shakespearean although without the rhymes.
One that I could find easily – I know there are more.
Lightly edited.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/12/05/all-hail-the-great-reset/#comment-2529387
Artfldgr on December 6, 2020 at 9:00 pm said:
And some thought i was being morose when i said invest in ovens..
what else could one do with the outcome of such a global thing?
just remember… if you’re not essential now, and have special privilege
you can guarantee you’re not going to be then, and then what?
i will bet that people later will wish they took my big ass warnings so far back rather than wait till they were sure they and their future family were this screwed…
I don’t know about anyone else, but for me, it’s been a few things: 1) the world has become far more stressful in the last few years, and novels seem frivolous now, a waste of time, 2) I’ve grown and developed new friendships and hobbies and find that immersing myself in a made-up world seen through a made-up person’s eyes (and the person disappears at the end of the book, and you can only see the person going through the exact same sequence of events over and over) doesn’t give me the pleasure it used to, 3) I’ve discovered that the only novels I liked were bad for me (example: I love women, but female perspective novels have a way of stunting one’s growth as a man), and the ones that were good for me bored me to no end despite all my efforts, and 4) most modern novels are extremely woke, and wokeness is bogus. So, I switched to short stories and poems for my pleasure reading, and I’ve never looked back.
Go to classicalpoets.org for some non-woke poetry.