Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

[MrDoug]

Terry Francona.. the RED SOX years.. anyone besides me?

[Stephjk]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The best one by far, IMHO, but speaking as a classicist, is Richard Lattimore's. If you can't read the Greek original (and, alas, those who can are an ever-shrinking minority), Lattimore's version is about as close as you can get to the "feel" of the original. It is available as an ebook. His "Odyssey" is also the best, in my view.

Thanks very much for the tip, I'll investigate.
I can read a little modern Greek but I don't think that would help with Homer!

[Stephjk]

Originally Posted by LovesMacs

Depends on what you find easier. If you find prose easier to read than verse, Penguin Classics publishes a decades-old translation by E.V. Rieu.

The translation I have read is by Robert Fagles. It's in verse and has many footnotes.

I also bought but haven't yet read the Lattimore translation. I've read that it shows as much fidelity to Greek as is possible with the English language. I know that it uses spellings that you may not be accustomed to (Menelaos for Menelaus, Aias for Ajax) because many English translations use spellings that have been influenced by Latin.

I've flipped through a contemporary translation by Stanley Lombardo. It's very visceral and even slangy.

Here are a couple of Mobileread threads that also discuss translations:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=185961
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=175779

Thanks for the advice, I'm off to investigate the best one for me!

[Joy736]

I just finished Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell and it as amazing! It was sooooo beautiful, it made me cry, realy cry. Need I say more...
Next up: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by Stitchawl

I just wanted to re-post something that I sent to alansplace the other day;

Just wanted to say 'thanks.'
You've always spoken of the Dresden Files so highly, and so a couple of years ago I 'tried' to read 'Storm Front' but couldn't get past the first 50 pages. But you continued to rain praise on the series, so a year later I tried again. Same results and I figured, well, it just wasn't my cup of tea. It happens...

But last week someone gave me an audiobook of 'Storm Front.' I've been walking for exercise, between 5-10km a day, usually listening to music to walk along with. But instead, I loaded up the audio book, and got so engrossed with it that I kept walking, and wound up walking almost 18km! Absolutely delightful story! My feet are killing me, but I can't wait to get back to it on my walk today. I'll certainly try to read the next in the series, but if that doesn't work, I'm sure the audiobook will! Thanks for being so persistent in your recommendation of the series.


Stitchawl

Interesting. I have got stuck with the series too. I have read the first two, including Storm Front, and have no compelling desire to keep going. Maybe I'll use one of my growing number of credits at Audible to give the audio version of #3 Grave Peril a go.

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by caleb72

Pale Queen's Courtyard - by Marcin Wrona. This is an indie book for my review site. I was pretty impressed with a steam/clock punk offering of his called The Whitechapel Gambit. However, this one is his debut novel and was a finalist in SciFiNow's 2009 War of the Words (whatever that is). It looks like it has a more Middle-Eastern fantasy feel. Interested to see how this goes.

OK - finished this one. I thought this was a great story. A fantasy with Middle-Eastern cultural origins. It was well told and there weren't any really glaring problems.

I always have one or two things that niggle me and this book wasn't an exception, but I'll probably give it a 4 star rating.

Now I've launched into A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine. About 20% in and this is the usual slow burn Vine book.

[Dr. Drib]

The John Harwood novel is wonderful. A rich-detailed and densely told story that moves along.

Some people have complained about the ending, but I'm not there yet.

I highly recommend this book.

I'm about 80 pages into it.




Don

[fantasyfan]

I just finished The Dragon Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine {pseud. of Willard Huntington Wright}

It's the seventh of the 12 books about the detective and evidently marks the beginning of the decline of quality in the series. In all honesty, it is rather too far-fetched and contrived to hold the interest, though there are some nice red-herrings here and there. Vance, himself is, I suspect, getting tiresome by this time. I read The Bishop Murder Case {fourth in the series} and it was quite a bit better.

These were made into films in the twenties and thirties--mainly with William Powell playing lead. I've not seen them myself--has anyone here done so?

[JSWolf]

Today I finished Star Trek: The Original Series: The Weight of the World. Quite enjoyable.

My next read is going to be The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler for the book club. I just hope it's good.

When a dying millionaire hires Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.

[Stitchawl]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

My next read is going to be The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler for the book club. I just hope it's good.

If it's even half as good as the 1946 Bogart/Bacall movie, it will be a great read! That was as much a classic as 'The African Queen!'


Stitchawl

[Synamon]

I've been doing some reading this week on the dock during our amazing heatwave (30 C in May!!):

Murder Stone by Louise Penny, fourth in the Three Pines series. This one is not set in the town and is focused on the dynamics of a single family staying at a remote resort with CI Gamache. Lots of red herrings and suspicions to go with a strange murder. I love reading these at my remote cabin in the woods, it makes the setting really come alive.

Endless Night by Agatha Christie, one of her later standalone novels. Not my favourite, I'm sort of addicted to Poirot and this is more romantic suspense than mystery.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. Sweet story and wonderful character(s), but the journey itself was not terribly believable. Easy enough to suspend disbelief and go along for the interesting ride though.

The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen. Great addition to the police detective genre, with a department of two (Department Q) investigating cold cases in Denmark. The pairing of a smart but unmotivated and wounded detective with a secretive political refugee as his civilian assistant brings something new to the table. I couldn't put it down and I can't wait to read the next one.

[Pulpmeister]

I'm currently re-reading
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L Shirer. (1960)

I read this more or less non-stop back around 1965, in the Pan Paperback edition, which I still have, much battered about but still, amazingly, holding together despite being over 1400 pages!

Shirer was a US newspaper correspondent based in Berlin until 1940, and who had access to the vast captured German files after the war. He could easily read German, and so didn't have to wait for translations.

This was the first general history of Nazism and the 3rd Reich, and still the easiest to read; Shirer's journalism skill showing through. It is a monumental bit of research.

If you want the whole appalling story in one book, which is not a dry-as-dust historians' approach, and you don't mind that Shirer's justified indignation tends to give it flavour, this is it.

I'd hate to make an e-book out of it. There are well over 1300 source reference in the text, and probably close to 1,000 footnotes. It would be a nightmare sorting that lot out.

[HarryT]

It is available as an ebook. I have it.

[Pulpmeister]

Crikey!

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Next: Asimov's Science Fiction, July 2013

An OK issue. Nothing that stood out.

Next up: Analog Science Fiction Science Fact, July/August 2013. I'm also reading the serial from the last three issues (conclusion in this issue).