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

[nana77]

Originally Posted by alansplace

Thanks for mentioning this one. I read it when I was still in High school, the year it was first published. I just bought the ebook from the Kindle store so I can read again!

By reading its wiki page, it seems to have a sequel, also: "Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman"

Toward the end of his life, Miller wrote another installment of the Abbey of Saint Leibowitz saga, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman. A full-length novel (455 pages) significantly longer than its predecessor, it is set in AD 3254, eighty years after the events of "Fiat Lux" but several centuries before "Fiat Voluntas Tua". Suffering from writer's block and fearful the new work would go unfinished, Miller arranged with author Terry Bisson to complete it. Bisson said all he did was go in and tie up the loose ends Miller had left.

Which was published one year after his departure (1997).

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Renate

I just finished "An American Tragedy", Theodore Dreiser, 1925
It was worth reading, but at ~900 pages it might have improved with some chopping down.

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I read this when I was in my 30s. It's a great American novel, in my opinion. The author, unfortunately, is now often overlooked.

I read Dreiser's novels decades ago and loved them, but I think he hasn't aged well. He does go on, as Renate said. I did reread Sister Carrie in the unexpurgated version about ten years ago and thought it terrific, so I might be unjust.

Originally Posted by Renate

I've just gotten around to reading "Tender Is the Night", Fitzgerald.
I've never been big on Fitzgerald.
I just don't get his whole "psychological" approach to everyone.
I don't get how he is into people worshiping other people.
Screw Jay Gatsby. Screw the Divers.

Maybe it's my fault for being emotionally stunted.

One of the book clubs here read Tender is the Night and I was blown away. I get that Gatsby is technically better, but Tender gets my nod. I think Gatsby suffers from overexposure, however. And bad movie versions.

I'm currently reading The Traitors' Circle by Jonathan Freedland, about the Solf Circle resistance in Nazi Germany and I think I just talked myself into DNFing it. I've held off so far, because the subject matter interests me and then there's the sunk cost fallacy and I'm about a third into it, but the reality is that it's not good. It's poorly organized and disjointed and displays that tendency I loathe in current nonfiction of novelization, or making stuff up, I suppose to broaden its appeal. It's replete with flashing eyes, guilty looks, sweaty faces, made-up conversations, people's thoughts and emotions and so on, things that couldn't possibly be known. My reaction is like Joe Friday's. Ugh.