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Post by Suzy on Feb 26, 2014 15:21:02 GMT -5
Reading is nearly as important to me as writing. I have to read for at least half an hour before I go to sleep.
I have very catholic (not in a religious sense) tastes when it comes to books and I'll read any good story, provided it's well written and the story grabs me.
At the moment, I'm reading historical fiction, The Song the Lark by Willa Cather, recommended to me by a friend. I had never heard of this author before, so I'm grateful to my friend for telling me about her.
The story is set in early 20th century Colorado and it's excellent. Wonderful prose with engaging characters. Very descriptive and detailed, the way they wrote in that era.
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Post by Daniel on Feb 26, 2014 15:31:14 GMT -5
I'm reading The Lockington Legacy by Lynda Wilcox. It's a story about two young women (twins) who start a detective agency. Their first cases are finding a lost dog for a homeless woman (who may be more than she seems) and searching for an expensive necklace for a client who wants to keep the theft secret. The girls' father is a police detective, which adds humorous situations and some extra tension to the tale. It's a fun cozy mystery and I'm looking forward to seeing how it ends.
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Post by Suzy on Feb 26, 2014 15:32:11 GMT -5
Lynda's books are terrific.
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Post by Alan Petersen on Feb 26, 2014 17:03:37 GMT -5
I'm reading Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard.
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Post by Becca Mills on Feb 26, 2014 17:04:02 GMT -5
Not reading anything at the moment.  |
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Post by Suzy on Feb 26, 2014 17:31:53 GMT -5
Aww, Becca, that's sad. But you will be able to read on vacation.
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Post by whdean on Feb 26, 2014 19:24:57 GMT -5
Funny, I listened to the first part of Road Dogs about a month ago. But the library CD was so badly scratched that I had to take it back. It's gonna feel weird reading the rest of the book.
Just finished Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and I'm onto some of Craig Johnson's Longmire series.
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Post by Becca Mills on Feb 26, 2014 20:10:32 GMT -5
Aww, Becca, that's sad. But you will be able to read on vacation. Yeah.  Well, I shouldn't say I'm not reading. I'm not reading anything for fun. In the last week, I've read essays by Steven Pinker (on morality), John Gribbin (on quantum mechanics), James Baldwin (on black English), and Emily Martin (on gender bias in scientific language). Interesting stuff, but only "fun" in the intellectual-challenge sense. |
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Post by whdean on Feb 26, 2014 21:34:09 GMT -5
Aww, Becca, that's sad. But you will be able to read on vacation. Yeah. Well, I shouldn't say I'm not reading. I'm not reading anything for fun. In the last week, I've read essays by Steven Pinker (on morality), John Gribbin (on quantum mechanics), James Baldwin (on black English), and Emily Martin (on gender bias in scientific language). Interesting stuff, but only "fun" in the intellectual-challenge sense. Pinker is a good non-fiction example of a cultural phenomenon. His expertise is in linguistics, but he's a "celebrity intellectual" (like Gladwell), so he can write about anything and people think it's worth reading. |
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Post by vrabinec on Feb 26, 2014 21:48:04 GMT -5
On Basilisk Station by Webber. I'm ready to put the fucking thing down and move on to something else. Bland.
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Post by Becca Mills on Feb 27, 2014 3:52:01 GMT -5
Yeah. Well, I shouldn't say I'm not reading. I'm not reading anything for fun. In the last week, I've read essays by Steven Pinker (on morality), John Gribbin (on quantum mechanics), James Baldwin (on black English), and Emily Martin (on gender bias in scientific language). Interesting stuff, but only "fun" in the intellectual-challenge sense. Pinker is a good non-fiction example of a cultural phenomenon. His expertise is in linguistics, but he's a "celebrity intellectual" (like Gladwell), so he can write about anything and people think it's worth reading. I like Pinker and Gladwell. Pinker's more fun. He's provoking.  |
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Post by Daniel on Feb 27, 2014 7:51:51 GMT -5
On Basilisk Station by Webber. I'm ready to put the fucking thing down and move on to something else. Bland. I got into the Honor Harrington series for several books. The series devolved for me after the first five or so. It got more and more depressing. I can handle only so much badness:goodness ratio. After a while, mostly terrible things happen followed by somewhat hollow victories. It's the next worse thing to a tragic ending, which I don't tolerate. In fact, that's why I didn't read Hugh's stuff beyond the first installment; it's brilliant but tragic. |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2014 10:17:31 GMT -5
I read about five or six of the Honor books. I kept hoping Honor would have one character flaw. Never found one. And I started skipping the inevitable fifty-page description of superdreadnoughts.
Bujold's Vorkosigan series is epic, if you want something more fun in the same genre.
I got Vampire Academy free with an Amazon promotional credit and decided to give it a try. It's actually not bad. Much snarkier and honest than Twilight. I like the main character.
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Post by shawninmon on Feb 28, 2014 9:23:04 GMT -5
I'm reading "Veek as in Wreck," a ghostwritten autobiography of Bill Veek, a baseball owner who caused no end of headaches for other baseball owners. My editor recommended it to me because of the way the ghostwriter goes about his business, telling the story in Veek's voice, but better than he could have told it himself. For some reason (Because I've written memoirs of both myself and my wife, I guess) people occasionally approach me and say "My Dad (or brother, or friend) has led an unbelievable life and would like you to write his story." So far, I haven't found one I want to do that with, but maybe someday...
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Post by Becca Mills on Feb 28, 2014 11:52:21 GMT -5
I'm reading "Veek as in Wreck," a ghostwritten autobiography of Bill Veek, a baseball owner who caused no end of headaches for other baseball owners. My editor recommended it to me because of the way the ghostwriter goes about his business, telling the story in Veek's voice, but better than he could have told it himself. For some reason (Because I've written memoirs of both myself and my wife, I guess) people occasionally approach me and say "My Dad (or brother, or friend) has led an unbelievable life and would like you to write his story." So far, I haven't found one I want to do that with, but maybe someday... There'd be worse gigs than ghost-writing, that's for sure. Or are you thinking more of writing a biography of someone? |
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Post by shawninmon on Feb 28, 2014 14:41:28 GMT -5
I can see where it could go either way. I was approached a few months ago by someone who did have an interesting life story. I aske him a few questions, we exchanged a few emails, then he said "So, I only want $5,000 for the rights to my story and I will cooperate fully." Perfectly his right to ask for that and perfectly my right to not be interested, which I wasn't.
Because my two memoirs are romances, I have toyed with the idea of ghostwriting other people's stories for a price. In the end though, I decided I wouldn't want to charge someone what I would have to in order to make it worth the hours.
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Post by Suzy on Feb 28, 2014 14:55:19 GMT -5
I wrote my great-aunt's biography as a novel.Her life story that I discovered in hundreds of letters in my grandmother's chest of drawers was amazing. This woman travelled all over Europe and America during a time when women usually stayed at home and got married. But, as I knew roughly What happened, but now exactly HOW it happened, I turned it into a novel, filling in the gaps by using my own imagination. It became a novel called A Woman's Place. Not a huge seller but what I consider my best work. And I so enjoyed writing it, even if some of those letters were truly heartbreaking. |
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Post by vrabinec on Feb 28, 2014 15:02:16 GMT -5
Hmm, sounds like a Karen Blixen type of story.
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Post by Suzy on Feb 28, 2014 15:07:39 GMT -5
Hmm, sounds like a Karen Blixen type of story. In a way, yes. Here she is. The beautiful and scandalous Julia...  |
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Post by Becca Mills on Feb 28, 2014 17:44:48 GMT -5
Hmm, sounds like a Karen Blixen type of story. In a way, yes. Here she is. The beautiful and scandalous Julia... View AttachmentWow. She's gorgeous. Furthermore, she looks like the cat that just ate the canary! |
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