Books

By Will Cuppy. I read this when I was 8 years old (yes I was bright, but it captured my interest, while having so many layers). I've read and reread it many many times-hysterical, sarcastic, cynical, yet true-all of the characteristics I learned to love and appreciate, and this was the start. Link here.

In particular I've grown a great love, lately, for sword and sorcery tales, old pulp stuff with pulse-pounding action. In that department I've yet to meet a writer who surpasses Robert E. Howard. His writing has the magical ability to effortlessly conjure images before my mind's eye, so that as I read I seem to be watching a movie made of words. I'm also a huge fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter books.

Not exactly progressive media, but I love it.

... but now I do most of my serious reading online in real time.

I think, in retrospect, that is a knock-on effect from 2008, because both the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books were "feeder systems" for book reading, and they were both so Kool-Aid addled that I gave them up. In addition, I have no reasonable bookstore in walking distance, and the University Bookstore isn't serious.

However, I still (re-)read a good deal of grade B fiction including but not limited to:

1. Yes, John MacDonald. I too am taking my retirement a little bit at a time, though without Travis McGee's toolkit.

2. The Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O'Brien (far, far better than C.S. Forester because the characters are rounded)

3. Terry Pratchett but only with Sam Vimes and Lord Vetinari

And a great slew of detective including Christie, Connelly, Cross, Dexter, Marsh, Sayers, Simonen, and Stout.

SF I read little of. Why, after Phillip K. Dick? Although I like Richard Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs series a lot. It's beautifully written.

Fantasy just doesn't do it for me, unfortunately. I can't see the point after Tolkien.

Oh, on the epigraphs, I do it because I'm marinated in it through a lifetime of reading. Sadly, an obsolete culture that had its graces.

with a penchant for historical series:
Ancient Rome -- Steven Saylor's Roma sub rosa series about Gordianus the Finder, John Maddox Roberts' SPQR, and to a lesser degree Lindsay Robinson's Falco series.
Renaissance -- C.J. Sansom (I also liked his Winter in Madrid set in the Spanish Civil War.)
There are a number of decent World War I and aftermath series. I like both of Charles Todd's series.
Walter Moseley's Easy Rawlins series is a take on the African-American experience in Los Angeles from about the 50s on.

There are a number of good series that focus on the protagonist trying to understand his/her own and society's past and its relationship to present injustices -- James Lee Burke's Dave Robichaux, Dennis Lehane's Kenzie/Gennaro series, Ian Rankin's John Rebus. I think probably Denise Mina's Garnethill trilogy and her Paddy Meehan series would fit here.

And there are some that have good complex protagonists firmly situated in a specific community -- John Harvey's Charlie Reznick, Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallender, and Peter Robinson's Ian Banks.

I am also a huge Pratchett fan, with a particular fondness for Sergeant Angua.

Among the classics, it's Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice is a virtually perfect book, so apparently effortless. I'm in awe of her ability to depict human failings without being mean-spirited. The other 19th c. book that I reread regularly is Dickens' Our Mutual Friend. Well, it's a mystery, of course, but mainly it gets at obsession and the modern wasteland as well as any book I can think of. T. S. Eliot, after all, originally planned to call The Wasteland "He do the police in different voices", a quotation from Our Mutual Friend

Like Lambert, most of my serious reading is online analysing events and responding to them.

I used to like to read historical mysteries. I got the Brother Cadfael series (medieval England) just as it was starting. There were a couple of Roman ones. My favorite was Didius Falco. There was Egyptology with Amanda Peabody and ancient Egypt with Lauren Haney's Inspector Bat. All of these were quite successful series. The best ones tended to be early on with what seems to be the inevitable running out of steam in the later ones.

I used to read Leonardo Sciascia in Italian. He was a master at describing the atmosphere of corruption that infected Italian society and institutions. I guess I mention him because he could really evoke the claustrophobic nature of it and it reminds me so much of what is happening now. I liked Umberto Eco. Not sure his stuff went anywhere but it was always a fun ride. I liked his wealth of language. He had scads of words that never showed up in any Italian dictionary I ever knew of.

In Spanish, I started out with some of Arturo Perez-Reverte's other novels and then settled into his capitan Alatriste novels. I like these because they are Siglo de oro. They capture the futile sense of honor of two men serving people and an empire that aren't worth it and which they know aren't worth it.

In English, I started reading the Sookie Stackhouse novels before they got turned into Trueblood. I read the Harry Potter novels in English and several in French, and even a couple in Latin just for kicks.

Because of the unreasonable length of copyright laws, projects like Gutenberg have all of this old fiction from about 1850-1920. And as a kind of mindless relaxation, I have created my own e-editions of some of it. I can't say I have read that many of them. I sort of skim them as I manipulate them. But what interests me is the B grade literature of the period, especially in French and English: all the vintage science fiction, mysteries, and adventure stories that aren't just Verne, or Conan Doyle, or HG Wells, although I have these too. I think you learn a lot about the people of a particular time by looking at how and what they daydream about.

Then there are my "forever" books, like reading the first half of the Odyssey or Antigone a few lines at a time then setting them aside sometimes for months at a time. Or that phase a while back where I translated 30-40 of my favorite Tang poems, including that one Lambert cited once by Li Bai: We Fought South of the Walls.

I do not think I will ever have enough time to read everything I would like to.

there, that takes care of "the classics."

now for the classics... some of the authors represented:
agatha christie
dick francis
tony hillerman
marcia muller
joan hess
ngaio marsh
rex stout
dorothy sayers
janet evanovich
lilian jackson braun
marcia muller

this does not begin to cover my list of favorite authors but it sure reveals my favorite genre. after i got out of college, i swore i'd never read another "serious" book ever again. i can't say i've kept that promise entirely, but i've been pretty good.

to further quote that conversation, valley girl noted that her list of b-grade authors didn't include many [any?] women, and that she had a theory about why that is. not that she ever actually shared that theory. of course, i've got a theory on that too, and i'd be willing to bet it's the same one. :)

BTW Lindsey Davis writes the Didius Falco series and nihil obstet names the other two I follow. And Lauren Haney's protagonist is Lieutenant Bak and he lives in the time of Hatshepsut.

you will find UTF support ie Chinese characters.