So I know rinx is taking a mini Hubski break and I've been posting and commenting a lot less myself at the moment, but I really wanted to start a book thread. I just wrapped up one book and I'm starting up a second that I think is gonna be a lot of fun for me.
The book I finished
I just the other day wrapped up Louis L'Amour's The Iron Marshall. Like most of his books, I very much enjoyed it but I also finished it with mixed feelings. I'll put spoilers on this just out of general courtesy, though I'm pretty certain none of you guys actually care if I spoil a western novel.
In short, it's about a thug from New York who through a series of events finds himself in a small, startup town in the middle of Kansas where he finds himself to become a marshall who must not only stop a feud, but a seemingly inevitable train heist as well. It's a very easy read, not overly convoluted, and the characters are pretty much your standard stereotypical western characters. Familiar but interesting without being over the top. I do have a mild nit-pick about the main character though, Shanaghy, and how he's shaped. When I first picked up this story, I was kind of expecting a fish out of water tale, where his skill set is seemingly no good for the predicaments he finds himself in. However, that doesn't turn out to be the case to any extent, which is a bit disappointing. I did though enjoy the fact that halfway through the book, it turned from an adventure to a mystery and while there was action here and there, there was no big, crazy, stereotypical shootout in the end. It was flawed, not my favorite L'Amour book, but still fun. I probably wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it to anyone though.
The book I just picked up
Over the course of a week, kleinbl00 recommended quite a few books to me, one of them being The Ten Cent Plague. I've only read the first chapter, as I'm super busy at the moment, but it's one hell of a chapter. It talked about the early days of comics and their roots in newspapers trying to appeal to immigrants to becoming what we think of today when we think about comics, floppies. It talks about everything from minorities and class division to high-brow and low-brow culture. It's very well written and if this first chapter is just setting up the background for what's gonna happen and why, I think I'm in for a very, very interesting read.
Honestly? With the exception of one digital album that my friend got for me from Bandcamp, all of my media purchasing is stuck in the 20th century. Physical books, CDs, and Blu-Rays are my thing. Is audible a good deal? What's your opinion of it?
I've been giving them $20 a month for about nine years. I own a thunderous amount of audiobooks but I listen to them avidly. I literally burned through The Poisonwood Bible on a single valve lash adjustment on the Benelli. Some people don't, though.
As per kleinbl00's suggestion, I read "Disrupted" this past week, and enjoyed it immensely. I particularly liked some of the more theoretical stretches of it that looked at what the start-up model really means for employees. Definitely something I am wary of when looking for jobs now.
Oh no. For the first time in my life, I've committed a reading sin: Having multiple books on the go. I have Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde and Other Strange Tales underneath my water bottle. I finished The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (which, by the way, was very interesting - I can only imagine what a shock it would be to read before all the pop culture surrounding this story), The Body Snatcher, and The Bottle Imp. Only Markheim and the unfinished Weir of Hermiston is left... but I got distracted. I had started Joseph Heller's Catch-22 last month, but admittedly I wasn't as focused as I needed for this book. Only 120 pages in and it sits unfinished by my lamp. Someone had given me a collection of Agatha Christie murders that occurred on trains. Thankfully I finished all 3 of those and can put it into my "to be donated" pile; I simply don't have the space for books, sadly. I have the complete collection of Brothers Grimm fairy tales. I'm maybe a quarter of the way through? I'd like to sit down and finish this one, but it's definitely low priority since it can be picked up at any time. I'm currently reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. I really shouldn't have started it but now I HAVE to finish it since someone saw me reading it and wants to borrow it. The story itself is interesting (I love knowing classic stories) but I can't say I found his essay The Custom-House particularly useful. Maybe I'm lacking on historical context? This would all be fine and dandy, but then someone went and lent me a book. Which of course hits top of my pile. My father gave me his copy of The Odyssey, and someone insisted on giving me their copy of The Iliad to read before. Having started spring semester, I also have two textbooks to power through. Which I should, admittedly, be working on right now...
If you haven't heard of it, he also has a book of poetry called Smoke From This Altar. There's a more recent publishing that has a few more poems so it's worth hunting down. The majority of them are actually pretty good. I'm not much of a memoir person myself, but I think I should get around to reading Wandering Man. I think I'd like it.