What are you currently reading?

[Mandryka]

(Using kindle)

[Spotted Horses]

It does. I have a big problem about reading certain things in Kindle - academic pieces, books where you want to go back and forth like this one. Kindle is too clunky, and I've never found an e-reader with faster hardware. But when you listen to an audiobook, you're forced to abandon any thought of going back to a passage. You're almost forced to go forward at the pace of the narration, you have to submit to that pace. And that can be quite a good experience, though certainly not the best one if you want to understand.  I think sometimes the audiobook can give you the general gist of the chapter, which you then refine and polish up by reading the book.

I like kindle for popular fiction. Stuff where you just start at page 1 and work forward to the end. Anything else, and as I say, it's just too clunky. But there's not the sense of submission to another person's chosen pace like in an audiobook, so . . .

A tablet is maybe better, and I use them for pdfs. But I don't like the glare . . .

It's not that I don't know what you mean. In a way there is nothing more effective than your thumb to hold a place in a book that you want to go back to. But Kindle has its advantages, like when a character name appears and you say to yourself, "who the hell is that," and in kindle you can search and find the first appearance.

It's been years since I used an actual kindle. I use the kindle app on iPad and it is very responsive and has an elegant way to scan through pages. With my life as it is, if I had to read paper books only I just wouldn't read.

[Mandryka]

I find kindle software on my Samsung phone very good when I'm travelling. And yes iPad is better for kindle than the Amazon hardware. But there's the glare and I find that the light, is it blue light, stops me from falling asleep.  I spoke to Amazon to see if they have a faster e-reader, but they said no.

I think part of the problem is that the way they implement the fonts makes page refresh very resource consuming. And for me searching on an Amazon kindle reader is often painful - entering texts. I really hate the kindle e-reader, apart for reading light fiction.

[Spotted Horses]

I think part of the problem is that the way they implement the fonts makes page refresh very resource consuming. And for me searching on an Amazon kindle reader is often painful - entering texts. I really hate the kindle e-reader, apart for reading light fiction.

I think the issue is that the paper-white display is not like an LCD, it physically moves pigment particles to draw the screen, and that isn't fast. There is some advantage to it if you are trying to read in sunlight, otherwise iPad (and iPhone) work best for me.

[Mandryka]

If anyone knows of a faster e-reader, then please let me know.

[Spotted Horses]

Steinbeck, Cannery Row, a quick read (especially since circumstances afforded me a larger than usual chance to use my Kindle).

I read this book out of nostalgia for central California. The action takes place on and around Ocean View Boulevard in Monterey California, which at the time (the 1930's) was the site of an array of Sardine canneries. Steinbeck expresses admiration for the passions and disorder of the people who struggle to make a meager living in the shadow of the canneries, particularly Doc, a marine biologist who runs a business selling samples of marine animals, and Mack, the leader of a group of vagrants squatting in an abandoned warehouse. Ironically, the canneries have since been replaced by fancy hotels and restaurants and Monterey has become a playground of the wealthy.

[SimonNZ]

This quickie:



And this biggie:

[USMC1960s]

Reading Dostoyevsky. The Brothers Karamazov. 800+ pages but easy reading compared to Dickens or even Hugo or Dumas.
But tedious at times.

[Klavierman]

[Florestan]

Not yet reading, but just bought: Thomas Mann - Complete Short Stories & Novellas, Romanian translation in two volumes.



Covers read: Nobel Prize for Literature - Death in Venice, Mario and the Wizard - Short Stories

Would it be a good idea to start a new thread, "Books Purchased Today"?

[ritter]

Would it be a good idea to start a new thread, "Books Purchased Today"?

What a splendid idea! 

[Florestan]

Just finished this curiosity:



Marie of Romania - Masks (A Novel of an Impossible Love)

A saccharine, sentimental novel, set in post-WWI Romania and Constantinople, yet not entirely implausible and stylistically very well written --- astonishingly so actually, considering Romanian was not her native language. She (as queen consort) and King Michael (her grandson) were the two most popular royals in the whole history of the Kingdom of Romania (1866-1947).

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Reading Dostoyevsky. The Brothers Karamazov. 800+ pages but easy reading compared to Dickens or even Hugo or Dumas.
But tedious at times.

Big fan of Dostoevsky, but never been a fan of Karamazov.

[Spotted Horses]

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of he Dead, Olga Tokarczuk.



This book is something of a literary detective story. It involves a series of deaths in an isolated village in Poland. The central character is a woman in late middle age who has a great respect for nature and wildlife. Also important is her circle of eccentric friends. The first death is a neighbor who has choked on a lamb bone. This is followed by a series of deaths in strange circumstances, all of which have a mysterious connection to wildlife and possible local government corruption. It seemed a bit preachy and political until the conclusion.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of he Dead, Olga Tokarczuk.



This book is something of a literary detective story. It involves a series of deaths in an isolated village in Poland. The central character is a woman in late middle age who has a great respect for nature and wildlife. Also important is her circle of eccentric friends. The first death is a neighbor who has choked on a lamb bone. This is followed by a series of deaths in strange circumstances, all of which have a mysterious connection to wildlife and possible local government corruption. It seemed a bit preachy and political until the conclusion.

It sounds interesting.  I did a (very quick) googling of her name.  Interesting to read that she has a background in clinical psychology and also worked as a psychotherapist before dedicating herself fully to writing.

PD

[Spotted Horses]

It sounds interesting.  I did a (very quick) googling of her name.  Interesting to read that she has a background in clinical psychology and also worked as a psychotherapist before dedicating herself fully to writing.

Reading this book I had the impression that storytelling was secondary to a political message, but it came together in the end. I'm thinking of seeking out more works by Tokarczuk.

[Spotted Horses]

Big fan of Dostoevsky, but never been a fan of Karamazov.

I thought it Karamazov was brilliant the first time I read it, tedious the second time, brilliant the third time. I think my favorite book by Dostoyevsky is The Idiot.

[Spotted Horses]

Interesting.  I generally give any book that I'm not enjoying about 80 pages to win me over, in case it's a question of getting used to the authorial voice.  But I did give up on this one.  In spite of the promising premise, something about the writing made it seem just too much of a slog.

Yes, it is a bit like Melville's Moby Dick, and the elaborate descriptions of whale fishing technology.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein. Abraham Pais.

[SimonNZ]

Started:



publisher's synopsis:

"Reporter Sally Hayden was at home in London when she received a message on Facebook: "Hi sister Sally, we need your help." The sender identified himself as an Eritrean refugee who had been held in a Libyan detention center for months, locked in one big hall with hundreds of others. Now, the city around them was crumbling in a scrimmage between warring factions, and they remained stuck, defenseless, with only one remaining hope: contacting her. Hayden had inadvertently stumbled onto a human rights disaster of epic proportions.

From this single message begins a staggering account of the migrant crisis across North Africa, in a groundbreaking work of investigative journalism. With unprecedented access to people currently inside Libyan detention centers, Hayden's book is based on interviews with hundreds of refugees and migrants who tried to reach Europe and found themselves stuck in Libya once the EU started funding interceptions in 2017.

It is an intimate portrait of life for these detainees, as well as a condemnation of NGOs and the United Nations, whose abdication of international standards will echo throughout history. But most importantly, My Fourth Time, We Drowned shines a light on the resilience of humans: how refugees and migrants locked up for years fall in love, support each other through the hardest times, and carry out small acts of resistance in order to survive in a system that wants them to be silent and disappear."