Jump to content

What are you reading now?


grawk

Recommended Posts

Ars Technica made a video about the F-15 cockpit controls, which led to a sidebar by the author about Boeing in the 2000s:

https://arstechnica.com/features/2020/06/human-interface-come-on-a-tour-of-an-f-15c-fighter-jet-cockpit/?comments=1&start=80

Which led to an article about the McDonnell-Douglas / Boeing merger:

https://www.msn.com/en-za/money/news/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merger-led-to-the-737-max-crisis/ar-BBYzJXz

TL;DR mistakes were made. Another tragic story of corporate aggression, cost-cutting, and greed.

I'm against continually escalating airline ticket prices, but compromising safety to cut costs led to inevitable disasters.

Edited by HiWire
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

Started reading this one after blasting through Hammett's earlier novel, The Maltese Falcon (a bit of a disappointment). His writing style seems a lot clunkier than Raymond Chandler's or even Mickey Spillane's, but there is an energy and drama that keeps you going. Big points for being the first one, too.

spacer.png

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe this one (After Dark, My Sweet – 🥰 Rachel Ward) – I usually read the books before watching film versions:

spacer.png

And this one (The Grifters):

spacer.png

 

After reading The Maltese Falcon, I realized that a lot of the cheesy Sam Spade parodies are actually parodies of Spillane's Mike Hammer character (I guess a lot of screenwriters were too lazy to read the original material).

Edited by HiWire
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The film versions of those two were released the same year and the wrong one became famous. After Dark is still unknown and so good. 

Was in a different spot in my life when I read Thompson, but maaan did it resonate then. Like Bukowski/Fante-levels at the same time, but again I was in a different space (semi-emotionally trapped on a Great Lakes 1x1.5 mile island for several months). Just look at your image.  

The Killer Inside Me was probably his first great... and a pretty bad movie. 

From Wikipedia: The writer R.V. Cassill has suggested that of all crime fiction, Thompson's was the rawest and most harrowing; that neither Dashiell Hammett nor Raymond Chandler nor Horace McCoy ever "wrote a book within miles of Thompson". Similarly, in the introduction to Now and on Earth, Stephen King says he most admires Thompson's work because "The guy was over the top. The guy was absolutely over the top. Big Jim didn't know the meaning of the word stop. There are three brave lets inherent in the foregoing: He let himself see everything, he let himself write it down, then he let himself publish it."

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Maybe a little redundant, but I finally received my copy of J.G. Ballard's High-Rise and I'm enjoying it immensely. The novel is clearly satirical and the film seems to have lost that feeling somewhere in translation.

I got the one with the movie cover on purpose, as the novel is supposed to be about a disaster and the movie was one, unintentionally. Looks like a slew of cover artists attempted to visualize the story with varying degrees of success.

It is a near-insurmountable challenge to make a condominium appear fascinating to the reading public.

https://www.4thestate.co.uk/2015/11/high-rise-40-years-of-cover-design/

spacer.png

spacer.png

spacer.png

spacer.png

Edited by HiWire
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm a sucker for Stephenson stuff, even his more navel-gazey work really does it for me.  Fall is perhaps not the place to start if you're not already a fan, but I just find his thought process and world-building compelling.  I did not enjoy it as much as Seveneves, and Diamond Age remains my favorite of all his books.  I did prefer it to Reamde.

The reviews are a little harsher but similar in tone to those of Seveneves.  Normies don't like 600+ pages of exposition from a layman on fringe tech with their speculative fiction, maybe?  I just discard out of hand any review which mentions Snow Crash.

Edited by Sherwood
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've enjoyed most of his books, but The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. was terrible. It had the outlines of Stephenson's usual obsessions, but the plot was terribly weak, the characterizations were cartoonish, and it went way too far in terms of self-indulgence and laziness. I took a hard pass on The Mongoliad.

I read half of Seveneves before my library loan expired – I'll get back to finishing it at some point. I loved Reamde, despite its flaws, and I'm looking forward to reading Fall.

Edited by HiWire
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I really enjoyed Fall.  I should read DODO, I haven't yet.  I definitely only consume books via audio these days, I haven't ever gotten a set of reading glasses that work well enough for me, and my reading time is when I'm already tired.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Last Call for Gumshoes 

For nearly 50 years, a tight-knit group of San Francisco private eyes—intellectual, swashbuckling, anti-authority lefties—practiced their craft in the pursuit of truth and, hopefully, justice.

https://altaonline.com/private-investigators-san-francisco-phil-bronstein/ 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

A genius book. I get the feeling that books as disparate as Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos (and Ilium / Olympos, of course), Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon trilogy, Walter Jon Williams' Aristoi, and even David Brin's Kiln People (and so many more), were directly inspired by Lord of Light.

spacer.png

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.