📚 About ready to start reading “The Future Home of the Living God” by Louise Erdrich. I have a couple of her other books that I haven’t started yet. This one is from the public library. I’m at the point where I donate books to the library when I’m done with them.

📚 Current audiobook: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. About 2/3 of the way through. There’s always a train wreck around the corner at this point.

Currently reading: The World by Simon Sebag Montefiore 📚. Borrowed this from our local library. At over 1000 pages I’m only going to hit highlights this time around. Lots of interesting stories here. Will likely borrow again.

Currently reading: The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya 📚. This is an audiobook. I listen to this while doing dishes or some other chore that doesn’t take a lot of mental energy. Decent narration for the topic. I wonder what he would have accomplished if he had not died at 53.

Currently reading: Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen 📚. Just started. I pick up a book of his about every 6 months or so. Random note: this one has typewriters.

How did I not find out about Standard ebooks until a week ago? I’ll be reading forever.

📚I’m about 2/3 of the way through the audiobook “Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field” by Nancy Forbes, narrated by Patrick Lawlor. I thought it was going to be a bit of a slog, but it has turned out to be quite entertaining.

Starting to record books with Epilogue. Catching up with 2022. Queuing 2023.

📚Just finished the audiobook “Troy” written and narrated by Stephen Fry. Loved the narration in this one.

Finished “Simply Gödel”. Brought back memories of studying computability theory in grad school. I might dig out the old books.

Starting Simply Gödel by Richard Tieszen. It’ll be interesting to see how it works as an audiobook. 📚

Finished Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. I had never read it before. Though dated I’m not sure it’s possible to overstate its importance. 📚

📚 Today’s reading: One chapter of Le Guin’s interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, the latest Science News, skimming IBM i Security: Administration and Compliance, an article from the Tampa Bay Times on the death trends for pedestrians on Pinellas county roads.

Finished reading: Naturalist: A Graphic Adaptation by Edward O. Wilson 📚

Currently reading: From Yao to Mao: 5000 Years of Chinese History by Kenneth J. Hammond 📚

Currently reading: Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way by Ursula K. Le Guin 📚

Finished reading: It Can’t Happen Here (Signet Classics) by Sinclair Lewis 📚

Finished reading: The Case of the Lady in the Luggage by Cheri Baker 📚

Finished reading: The Case of the Lady in the Luggage by Cheri Baker 📚

Finished reading: EndTimes by Bryan Walsh 📚 The subject matter is grim, especially on the existential threats we create for ourselves. The book was released in 2019, and accurately predicted the way the science-denying Trump administration would “handle” a pandemic. Fortunately, while SARS-COV-2 was serious, it wasn’t the big one. Other anthropogenic topics covered are the AI apocalypse, nuclear annihilation, climate change, bioterrorism. Add to that the natural existential threats of supervolcanoes and asteroid impacts and you have a book that makes for some interesting reading.

Finished reading: Figuring by Maria Popova 📚 The funny thing about all of Popova’s writings such as BrainPickings is that you want to take notes. Lots of notes. She works from a wealth of sources, although she obviously has favorites, and you want to see just how all this stuff is connected. This holds true for this book as well. I didn’t avoid that temptation at first, and it made the book slow-going.

📚 It’s not all work and no play. I’m also reading The Case of the Lady in the Luggage by @cheri.

TECH RESOURCES

I like having tech books around as reference and for ideas (Ruby, Python, Linux, security, style, …). I tried various books apps to use them: bad idea – no way to leaf through them easily on ereaders, although desktop isn’t too bad. I tried hardcopy which is better but bulky. The real problem is obsolescence. Both of the forms are subject to that. I was a big user of Lynda, but video is just too damn slow to pick up on essentials, and it is also horrible for browsing, and it’s gone into the trashcan since LinkedIn bought it.

📚 I’m reading Popova’s “Figuring”. I do not understand Emily Dickinson. Perhaps with time?

Just finished the audiobook “The Wave in the Mind” by Ursula K. LeGuin, an excellent set of essays on the crafts of writing and reading. The narration by Christina Moore was flawless. I’m keeping a print copy around to mark up. 📚

Just finished the audiobook of “A Dance with Dragons.” Looks like I’ll have to wait quite a while (like years) for books 6 and 7 of “A Song of Ice and Fire”. Hope I make it. 😎📚

The only books I’ve read more times than Dune are LOTR and Stranger in a Strange Land.

Also waddling my way through this. Love the narration. 📚

Queued

Listening to Stephen Fry read Mythos. Very entertaining. 📚

📚 So Far, So Good Ursula K. LeGuin’s final book of poems. Each one a gem. #mbmay

📚If you haven’t read Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac. Read it. Read it now. #mbmay

Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. The White Queen 💬

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all. Henry David Thoreau 💬

📚Also finished Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. I should have read this years ago.

📚Finished the audiobook of The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas. Loved the narration by Bill Homewood. It was a bit commitment since the book runs about 55 hours. I was expecting a bit of a swashbuckler, but instead found a morality tale of the dangers of omnipotence without omniscience.

LOCAL BOOKSTORES - FAIR TRADE BOOKS IN RED WING, MN

I admit that I’ve been getting most of my books from Amazon or from our library as ebooks. They are convenient for reading in bed or while traveling, but those are the only advantages. There is nothing to mark up and, worse, there is nothing to share. I had a short list of books I wanted to buy that friends had recommended and decided to stick with paper this time. I could get that from Amazon as well, but there are still a few independent bookstores left in the area, including one in Rochester.

My dear friend, Craig, wrote this plant book. It’s getting quite a good reception. Craig teaches at University of South Florida and St. Petersburg College. You can follow his tales of Florida gardening on his blog: There Were No Fences. #mbfeb

Catching up on the “classics”. Took a break from The Handmaid’s Tale to read On The Road. I liked Kerouac’s style, so it wasn’t a slog. Interesting in its time I suppose. 📚

In progress are “The Handmaid’s Tale” (Kindle), a graphic novel that purports to be a sequel to “Treasure Island” (Libby on iPad), a very entertaining audiobook version of “The Count of Monte Cristo” (iPhone), and several print books in various stages of consumption. 📚

Now starting “On The Road”. Don’t know how long I’ll last through Kerouac, but I found the first few pages to be pleasantly and surprisingly interesting. 📚

BTW. I just discovered the Libby app for obtaining books from our public library. Easy to use for a 14 day loan and a really decent eReader to boot. 📚

First book of the year finished. Nancy McLean’s “Democracy in Chains.” Recommended for US readers. 📚

📚 Books in progress Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (ebook) The Poet’s Corner, compiled by John Lithgow (audiobook) The Cruel Ever After, Ellen Hart (paper) So Far So Good, Ursula K. LeGuin (paper) You Come Too, Robert Frost (paper) Figuring, Maria Popova (paper)

📚Finished the Audible “Ben Franklin”. Narration was good. The book seemed quite thorough and well organized. Ben is a complex character, not always consistent in matching word with deed. Sounds pretty human to me.

📚Starting “The Cruel Ever After” by Ellen Hart. Physical paper.

📚 Finished “Reckless Daughter”. I enjoyed the book, but it kind of leaves you hanging about Joni Mitchell since it ends in 2017 with her recovering from her aneurysm. However, I saw a photo of her out and about fairly recently so I assume her recovery is progressing. One tidbit: I didn’t realize that Prince was a huge fan of Joni’s.

Current Audible Book: “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life”. 📚

Currently reading “Reckless Daughter: A Portrait Of Joni Mitchell”.📚

I am thoroughly enjoying Le Guin’s So Far So Good. I’m dipping into it, reading a poem every couple of days. I’m normally not a poetry reader and I am selecting poems at random. There do appear to be two sections of poems that are meant to be read in order: So Far and The Night Journey; I haven’t touched those yet. 📚

Just about to dip into Ursula K. LeGuin’s So Far So Good. I’m wondering if writing poetry is a craft you can learn or if it is a talent you nurture mostly on your own. Enlighten me, you poets out there. 📚

📚Next up on my reading list: Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography, when I can locate it.

📚 I loved Treasure Island as a kid. Still do. I keep wanting to recommend it to my grandson, but he’s still grappling with the concept of reading for fun. I realize my sample size is quite small. Is the current crop of middle schoolers indifferent to books?

📚I usually try to keep two books going. One from Audible and one on the Kindle. Currently listening to Ellis Peter’s The Pilgrim of Hate and reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

📚Finished the Audible version of The Three Musketeers a while back. Impressive narration by John Lee and a great story to boot.

📚Finished N. K. Jemisin’s The Obelisk Gate, and so on to another book. I’ll read The Stone Sky in a bit, but I’m going to tackle Bruce Catton’s Terrible Swift Sword first. It’s the second volume in his Centennial History of the Civil War. I read this quite some time ago, but memory fades.

📚Picked up The Obelisk Gate again after having set it aside for nearly a year. I was getting too deeply invested in the characters, so I left it for a time. Now I’m back to enjoying it. Anyone else left a book you liked for a while and then come back to it? Why?