Wed reading and writing meme...
Sep. 21st, 2016 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatSometimes I think I should just give up the ghost and call it the writing meme or books to be eventually read somewhere down the road meme. It's not that I'm not reading anything, I am, quite a bit really - but it's mainly books I've already read and talked about, or technical work related crap which you really don't want to know about, and I can't talk about anyhow.
Oh as an aside, not really book related, but while hunting television shows to record - because obviously I don't feel I have enough as it is - I discovered, "The Town That Dreaded Snowmen" - except apparently, I misread it, and it was, in reality, the Town that Dreaded Sundown...on Syfy. I was rather disappointed.
So...without further ado, books to be read sometime down the line:
I recently purchased:
* Ghost Planet by Sharon Lynn Fisher -- it's a weird book about a woman who discovers she's been reincarnated as a ghost on a ghost planet and stuck with an Irishman who refuses to acknowledge her existence due to protocol. It sounds familiar, I'm hoping I didn't already read it and forgot about it. Amazon usually tells me if I've already bought a book though...
* Magic Binds by Illona Andrews - which is the latest in the Kate Daniels series, and I'd pre-ordered. Not there yet, still re-reading.
* Grunt by Mary Roach, Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, Packing for Mars by Mary Roach -- all nonfiction. I've read snippets of Grunt. So far made it past the paragraph on studying the flight patterns of turkey vultures to ensure that planes don't collide with turkey vultures. Quite a few turkey vultures were killed during the experiment, but the good news, the experiment resulted in measures that would ensure no additional turkey vultures or people would die in the future.
In the long list of upcoming FALL BOOKS - which publishers paid Library Journal and Publisher's Weekly to promote (they do that by the way, what you thought people just randomly selected these books to tell you about? HA. And the IRS is filing a lawsuit against you, please call this number..)
two stood out:
1. John Le Carre's memoir about his days as a spymaster entitled The Pigeon Tunnel - it's his journey from spymaster to novelist. The man's career goes back to the early days of MI5. Ian Fleming and Le Carre are the gold standard in spy books, along with the guy who wrote the Bourne Books, whose name escapes my memory at the moment.
While I've read more Fleming, I have to state that Le Carre is the master stylist.
2. Maureen Dowd's The Year of Voting Dangerously. Maureen Dowd is a humorous liberal columnist for the New York Times, who is currently engaged in a Twitter War with Donald Trump - this begs the question, is there anyone who isn't engaged in a verbal battle of some sort with Donald Trump? And there are actually people who plan on voting for this guy for President? Are you nuts?
Nothing else stood out. I read an entire list of books the pubs were promoting and forgot 99% of them. I find this depressing. I also find the fact that the only books that are promoted are the ones that are pushed by major publishing houses, and written by the same writers, as if no one else is doing anything. As a self-published and independent professional writer, it depresses and infruriates me. As a reader, it irritates me. I'm finding myself looking off the beaten path. Or trying to.
So? I continue to boycott anything but independent sources, like book recs on lj, word of mouth, and my own weird searches. I never heard of the Kate Daniels series -- it was rec'd by a co-worker. Publisher's Weekly? Library Journal? NY Times Book Review? Stop catering to rich publishers and marketing people, and I might pay attention to you again. [How do I know that they do this? I tried to get them to review or look at my book and was told it had to be submitted by a trade publisher or I had to pay them $300 or more dollars for an honest review. Plus a subscription. That's how I know.]
Oh as an aside, not really book related, but while hunting television shows to record - because obviously I don't feel I have enough as it is - I discovered, "The Town That Dreaded Snowmen" - except apparently, I misread it, and it was, in reality, the Town that Dreaded Sundown...on Syfy. I was rather disappointed.
So...without further ado, books to be read sometime down the line:
I recently purchased:
* Ghost Planet by Sharon Lynn Fisher -- it's a weird book about a woman who discovers she's been reincarnated as a ghost on a ghost planet and stuck with an Irishman who refuses to acknowledge her existence due to protocol. It sounds familiar, I'm hoping I didn't already read it and forgot about it. Amazon usually tells me if I've already bought a book though...
* Magic Binds by Illona Andrews - which is the latest in the Kate Daniels series, and I'd pre-ordered. Not there yet, still re-reading.
* Grunt by Mary Roach, Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, Packing for Mars by Mary Roach -- all nonfiction. I've read snippets of Grunt. So far made it past the paragraph on studying the flight patterns of turkey vultures to ensure that planes don't collide with turkey vultures. Quite a few turkey vultures were killed during the experiment, but the good news, the experiment resulted in measures that would ensure no additional turkey vultures or people would die in the future.
In the long list of upcoming FALL BOOKS - which publishers paid Library Journal and Publisher's Weekly to promote (they do that by the way, what you thought people just randomly selected these books to tell you about? HA. And the IRS is filing a lawsuit against you, please call this number..)
two stood out:
1. John Le Carre's memoir about his days as a spymaster entitled The Pigeon Tunnel - it's his journey from spymaster to novelist. The man's career goes back to the early days of MI5. Ian Fleming and Le Carre are the gold standard in spy books, along with the guy who wrote the Bourne Books, whose name escapes my memory at the moment.
While I've read more Fleming, I have to state that Le Carre is the master stylist.
2. Maureen Dowd's The Year of Voting Dangerously. Maureen Dowd is a humorous liberal columnist for the New York Times, who is currently engaged in a Twitter War with Donald Trump - this begs the question, is there anyone who isn't engaged in a verbal battle of some sort with Donald Trump? And there are actually people who plan on voting for this guy for President? Are you nuts?
Nothing else stood out. I read an entire list of books the pubs were promoting and forgot 99% of them. I find this depressing. I also find the fact that the only books that are promoted are the ones that are pushed by major publishing houses, and written by the same writers, as if no one else is doing anything. As a self-published and independent professional writer, it depresses and infruriates me. As a reader, it irritates me. I'm finding myself looking off the beaten path. Or trying to.
So? I continue to boycott anything but independent sources, like book recs on lj, word of mouth, and my own weird searches. I never heard of the Kate Daniels series -- it was rec'd by a co-worker. Publisher's Weekly? Library Journal? NY Times Book Review? Stop catering to rich publishers and marketing people, and I might pay attention to you again. [How do I know that they do this? I tried to get them to review or look at my book and was told it had to be submitted by a trade publisher or I had to pay them $300 or more dollars for an honest review. Plus a subscription. That's how I know.]