So What Are you Reading?: Generations

[bdub76]

Still reading Dangerous Visions, Skeleton Crew, and Long Walk. Almost done with the Long Walk. I'm still not sure what I think of it.

Today, I learned that the first translation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas was badly edited and translated. Going to track down a good translation.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Now a precise quarter of the way through Lessons in Chemistry. Including a flashback chapter involving a boarding school/orphanage run by a RC bishop apparently stuck in the twenties. The sixteen twenties (think Galileo). And science textbooks -- from a mysterious donor -- being crudely redacted (by having entire chapters physically removed). If Garmus intended the whole chapter to be infuriating, she has once again succeeded.

Which was followed by Zott's lover's absurdist demise, being pulled over by a spooked dog, fracturing his skull, and being run over by a police car, which had already been spoiled by the Wikipedia article on the TV minseries adaptation. And I stumbled upon another spoiler that suggests that all was not as it seemed in the aforementioned flashback chapter.

 

[bdub76]

Stumbled upon the book: The Burnout Society. I typically avoid non-fiction, but I'm making an exception for this author. Book is coming in the mail, so I'll read it this weekend.

 

[Stevil2001]

Today, I learned that the first translation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas was badly edited and translated. Going to track down a good translation.

I recommend the 2003 Naval Institute edition, edited by Miller and Walter.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Hmm. The 2016 Barnes & Noble edition I have doesn't cite a translator.

Be that as it may, I got up to page 124 of Lessons in Chemistry last night.

Spoiler

Zott is pregnant, has been fired for being pregnant, and has personally (while pregnant) torn out the kitchen (with a sledgehammer; I've seen a rather petite woman wielding a sledgehammer, and had reason to be thankful she was "on our side") and replaced it with a lab, and Six-Thirty (the dog, who is occasionally the POV character) has first defended himself against the cemetary groundskeeper, then saved the groundskeeper's life.

 

[Greg Cox]

Almost done with the Stranger Things hardover. Would've finished it by now, but real life kept getting in the way: deadlines, snowstorms, a plumbing emergency, a broken furnace . . .

Fear not. We have heat again. (Knock on wood.)

 

[Smiley]

Star Trek Movie Memories by William Shatner and Chris Kreski

This is reading as a cross between your typical behind-the-scenes book and Shatner's convention talks. I'm learning some things, such as what Shatner did between TOS and TAS and the casting experience of David Gautreaux for Xon in Phase II. Some bits are more commonly known, but Shatner has a very entertaining and engaging approach to telling the stories.

To those who have read other Shatner non-fiction books like I'm Working On That, which would you recommend? I'm very pleased with the two Memories books about Star Trek.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Star Trek Movie Memories by William Shatner and Chris Kreski

I don't remember whether or not I read that.

 

[bdub76]

Finished the Long Walk.

I'm not sure what I think about the ending. I reread the ending twice. I'm not sure if I would recommend this book or not. It was mostly an entertaining read where the kids walk for about 4 days, but there isn't a whole much more to it.

My tentative TBR for February is: The Sweetness of Water (book club), Wuthering Heights (because of the film), Burnout Society, and maybe another Murderbot book or something else. And I'm continuing to read short stories from Skeleton Crew and Dangerous Visions. I was thinking I would read the Notebook, but I'll probably push that to March. Crime and Punishment also hit my radar, but after reading Wuthering Heights, I doubt I'll be in the mood for it. I might get in a CJ Box book too.

Edit: Stumbled upon another interesting book called the Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa.(My library has a 6 week hold, so unlikely to read it before March.) It's a short read. Byung-Chul Han mentions in his preface to Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld, which I'm thinking about reading after I finish his book Burnout Society, which I'm more than half way through.

The Memory Police - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[youngtrek]

Well, it’s the evening of the last day of January and I’m not going to finish any thing else I’m currently reading by the end of the night, so officially January 2026 is going to be just one book read:

Star Trek: Lore War (2025, trade paperback collected edition reprinting the last two issues each of IDW’s most recent “Star Trek” title and “Star Trek: Defiant”, and the “Star Trek: Lore War”, “Star Trek: Lore War: Shaxs’ Worst Day”, and “Star Trek: Omega” one-shots, all from earlier in 2025)

But I did a lot more reading in January than that. I’m 365 pages (57%) into “John Williams: A Composer’s Life” by Tim Greiving. 178 pages (31%) into “Batman: Revolution” (prose novel) by John Jackson Miller. And 133 pages (48%) into a reread of J.M. Dillard’s “Star Trek Generations” film novelization. All three of these should show up in my “February books read” post.

— David Young

 

[USS Firefly]

Well, it’s the evening of the last day of January and I’m not going to finish any thing else I’m currently reading by the end of the night, so officially January 2026 is going to be just one book read:

Star Trek: Lore War (2025, trade paperback collected edition reprinting the last two issues each of IDW’s most recent “Star Trek” title and “Star Trek: Defiant”, and the “Star Trek: Lore War”, “Star Trek: Lore War: Shaxs’ Worst Day”, and “Star Trek: Omega” one-shots, all from earlier in 2025)

But I did a lot more reading in January than that. I’m 365 pages (57%) into “John Williams: A Composer’s Life” by Tim Greiving. 178 pages (31%) into “Batman: Revolution” (prose novel) by John Jackson Miller. And 133 pages (48%) into a reread of J.M. Dillard’s “Star Trek Generations” film novelization. All three of these should show up in my “February books read” post.

— David Young

Why don't you read one book a time?

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Now closing in on the halfway point of Lessons in Chemistry, and it's still reading like a cross between John Irving and Erma Bombeck, with a twist of Douglas Adams thrown in. I'm not sure, but I think Frask just realized that she'd completely misread Zott, and should have been her closest ally instead of her nemesis. I won't bother spoiler-tagging the plot point that Zott's daughter is so precocious that she makes the protagonist of my own novel look like a moron, because Garmus herself spoils that in the very first chapter.

 

[Greg Cox]

After taking time out to read the Stranger Things book (because it was on loan from the library), I'm now finishing up The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers.

I remain dumbfounded at how Powers managed to construct such an intricate and tricky plot, which involves both time travel, disguises, false indentities, and multiple instances of body-swapping. ("Wait, who is who in who's body at the moment?")

I can only imagine the intricate flow-charts he must have used, especially back in the day.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Hmm. Maybe a repurposed cribbage board (with pegs in a variety of colors and shapes) as a model of the current state?

 

[bdub76]

Half way through Wuthering Heights. This is a fantastic novel except for two things that bother me a bit. The author loves her colons, which I'm not used to reading with this level of frequency. And she tries to get an accent for Joseph that I find very annoying to read. I heard she eliminates this in the 1850 edited version of this book, but I wasn't able to find it on eBook, so I'm reading the 1847 version from Project Gutenberg. I plan to contact them to see if they can get it on their site as it should also be in public domain.

And I have one chapter left of The Burnout Society. It's a densely packed book, so I'll have to read it again but much slower.

 

[Nardole]

100 pages in the first Wraith Squadron book and enjoying it so far. The rogues were more top gun where the wraiths seem to be more the dirty dozen type. These X Wings books have also really made me like Wedge a lot more.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I've never understood what others see in Wuthering Heights. Or Pride and Prejudice. Both of them were required reading when I took high school lit, as I recall.

 

[bdub76]

I've never understood what others see in Wuthering Heights. Or Pride and Prejudice. Both of them were required reading when I took high school lit, as I recall.

It hits differently when you're older. And no one is requiring me to read it either.

 

[Christopher]

I've never understood what others see in Wuthering Heights. Or Pride and Prejudice. Both of them were required reading when I took high school lit, as I recall.

Not for me, apparently. I still don't know how a height wuthers.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Not for me, apparently. I still don't know how a height wuthers.

One of the very few things I still remember (other than being bored to tears) is that the book itself explains its title:

Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr Heathcliff's dwelling, "wuthering" being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather.

I'm really glad that the third assigned reading for the class was to read the book of our choice from a list we were offered. Which was my first introduction to Gulliver's Travels.

During my four semesters of Short Story Workshop at a local junior college, the instructor and I frequently engaged in friendly sparring over the matter of literary fiction vs. genre fiction. I took the position that all fiction is genre fiction, because contemporary realism, historical realism, magical realism, and so forth are themselves genres, and because if an opus somehow manages the rare achievement of failing to fit into any existing genre, then it simply becomes the holotype for a new genre.

And I also paraphrase the great Karl Haas, in his assertion that there are only two kinds of music: good and bad. Neither of which has anything to do with genre. Literary fiction is simply fiction that refuses to be a slave to its genre, and in transcending its genre, the opus and the genre serve each other far better than the opus could possibly serve the genre as its slave.