So What Are you Reading?: Generations

[hbquikcomjamesl]

However, if I'm going to read something with mostly villains, I need to be reading something else with pretty good characters.

I don't bother with stuff that's "mostly villains." I like stories about nice people. Who are reasonably intelligent. So thank you for alerting me about Vile Bodies; I'm sure I'd find the whole book pretty vile.

Probably why Seinfeld never appealed to me, and why the one time I saw an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, I had none to curb. And why soap operas are something I go out of my way to avoid.

 

[Greg Cox]

Finished the Jenny Lawson book and have moved onto The Conqueror Worms by Brian Keene, a horror-disaster novel in which giant carniverous worms devastate mankind.

So, quite a change of pace!

(Meanwhile, I see there are new WOLFMAN and CONAN comics out today. It's sunny out, so I'll probaby trek up to the comic shop to pick those up at some point.)

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Hmm. Giant carnivorous worms. Sounds like a planet-sized dose of Mebendazole would be in order. Maybe spiked with Piperazine.

 

[bdub76]

Finished Vile Bodies at lunch today.

This was a fun read. It's definitely a P.G. Wodehouse derivative work. And this is made clear from one of the author's letters found the library version of this book.

The author says in their letter dated July 20th, 1929:

It is rather like P. G. Wodehouse, all about bright young people.

I'd recommend it. It's a really fast read with a lot of eccentric characters. Get the library version over the Project Gutenberg version, which has issues with its TOC.

Now, I'm going to knock out Good People before the end of the month. Read some more Odyssey and some more Very Good, Jeeves. I have three more short stories from that collection to read. And maybe start Lady Susan before the month is over.

I did stumble upon another book that I now want to read: The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly. But there is no way I'm spending $18 for an eBook, and my library currently doesn't have it. Definitely time to get another library card. And I'll probably have to wait this one out. Going to set a price watch at ereaderiq. That's for Amazon, but mostly if one has something on sale, the other does too. There are times when this is not true, but I'll see what happens.

 

[Greg Cox]

Today’s comic-book haul: Conan, Swamp Thing, Supergirl, and the Wolfman.

Not all in the same comic, alas.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Most of the time, a random web search turns up something that is at most mildly interesting. On rare occasions, it turns up something that leaves me pale and somewhat nauseous. But on the rarest of occasions, it turns up something absolutely fascinating, with a personal connection.

About an hour ago, I stumbled upon this free online book.

The Laserium® Laserist: The Greatest Job on Earth

ILDA's purpose and mission

www.ilda.com

A memoir of laserist Glenn Thomas, who performed Laserium shows at Griffith Observatory, back in the 1980s and 1990s. As soon as I saw the name and job title, I immediately recognized him from the very first time I saw Laserium's first all-classical show (also their first to tell an actual story), Crystal Odyssey, back in 1981.

 

[bdub76]

Finished Good People.

It's about an Afghan refuge family that end up with a lot of money and an out of control daughter. Besides the immigration politics that come up at the very end, it was an okay read.

My two main grips with the book is that the author doesn't tell you that the frame story is a documentary from the start. You get this notification at the very end. And the second is that it has really short chapters like you'd expect in a suspense novel (like a Dan Brown novel) which this novel isn't. Otherwise, it was an okay read. Nothing great or grand.

Started Whalefall.

It's a short book, so I'm hoping to get it finished by the end of the month. But like Good People, it has really short chapters. I don't get it. The short chapter breaks don't make a whole lot of sense.

John Steinbeck's Cannery Row is referenced throughout. I'll have to read that novel at some point before the end of the year.

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[Allyn Gibson]

Igor Teper's "The Secret Number," a curious little tale of mathematics and paranoia, of the secret integer that lies somewhere between three and four, that ends on a delightful phildickian twist.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Sounds like a riff on an old George Carlin stand-up bit, except that Carlin's new integer was between 5 and 6, and had a very slightly different name.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

To me, bleem! is the name of the PlayStation emulator for PC, circa 2000. The word bleem (all lowercase), when flipped on the horizontal axis looked a bit like P166W, which stood for Pentium 166 Windows, which was the intended minimum requirements.

 

[Christopher]

To me, "bleem" is an Orkan unit of time and/or distance from Mork and Mindy.

 

[Greg Cox]

Coming up:

Faithful Place by Tana French. A Dublin Murder Squad novel.

American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond by Jeremy Dauber.

 

[Smiley]

I read the first chapter of I'm Working On That by William Shatner.

The style of the writing is comparable to Asimov's way of explaining things (Foundation is even quoted, so I don't think I'm wrong about the influence). It also has Shatner throwing in references to LA traffic and Leonard Nimoy business meetings, consistent in tone with a lot of his appearances on stage and at conventions.

Shatner has used co-writers on the fiction and non-fiction books I have read of his. I'm not certain how much of the material ends up coming from which party, but Shatner has at the very least picked collaborators who have skill and complement/enhance his storytelling style.

 

[JD]

I'm not sure about how his other collaborations worked, but I think he did talk a bit about the writing process with the Reeves-Stevenses in Voyages of the Imagination.
I finished up The Time Machine earlier this morning, and I liked it a lot. It was actually a much easier read than I was expecting for something that old. My only real complaint was that it would have been nice if we'd gotten a little more backstory or background on The Time Traveler. One thing that stood out to me is that it seems like most of the sequels and adaptations make the Time Traveler and Weena's relationship romantic, but it never really felt that way in the book itself to me, if anything it was more parent/child kind of relationship. I also found the relationship between the Eloi and the Morlocks interesting, and I wouldn't have minded getting to see how it worked with the Morlocks providing the Eloi with their clothes and things like that.
Now that that's done, I borrowed the Fourth Doctor, Doctor Who comic, The Gaze of The Medusa written by Gordon Rennie & Emma Beeby with art by Brian Williamson.

 

[Christopher]

I finished up The Time Machine earlier this morning, and I liked it a lot. It was actually a much easier read than I was expecting for something that old. My only real complaint was that it would have been nice if we'd gotten a little more backstory or background on The Time Traveler.

I don't think we were supposed to. The narrator keeps most of the characters anonymous -- the Time Traveller, the Psychologist, the Provincial Mayor, the Medical Man, the Very Young Man, the Editor, etc., with only a few exceptions like Filby. The conceit of the book was that it was a true account, so perhaps the idea was that the author was protecting the identities of the people involved.

Various adaptations have implied (e.g. the George Pal movie) or stated outright (e.g. Time After Time) that the Time Traveller was H.G. Wells himself, but in the novel, presumably Wells is the narrator and the Traveller is someone else.

 

[bdub76]

Finished Very Good, Jeeves.

This was a fun collection of Jeeves and Wooster stories. I think, I have two more short stories to go that are in collections that aren't in print in the US. I'll probably import them from the UK since I can't find eBooks or print copies here.

I recommend this collection.

I'm a third of the way through Whalefall.

It's really a story about a father and son. The chapters where they interact are the best parts. The stuff with the whale gets a bit too technical for the narrative, but they go by really fast. This book has super short chapter likes the previous book I read, Good People. Not a huge fan of tiny chapters.

The more I read this book, the more I think it should have come out for Father's Day.

I'm two chapters into Mansfield Park for Jane Austen July. Too early to say much about this book.

And I've stalled on the Odyssey. I really need to get back into it.

 

[youngtrek]

My June 2026 reading tally…

Finished rereading the novelization of “Star Trek: First Contact” by J. M. Dillard (Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, 1996)

Read “Live and Let Die” (the second James Bond novel by Ian Fleming) (originally released in 1954)

Read the “Live and Let Die” U.K. Daily Express newspaper strip adaptation (December 15, 1958 to March 28 1959) in “The James Bond Omnibus Volume 001” (Titan Books, 2009)

Read Star Trek: Lower Decks Vol. 2: Mixed Signals trade paperback (IDW, 2026) (reprints Star Trek: Lower Decks #7-12, May 2025 to October 2025)

Finished reading “Superman: The Action Comics Archives Vol. 5” (DC Comics, 2007) (reprints the Superman stories in Action Comics #69-85, February 1944 to June 1945)

Finished reading “Superman Archives Vol. 8 (DC Comics, 2010) (reprints Superman #30-35, September-October 1944 to July-August 1945)

(These are the last volumes DC made in these two series. Will be switching over to Superman: The Golden Age Omnibus Vol. 5 for “Superman” and “Action Comics”.)

Also began reading the original Superboy stories reprinted in “The Adventures of Superboy” (hardcover, DC Comics, 2010, at the point in time that they joined the Superman stories I’ve been reading).

And just began reading the stories in “Ka-Zar By Mark Waid and Andy Kubert Vol. 2” (actually the individual issues via Marvel Unlimited) when June ran out.

Total books read (or finished) in June: 5. GoodReads 2026 Reading Challenge at end of June: 22 of 75 books read (29%).

— David Young

 

[bdub76]

Read two PKD short stories at lunch today:

The King of the Elves

This one was really well done with a nice ending. I would recommend. I could see it as a Twilight Zone episode.

Adjustment Team

I had read this one before when the film came out. I enjoyed it. The ending leaves you thinking a bit. Another recommend.

I had a good lunch today.

 

[JD]

I finished reading Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor: Gaze of Medusa a few days ago, and I really enjoyed it. It did a great job of capturing the feel of the Fourth Doctor/Sarah Jane Smith era of the show.
Now I'm reading STDS9: Invasion Book 3: Time's Enemy by L.A. Graf, and it's off to a good start so far.

 

[Greg Cox]

Finished Faithful Place by Tana French yesterday. Highly recommended.