Happy 1000th post! I don’t have any prizes, unfortunately.
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you can owe me a scotch
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next genre, History. The Longest Day - Ryan
i know some short stories became full length movies, but this has to be up there for the ratio of minutes in a movie to pages in a book
The Time-Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
At the Wall of the Almighty, by Farnoosh Moshiri
Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
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The Dr Siri Paiboun mysteries are his main work. The Dr supported the guerillas in Laos and the eventual formation of a communist government. By the time the war was over, he was old and had hoped to just retire, but the government forced him into the position of coroner. That’s despite him having no background in the field and he is given the job pretty much because there is nobody else to give the job to. And the job isn’t very well-supported and Laos is full of poverty. They live right across the Mekong from Thailand and have a constant reminder of how bad their conditions are to those across the river. Their facilities are primitive and his staff is just an untrained young woman and a young man with Down’s syndrome that he pretty much rescued from mistreatment. The job is pretty thankless, as typically the government wants him to routinely declare everything an accident. When he does find foul play, the police and politicians are at best reluctant to follow up, which is why he checks out the mysteries. He often needs to resort to blackmail or subterfuge to get help checking out the mysteries. The books are sufficiently after the end of the war that by then it is clear to him that the communist government is inept, corrupt, etc and not living up to the hopes he’d had as a guerilla, although he’s not given up hope for the future. Being old and a well-recognized fighter in the revolution, he is given some leeway on things that might land others in a re-education camp. And he’s got a sense of humor that is mostly based on the ironies of the Lao government. The books occasionally get a little mystical.
The other series is from the viewpoint of a young Thai woman who was just getting her start as a crime reporter but is forced to moved with her family to a rural part of southern Thailand (which I get the impression is definitely redundant) when her mom sells their house and business and buys a very small “resort” that is dilapidated and in a part of the country that sees no tourists anyway. She still has dreams of being a respected crime reporter, but there is no newspaper down there. So she investigates on her own when a mystery happens. The author tries to draw some humor from the quirkiness of their family (mom who seems oblivious most the time, but is sharper than she seems; ex-traffic-cop grandad who similarly doesn’t seem to know what’s going on much of the time; body-building brother who is a wimp; and a transgender sister who doesn’t live with them but often provides support in searching for info on the internet). And there is some humor of having moved somewhere where everyone seems to be hicks. And then there’s some additional plot humor. Like in the one I read most recently Jimm Juree is convinced to join a drug trial for an anxiety medicine in order to make money, since the resort is doing so poorly. But it turns out the drug doesn’t do much for anxiety, but makes Jimm want to mate with every man she runs into.
do you ever get tears in your eyes at the end of a nonfiction book about running? Because it’s awesome to see someone conquer internal demons? Because it’s incredible to know that there are people out there who will support you no matter how long it takes? Because you’ve been reminded of why you love to run, how natural and how instinctive and how exhilarating and how cleansing a good run is and can’t wait to get back to that point where you can just launch out on a Saturday morning for a 10 mile jog and come back drenched in sweat, exhausted, and completely psyched up to tackle the day?
No? Just me then? Gotcha.
I don’t read nonfiction books about running. I have felt that way watching a marathon though.
ETA: not the love to run part, I mean. Just all the stories of all the people who are running, the obstacles they overcame, etc. It’s inspiring.
But I tried running and never got the runner’s high.
I get tears in my eyes when I go running barefoot and step on something sharp.
Rare reader that I am, I recently devoured
Ready Player One and its eponymous sequel.
The first one was good and the second was meh. Interesting to see how different the book is from the movie.
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No, but maybe I did after that movie… Chariots of Fire.
But as for running myself? Hate it. Feels horrible, makes me feel crappy for a while. I’ve hated running since I first had to do it in high school gym. I pretty much only run to catch a train these days.
Only times in my life I’ve been ‘in shape’ have been from running, but I can’t say I ‘enjoy it’.
At 17 years old, summer break, I ran 1+ hours a night almost every day of the week. That’s the best physical shape I’ve probably ever been in.
I hire a personal trainer to tell me to exercise for an hour every week, basically because I hate to exercise, and I know I need to, and the social commitment of having her expecting me and then urging me on is the only reason I do it.
The History of Opera by Richard Fawkes – definitely perfect use of audiobook format, because you get opera snippets in addition to prose.
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I love that!
Impulse YA audiobook: When My Heart Joins the Thousand by A.J. Steiger
We inherited this from my wife’s parents but I confess I have not had the time to listen to it but will get to it eventually. I understand it is a very good introduction to opera.
It includes the recording of the last surviving castrato, though the recording (given when it was made) is of poor quality, and the singer was pretty old at the time.
It’s interesting, because I’ve been trying to see if I can recognize some of the singers (the one I mention above is the only one where they name the singer so far). Given my experience w/ opera lectures from The Teaching Company, given difficulties w/ licensing for excerpts, generally they aren’t allowed to do anything but indicate what opera and aria/piece it is – can’t indicate the orchestra, conductor, singers, anything like that. Or, more likely, they can’t afford to get excerpts with big-name singers.
Starting Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
And, Shit my Dad Told Me, on the Kindle. Will switch back forth as my whim commands.
Uh, seems like an odd couple?
Enjoyable but sometimes uncomfortably close.