What are you reading lately?

[Phoenix520]

Too, also, I tried to listen to Woodward’s new tfg book with the interviews in his voice…maybe I’ll try later. I couldn’t get past the first 20 minutes without gagging. Holy shit he’s insufferable. He seems thick, often not understanding the questions Woodward and Acosta were asking and the answering whatever the hell question he wanted to answer instead.

Everything I despise about the man is in his own words and his voice and I dont think I can finish it. I don’t think I’ll get past chapter 2.

[RTH10260]

Agatha Christie novels reworked to remove potentially offensive language
Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries have passages edited by sensitivity readers for latest HarperCollins editions

Rachel Hall
Sun 26 Mar 2023 14.36 BST

Several Agatha Christie novels have been edited to remove potentially offensive language, including insults and references to ethnicity.

Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries written between 1920 and 1976 have had passages reworked or removed in new editions published by HarperCollins to strip them of language and descriptions that modern audiences find offensive, especially those involving the characters Christie’s protagonists encounter outside the UK.

Sensitivity readers had made the edits, which were evident in digital versions of the new editions, including the entire Miss Marple run and selected Poirot novels set to be released or that have been released since 2020, the Telegraph reported.

The updates follow edits made to books by Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming to remove offensive references to gender and race in a bid to preserve their relevance to modern readers.

The newspaper reported that the edits cut references to ethnicity, such as describing a character as black, Jewish or Gypsy, or a female character’s torso as “of black marble” and a judge’s “Indian temper”, and removed terms such as “Oriental” and the N-word. The word “natives” has also been replaced with the word “local”.

Among the examples of changes cited by the Telegraph is the 1937 Poirot novel Death on the Nile, in which the character of Mrs Allerton complains that a group of children are pestering her, saying that “they come back and stare, and stare, and their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don’t believe I really like children”.

This has been stripped down in a new edition to state: “They come back and stare, and stare. And I don’t believe I really like children.”

In the new edition of the 1964 Miss Marple novel A Caribbean Mystery, the amateur detective’s musing that a hotel worker smiling at her has “such lovely white teeth” has been removed, the newspaper added.



https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/ ... e-language

[Volkonski]

There are many problematic lines in Christie's novels.

Not sure what the best way to deal with this is in the 21st Century.

Won't want our half black grandson to read the original "Then There Were None without having a talk about it beforehand.

[sugar magnolia]

Isn't HarperCollins one of the companies suing the Internet Archive?

[northland10]

I have been bouncing around David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War.

I also don't think I am anybody's sister unless I missed a memo. I could sing soprano in Middle School until I couldn't.

[Dr. Ken]

Back to my 7th or so jack reacher book then I'm getting back to my alternative history fiction

[Kriselda Gray]

Back to my 7th or so jack reacher book then I'm getting back to my alternative history fiction

Which alternative history?

[Reddog]

https://www.aarp.org/money/budgeting-sa ... -free.html

Where to Get Books for Free​

The organization names are hyperlinked in the article.
Classics
Project Gutenberg (Orlylicious mentioned this several months ago.)

Old post, but I want to add an app I found recently.
https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby

It’s basically like an old school lending library.
You need a library card, there are limited quantities. The books/magazines/audiobooks are checked out for a limited time also.

I can see advantages:
1. Lets you try a current popular audiobooks book/periodical without bypassing copyright laws
2. Lets you try a book you aren’t sure about, without spending money.
3. Access current books digitally.
4. It says you can get on Kindle also, (I haven’t tried that yet)
5. Creates anticipation, waiting for your turn in queue. (Brings back memories)
6. No cost

Disadvantages.
1. If number of copies available are checked out, you will wait. (Brings back memories)
2. A library card is needed. My local library card allows me access to Missouri Libraries 2go.
3. Interface seems cumbersome to me, trying to find what I’m looking for.

[Reddog]

I did try the Kindle loan. It works well. I had been using the libby app to read, but traveling I prefer the kindle. I just use phone to borrow, in settings I changed the loan to to “no preference”.

[Dr. Ken]

Back to my 7th or so jack reacher book then I'm getting back to my alternative history fiction

Which alternative history?

Right now I'm on


Followed by:
the Black Chamber series


and

[Kriselda Gray]

Cool - thanks!

[keith]

I've started book 7 of The Expanse.

Not sure where it's ultimately going yet, but the powers that be are currently dealing with a whole planet of sovcits that are thumbing their noses at the interplanetary road rules

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

I just finished Randy Rainbow’s Playing With Myself. It was delightful.

[Maybenaut]

Under the Naga Tail by Mae Bunsen Taing.

It’s a first-hand account of surviving the genocide in Cambodia at the hands of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. Taing is ethnic Chinese from a middle-class family, and as a child in Cambodia attended a Mandarin school. After the fall of Phnom Penh his family (along with everyone else in town) was forced out of their home and made to march into the countryside and left to fend for themselves.

[Edit: They didn’t live in Phnom Penh - they lived in Poipet, to the north along the border between Thailand and Cambidia]

But that’s just the beginning. I’m only a few chapters in.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

[Maybenaut]

Monsterville by Andrew Black.

It’s a children’s book written and illustrated by a dear friend of ours. He’s the same guy who did the illustrations for my husband’s children’s book, Mouse, the Man, and the MGB.

A shameless plug — links to each follows…

Monsterville https://a.co/d/7IohtKa

Mouse, the Man and the MGB https://a.co/d/8kiQKqt

[pjhimself]

Yahoo sent me Butler as someone to learn about (posted in hijack).
His book (War is a Racket) is free here:

http://kether.com/words/butler-smedley- ... cket-1.pdf

[Frater I*I]

So I'll be in DC in OCT, and since everything for tourists shuts down between 1700 and 1800 hrs, I'll be taking a book with me to read, until it's time for me to head down to the bar to get my drink on and snack on....

I've narrowed it down to two books, only one gets to go, and Fogbowzers get to vote for the winner...

A: Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy

B: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer



Choose wisely

[Volkonski]

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer

[Phoenix520]

Coincidentally, so am I. Listening. It’s an awesome audio book.

I tried reading it some years ago but the voice in my head was dry and it became tedious. This narrator is fresh. It’s bringing contemporary life to the story. And that’s kind of terrifying.

[Foggy]

Cross-posting, this is my latest Earthlings in outer space series.



Just kind of a fun series, I read a lot of stuff like this. Backyard Starship is another fun series.

There are 10 books in the Starship for Sale series, and 14 books in the Backyard Starship series. I've read all 14 of the latter, only a book and a half of the former. Backyard Starship is wonderful fun with really likeable characters, lots of witty dialog, and an interesting storyline.

I'm gonna wear out mah Kindle.

[Phoenix520]

Jeff Sharlett has a new book. I’m listening to it alternately with Rise and Fall.

It’s called The Undertow, continuing his quest to figure out what the anti-democratic wave is about. Sharlett is thoughtful, poetic in his treatment of the people he meets. These essays (I’m on the first one, about that great subversive Harry Bellafonte) will tie together I’m sure cuz that’s what he does, he makes connections. His empathy is palpable but not to the point it excuses the ridiculousness of their views.

I’m putting aside my aversion to authors reading their own Audibles. Sharlett is perfect. Just…perfect.

Back to cleaning and listening. We’re being invaded for a week by 5 20something young men from Portland, sprout’s friends.

[Reddog]

I started reading the Slow Horses series by Mick Herron. I’ve never been a great fan of spy novels, but I have become a fan of this series.
The main character Jackson Lamb seems to me a cross between Ignatius J. Reilly and George Smiley. Totally inappropriate and insensitive, but with an underlying grasp of the what’s actually happening.

Some people may find him to be extremely offensive. That’s fair, he is.

I was looking forward to the series on Apple TV. I found it to be very good as well. Gary Oldman is perfect , as is the rest of the cast, in my opinion. The theme song “Strange Game” was composed and performed by Mick Jagger. I’m not a music critic, but I felt it expressed the mood of the books very well.

Sorry for the What Are you watching, and What Are You Listening To hijack, but I felt it was appropriate.

One other thing, although the series started over a dozen years ago, it does have references to events that were appropriate at the time they were written. I will paraphrase an interview from the New Yorker. He felt bad when he started getting letters accusing him of showing disdain for trump, he said he was actually aiming for contempt.

It may really offend some people, but to me it wasn’t as bad as some early Erle Stanley Gardner novels.

[Kriselda Gray]

I should be reading the third book in a trilogy I've been waiting for for MONTHS that finally came out this week, but I'm so caught up on the story I'm trying to write that I think it may be a while before I start the other. With the other two books in this series, once I started reading them, I couldn't do much of anything else until I was done with them, and I don't want to stop the flow of my story before it's done. The series is "Celtic Rebels" by Melanie Karsak (who has also written two of the best Viking-fantasy series I've read so far, those being "The Road to Valhalla" and 'Shadows of Valhalla") which is her take on the legend of Boudica, the Queen of the Icini who almost succeeded in driving Rome from the shores of Ireland. Really great stuff. Karsak also writes steampunk retellings of Fairy Tales, if that interests you, and had a couple other Historical Fantasy series as well. She's a really good writer!

If anyone's interested in what I'm working on, the drafts of the first 5 chapters are up at https://www.writing.com/main/books/item ... olf-Spirit. They're still rough, but if you have any interest in the Paranormal, Urban Fantasy or Magical Realism genres you might want to check 'em out.

[Foggy]

I'm on the tenth book out of ten in the series I mentioned, and it is so enjoyable I am slowing down. I don't want to finish the story.

But my author has written an amazing number of other books, so I plan to survive the end of the series.