Ramon > Recent Status Updates

Finished Part I! It was all about Moses' education, from birth through a PhD. Part II is very short, just a chapter or two long, so I'm almost ready to listen to the next episode of the 99% Invisible podcast.

Read most of Chapter 1 this morning. This is about Moses' family background, going back two generations to Bavaria in the 1800s. It's really interesting, as we get pretty full portraits of all these people in just a few words. Learned that the Jewish ghettos were a thing in Bavaria back then too!
When I can actually sit down for a minute without any distractions, this book is instantly compelling.

I finally tracked down a copy of this that was under $20 (I paid the same as the cover price from 1976: $18.50) so I could read along with Roman Mars and Eliot Kalan's podcast/book club.

I read the introduction, which is 21 pages long. It took me an hour.

I've read the first essay at this point, and I am trying to be mindful about how I'm reading. I'm reading slowly, rereading paragraphs to make sure I get the idea, and I'm trying to apply this overall idea of slowing down to my every day. It's hard.

I'm halfway through this series of six short stories and... maybe I'm reading a different book than the one advertised? The pull quotes on the cover are all about how inspiring this dog's journey is, but it's really dark. Everyone who gets involved with this dog ends up dead and the dog just moves on. I don't know the last time I felt such a jarring difference between my reality and everyone else's.

My kid is interested in history now and I found it that one person (Rebecca Stenfoff) adapted a few of my college favorites, so I picked them up to leave around for her to read (and for me to read).

I'm liking this so far, simple language and all. It'll be a good entry point and it asks the reader to think about really clarifying ideas.

This book is so horny

Delicious crime novel. Lean and mean, weirdly sexy, and as it's going along, I can picture how it would have been filmed in the 50s.

Started on Sunday, been a great read while having COVID (oh yeah, I finally got COVID). There have been some things that happened that I hope factor into the ending, otherwise I'm not entirely sure why they happened. At the same time, King is 75 and knows that anything he writes will explode, so why not just write what he wants?

Also, pg 352, we get the King connection: a reference to the Overlook.

I needed a book in a hurry, so I grabbed this one off the shelf, not really knowing what to expect. But it's a real blast! Herron is great at dropping information into conversations and descriptions, then fleshing it all out a few pages later, kind of planting seeds and letting them grow.

Like the Charles Band memoir, this one breezes through events in her life, she meets loads of people, crosses paths with actors, singers, rock stars, etc, and lives a whole life.

I'm really enjoying it so far, but I'm halfway through and Elvira hasn't even shown up yet.

Jesus fucking Christ, I was not prepared for this. I SHOULD have been, but I wasn't. I've read most of Vlautin's other stuff, but this one seem harder, more intense, darker, more upsetting (or I could be older now). It's also VERY close to home, literally, as it's set in my hometown, in and around places where I once hung out. I like the description "crime novel where the missing person is affordable housing".

Had to put this one down for a bit. I wanted to read it to read a very different take on a shared experience, but the things that are the same still hurt, eight years later.

So far, this is a really fun, if pretty slight read. Charles Band has dinner at much ridiculous stuff and he's so positive when he talks about his work, I didn't think this would actually be a tell all, so I'm enjoying the breezy read.

Into the home stretch, the overall story is finally taking shape. This story seems personal, like he's working through his own death rather than his partner's. We're finally into the otherworldly stuff that has been hinted at, as Lisey continues to investigate her forgotten memories. It's quietly devastating, but pretty meandering. I do think I know how the bad guy will go. We'll see if I'm right.

For some reason, this is really slow going. It has King's best writing, that effortless narration and character development, how he's able to wrote so specifically, using dialect and character based slang to create a whole person, but for whatever reason, when I'm not reading it, I'm not thinking about reading it. I'm trying to leave it close to me so I'll pick it up more, because I do like it.

For some reason, this is really slow going. It has King's best writing, that effortless narration and character development, how he's able to wrote so specifically, using dialect and character based slang to create a whole person, but for whatever reason, when I'm not reading it, I'm not thinking about reading it. I'm trying to leave it close to me so I'll pick it up more, because I do like it.

Just started the Poet's Tale, and the thing just gets better and better. Like Cloud Atlas with a thread tying everything together. Initially very dense, but once I let go that I wasn't going to understand everything immediately, I was able to enjoy myself.

The prologue and first chapter are just so full of information, and I think I understood... most of it? It's so dense and obtuse, and I'm working really hard to let it go, to not feel like I need to know everything that's going on.

This one took a minute to get going. It starts right in the middle of some action, but it's a little dry and plain, bit the more time I spend with Quarry, the more I really enjoy being in his head. Snappy, terse, doesn't give a fuck, and I appreciate that he's not a master of all skills, which opens up the door for some actual tense situations. We'll see how Collins does with the rest of it.

This book is electric! After the first chapter, the book just flies, despite it being very thorough and descriptive. The narrator is compelling and her plight is frustrating in the modern era, but I'm sure it was even more shocking when this was written/set (it's Cain's unfinished novel, which means he was writing it in the '70s, but it feels like it was set in the '50s).

This is such an odd one. I've never read any Erle Stanley Gardner, so I don't know if this is just his style, but the first chapter alone covers multiple events over multiple days without any breaks. It's a staccato flood of "I went here then there then talked to this lady then ate and then read this paper and then" and it's almost overwhelming.

I love that Bertha Cool has her own agency figurative and literal.

Don't remember the path that lead me to this book, but after the first 50 pages, it really just took off. The set up has been fascinating, and I'm really invested in the story, even though I have no idea where it's going.