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A Good Read: Book Suggestions & Recommendations

Agency by William Gibson. Second in his latest Trilogy. In 2136 a devastated Earth has been somewhat rehabilitated after The Jackpot, a perfect storm of economic chaos, climate change, wars and pandemics. There are those in this era who can intervene in alternate pasts, stubs, which have branched off the main timeline. In the latest stub, in 2017, an AI is becoming sentient and the future recruits an app whisperer to help it on it's way. Noir Science Fiction at it's best.
 
Currently working my way through the Audible free books for children offerings. Started Miss Partridge's Home for Peculiar Children but am finding it hard going. May switch to Moby Dick instead!
Yesterday I finnished reading 'Tales of the Peculiar' by Ransom Riggs, I found it very entertaining, and this morning I started reading Moby Dick !
 
Feed by Mira Grant. it's 2039, 25 years after the Zombie Outbreak of 2014. That had been caused by two viruses combining one of which cured the common cold, every silver lining has a cloud. We survived but so did the disease. Alaska abandoned, life full of constant blood checks, larger animals can also turn. Things just aren't the same. Bloggers embedded within the campaign of a presidential candidate find that zombie outbreaks at his campaign events and home were caused deliberately. Conspiracy, politics, Zombies, bloggers. Well written, first of a trilogy with other related novels. I'm halfway through it's 570 pages and it's not overwritten.
 
Feed by Mira Grant. it's 2039, 25 years after the Zombie Outbreak of 2014. That had been caused by two viruses combining one of which cured the common cold, every silver lining has a cloud. We survived but so did the disease. Alaska abandoned, life full of constant blood checks, larger animals can also turn. Things just aren't the same. Bloggers embedded within the campaign of a presidential candidate find that zombie outbreaks at his campaign events and home were caused deliberately. Conspiracy, politics, Zombies, bloggers. Well written, first of a trilogy with other related novels. I'm halfway through it's 570 pages and it's not overwritten.
Sounds almost like real life.
 
I've just had this arrive this week, only just started, but so far, so good. If you've enjoyed the Haunted Generation series in FT magazine, you ought to like this one.

Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country Hardcover – 21 Oct 2019
by Edward Parnell (Author)

In his late thirties, Edward Parnell found himself trapped in the recurring nightmare of a family tragedy. For comfort, he turned to his bookshelves, back to the ghost stories that obsessed him as a boy, and to the writers through the ages who have attempted to confront what comes after death.

In Ghostland, Parnell goes in search of the ‘sequestered places' of the British Isles, our lonely moors, our moss-covered cemeteries, our stark shores and our folkloric woodlands. He explores how these landscapes conjured and shaped a kaleidoscopic spectrum of literature and cinema, from the ghost stories and weird fiction of M. R. James, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood to the children's fantasy novels of Alan Garner and Susan Cooper; from W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn and Graham Swift's Waterland to the archetypal ‘folk horror' film The Wicker Man…

Ghostland is Parnell's moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – and what is haunting him. It is a unique and elegiac meditation on grief, memory and longing, and of the redemptive power of stories and nature.

Available on Amazon (and I'd assume elsewhere).
 
I've just had this arrive this week, only just started, but so far, so good. If you've enjoyed the Haunted Generation series in FT magazine, you ought to like this one.

Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country Hardcover – 21 Oct 2019
by Edward Parnell (Author)

In his late thirties, Edward Parnell found himself trapped in the recurring nightmare of a family tragedy. For comfort, he turned to his bookshelves, back to the ghost stories that obsessed him as a boy, and to the writers through the ages who have attempted to confront what comes after death.

In Ghostland, Parnell goes in search of the ‘sequestered places' of the British Isles, our lonely moors, our moss-covered cemeteries, our stark shores and our folkloric woodlands. He explores how these landscapes conjured and shaped a kaleidoscopic spectrum of literature and cinema, from the ghost stories and weird fiction of M. R. James, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood to the children's fantasy novels of Alan Garner and Susan Cooper; from W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn and Graham Swift's Waterland to the archetypal ‘folk horror' film The Wicker Man…

Ghostland is Parnell's moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – and what is haunting him. It is a unique and elegiac meditation on grief, memory and longing, and of the redemptive power of stories and nature.

Available on Amazon (and I'd assume elsewhere).

See upthread for brief discussion: https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/suggestions-for-a-good-read.13479/page-55#post-1908797
 
Just finished this excellent little book. 'Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death' by Caitlin Doughty. Doughty is a mortician who has collected questions from children about death (including the eyeball one). The result is a funny, and informative trip into the funeral home. Well recommended.
 
Just finished this excellent little book. 'Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death' by Caitlin Doughty. Doughty is a mortician who has collected questions from children about death (including the eyeball one). The result is a funny, and informative trip into the funeral home. Well recommended.

We need cheering up so thanks! :D
 
I'm not saying that they are a good read, but I have been poking around Archive.org and found some free reads that may be of interest to some:

Real Life X File, Investigating The Paranormal - Joe Nickell - https://archive.org/details/reallifexfiles.investigatingtheparanormal/mode/2up

And also a lot of issues of a magazine called Phenomena Magazine, but I have linked just one: https://archive.org/details/Phenomena_Issue_041_2012_09_September/mode/2up

This was my search results for the above magazine: https://archive.org/search.php?quer...tatus__status:"-1"&and[]=subject:"paranormal"

I hope that these links work.
 
Michel Bernanos’ “The Other Side of the Mountain". A novella/"long" short story narrated by an 18 year old press ganged onto a ship which becomes stuck in the doldrums at the equator long enoug for most of the crew to starve or murder one another before washing up on land that is depopulated but thoroughly alien. There's a sense of all encompassing dread and hostility reminiscent of the uncaring cosmos and entities of Lovecraft.
 
Not sure I want to drink a tumbler of whisky every night but perhaps I could substitute reading by candlelight? (and the light attached to my kindle..)

It is a wonderful book. Even though it is about whaling, it is also a celebration of whales. I am a bit fascinated by the whaling of olden days, even though I am also horrified by it. Maybe it was the old whaler that was slowly disintegrating in the harbour when I was a child. I didn't believe that such a tiny boat could be used to catch whales and thought people must be mistaken about its purpose. But they weren't. My favourite thing to do on a dark night with a gale blowing is to read The Captain of the Pole Star. Since the lights are getting lighter, Moby Dick will be a better substitute I think. Though I had better read Pole Star too just in case.
 
Not sure I want to drink a tumbler of whisky every night but perhaps I could substitute reading by candlelight? (and the light attached to my kindle..)

It is a wonderful book. Even though it is about whaling, it is also a celebration of whales. I am a bit fascinated by the whaling of olden days, even though I am also horrified by it. Maybe it was the old whaler that was slowly disintegrating in the harbour when I was a child. I didn't believe that such a tiny boat could be used to catch whales and thought people must be mistaken about its purpose. But they weren't. My favourite thing to do on a dark night with a gale blowing is to read The Captain of the Pole Star. Since the lights are getting lighter, Moby Dick will be a better substitute I think. Though I had better read Pole Star too just in case.
I went to a museum in Sweden once and they had the prow of a whaler in there. So you could stand where Queequaig would have thrown a spear from. It somehow made it more real.
 
Michel Bernanos’ “The Other Side of the Mountain". A novella/"long" short story narrated by an 18 year old press ganged onto a ship which becomes stuck in the doldrums at the equator long enoug for most of the crew to starve or murder one another before washing up on land that is depopulated but thoroughly alien. There's a sense of all encompassing dread and hostility reminiscent of the uncaring cosmos and entities of Lovecraft.

Cool. That also sounds like Poe's book: Arthur Gordon Pym.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Narrative_of_Arthur_Gordon_Pym_of_Nantucket
 
I'm going back and forth between Gormenghast book 2 of the Merwyn Peake trilogy and Mysteries by Colin Wilson.
Somehow , in a strange way, they seem to compliment each other.
 
I'm going back and forth between Gormenghast book 2 of the Merwyn Peake trilogy and Mysteries by Colin Wilson.
Somehow , in a strange way, they seem to compliment each other.

I seem to be in the minority that prefers book one.

I may get to book three in the lockdown, I'm saying that about a lot books though...
 
Library of America and Everyman have fine editions of Melville, Poem and others.
 
The second Sleep by Robert Harris. Post-Apocalypse novel. Set 802 years after the disaster but it's 1468 because they count the end year as 666. It's a theocracy where science is suppressed. A young priest is sent from Exeter to a remote parish to conduct the funeral service of the local parish priest. But things take a sinister turn and he soon becomes involved in the search for forbidden knowledge and artifacts. Perhaps not up to the standard of A Canticle For Leibowitz or Pavane but still a pretty good SF/Thriller.
 
I seem to be in the minority that prefers book one.

I may get to book three in the lockdown, I'm saying that about a lot books though...
So far I think book one is better....but book 2 is growing on me...not sure if I'll even read the last part.
 
The second Sleep by Robert Harris. Post-Apocalypse novel. Set 802 years after the disaster but it's 1468 because they count the end year as 666. It's a theocracy where science is suppressed. A young priest is sent from Exeter to a remote parish to conduct the funeral service of the local parish priest. But things take a sinister turn and he soon becomes involved in the search for forbidden knowledge and artifacts. Perhaps not up to the standard of A Canticle For Leibowitz or Pavane but still a pretty good SF/Thriller.
That sounds interesting.. I enjoyed both Canticle and Pavane.
 
Has anyone here read Anathem by Stepenson...? Thoughts on this long novel..? Worth tackling..?
 
Has anyone here read Anathem by Stepenson...? Thoughts on this long novel..? Worth tackling..?

Yes! It does have a sort of similar theme to the above mentioned novels, perhaps closest to Canticle but subtly different. It is rather a tale of civilisation rising and falling in cycles and Monasteries or Maths existing to preserve knowledge. Really liked the way it developed the idea of people being sealed off for different lengths of time as a contingency. As usual Stephenson indulges his love of maths.
 
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