Daily Reading (19th January)

[ironed_orchid]

What have you been reading today? Everything counts, from the user's manual to the back of the cereal box!

Comments

[elynross]

This is my first post, so it's a bit more than I've read today, but I did read bits of all of these within the last day or so:

I just finished The Writing Dead: talking terror with TV's top horror writers, 13 interviews with writers from shows like XF, WD, Hannibal, Buffy, etc. It was interesting, with standard questions like how did you get into genre, have you always been a horror fan, best crit you've gotten, and then more show-specific queries. Fairly shallow and brief, but also a quick read.

Working on Karen Armstrong's "The Great Transformation", which covers the development of Judaism, Greek thought, Hinduism, and Confucianism prior to the so-called Axial Age of their peak influence. She often presents things as total fact that I suspect are interpretations, but she has a knack for assimilating a lot of information (nicely endnoted) and developing patterns that is fascinating to me, and shows both trends across spiritual paths and the seeds of later developments.

Almost done with Thomas Merton's What is Contemplation, a short concise exploration of mystical contemplation and the whys and wherefores that he goes into in greater length in other works.

And for my ongoing fiction reading I am rereading the entire In Death series by JD Robb/Nora Roberts. I picked up the latest one in December, realized I'd missed the one just previous, and was still in the mood when I was done with both those, so I'm now 32 books/stories in to the 54 book/story series. *kof* As this amply demonstrates, they're very quick reads, not much over 120-130 pages apiece for the books, and especially when you skip the sex scenes, as I'm mostly doing this time around. *g* Nearish future murder mysteries, with fun characters and basically sound writing, as well as droids, flying cars, and what are essentially ST holodecks and replicators!

And I'm getting ready to read this sestina, titled "A Sestina for January 20, 2017", by Lanna Michaels, recommended by a friend.

[ironed_orchid]

Awesome! A 54 book series sounds dangerously tempting... especially when I'm looking for light reading.

[elynross]

It's my bubblegum reading! It is about a murder cop, and I it occurs to me I should probably say that there are things I would warn for if asked; the main character has a background of being badly abused as a child, and it comes out in her dreams in explicit ways (as she starts to feel safe enough to allow things to start working themselves out), and some of the murders are pretty explicit. So... in a strange way I still consider it light and frothy, only partly because I don't have any personal triggers in that area; it also has a lot of humor, and romance and deep positive emotions and wish-fulfillment type stuff. Anyway, I can give more details if any of that sounds like it might cause problems for anyone who's interested.

[ironed_orchid]

I have a few comfort reads which include violence and trauma, I find it's not so much the nature of the content as how the narrative deals with it which affects my enjoyment. But thank your for expanding.

[elynross]

Exactly!