The Book Thread! What are you reading?

[erilaz]

Yowamushi Obake by Watanabe Megumi — It's a children's book about a supernatural being named Coal Tar (コールタール), and it's written at a low enough level that I can probably soldier through it with the aid of a dictionary, even though it's much longer than anything I've ever tried to read in Japanese before. がんばります！

I finally made it through the 133 pages of this children's chapter-book. 大成功！

[Moh]

A Nation in Pain: Healing Our Biggest Health Problem by Judy Foreman.

What? Something non-fiction? A doctor told us about this book, so I had it delivered from another library to the branch I frequent.
It basically is what it says: A book about chronic pain, how doctors deal (or don't deal) with it, stories from various people who suffer from it.
Has a lot of statistics that have really surprised me so far. Also includes lots of references to different studies.
It also talks about molecular things, how nerves send signals to the brain, how acute pain becomes chronic, etc...
I only just started chapter 4, but I think I'd already call this a must read for people with chronic pain, people who know someone with it... I feel like doctors could probably benefit from reading this, too.

Been working on The Strain trilogy by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan.

Didn't get to finish the last one. I'll check it out again next time I drop by the library.

[Nayoko-Kihara]

It's been years coming, but I finally read "We Have Always Lived in The Castle" and "The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson. They were both disappointing, especially for how consistently they're recommended to me, but at least neither was a huge time investment.

[erilaz]

It Can't Happen Here (1935) by Sinclair Lewis. A demagogue is elected President of the United States and turns the country into a totalitarian dictatorship.

[Moh]

^
I didn't know about this book, but I'll definitely be checking it out once the library has a copy in. Are you sure you didn't get the date wrong?

A Nation in Pain: Healing Our Biggest Health Problem by Judy Foreman.

Finished this a few days ago. The chapter on marijuana was enlightening, to say the least. We didn't always view it as an evil drug!
That one alone makes it worth the read, but there are a lot of pieces of information that I had no idea about.

Spoiler: show

The United States spends more on treating chronic pain than diabetes, cancer, and heart disease combined.
Only 1% of the NIH's annual budget goes toward research on chronic pain. The government will not allow them to have a building strictly dedicated to researching it, either.

The chapter on kids with pain is so upsetting to me. Children with cancer reported not having adequate pain relief.
As difficult as it is to properly dose pain medication for them... It's really a disgrace. Kids shouldn't have to suffer.

Adults with end-stage cancer also reported having inadequate pain relief. There is something seriously wrong with this!

People with chronic pain are twice as likely to commit suicide than people without, especially if they suffer from severe migraines or trigeminal neuralgia.
And the ones with pain who don't think about killing themselves say that they just want to die. Hashtag relatable.

And finally, it addresses the other side of the "opioid crisis" coin: It's having a negative effect on pain patients who need them.

[erilaz]

Are you sure you didn't get the date wrong?

It was published a couple of years after Hitler came to power in Germany, but it's had a dramatic resurgence in popularity within the last two years.

[Moh]

A few months ago I picked up (again) and finished The Night Eternal by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan.
Like I said last year, I'm glad I waited til the show was finished before reading them. Really cool series.

I hadn't been to the library for a while since then. I usually check books out by people whose work I'm familiar with, but I decided to mix it up this time!

Finished:
Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben / Started 8/12/2019; finished 8/15/2019

I remembered seeing this on CBS This Morning when it came out, thought "oh that might be interesting," and never thought about it again. IMO it was good, even if the ending seemed kind of predictable. And I'll definitely be checking out Coben's other novels.

The Trespasser by Tana French / Started 8/15/2019; finished 08/20/2019

Great novel. Definitely going on my list of favorites. There's a lot of detail, a lot of profanity (my favorite!), and I found the dialogue to be really engaging. I almost want a movie from it, but Hollywood would no doubt find a way to screw up the casting.

The Green Mile by Stephen King / Started 08/20/2019; finished 08/25/2019

I'm not completely sure why King decided to write this book, but I'm glad he did. It's such a good read and one I definitely want to own so I can read it over and over. I sorta felt bad for what happened to Percy at the end, but then again, he was such a little jerk that he maybe kinda deserved it. As expected, I got a bit teary at certain parts of the book.

Currently reading:
Nothing!

Tried:
The Girls by Emma Cline / Started and quit 8/13/2019

As harsh as this sounds... you would have to pay me to finish this book. Wish I had looked it up before grabbing it! It's loosely inspired by the Mansons and the murder of Sharon Tate. I've seen a few reviews calling it "original," but I don't see what's original about the whole "teenage girl joins killer cult in the '60s!" storyline tbh. And, oh yeah, this is written in first person too.

[Moh]

Whoa, has it really been a year since the last post in this thread?

The county library system is now working with Hoopla, so I can rent e-books. Unfortunately, their selection is pretty limited, depending on what you're looking for.

Currently reading:
The Silent Corner by Dean Koontz.

The protagonist, FBI Special Agent Jane Hawk, investigates the death of her husband. She's also investigating other mysterious suicides around the country, and bad people are trying to kill her! I'm not deep into it yet, but enjoying it so far.

Finished:
The Meaning of Birds by Jaye Robin Brown.
Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown.
It's Not Like It's a Secret by Misa Sugiura.

Spoiler: show

Gay girl books! All written in first person, which I largely found annoying. All taking place in high school settings, which was also annoying. The Meaning of Birds was depressing, since right off the bat the main character's girlfriend freaking DIES.

I need content similar to these that aren't hella depressing or about high school students. Gimme something about women in their 20s or 30s ffs.

[Nayoko-Kihara]

I feel like I've never been able to escape "House of Leaves" (I swear it's on every 'creepy books' related list I've come across, it constantly shows up in YT videos I watch, etc), so I finally gave it and picked it up from the library.

I was excited. Everyone seemed to love it. I like horror. I was reading it up until 20 minutes ago, I got to page 70-75 or so and dropped it. I think it might be my most hated book/attempted read, including the Anne Rice novel it took me 3 years to finish.

[erilaz]

Almost finished:

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer.

At the age of 17, Abdel Kader Haidara became the custodian of his family's enormous collection of rare medieval manuscripts. He spent the next three decades working to save manuscripts like these from weather and termites by putting them into modern library facilities, where they could be preserved, restored, digitized, and read. But when a March 2012 coup d'état threw northern Mali into chaos, he and his associates had a new task: to keep these irreplaceable manuscripts, some 350,000 of them, from being destroyed by fanatical religious extremists.

Next up:

Die gefährliche Sprache: Die Verfolgung der Esperantisten unter Hitler und Stalin by Ulrich Lins.

It's a history of the persecution of users and adherents of the international language Esperanto, especially in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s. I checked this book out some 15 years ago and used it as a reference in an article I wrote at the time, but it appears that I've never actually read it cover to cover. Time to change that.