What have you been reading lately?

I’m reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing. It’s good so far. I just finished Justin Kronin’s The Twelve which I thought was quite poorly written and overly long.

I’m reading Wicked by Gregory Maguire. So far it’s very inventive and fun.

Text on weather element forecasting: icing, turbulence, thermal tertiary circulations, induced tertiary circulations etc.

I am enjoying Neal Stephenson’s Reamde.

@Blackberry That’s hot.

@Blackberry I saw ‘icing’ and did a double take and thought you were into cake icing. Then I remembered you are a meteorologist.

I just started Zeugloden by James P. Blaylock.

Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall” and am about to start the sequel, “Bring up the Bodies.” Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII and the rest of the gang.

Bring Up the Bodies is a historical novel by Hilary Mantel and sequel to her award-winning Wolf Hall. It is the second part of a planned trilogy charting the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, the powerful minister in the court of King Henry VIII. Bring Up the Bodies won the 2012 Man Booker Prize, following Wolf Hall’s win of the Booker in 2009.” Source

Two Man Booker’s is pretty hot stuff.

Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon.

Yeah, today I was learning about sea spray icing in the poles. You never think about it until you read about it. High enough winds accompanied by well-below freezing air and sea water temperatures is quite devastating.

I don’t read novels any more. I only read stuff online. I don’t have the concentration to read more than three paragraphs at once, these days. My brain has turned to mush, I think.

Whoa! Down, boy! No need for everyone to agree in such a rousing huzzah!

@Blackberry This tropical turtle is going to have nightmares from the pictures in your link. Yikes!

@Blackberry You had me at turbulence.

How long does it take to get like that @Blackberry? Given it’s over 40 Celcius at the moment here I wouldn’t a little icing.

^^^No typo? 104˚ F? How do you cope?

@Bellatrix I don’t have that answer at the moment, but I’ll find out for you. This icing can occur quickly, because this water freezes immediately upon contact. The speed of the ships doesn’t help either. You have ships up there for weeks – months exposed to this environment so I imagine it doesn’t take long. The problem is there isn’t many precautions taken to prevent this stuff.

Ships aren’t like commercial airliners and jets that have deicing equipment built in. For some crews, the solution is actually coming out to regularly break the ice with hammers, mallets etc lol.

@gailcalled I am thankful for air conditioning. My cat is exceedingly grumpy. Seriously, we do have a couple of different cooling mechanisms including air con and today I have just closed off part of the house to keep this section cool. Even so, in this room it’s 29 Celcius. Just ridiculous. We have someone doing some gardening. I feel so bad asking him to garden today!

Thanks @Blackberry. I had a suspicion it could happen very quickly. It can happen to aeroplanes very quickly of course. You have a fascinating job!

Ania Ahlborn’s “Seed”. Going to finish LOTR over the break and probably a couple of other books as well.

@Bellatrix Yeah, and the upper atmosphere also isn’t as harsh an environment. There are some ships made just for ice, but still…It’s the freaking Arctic lol. Bundling up for cold weather to step outside doesn’t seem as bad now.

I would love to visit the Antarctic. You can do trips now. I would just love it! Do you get to go to places like that for your work?

Fluther posts, mostly.
I’m reading a book called Ruined, by Paulla Morris. It’s really slow, but once I start a book I just have to finish it, or I’ll wonder what I’m missing. The only acception is Wuthering Heights. I try to read it every few years, hoping I’m old enough to be interested. My latest attemp was a few weeks ago. Four pages in, and no beans. Gave up.

Dreamcatcher by Stephen King. I read it years ago when it came out, but I forgot a whole bunch of crap, so it’s kicking ass.

There’s one part I read today in particular that got me laughing…you get a flashback from one of the characters which really isn’t a flashback…if you know the book, you’ll know what I mean when he was a kid. In one part he’s in a general store, an old store in the middle of nowhere that mostly serves hunters with beer and canned goods during hunting season. This guy takes these four kids up to the cabin every year and they go hunting. But anyways in this one part the four young friends are calling someone on the phone, and during the whole scene it’s always mentioned on just how unbelievably hot it is in the store. There’s a wood stove burning, and at the end of the scene the character having the flashback sees his kid self saying…Jesus it’s in hot in here. What are they heating that stove up with anyway, fucking plutonium? Man I laughed lol.

A bunch of little articles about gun control. I hold my breath and refrain from putting out an opinion every time.

My newspaper & several questions on here, okay it’s very light reading, but it still counts.

I am currently reading At My Mother’s Knee and Other Low Joints by Paul O’Grady. It is his autobioghraphy of the first years of his life. I am big fan of his.

I just started reading Leonardo’s Swans by Karen Essex. So far so good.

@Bellatrix Apparently that kind of icing can happen within hours, lol. If the wind is strong enough to kick up the water to the decks then it doesn’t take long.

Amazing. So will you get to travel to the arctic or antarctic?

GA’s all around, some of these have definitely piqued my curiosity…I shall look into them posthaste!

Reading I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER by Dan Wells for the 19th time… may be exaggerating a little. Probably not.

Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. I am currently on the second book, The Drawing of the Three.

What with the holiday craziness and all, I’ve slowed down a bit as far as pleasure reading goes, but my currently bookmarked tomes include Novel History by Mark C. Carnes and Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (yes, I’m still reading that… have had to put it aside for various reasons, and keep trying to finish it!). Additionally, thanks to a recent quick jaunt in Monterey, I’m re-reading Steinbeck. Just finished Cannery Row, and now re-reading Tortilla Flat. Haven’t read most of his books in 25–30 years, so it’s interesting reading them again. Got several new books for Christmas to add to the ever-increasing pile of books I own but haven’t read… sigh… :) Nice problem to have, really!

I just finished Hilary Mantel’s second book of her Henry VIII trilogy, Bring Up the Bodies.

It was a stupendous read. Long and dense but readable and even funny since the author gives us Thomas Cromwell’s interior monologue along with the action, of which the book is packed.