What are you currently reading?

I'm currently new to this book series, so far it's really interesting!

The Djembe Owners Manual by Skip Tarrant.

all are great books but the one praised most and I have not still read is "How to lose the time War". Would love to hear more reviews, but please no spoilers.

Wow! Awesome!
I read fiction mostly. Long time ago I read serious books,
Nowadays its light reading. Favourite authors are:
Frank Yerby
Taylor Caldwell
Catherine Cookson
James A Michener
...nothing too new or heavy.
Right now, for non-fiction its just the Bible.

Gore Capitalism by Sayak Valencia.

The Power of the Crone: Myths and Stories of the Wise Woman Archetype
(Book #2 in the The Dangerous Old Woman series Series)
by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD

I just finished reading Pan's Labyrinth by Cornelia Funke and Guillermo del Toro. The book is interesting,I like the plot the story is going by,but some moments in the book are a bit more on the dark or violent side. However,I'm surprised things end better for the main character.

If you're craving some formal poetry, Give A.E. a try. She is fantastic and makes me want to be a better poet. I just finished reading Archaic Smile, but I keep flipping through it and reading favorite poems again and again.

Hoi hoi
I am currently reading many of the recently posted DUP writes…
Especially Ashley_M_Hardy’s writes…
I’d like to invite you to do the same.
A biting sense of humor and self mocking that would easily survive in Amsterdam Boom Boom theatre. (where most of the American acts fall flat).
I say Ashley for president or (if all humor fails) Ashley for in oval office in house poet!

Thank you ms Ashley!!!
You brighten up my day!
Kind regards, Gus

Fire and blood by George R.R. Martin is my current read. Just over half way through now and so far so good. Worth a read for anyone who's followed the Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon series.

I’ve just finished The Black Toad by Gemma Garry. An exploration of trad-craft in Cornwall.

The Stone Gods
by Jeanette Winterson.

https://a.co/d/f1xhOdA

I’ve just finished The Witches Devil by Roger. J. Horne.

It was kinda interesting actually. The book unpacks the symbolism of The Devil - lore, myths, and understanding.

Not that I’m a Satanist or anything (because I’m not) but I’ve always found the symbology interesting because it governs so much of our understandings of life in this good / bad binary.

Worth a read if you’re an esoteric nerd like myself.

Just finished Notice by Heather Lewis. I read this one because it was listed as the most disturbing book that a YouTuber I watch, CriminOlly, had ever read. It’s certainly a “disturbing book” that deserves its place in the canon of that particular genre. Heather Lewis was an American lesbian writer of the ‘90s who wrote three novels before taking her own life, aged forty, in 2002. The details of her life are shocking and saddening. She was a victim of incest from her father and for a time was institutionalised at his request when they both started pursuing the same woman. (This and other biographical information can be found in Melissa Febos’ introduction to the recent Serpent’s Tail re-release of Notice.)

In this way, Notice is clearly autobiographical to some extent. It’s about a young sex worker who calls herself Nina, though that isn’t her real name, and ends up involved in a twisted marriage between a powerful man and his wife, Ingrid. They once had a daughter but don’t anymore, for reasons clearly implied, and when Nina tries to escape, her path leads her to Beth, a counsellor with whom she develops an intense physical bond.

The novel is written in the first person, from Nina’s perspective, and is a very strange, unsettling read that will alienate many readers. I was initially worried that it would involve a lot of repetition, which it does, but it stays engaging enough to just about sustain interest for its circa 250 page count. It’s not a perfect book by any stretch of the imagination. It’s extremely vague about all of its characters and setting, deliberately so in part, due to its stripped-down style. But I was left feeling at times as though I wasn’t getting a fully-rounded narrative. Why is the husband so powerful? Why exactly does Beth conduct her relationship with Nina in such a manner? Where are Nina’s parents, did she have any friends growing up, other family, concerned teachers, etcetera?

There’s an argument to be made, of course, that such questions are the point, that you’re supposed to wonder on these things and draw your own conclusions. But for the purposes of a fictional narrative it can start to feel, again, repetitive. Once you reach the midpoint of the book, the same basic scene between Nina and Beth starts to play on repeat for an awfully long time, until you feel as though 25 to 50 pages could have been cut.

Still, the vagueness of the telling does generate a disconnected weirdness in its atmosphere that’s largely why, I think, this novel manages to disturb as much as it does. It’s a sexually frank and graphic work comprised almost totally of intimate encounters, though it’s never pornographic and you’d be hard pressed to find a reader who’d find anything here arousing, since even the consensual sex is overlain with deep sadness. Rape figures heavily throughout, and other forms of exploitation too. How nice is Beth, really, when she helps Nina find work and a home but also muddies her treatment with sex, conducting a torrid affair with this younger woman she knows is damaged?

The simple, direct writing of Notice gets under your skin. Aside from misogyny, it’s about how trauma can set a pattern in our behaviour that drives us to act self-destructively. The word “notice” starts to become noticeable (no pun intended) throughout, as Nina talks about wanting to be noticed, not being noticed, and so on. She’s one of those victims, like the married couple’s daughter, who are used by men and society without their users ever even knowing their real names. Will anyone notice and properly care for “Nina” in time? Maybe, maybe not.