Whatca reading

[LogDog75]

I just finished a novel in a series from Jefferson Bass. Jefferson Bass is the combined names of Jon Jefferson, a writer, and Dr. William Bass, a forensic anthropologist. The protagonist of the novels is Dr. Bill Brockton, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Tennessee (UT).

Brockton teaches anthropology and also runs the "Bone Farm" a five-acre property at UT where he can study how bodies decompose. His studies help determine how long it takes a body to decay as well as how long it takes for wildlife and bugs to strip the bodies of flesh. The bodies are donated by by the descendant or relatives and some by the state when the body is unclaimed. In fact, Dr. Bass actually established the "Bone Yard" in 1971 for this study.

Brockton helps local and state law enforcement, as well as the FBI, when a body is found and has decomposed. Through his efforts, he attempts to determine the cause and time of death. In most cases, he's dealing with a killer and characters who could harm him.

One interesting thing about the novels is although it's a work of fiction, the is one character who is real; Knoxville Detective Art Bohanan.

Overall, the stories are good and the characters well developed.

[Bayard]

1. Sounds good

You may want to post in the Fiction forum.

[LoisB]

2. The Other Side of the River - Alex Kotlowitz

non-fiction

PS FYI, there is a fiction and non-fiction forum

[zanana1]

3. I just started reading Out Stealing Horses.

I don't know what I think of it yet.

[Rizen]

4. I tried reading...

...The Dragon Riders of Pern but it felt really slow and archaic. Currently I'm reading What to Expect When Expecting because I'm writing a book where the main character's pregnant and doing some research. I also ordered the full Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy set for later.

[JoseBalow]

5. Currently reading "Dead Souls" by Nikolai Gogol

I have a longtime interest in Russian and Soviet history, and a penchant for most all Russian literature. This so far has been quite a fun read, and very insightful of the morals, attitudes, and people of the time, and the details of their daily lives. I'm enjoying it very much.

... first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. The novel chronicles the travels and adventures of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov and the people whom he encounters. These people typify the Russian middle aristocracy of the time. Gogol himself saw his work as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book characterised it as a "poem in prose". Gogol intended the novel to be the first part of a three-volume work, but burned the manuscript of the second part shortly before his death.

In the Russian Empire, before the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, landowners had the right to own serfs to farm their land. Serfs were for most purposes considered the property of the landowner, who could buy, sell or mortgage them, as any other chattel. To count serfs (and people in general), the classifier "soul" was used: e.g., "six souls of serfs". The plot of the novel relies on "dead souls" (i.e., "dead serfs" ) which are still accounted for in property registers. On another level, the title refers to the "dead souls" of Gogol's characters, all of which represent different aspects of poshlost (a Russian noun rendered as "commonplace, vulgarity", moral and spiritual, with overtones of middle-class pretentiousness, fake significance and philistinism).

Dead Souls has been compared to Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote and Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers. The plot for the novel was suggested by Gogol's friend Alexander Pushkin.

Although the townspeople Chichikov comes across are gross caricatures, they are not flat stereotypes by any means. Instead, each is neurotically individual, combining the official failings that Gogol typically satirizes (greed, corruption, paranoia) with a curious set of personal quirks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Souls

[Space Lemon]

6. Fiction has always been my favorite.

I've been having a lot of fun reading Tami Hoag's new book Bad Liar.

[sakabatou]

7. Actual book, or story?