I'm in the middle of my second read-through of Moby Dick, though it's slow going at the moment, as I seem to have gotten ahold of a cursed copy - every time I read it, it starts raining outside. And in the interest of not ruining the few hours of sun Sweden gets every summer, I've been reading it pretty slowly.
What else have I read lately that I liked, let's see...
Station Eleven Emily St John Mandel. This one is post-apocalypse, but as far from Mad Max as it's possible to get (though Mad Max is awesome; Fury Road is, like, perfect). Ever wonder what happens to average people after the apocalypse? Office managers, bus drivers, actors, corporate consultants, concert musicians? Station Eleven is their story. It's got this sense of optimism and hope in the face of catastrophe that I feel is often missing from post-apocalyptic stories. Also, super-bonus points? One of the main characters is a comic artist!
Other favourites include:
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway. Another post-apocalyptic novel that toes the line between scifi, fantasy and plain old critique of society. It's thought-provoking and interesting and contains a lot of politics - along with post-apocalyptic truckers, a ninja conspiracy and a troupe of mimes. No, really. A troupe of mimes.
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Munro Clark. Ever asked yourself why WWI happened, or why Europe decided to have a second world war so soon after the first? Then this book is for you. It is massive, and examines every minute detail of the people who led Europe into WWI. And I'm not talking about just the shots in Sarajevo, here; I'm talking the internal politics of Serbia in the late 1800s, about pan-Slavism, English isolationism, the instability of the French regime(s), the final fallout of the crumbling of the Ottoman empire, the fear of the German war-machine, the hawkishness of Russian foreign ministers, missed phonecalls, bad peace-deals making terrible situations worse, and the complete mess that was Kaiser Villhelm.
And, finally, the collected poetry of Carl Sandburg. He's one of my favourite poets, and I could read him forever. Happily, he was also super-prolific, so there's a lot to read. One of my favourite poems is Fire Pages:
I WILL read ashes for you, if you ask me.
I will look in the fire and tell you from the gray lashes
And out of the red and black tongues and stripes,
I will tell how fire comes
And how fire runs far as the sea.
.... My taste in books is rather broad and varied, I have to confess.