What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

[rasetsu]

[rasetsu]

Shopping the BOGO sale at Audible. I picked up these two but may grab a couple more.

[rasetsu]

Yet another month, yet another Audible credit. My Audible promotional rate expires this month, so I'll get the 12-credit Annual Plan towards the end of the month. I'm becoming a bit of a bean counter regarding Audible books, worrying more about value than what I want. I'm spending more time reading about compassion, so I'd like to spend time on that, but many of those books are under 10 hours of listening and are not very expensive without credits.

[macdoc]

loving it.Maybe one has to be a pilot but the language is wonderful.

Somehow I manage to wheel the DC-2 around and at least aim it at the field with reasonable accuracy. My feet are actually shuddering on the rudder pedals as I ease back on the throttles and begin the descent. McCabe frequently calls off the air speed, which is, maddeningly, always too fast or too slow. When he drops the flaps, I shove the nose down so violently that our attitude becomes nearly a straight dive. McCabe moans in protest. I haul back on the control wheel. We instantly balloon upward and hang ridiculously in a half stall. I shove the nose down again and repeat the entire sequence of ugly gyrations until we swoop over some telephone wires and wobble down toward the black cinder field.

This time I am determined there will be no more bouncing. I will astonish McCabe with the featherlike touch of our wheels.

As the edge of the field slides beneath the nose, I pull back on the throttles. The engines sputter and backfire. I wait, holding the glide nicely. I do not see McCabe’s hands creep forward along his legs until they are only a few inches from the control wheel. He must allow me actually to make the landing or the whole session is meaningless—but he too has a strong sense of self-preservation.

I have not reckoned with the powerful psychological aftereffect of the previous landings. Now, suddenly, fear of repeating the debacle dominates my reactions. Earth-shy, I level off a good thirty feet above the swiftly passing cinders. Even McCabe is robbed of time to avert the crisis. The DC-2 hesitates as if bewildered by this giddy height and, abandoning all hope, stops flying instantly. Luckily I have kept the wings level, for the descent is as direct as an elevator’s. There is no energy left for bouncing. We hit on all three points with a soul-shattering thump.

I am quite defeated. The sound of the landing is still echoing in my ears as I struggle at least to keep the ship rolling in a straight line. The sound was like a very bad accident in a large hotel kitchen.

“That,” says McCabe, massaging his back, “was not a landing. It was an arrival.”

[rasetsu]

I picked up Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest with this month's credit. My promotional rate ends this month so I'll probably grab the 12-credit annual plan at $120.

[macdoc]

Enjoyed the flying book.
Started on Hidden Empire the big science fiction series by Kevin J Anderson.....but think I will switch to Cormac McCarthy Trilogy

[rasetsu]

Browsing the two-for-one sale at Audible. I found a book on the history of the Arabs that I like, but the only other one I've found is on the French revolution, and that doesn't exactly light my fire.

[macdoc]

I've got 12 books to grab in fairly short order .....here we go again.
Got so much I haven't read or listened to....partner gave me one to pick up and Rothfuss appears to have gone to ground again tho apparently he has a novella coming in Nov

Here is the sad tale of one of the best fantasy series ever written .......that IS NOT FINISHED.
https://winteriscoming.net/2023/05/20/w ... -rothfuss/

This a Tolkein level tale that is flat out marvelous.....and unfinished.

[JimC]

I'm re-reading the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher...

A wizard operating in the modern world...

[macdoc]

mother the guy can write ....

They rode out along the fenceline and across the open pasture-land. The leather creaked in the morning cold. They pushed the horses into a lope. The lights fell away behind them. They rode out on the high prairie where they slowed the horses to a walk and the stars swarmed around them out of the blackness. They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.

[rasetsu]

[macdoc]

Learned a lot ...novel zips along in a very satisfying way ....

[macdoc]

a bit YA for me but I've always like dragons.

[macdoc]

He wrote Salt which was terrific.

[JimC]

When will he write Gin?