What have you read recently? 2009 -2020

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Something I've been enjoying recently (laugh if you will) is Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know, available free on the Kindle bookstore and probably elsewhere.

They're almost all short, the length you can read while waiting somewhere.

Most if not all of my exposure to these were through animated versions growing up. You get the real answers to burning questions like, "How did Red Riding Hood and the Wolf (or Goldilocks and the Three Bears) work out their differences?" or "Who said 'fee-fi-fo-fum and in what tale? And what was really said?".
 
[FONT=&quot]American Exit Strategy, by Mark Goodwin
(Book One)[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Events and characters mimic recent history in a story of the collapse of the US dollar and economy. While fiction, it’s not that far of a stretch to see events such as Mr. Goodwin writes actually coming to be in real life.[/FONT]


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Not something I read, but I saw a good movie today. "Wild Tales", an Argentinian production in Spanish with English subtitles. 6 short films by the same director, I think. Well directed, well acted. Each short film shows "normal" humans taking things up "just a notch or two" in reaction to certain outrages. Best movie I've seen in a long time.
 
I almost forgot World Gone By, by Dennis Lehane. I finished it just before I started Cuba Straits. I like Lehane (he wrote Mystic River, Shutter Island, and other thrillers). World Gone by is a similar style but entirely different setting -- mid 1940's Tampa, FL. It is a fascinating look at the Tampa Mob in those days of Myer Lansky and the Trafficante's
 
Iain M. Banks,' Transition, is a fascinating SF novel. If you have wondered what the multiverse would be like if you could flit between worlds popping into the minds of various and sundry inhabitants, try it out.
 
Skywalker, by Bill Walker amazon/kindle The real life experience of a 40 year old man thru hiking the Applichian Trial. EXCELLENT read for out doors types.

Keyless in Alaaska by Darrell Purdy

Real life, day to day living in alaska in the gold fields, mining camps, oil fields and ice roads. Purdy is retired navy and also a master chief and outdoorsman.
check the facebook page--KEYLESS IN ALASKA
 
John Galt III said:
Not something I read, but I saw a good movie today. "Wild Tales", an Argentinian production in Spanish with English subtitles. 6 short films by the same director, I think. Well directed, well acted. Each short film shows "normal" humans taking things up "just a notch or two" in reaction to certain outrages. Best movie I've seen in a long time.
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I saw "Wild Tales" this weekend. Fantastic! For me as well, it was the best film that I've seen in a long time. 6 incredibly inventive tales about people who go over the edge. It's also a very cynical (but perhaps accurate) look at Argentine society. It was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Oscar this year. The Argentine writer/director, Damián Szifron, has already been signed to do his first English-language film.

As for books, I just finished reading 2 good books by the South African writer Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer, and In a Strange Room. I liked both. The latter, my favorite of the two, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize.
 
'A Land Remembered' by Patrick Smith. An excellent read about how Florida became settled starting during the Civil War by bringing you into the life of a family and watching their children and grandchildren witness the Florida frontier. It is also mandated reading in some Florida schools. For those Florida residents, it makes for very good reading.
 
I downloaded The Escape, Baldacci's latest, from the library and am half thru. So far this is a good one.
 
I'm reading Candace Bergan's new book. She has a good way of telling a story-not your typical bio.




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For a 16th century French writer, Montaigne has proven incredibly popular through the centuries. There is a good reason for this. His Essays have made every succeeding generation say "Hey, this guy is just like me!"

Sarah Bakewell spent five years researching and writing this book, a biography of Montaigne through his writings and his adventures. I can only say it was magnificent, and I was saddened to come to the end of it. I wanted to stay in the book far longer. Beautifully written and totally engaging, the author obviously has a deep affection for her subject, and the level of scholarship and research are second to none.

Highly recommended!

Amazon.com: How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer eBook: Sarah Bakewell: Books
 
braumeister said:
For a 16th century French writer, Montaigne has proven incredibly popular through the centuries. There is a good reason for this. His Essays have made every succeeding generation say "Hey, this guy is just like me!"

Sarah Bakewell spent five years researching and writing this book, a biography of Montaigne through his writings and his adventures. I can only say it was magnificent, and I was saddened to come to the end of it. I wanted to stay in the book far longer. Beautifully written and totally engaging, the author obviously has a deep affection for her subject, and the level of scholarship and research are second to none.

Highly recommended!

Amazon.com: How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer eBook: Sarah Bakewell: Books
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Thanks for the suggestion. I have read and thoroughly enjoyed Montaigne's Essays, and still have a copy on my bookshelf. This sounds like a good companion to it.
 
Just finished The Dying Animal by Philip Roth. Much lighter than his usual stuff. But enjoyable anyway. Old professor has affair with young student.
 
The Hydrogen Sonata by Ian M. Banks is a good space opera. I will have to check out some of Banks' other SF books. I picked this one up at the library when I realized that Banks wrote The Wasp Factory, a haunting and disturbing novel I read a couple of decades ago.

Edit: went to the library web page to check possible downloads and realized I also read Banks' Transition, which was also good. I wasn't aware that he was the Wasp Factory guy when I read Transition.
 
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Now reading Rolling Stone Interviews, which I got from the library. Very interesting. Has about 50 interviews with famous people, mostly rock musicians. Jim Morrison, Jerry Garcia, John Lennon, many more. Each interview is only about 10 to 15 pages.
 
Just read a great book by Russ Roberts called How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life. Absolutely fantastic read.

Most of us know his Wealth of Nations, but Smith's earlier Moral Sentiments is stellar, and Roberts carefully teases out the lessons from the sometimes overwrought language of the original.

A fine book from the philosophically inclined, and one I recommend if you want to know the how and why of being a good person.

Just the "impartial spectator" part alone made it worth the read, encouraging me to consider more than my own perspective in conversations.

The WSJ (among others) reviewed it when it came out last year. http://www.wsj.com/articles/book-re...n-change-your-life-by-russ-roberts-1413846808
 
I'm currently reading 2 very different books:

Bud, Sweat, & Tees by Alan Shipnuck and
to hellholes and back by Chuck Thompson
 
Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife Paperback – October 23, 2012

A Scientist's Case for the Afterlife...

Thousands of people have had near-death experiences, but scientists have argued that they are impossible. Dr. Eben Alexander was one of those scientists. A highly trained neurosurgeon, Alexander knew that NDEs feel real, but are simply fantasies produced by brains under extreme stress.

Then, Dr. Alexander’s own brain was attacked by a rare illness. The part of the brain that controls thought and emotion—and in essence makes us human—shut down completely. For seven days he lay in a coma. Then, as his doctors considered stopping treatment, Alexander’s eyes popped open. He had come back.

Alexander’s recovery is a medical miracle. But the real miracle of his story lies elsewhere. While his body lay in coma, Alexander journeyed beyond this world and encountered an angelic being who guided him into the deepest realms of super-physical existence. There he met, and spoke with, the Divine source of the universe itself.

Alexander’s story is not a fantasy. Before he underwent his journey, he could not reconcile his knowledge of neuroscience with any belief in heaven, God, or the soul. Today Alexander is a doctor who believes that true health can be achieved only when we realize that God and the soul are real and that death is not the end of personal existence but only a transition.

This story would be remarkable no matter who it happened to. That it happened to Dr. Alexander makes it revolutionary. No scientist or person of faith will be able to ignore it. Reading it will change your life.
 
mh said:
Most scientists and others who are respected in this area ( like Oliver Saks ) seem to have a pretty dim view of mr Alexander's publication....
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Your post made me look up Oliver Sacks and this result appeared: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/b...ks-looks-at-his-life-in-on-the-move.html?_r=0

which is a review of Dr. Sacks' just-published autobiography, which I've put on hold at the library.

In a blunt, eloquent and devastating Op-Ed essay in The New York Times in February, Dr. Oliver Sacks revealed that cancer in his liver had left him with only months to live. This knowledge, he wrote, had enabled him to see his own life “as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts.”
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