What have you read recently? 2009 -2020

[Sarah in SC]

Good tip on that one, marty! I consider The Stand to be one of my all time favorite reads ever, and it was also a fave of my grandmother.
And continuing in the post apocalypse vein, I can't remember where I got the recommendation (here?) for Wool, by Hugh Howey, but it was a real page-turner and a great book! Set in a future where the air outside is poisonous, the inhabitants of a huge underground silo work together to try to make their world livable. Very suspenseful, with characters you really grow to like. Fun book to stick your nose into and not come up for air until the end, 500 pages later!
http://www.amazon.com/Wool-Hugh-Howe...=UTF8&sr=&qid=

[zinger1457]

Quote:

Originally Posted by brett Just finished three books. Hack Attack (on going phone hacking scandal in the UK), The Berlin Wall, and part of a book about Sociopaths among us. I usually have a few going at any one time.

How was Hack Attack? I got the e-book from my library a few days ago but haven't started reading it yet.

[Elbata]

I didn't start college till 25 (circa 1983) and two books I read back then that floored me were Alvin Toffler's Future Shock and George Orwell's 1984.

Book that had a tremendous impact on me a few years ago was Michael Lewis's The Big Short.

Sometimes I get so excited about a book, or movie, that after it's over, I have to go for a run. Damnedest thing.

[donheff]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarah in SC Good tip on that one, marty! I consider The Stand to be one of my all time favorite reads ever, and it was also a fave of my grandmother. And continuing in the post apocalypse vein, I can't remember where I got the recommendation (here?) for Wool, by Hugh Howey, but it was a real page-turner and a great book! Set in a future where the air outside is poisonous, the inhabitants of a huge underground silo work together to try to make their world livable. Very suspenseful, with characters you really grow to like. Fun book to stick your nose into and not come up for air until the end, 500 pages later! http://www.amazon.com/Wool-Hugh-Howe...=UTF8&sr=&qid=

+1 on Wool. I either read about it here or reviewed it here. I too will look for Earth Abides.

[scrabbler1]

I have just started reading "The Birth of the Pill," by Jonathan Eig. The subtitle is "How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution." Eig was recently interviewed on C-Span's BookTV (where I get a lot of my good ideas for books to read).


So far it is a good read, as Eig begins with Margaret Sanger's early role in bringing contraception to the forefront, finding allies for her cause while trying to change the public's attitude toward contraception in the first half of the 20th century.

[John Galt III]

Found a Philip Roth book I hadn't yet read. "The Human Stain". About a 71 year old college professor having an affair with a female janitor who works at the college. So far so good. I'm a quarter of the way through. Classic Roth. Never boring, at least for me.

[Mango1956]

Reading "Blood and Thunder" by Hampton Sides. Cracking good book. All about Kit Carson, the Navajos, Fremont, and the winning of the west. Sides has a way of weaving the fate of all of the very different players into one story. As one reviewer remarked, he is fair to all sides, and there is a lack of "heros" and "villains". Good stuff.

[scrinch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarah in SC And continuing in the post apocalypse vein, I can't remember where I got the recommendation (here?) for Wool, by Hugh Howey, but it was a real page-turner and a great book! Set in a future where the air outside is poisonous, the inhabitants of a huge underground silo work together to try to make their world livable. Very suspenseful, with characters you really grow to like. Fun book to stick your nose into and not come up for air until the end, 500 pages later!

And there are another dozen or more books set in the Wool universe, both by Howey and by fans of Wool, examining many aspects of his underground world. They're available on Amazon. Many are quite good.

[Nemo2]

A Bill Bryson that I hadn't read previously......I'm finding it hilarious.......tried to re-read a couple paragraphs out loud to my wife last evening.....but I couldn't stop laughing:

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Accidental Retiree]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nemo2 A Bill Bryson that I hadn't read previously......I'm finding it hilarious.......tried to re-read a couple paragraphs out loud to my wife last evening.....but I couldn't stop laughing: Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I do that with Bryson, too. I love his stuff, and I get the teary-eyed giggles when I try to read aloud to DH. _Notes from a Small Island_ is my favorite!

[Nemo2]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Accidental Retiree I do that with Bryson, too. I love his stuff, and I get the teary-eyed giggles when I try to read aloud to DH. _Notes from a Small Island_ is my favorite!

I don't believe there are any of his books that I haven't thoroughly enjoyed......with so many observations that I can react to with an "I've been in that position" or "I've seen that".

[donheff]

Quote:

Originally Posted by scrinch And there are another dozen or more books set in the Wool universe, both by Howey and by fans of Wool, examining many aspects of his underground world. They're available on Amazon. Many are quite good.

The book "Wool" that I got from the library was a compilation of episodes 1-5 of the Shift Series. I see some other stuff at the library but I think they are parts of the Shift Series which appear to be chapters of Wool. Hard to figure out what is new, if anything.

[donheff]

The Three-Body Problem is a very good science fiction novel by Cixun Liu, a Chinese author with a huge following in China. Scenes from the Cultural Revolution, philosophical musings, advanced physics, aliens - all make this a big hit in the best science fiction tradition. This is part one in a trilogy that has been available in China for several years. A translation of Part 2 will be released here in June. I hope someone here will follow-up with a note on that one next summer since I will have forgotten all about it by then.

[scrinch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by donheff The book "Wool" that I got from the library was a compilation of episodes 1-5 of the Shift Series. I see some other stuff at the library but I think they are parts of the Shift Series which appear to be chapters of Wool. Hard to figure out what is new, if anything.

Look on Amazon. There are 3 novel-length sequels to the initial Wool omnibus edition, and then a dozen or more novelette- to novel-length books written by others that are set in the Wool world that explore families, education, religion, and other issues within the closed, silo worlds. The sequels by Howey follow a storyline that leads to a partial resolution of the buried silo initial premise. They are called First Shift, Second Shift, and Third Shift, and they are episodes 6-8 of the Shift Series.

It has been a year or more since I read these. There may be more by now. Howey is a very prolific writer.

[donheff]

Quote:

Originally Posted by martyp Just finished reading "Earth Abides" by George Stewart. It was a book club reading. It is an excellent post-apocalyptic story set in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was written in 1949 and holds up amazingly well. It was the inspiration for Stephen King's "The Stand" which I read decades ago and loved.

Just finished it. Excellent. I was surprised to see that the white guy protagonist meets and falls in love with a black woman survivor and that was not treated as a major deal -- her race was only mentioned twice in the book. The book was written in 1949.

[Moemg]

I haven't read Steven King in years but I recently read his short stories collection "Full Dark No Stars " . The stories were very good and very odd . I enjoyed the book .

[Lsbcal]

I read this latest David Ignatius spy thriller: The Director: A Novel

The subject of this book is cyber security and espionage. Very much in the real news nowadays.

[Ginny]

Inferno by Dan Brown. My husband and I will go to Italy to see the Boboli Gardens.

[Derslickmeister]

Unbroken. Going to see the movie tomorrow, I really hope Angelina got it right...

[LoneAspen]

I'm just finishing up a book on the history of Dungeons & Dragons, TSR, and Gary Gygax (among others) titled "Of Dice and Men" by David Ewalt.

I used to play D&D as a kid, but not a whole lot because we all sucked at being Dungeon Masters, and could never seem to get everybody together at the same time.

But we had a lot of fun when we did play (in spite of the sucky DM'ing) and I still have ALL my original D&D (actually AD&D) manuals and modules, so this book brought back a lot of fond memories.

The author includes a lot of stories from his own experiences about characters he created, parties he adventured with, what they encountered, etc, that made it a good read.

In one chapter, he detailed how he'd make up characters, dream up a backstory, and fill in character sheets, and that really took me back in time because I used to do the same thing.

For anybody who played D&D, I'd definitely recommend this book. Here's the Amazon link to it:

http://www.amazon.com/Of-Dice-Men-Du.../dp/1491514191