What have you read recently? 2009 -2020

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Bestwifeever, it's interesting that you mention "Spoiler Alert" because as I was writing the "review" I was thinking that even if I wanted to, I could not come up with a "Spoiler". Actually, the closest I could come to one would be to say, "By the end of the book, Tommy advances from second grade to third grade."
 
I finished The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett. Excellent novel.

It was copyright 1929. The movie was released in 1941. They are so close, you'd think they coincided in time.

The casting of the movie was perfect, dead on, with one notable exception: Sam Spade. Bogart is physically nothing like the character described in the novel. But he had the attitude!
 
"A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving. I liked it OK. It helped pass the time. I'm still searching for a replacement author for Philip Roth and John Updike. The search continues. Also reading a non-fiction book about the French Revolution which is pretty interesting.
 
I just finished Hilary Mantel's historical fiction novel "Wolf Hall" set in the time of Henry VIII and focusing on the rise of Cromwell. Next in the series is "Bring Up the Bodies" which I will have to pick up the next time I am at B & N (am using up some of the gift cards I received from generous co-workers when I retired). I read an ad in The New Yorker that these novels will be featured in a BBC TV series sometime in 2015 and this is what prompted me to seek out the book.
 
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I just read "Full Dark No Stars " by Steven King . It is a collection of very weird but very good short stories ,
 
John Galt III said:
"A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving. I liked it OK. It helped pass the time. I'm still searching for a replacement author for Philip Roth and John Updike. The search continues. Also reading a non-fiction book about the French Revolution which is pretty interesting.
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Do you know William Maxwell's work? DH really likes the authors you mention, and Maxwell is also one of his favorites, especially Time Will Darken It, and So Long, See You Tomorrow. Maxwell was the editor at the New Yorker who worked with Cheever, Updike, O'Hara and others. JD Salinger chose Maxwell as a first reader for the Catcher in the Rye manuscript.Overlooked classics: Time Will Darken It by William Maxwell | Books | The Guardian

DH also really likes William Kennedy, who wrote Ironweed and several other novels set in upstate New York, which you maybe have already read. They are a little dark for my taste. I am reading two murder mysteries instead.
 
Bestwifeever said:
Do you know William Maxwell's work? DH really likes the authors you mention, and Maxwell is also one of his favorites, especially Time Will Darken It, and So Long, See You Tomorrow. Maxwell was the editor at the New Yorker who worked with Cheever, Updike, O'Hara and others. JD Salinger chose Maxwell as a first reader for the Catcher in the Rye manuscript.Overlooked classics: Time Will Darken It by William Maxwell | Books | The Guardian

DH also really likes William Kennedy, who wrote Ironweed and several other novels set in upstate New York, which you maybe have already read. They are a little dark for my taste. I am reading two murder mysteries instead.
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No, I am not familiar with Maxwell or Kennedy. Thanks for the suggestions. I will check them out!
 
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.
 
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.
 
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-Howey/dp/1476733953/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=
 
brett said:
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.
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How was Hack Attack? I got the e-book from my library a few days ago but haven't started reading it yet.
 
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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.
 
Sarah in SC said:
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-Howey/dp/1476733953/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=
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+1 on Wool. I either read about it here or reviewed it here. I too will look for Earth Abides.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Sarah in SC said:
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!
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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.
 
Accidental Retiree said:
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!
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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". :)
 
scrinch said:
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.
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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.
 
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. :)
 
donheff said:
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.
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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.
 
martyp said:
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.
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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.
 
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