What have you read recently? 2009 -2020

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Free To Canoe said:
Now reading Younger Next Year by Crowley and Lodge.

It is as I have always believed. You can maintain your health and mobility of your youth into old age if you exercise and take care of your self. The effects of a sedentary lifestyle on your well being as you age are much greater than the ageing effect itself. Many around me do not believe this is so. Now I can reference the book that explains it.
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Not so fast......http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f38/sad-news-from-younger-next-year-85920.html
 
Free To Canoe said:
I don't believe his early death changes the theory. No one said anything about being immortal. It's about a better quality of life. One that many I know don't have. For example, being able to walk a mile to see something is no longer an option for these folks.
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Based on what I have seen with people older than me who have since passed on I have to agree. They (generally) keep up a healthy lifestyle and then their health "falls off a cliff" the last 6 to 18 months. That's a lot better than being almost immobile or bedridden for five years and if I can prevent that by going to the gym every other day and walking on days when I don't, then that's what I'm going to do.

That said, there are of course no guarantees, but the statistics are favorable for the ones who exercise.
 
Standing Down

Reading "Standing Down", which is a compilation of stories by/about soldiers, war, combat and their return to civilian society. It's sponsored by The Great Books Foundation. Worth a read, especially if you are a Vet or someone close to you is.
 
John Scalzi's "The Collapsing Empire," is a good beach read. It your standard space opera that reads like a who done it. Sets things up nicely for volume 2 which will probably be titled "The End of Empire."
 
I upload a lot of books from my library's CLoud reader. Depending on what they have when I browse, I get to read a lot of things I otherwise wouldn't have thought of. Just finished Rosemary: The Forgotten Kennedy Daughter. So tragic. The family more or less completely abandoned her after the botched lobotomy, yet it is still uncertain she had anything more than a pronounced learning disability.

I'm about to start J D Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. Has great reviews and I lived for a short time in southern Ohio myself.
 
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The Greatest Story Ever Told -- So Far, by Lawrence Krauss is pretty good for physics fans. Even better is his, A Universe from Nothing which I read a while back. The Greatest Story is basically a brief history of particle physics from early renaissance precursors to the Higgs Boson. Krauss is very good at interpreting complex science for lay audiences. Unfortunately, the only way to really understand this stuff is through mathematics and that sort of math is way out of reach for we mortals. Krauss gets pretty far using non-math analogies but even without math concepts like gauge are still pretty difficult to wrap your head around. Every time I get through a book like this everything I learned is already leaking away. Oh well, that makes the next book plowing through the same material interesting.
 
donheff said:
...Unfortunately, the only way to really understand this stuff is through mathematics and that sort of math is way out of reach for we mortals. Krauss gets pretty far using non-math analogies but even without math concepts like gauge are still pretty difficult to wrap your head around. Every time I get through a book like this everything I learned is already leaking away. Oh well, that makes the next book plowing through the same material interesting.
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That is my observation too. The particle physics stuff starts to get very complex and non-physical once one starts getting beyond the basic physical chemistry sort of stuff. So I'm trying to learn where to draw the line. Where are the Cliff Notes? :)

I've been reading a fair amount about astronomy. Haven't found a good book to latch onto but there are plenty of good web sites with up to date Hubble (and such) pictures to go along with the astronomy/physics.
 
Somewhat of a change of pace, I've been getting into the Alex Berenson John Wells series.....derring-do, well written for the genre, and quite absorbing:

Books
 
Not, (really), a sci-fi buff, but I have, (finally, after many decades), started in on Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, (I have, in the past, read a couple of his other novels); he was definitely ahead of his time.
 
Black Edge by Sheelah Kolhatkar. About insider trading and Steven Cohen. I am only part way through.
 
I am most of the way through J.D. Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy." Pretty fascinating stuff, although to me his life and upbringing seems to be from another planet.
 
Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140 is good. It is a vision of New York after 50 feet of sea rise in two rapid "surges" in the late 2000s as Antarctic ice shelf buffers collapse allowing massive glacial outflows. At it's core it is just a good story about a bunch of quirky characters living in the old Met Life building on Madison Square in the developing "super Venice" that is lower Manhattan. Robinson uses it as a vehicle to get in some good jabs at current day climate denialism and financial shenanigans. It involves treasure chests from the revolution, hurricanes, animal rights, and a great slam at the too big to fail financial industry.
 
bjorn2bwild said:
+3 on "The Boys in The Boat" - I gained a new appreciation for the discipline of team rowing + "catching a crab" and "ten big ones". Set in depression era Seattle with tie-ins to Sequim, Berkeley, and Nazi Germany.
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Me too but a ways behind. Good book and what a slice of Americana.
 
I was gifted the book Cognac: The Seductive Saga of the World's Most Coveted Spirit by Kyle Jarrard, 2016. This was because of my upcoming Europe trip with a stop to the town of Cognac, where I have always wanted to visit but never made a serious attempt to do. This time, it will be combined with a stay in Bordeaux and a visit to Saint Emilion.

The book dust cover says that "Cognac is the first comprehensive history of this celebrated spirit...". Really? I don't know if I believe that, but it will surely tell me things that I did not know.

Have not started to read it yet, because I am still busy surfin' the Web to fill in some info for some other stops that are still undefined. Normally, I would read a small book like this in one sitting or two. It would be nice if I take it on the trip, but then have to lug it around for 6 weeks. Would hate to throw away a gifted hardcover. So I probably will read it before leaving.
 
scrabbler1 said:
I am most of the way through J.D. Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy." Pretty fascinating stuff, although to me his life and upbringing seems to be from another planet.
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You made me curious, so I went to Amazon to read a description of this book. My assumptions were correct that I would not think that his upbringing would seem to be from another planet. Unfortunately, the abuse, alcoholism, poverty and trauma are part of my memories. I am so glad that myself and 3 of my siblings broke the cycle. My other sibling, who is deceased, had many problems, but was doing much better the last couple of years before he died. He was a character and a lot of fun. He was only 45 years old when he died and we miss him so much.
 
I finally read Oil Painting Secrets From a Master painter, David Leffel. This is my supposedly textbook that I have to read before I painted my last painting. But don't laugh that this is required reading because I almost didn't read it.
 
Just finished "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot. Wow. Fascinating- and inspirational, and mildly disturbing all at the same time. Great read.
 
In the past 2 weeks I've read March 1917 and Killing Kennedy. Currently reading the 753 page 2013(2016 in English) book "Hitler" by Volker Ullrich. Will soon be reading these 3 books:Forty Autumns, Paris 1919, and "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream".
 
I finished Hillbilly Elegy this weekend. I found it somewhat disappointing. It is a good story along the "rags to riches" American lines of Ben Franklin--poor disadvantaged boy by luck and pluck overcomes obstacles and rises up--but I didn't find it nearly as insightful as some reviews have made it out to be. I'd like to find a book that is more in-depth and analytical about the plight of poor whites, especially in Appalachia. I lived briefly in southern Ohio, close to the area Vance writes about, and found the culture fascinating.
 
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