What have you read recently? 2009 -2020

Status
Not open for further replies.
I just finished

The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code
by Margalit Fox

Really interesting! I'd been reading too much fiction lately so decided to read a few non-fiction books.
 
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is a superb novel and deserving of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction which it won this year.

So, Anyway is a memoir by John Cleese. It covers his childhood up to the beginning of Monty Python's Flying Circus. I found the book very enjoyable, but potential readers should be aware that 98% of the book is about his years prior to Monty Python. Fawlty Towers came later and is not part of this book, though we learn about his marriage to Connie Booth.
 
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Could not put it down! I'm hoping it will be made into a movie.
 
I'm finishing up "The Millionaire Next Store" right now. It's turned out not to be what I expected, but it's a quick read that's worth the few hours.
 
The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter, by Malcolm Mackay is a sort of Scottish noire novel set in Glasgow. The first in a trilogy, it follows the actions of a hit man who wants to remain independent but is being dragged into alignment with an ascendant gang. Good read.
 
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. A quick read from McCullough, whose biographies of John Adams and Truman were more on the monumental side. This work focuses on the Wrights as they embarked upon their mission to achieve powered flight and then strove to show their achievement to a skeptical world. It's interesting to discover how the Wrights' achievements paired their inventive skills on building their flyer with developing their individual talents as pilots. They were flying dozens of miles under total control while others were struggling to get off the ground.
 
Reread Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell after watching the excellent recent BBC adapation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Strange_&_Mr_Norrell
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is the 2004 debut novel of British writer Susanna Clarke. An alternative history set in 19th-century England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars, it is based on the premise that magic once existed in England and has returned with two men: Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange.
 
I did a book report on this one for the boss, and it is just excellent. A great gift for the folks raising your grandkids, or for friends with kids, or even yourself.

Ron Leiber The Opposite of Spoiled: raising Kids Who are Grounded, Generous, and Smart about Money

Ron Leiber is a personal finance columnist who has worked for the NY Times and the WSJ. I like that he addresses the big elephant in the room for more affluent parents, the dreaded "are we rich?" question, and how to frame the discussion about money and values.

Lieber has practical advice for lots of teachable moments but his most interesting commentary is on the awkward but important questions children have about wealth, within the family and compared to their peers and others. From his chapter subtitled “Instilling gratitude, grace, and perspective in our sons and daughters” comes this:

“Many of us have enough to give our kids everything they need and much of what they want. And even if we have less than many people we know in our communities, we have more than most in our country and in our world. We know this, but our kids probably don’t quite yet. So how do we make them aware of just how good they have it, without preaching to them or making them pity others who have less?”

I quite liked it, from start to finish and would recommend it.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Opposite-Spoiled-Grounded-Generous/dp/0062247018
 
"The Girl on the Train" by Paula Hawkins. I read mostly technical books but I do love a good murder mystery. Friend recommended this book. It's too "Hitchcock" for me. Didn't like the writing style, too much going back and forth in time.
 
"The Chase" by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg. Quick read about a master con artist Nicolas Fox and die-hard FBI agent Kate O'Hare. I did not even realize that it was part of a series, so will need to read the first one.

"The Martian" by Andy Weir. It is not the type of book that I normally ready. I started it and put it down to read "The Chase", but went back and finished it. I saw the preview for the movie at the theater, so I wanted to finish it before the movie came out. I did enjoy the book and I am glad that I finished it.

I am currently reading "Outlander" by Diane Gabaldon. It is about a married nurse living in 1940 and is on a second honeymoon with her DH in Scotland. The war has just ended. She is hurled back in time, through a stone circle, and finds herself in 1743. This is a series of 8 or 9 books. It has been made into a TV series. I do not usually read books from ancient times, but I am quite enjoying this book.

"The Martian" and "Outlander" were on a list of books that were page turner type of books and I decided to try to find them at our local library. I can't remember if "Outlander" was on the list or if it was one of the comments that people wrote saying they could not believe this book was not on the list.
 
Just finished a P.D. James novel, Innocent Blood, link here: http://www.amazon.com/Innocent-Bloo...38288866&sr=8-1&keywords=innocent+blood+james
Adopted as a child into a privileged family, Philippa Palfrey fantasizes that she is the daughter of an aristocrat and a parlor maid. The terrifying truth about her parents and a long-ago murder is only the first in a series of shocking betrayals. Philippa quickly learns that those who delve into the secrets of the past must be on guard when long-buried horrors begin to stir.
Click to expand...
It is very much a study of the dark side of the characters. Some things come together at the end. It is dark and sometimes hard going because the characters are not heroic in the traditional sense i.e. there is nobody solving a mystery with brilliant detective work. But I couldn't leave it and found the end to be very interesting. Also P.D. James has such a good command of the English language which it a rich reading experience.
 
I am Malala, by Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb (2013). I couldn't put it down. I am so grateful to have lived in parts of the world where most basic human rights are taken for granted.
 
Not a new release, but I finally caught up with the audio version of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon which I would highly recommend. Told entirely from the POV of an autistic boy, I found this a lot more compelling than I anticipated.
 
The new Lee Child book, Make Me, which hasn't come out yet. As a former librarian I get to read lots of galleys! It was good, but not as great as previous books. Still, love Reacher!
 
Just started reading "A Time for Truth" (Ted Cruz). Pretty good so far.
 
Several Stimulating Books

American Nations, A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America; Colin Woodard. "Fascinating . . . engrossing . . . a smart read that feels particularly timely now." -- The Boston Globe My mother and I are native to what Woodard calls El Norte. Her roots are The Midlands and Yankeedom. My father and his parents are native to Greater Appalachia. I live now in the Far West, specifically Nevada, as a refugee from El Norte, specifically California.

Genome, The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Matt Ridley. "A fascinating tour of the human genome. . . . If you want to catch a glimpse of the biotech century that is now dawning. . . Genome is an excellent place to start. " -- Wall Street Jornal

What's Wrong with Benevolence; Happiness, Private Property, and the Limits of Enlightenment; David Stove. "Stove's mordant wit exposes the assumptions of the modern world for the self-serving and dangerous myths they are." James Franklin

The Thin Green Line; The Money Secrets of the Super Wealthy; Paul Sullivan; Wealth Matters columnist, The New York Times "Chances are you will buy this book for its smart and practical advice about building true wealth (Seriously, buy it.) But what kept me hooked were the tales of money decisions gone horribly awry: fortunes squandered, kids ruined by inheritances, and rich people made miserable by their riches. Learn from the wise, or learn for the foolish -- either way, you win." Dan Heath . . . "There's good how-to stuff here, but Sullivan's added value is his gentle insistence that wealth and money aren't synonyms." -- Kirkus Reviews. Reading the book, I kept thinking that the fabulously rich can be as screwed up as the rest of us.

The End of Men and the Rise of Women, Hanna Rosin; "In this bold and inspired dispatch, Rosin upends the common platitudes of contemporary sexual politics with a deeply reported meditation from the unexpected frontiers of our rapidly changing culture." Katie Rolphe. Men can be almost pathetically grateful for the recognition of our plight in modern society. By making it safe and comfortable for women and children in general, we have worked ourselves out of a job. Rolphe's observations would be intolerable if a man had written them.
 
Last edited:
I read The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (2010) by Siddhartha Mukherjee.

The author is an oncologist. While this book is aimed at laymen, it delves more deeply into the historical background and technical aspects of cancer treatments than most readers would expect. It also chronicles the study of the cause of cancers, and describes how researchers were misled when they looked for the elusive single and common cause of all cancers, which does not exist.

The author spends quite a bit of time on how the treatments for breast cancer and leukemia have progressed through the ages, and how doctors and researchers fumbled on their way to look for effective treatments. It is gruesome to read about how William Halsted, a surgeon, developed the radical mastectomy in 1882 when anesthesiology was primitive and antibiotics had not been discovered.

This is a well-researched book (it won a Pulitzer prize), and the interested reader would pick up a lot of interesting facts. For example, penicillin was so precious in 1939 that it was recovered from the urine of treated patients for reuse. Reading this book demands a devotion, and the less engaged audience may find it easier to watch a 3-part PBS video series based on this book.

It is sobering for the reader to realize that while great progress has been made with certain types of cancer like Hogkin's lymphoma, not much can be done for some cancers such as pancreatic cancer, or even breast cancer patients whose tumor is Her-2 negative and does not respond to regular treatments. If there's any part of our body that can attain immortality or difficult to kill, it's the cancer cells in our body.
 
NW-Bound said:
I read The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (2010) by Siddhartha Mukherjee.

The author is an oncologist. While this book is aimed at laymen, it delves more deeply into the historical background and technical aspects of cancer treatments than most readers would expect.

This is a well-researched book (it won a Pulitzer prize), and the interested reader would pick up a lot of interesting facts. For example, penicillin was so precious in 1939 that it was recovered from the urine of treated patients for reuse. Reading this book demands a devotion, and the less engaged audience may find it easier to watch a 3-part PBS video series based on this book.
Click to expand...

I recommended this book on this thread back in 2011.

Meadbh said:
I am in the middle of "The Emperor of all Maladies" by Siddartha Mukherjee. The author is an oncologist who started a project on the history of cancer and realized that he was describing a phenomenon with a personality. So it's subtitled "a biography of cancer". He has a very engaging writing style and the suspense keeps the pages turning. It has won a ton of awards, including the Pulitzer prize. Highly recommended.

The Emperor of All Maladies
Click to expand...

It's interesting to read your perspective on it. You found it a bit of a hard slog, while I found it very easy to read, probably due to my medical background. I did watch the PBS series but found it just scratched the surface.

The reason it is well researched is that it started out as Dr. Mukherjee's research project for his oncology fellowship.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

S
Scott Burns' own story
Replies
3
Views
3K
haha
haha

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom