What have you read recently?

[steelyman]

I’ve been enjoying A Drinking Life by Pete Hamill, borrowed from the library. As the title implies, it’s about alcohol but the aspect I like is its setting: growing up in Brooklyn in the pre- and post-WWII years.

I was introduced to Hamill in the PBS New York documentary series and thought him interesting. His writing is interesting as well (at least to me).

https://a.co/d/iZSwcXx

[FREE866]

Just finished Brief Answers to Big Questions by Stephen Hawking.


He doesn't believe there is any heaven, any afterlife, or time travel so I found it a bit unnerving.

[FREE866]

PS - A great site to keep track of all the books you've read and want to read is Goodreads

[Lsbcal]

Best book of the Dark Iceland series I have read so far. By Ragnar Jonasson:

Nightlblind: https://smile.amazon.com/Nightblind-...t%2C153&sr=1-1

Quote:

Ari Thor Arason is a local policeman who has an uneasy relationship with the villagers in an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland—where no one locks their doors. The peace of this close-knit community is shattered by a murder. One of Ari’s colleagues is gunned down at point-blank range in the dead of night in a deserted house. With a killer on the loose and the dark Arctic waters closing in, it falls to Ari Thor to piece together a puzzle that involves a new mayor and a psychiatric ward in Reykjavik. It becomes all too clear that tragic events from the past are weaving a sinister spell that may threaten them all.

[Zona]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FREE866 PS - A great site to keep track of all the books you've read and want to read is Goodreads

Yes, I love using that site! A couple times in my pre-Goodreads days, I picked up a book and only halfway through realized that the plot was familiar and I’d already read it! That doesn’t happen anymore now that I keep better track. Plus, I really like the Reading Challenge- it motivates me to read more books each year, rather than goofing off on the internet. Well, except here of course [emoji846]

[John Galt III]

Collection of short stories by John Cheever.

[upupandaway]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zona Yes, I love using that site! A couple times in my pre-Goodreads days, I picked up a book and only halfway through realized that the plot was familiar and I’d already read it! That doesn’t happen anymore now that I keep better track. Plus, I really like the Reading Challenge- it motivates me to read more books each year, rather than goofing off on the internet. Well, except here of course [emoji846]

If you would like to be my Goodreads friend send me a message. I wish I had more connections on the site because I love seeing what people are reading and their progress but my group of friends and family either are not readers or are not on Goodreads.

Note: Goodreads has very good privacy settings for your profile. You can easily reduce what it shows down to just your first name.

[Pointby2]

Reading "The Harry Bosch Novels" - Connelly. It's like being able to revisit the TV series, and all the dialog in my head is from the characters in the show.

[scrabbler1]

The book came out in 2011, but I just finished "The Jersey Sting." It centers around a man named Solomon Dwek. He got nailed by the FBI for carious white-collar crimes such as money-laundering and running a Ponzi scheme back around 2006. He became an FBI informant, setting up many local officials and rabbis in northern New Jersey and Brooklyn, NY. They nailed nearly 50 people thanks to his undercover work with the FBI and the US Attorney, who, at the time was Chris Christie. There was even a kidney broker who got nailed!

I worked in New Jersey until late 2008 when I ERed, particularly Jersey City, where many of the public official were caught taking bribes. I didn't know any of this was going on, of course, and the big day when all the bad guys got nailed was in 2009, the year after I stopped working in NJ. But I did find it fascinating how some of the people Dwek set up met him at a diner I ate lunch at a lot. I wonder if any of the videos took place when I had lunch there.

It's like a combination of a Dateline hidden camera episode with a bad Law & Order episode, complete with corrupt politicians in a state ripe with corrupt politicians - New Jersey!

[John Galt III]

Started a collection of short stories by Anton Checkov. Not what I expected. But so far, so good.

[steady saver]

About to finish The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert. She is the author of Eat, Pray, Love which I didn't read but have seen the movie.

Very much enjoying this book.

[target2019]

''From the Children's Home to the Gas Chamber, and how some avoided their fate'' has more than 50 testimonies. Authored by Reinier Heisman, who enabled the reunions of many of the survivors.

[scrabbler1]

While I was reading, "The Jersey Sting," I was also reading another book. "Rickey," a current book about Rickey Henderson, a hall-of-fame baseball player who played for more than 20 years, including the 1980s and 1990s. He has the all-time stolen base record.

Henderson has led a fascinating life, being brought up in Oakland before eventually becoming a major league ballplayer in 1979. I followed pro baseball a lot in the 1980s, especially the Yankees where he played for 4 1/2 years in the late 1980s, so learning about the story behind this fine player was a worthwhile experience.

[EarlyandLate]

I'm decades behind on reading and don't read current fiction at all. During the pandemic, I got on a philosophy kick and reread some of the classical Greek philosophy. I highly recommend Plato's Phaedo.

I just finished Robert Pirsig's second book Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals. That was after making it through his Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance at the end of last year. Zen is still used in university courses, but it's hard to imagine how college age folks get much out of it. I didn't when I was young. So many of his ideas absolutely blew my mind. I don't agree with everything he writes, but his insights into humanity, culture and society are amazing. Perhaps more importantly, he provides a model for deconstructing and analyzing what one observes in the world and how it fits into the grand scheme of human existence.
Lila refers quite a bit to concepts he presented in Zen, but you can find plenty of primers or summaries of Zen online, since it has been used so much in college courses.

[Lsbcal]

Spy novel by Charles Cumming, Box88. Quite good.

Link: https://smile.amazon.com/BOX-88-Char...s%2C154&sr=8-1

Quote:

Lachlan Kite is a member of BOX 88, an elite transatlantic black ops outfit so covert that not even MI6 and the CIA are certain of its existence — but even the best spy can’t anticipate every potential threat in a world where dangerous actors lurk around every corner. At the funeral of his childhood best friend, Lachlan falls into a trap that drops him into the hands of a potentially deadly interrogation, with his pregnant wife, also abducted, being held as collateral for the information he’s sworn on his own life to protect.

[anethum]

To Kill a Troubadour by Martin Walker, is the latest in his fantastic "Bruno" series. This was more a thriller than a murder mystery. Set, as always, in the Dordogne valley in SW France, this has Walker's great mix of history, world events, culinary delights, and interesting recurring characters. And of course, Bruno's bassett hound Balzac.

The Sweet Remnants of Summer by Alexander McCall Smith, in his latest in the similarly wonderful "Isabel Dalhousie" series. She is a moral philosopher and is asked by an acquaintance to solve a sticky family issue. This time, her dreamy husband also brings a troubling matter to her attention.

I loved both of these books. Both series are best read in order.

[LastBoomer]

Yes, his first book is great!

[LastBoomer]

Yes, Amor Towles’ first book is great!

[Lsbcal]

Read 3 books in the last month and liked them all.

Ragnar Jonasson's Winterkill: Book 6 in the dark Iceland series.

Quote:

When the body of a nineteen-year-old girl is found on the main street of a small Iceland town, Police Inspector Ari Thor battles a violent Icelandic storm in an increasingly dangerous hunt for her killer ... The chilling, claustrophobic finale to the international bestselling Dark Iceland series.

https://www.amazon.com/Winterkill-Da...s%2C141&sr=1-1


Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine: might be called a relationship book.

Quote:

No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine. Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living.

https://smile.amazon.com/Eleanor-Oli...s%2C148&sr=8-1


J.A. Janse's Desert Heat: First book in a series. Police drama.

Quote:

A cop lies dying beneath the blistering Arizona sun—a local lawman who may well have become the next sheriff of Cochise County. The police brass claim that Andy Brady was dirty, and that his shooting was a suicide attempt. Joanna Brady, his devoted wife and mother of their nine-year-old daughter, knows a cover-up when she hears one . . . and murder when she sees it. But her determined efforts to hunt down an assassin and clear her husband's name are placing Joanna and her surviving family in harm's way—because in the desert, the one thing more lethal than a rattler's bite . . . is the truth.

https://smile.amazon.com/Desert-Heat...s%2C131&sr=1-1

[anethum]

The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman, the latest in his "Thursday Murder Club" series, was delightful. Osman's writing is wonderfully witty.

The Great Mistake by Jonathan Lee, is an outstanding novel about Andrew Haswell Green, a very real man who has sadly largely been forgotten despite leaving New York City a much better place than he found it.

The Darkest Evening by Ann Cleeves is another fine mystery in her Vera series.

Dinners with Ruth by Nina Totenberg was a bit different from what I expected. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's more about various important friendships in the author's life, and not just her friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (which predated Ginsburg's nomination to the Supreme Court). It's also about the deaths of close friends and spouses. Like Ginsburg, the author had a friendship with Antonin Scalia, which I hadn't known about.

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett is a collection of her essays. She's one of my favorite writers of fiction, and now she's one of my favorite writers of non-fiction, too. The book title is the eponymous essay in the book, and it's a remarkable story.