What have you read recently? 2009 -2020

Status
Not open for further replies.
ohyes said:
Tom Wolfe is a favorite author. Bonfire, on my list of best books read. Glad you posted this. Thanks...adding this to my future reading list.
Click to expand...

I just read his book: " From Bauhaus to Our House", his sharply funny and merciless skewering of Modern Arts.
 
I finished this novel: The Company: A Novel of the CIA: Robert Littell: 9780142002629: Amazon.com: Books I would give it 5 stars.

It had been recommended by Larry Swedroe as what was on his summer reading list. It's a long book (900 pages) which follows the CIA from the Hungarian uprising in the 1950's to the Gorbachev era. As historical fiction it does a good job so far as I can tell. The author may be well connected and so one does not quite know how much is surmise and how much might have been actual factual without naming names.

There is an interview with Littell here which I found interesting:
Interview | Robert Littell
 
Zealot by Reza Aslan is a fascinating look at the historical life and times of Jesus of Nazareth. Aslan makes the case that the historical Jesus was likely a "Zealot," dedicated to ridding the Holy Land of the Roman occupiers, bringing on the Kingdom of God ( a la lots of messiahs in those days) and interested only in the Jewish people not the Gentile audience that became the focus of the Church through Paul. It is a bit controversial but an interesting read.
 
A book named "iPad for the over 50s" by Marc Campbell. Absolutely easy to follow, step by step and in full colour!

Also read The Game of Thrones ( you know - the HBO series)! This is Book 1 of The Song of Ice and Fire. Very good! Over 600 pages.
 
Required reading for my English 1 college class in 1954... Revisited it here The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger
and liked it all over again.
There were never many girls at all at the football games. Only seniors were allowed to bring girls with them. It was a terrible school, no matter how you looked at it. I like to be somewhere at least where you can see a few girls around once in a while, even if they're only scratching their arms or blowing their noses or even just giggling or something. Old Selma Thurmer--she was the headmaster's daughter--showed up at the games quite often, but she wasn't exactly the type that drove you mad with desire. She was a pretty nice girl, though. I sat next to her once in the bus from Agerstown and we sort of struck up a conversation. I liked her. She had a big nose and her nails were all bitten down and bleedy-looking and she had on those damn falsies that point all over the place, but you felt sort of sorry for her. What I liked about her, she didn't give you a lot of horse manure about what a great guy her father was. She probably knew what a phony slob he was.
Click to expand...

....and like that.
 
Last edited:
imoldernu said:
Required reading for my English 1 college class in 1954... Revisited it here The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger
and liked it all over again.
Click to expand...

Great! I was hugely disappointed that Salinger and Harper Lee are not available for Kindle :(

I saw a commercial that there is a movie "Salinger" coming out in September.

Did you know that Salinger was the original guy in Field Of Dreams (novel) who accompanied the character played by Kevin Costner in the movie version?
 
Just finished "American Pastoral" by P. Roth. A little different from the usual Roth novel, in that there was a little less introspection, and more action. Interesting plot. A good long read. Don't know why it won a Pulitzer prize, though.
 
Orson Scott Card's, Earth on Fire, is a prequel to Ender's Game,It was a pretty good read but not in a class with Ender's Game,speaking of which, I am eagerly waiting for the movie.
 
We took Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Friend by Christopher Moore with us on the bus and passed it around over the past 7 weeks. Everyone who read it, loved it. Very very funny coming of age novel that still manages to cover the stuff you might recall from Sunday School. Highly recommended if you have a sense of humor.
 
Nemo2 said:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.......NOW...where are all the pics of your trip? ;)
Click to expand...

All 12 billion of them? Working on it, working on it. My new avatar is a favorite from Godforsakistan aka Kazakhstan. Potholes in the "road" you could wash a poodle in. A standard one. :D
 

Attachments

  • Photo Jul 27, 8 20 52 AM.jpg
    Photo Jul 27, 8 20 52 AM.jpg
    693.7 KB · Views: 12
Sarah in SC said:
All 12 billion of them? Working on it, working on it. My new avatar is a favorite from Godforsakistan aka Kazakhstan. Potholes in the "road" you could wash a poodle in. A standard one. :D
Click to expand...

Think I recognize the Camel...

"Hey,hey hey... What day is it? What day is it?.... C'mon What day is it ?"
 
Sarah in SC said:
Godforsakistan aka Kazakhstan.
Click to expand...
Reminds me of a domestic Saudi flight from Dhahran to Riyadh...circa 1985.....scrolling through the English language newspaper, saw a comment in the Letters to the Editor column, (probably submitted by a Brit and over the heads of the editors).....to the effect that "Two jazz greats were Stan Kenton and Stan Getz.....a country should be established in memory of these two...it could be called Stanistan".

(Now get back to work and post those pics!) :)
 
I very much enjoyed two books by Canadian authors I found recently. The first is "How the Light Gets In" by Louise Penny. It is a very well written mystery/thriller featuring Chief Inspector Gamache of the Surete de Quebec. This series will be high on my list going forward.

The second, A Tap on the Window, by Linwood Barclay. Another mystery/thriller, this one is also quite good but a quicker, lighter read than Penny's.
 
Dreamer said:
Also, need a trip report please.
Click to expand...

Haha, if you're really bored, the blog is at teamdixiechickens.com but I haven't managed a synopsis yet, mostly because the bus is still out there causing logistical headaches. Right now stuck at the Vladivostok port, held up by a misunderstanding I had about the utility of a customs form versus a carnet de passage. DH dealing with it there, but I'm trying to help from 15 hour time zone difference. But I can say they are flush with pride from driving from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific! Having covered all but the last 2300 miles of it with them, I'm glad to be back where the showers are hot and the beers are cold!
 
Sarah in SC said:
the utility of a customs form versus a carnet de passage.
Click to expand...
I can only imagine.......50 years ago, when three of us set out, (with a 24 year old, right hand drive, car), to return to Australia from England.....we visited various embassies to check the logistics.......the Indian embassy told us that if the vehicle goes in it has to go out.....(regardless of whether it was totalled/burned out/fell apart/whatever.......and they demanded a cash bond amounting to (IIRC) about 10 times the pre-trip value of the car).

Needless to say, we didn't take it as far as India.

Good luck!
 
I just began reading, "This Town," by Mark Leibovich. He has been on a lot of TV shows promoting his book which is about Washington D.C. and the people in it. Good book so far.
 
The Warmth of Other Suns
Isabel Wilkerson

Epic account of the Great Migration. If you do not know the extent of how the Jim Crow South crushed the humanity of an entire segment of the population, I would highly recommend book.
 
I recently read "Shibumi" by Trevanian, probably for about the tenth time in thirty years. Still holds up remarkably well, especially since it's just a thriller. Ostensibly it's about a plot to hijack the Concorde, but the real story is the main character's biography.
 
scrabbler1 said:
I just began reading, "This Town," by Mark Leibovich. He has been on a lot of TV shows promoting his book which is about Washington D.C. and the people in it. Good book so far.
Click to expand...

Laugh out loud funny in parts. He skewers everyone.

I'm also reading Lawrence in Arabia. Really gives you perspective on the middle east, particularly Syria. NOT laugh out loud funny, but he's a great writer--makes it easy to understand how things got the way they were 100 years ago...
 
Just started 'the convoluted UNIVERSE book IV' by Delores Cannon. In the forward section she mentioned twisting you mind like a pretzel. Only on page 25, but I see pretzels.

Anyone read any of Delores books?

MRG
 
DW had The Legacy by Peter Turnbull checked out of the library and I needed a book. Read it and kind of enjoyed this short British police procedural. Turnbull has a whole series of Detective Inspector Hennessy novels.

This book takes place around York (northern England). BTW, York is a tourist destination we have visited and has a lot of historical significance + a great cathedral. One could read this and then travel to Britain with York as a nice stop over. Good for a least 2 days. I could even recommend a B&B there.

Here is a link to the 23 book series: Hennessey and Yellich series by Peter Turnbull
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

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

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom