What have you read recently? 2009 -2020

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Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon.I heard a while ago that they were gonna make it into a movie starring Robert Downey Jr.Still waiting.
 
Marita40 said:
IThe Old Curiosity Shop in advance of the forthcoming Masterpiece Theatre production. Little Nell is tedious--a wimpering waif--but the secondary characters, especially the evil ones, are vintage Dickens.
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"One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing."

Oscar Wilde.;)
 
Great quote from the irrepressible Oscar Wilde, Nemo! Little Nell's death has to be the longest, most drawn out, sentimental death in Victorian history. I can't say I laughed, but I was pretty bored--it was just so tedious and predictable. I'm working on David Copperfield right now with much more enthusiasm.
 
Am working my way through the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly. He really is a standout in the crime/police thriller/mystery category. Very enjoyable-next up is Trunk Music, which is book 4.
Others in the series are Black Echo, Black Ice, Concrete Blonde, and The Last Coyote.
 
Last weekend I read Now you see her by Joy Fielding. It is a thriller set in my home town, and she knows all the landmarks! Even the street where I grew up features in the book. It was a quick and entertaining read and the first book I have ever read on my Blackberry Torch (free from the library). I was actually amazed at how easy it was to read.

I have started two new books: Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby on my Kindle and The ground beneath her feet by Salman Rushdie on my iPad. Both are quite enjoyable. Nicholas Nickleby has a good discussion of the stock market and the dangers of overestimating SWR after receiving an inheritance.....
 
Just finished Coming Apart by Charles Murray. A very good read on what's led to the decline of our (US) culture. Lots of data, though more on what happened and less on how or why. Finishes with two potential futures, leaves the reader to speculate which way we'll go...
In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes do not break along lines of race or ethnicity.

Drawing on five decades of statistics and research, Coming Apart demonstrates that a new upper class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their underlying American kinship—divergence that has nothing to do with income inequality and that has grown during good economic times and bad.

The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. That divergence puts the success of the American project at risk.

The evidence in Coming Apart is about white America. Its message is about all of America.
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Finished a couple of new books:

Need You Now, by James Grippando, is a financial thriller featuring a Madoff like Ponzi scheme hijacked by the Feds to... Pretty good read and Grippando has several ePub novels available from the library for future reading.

Also, The Technologists, by Matthew Pearl, a historical thriller featuring the debut class of MIT saving Boston from bad guys and Harvard. I liked this book which featured a mix of real characters from MIT, Harvard and Boston and some fictional characters. But I have to say, it is pretty juvenile. I have never read a Harry Potter book but somehow this one feels like it must be a bit like what that series is like. Give it a try and see what you think :)
 
donheff said:
Finished a couple of new books:

Need You Now, by James Grippando, is a financial thriller featuring a Madoff like Ponzi scheme hijacked by the Feds to... Pretty good read and Grippando has several ePub novels available from the library for future reading.
...
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Don, do you convert ePub novels for a Kindle? If so, is the process easy?

I looked this one Need You Now and the reviews looked pretty good. BTW, he wrote one called Amazon.com: Money to Burn: A Novel of Suspense: James Grippando: Books
At thirty-one, Michael Cantella is a rising star at Wall Street's premier investment bank, Saxton Silvers. Everything is going according to plan until Ivy Layton, the love of his life, vanishes on their honeymoon in the Bahamas.

Fast-forward four years. It's the eve of his thirty-fifth birthday, and Michael is still on track: successful career, beautiful new wife, piles of money. Reveling in his good fortune, Michael logs in to his computer, enters his password, and pulls up his biggest investment account: Zero balance. He tries another, and another. All of them zero. Someone has wiped him out. His only clue is a new e-mail message: Just as planned. xo xo.
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Sounds like one of my day-mares and it's in our library.
 
Lsbcal said:
Don, do you convert ePub novels for a Kindle? If so, is the process easy?

I looked this one Need You Now and the reviews looked pretty good. BTW, he wrote one called Amazon.com: Money to Burn: A Novel of Suspense: James Grippando: Books
Sounds like one of my day-mares and it's in our library.
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My Library carries both ePub (for Nooks) and Kindle versions so you just download the version that works for your device. If your library has the ePub it may also have the Kindle version. I do have software that can convert one format to the other (Calibre recommended by T-Al) but it will not work with encrypted library downloads.

Decrypting to time shift your books is a whole different topic :)
 
MissMolly said:
A great tool for converting ebooks to whatever format your reader uses (mobi, epub, etc) is Calibre.

calibre - E-book management

It's very easy. You can also maintain a copy of all your books on Claibre so they never become lost.
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I also use Calibre and like it a lot. But I use it to manage books that do not have digital rights encryption. If you purchase an ebook from Amazon, B&N, Google or whatever I assume you are stuck with the format you purchase because of the digital rights management, correct? As I mentioned above, decryption is a whole different (and controversial) topic.
 
donheff said:
I also use Calibre and like it a lot. But I use it to manage books that do not have digital rights encryption. If you purchase an ebook from Amazon, B&N, Google or whatever I assume you are stuck with the format you purchase because of the digital rights management, correct? As I mentioned above, decryption is a whole different (and controversial) topic.
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No, it's easy to convert from one to the other. I have a Kindle, but still occasionally get books in epub. You can convert to mobi using Calibre. It does not break the DRM (unless you install the available plugin). So, you are not stuck with the format and you are not doing anything illegal.
 
Thanks Don and Molly. I just got a Kindle Fire today and so am excited to see what I can do with it. I'm starting to see what all the fuss was about. :)
 
I love my Kindle. My daughter had gotten one of the first generation Kindles and I thought it was silly at the time. Who would want to read on one of those as opposed to holding a book?? Then I got a 3 month contract in Texas (I live in KY) so I borrowed hers. I fell in love. All those books available right at my fingertips! I didn't have to lug a bunch of books in my suitcase. I asked for a Kindle for my birthday. I now have over 600 books on it - all them free. I have classics, history, biography, historical romance, "how to", cookbooks, fantasy, science fiction, you name it. Whatever I am in the mood to read, there it is. And if I'm unexpectedly stuck somewhere, I just open my Kindle app on my iphone and pick up where I left off at home. These ereaders are great in my opinion.
 
MissMolly said:
No, it's easy to convert from one to the other. I have a Kindle, but still occasionally get books in epub. You can convert to mobi using Calibre. It does not break the DRM (unless you install the available plugin). So, you are not stuck with the format and you are not doing anything illegal.
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That is good to know. I haven't bought any eBooks yet but it is good to know you are not completely locked in to a platform when you do.
 
Just finished The Orphan Master's Son. Really enjoyed this innovative different novel. The story takes place in North Korea. Sometimes funny, shocking, it is an adventure, love story and just overall really good read.

t.r.
 
William Boyd is one of my favorite authors and I enjoyed this one: Amazon.com: Armadillo: A Novel (9780375702167): William Boyd: Books

The writing is excellent and the character development is always well done by Boyd. A solid 4 stars, maybe even up to 4.5 stars.

The start of the Amazon review:
Lorimer Black may suffer from a serious sleep disorder and an obsession with the labyrinths of the British class system, but Armadillo's peculiar protagonist is the star insurance adjuster of London's Fortress Sure PLC, unaffectionately known as the Fort. At the very start of William Boyd's noir-ish seventh novel, however, things take a decided swerve for the worse. On a bleak January morning one of his cases has apparently chosen to kill himself rather than talk: "Mr. Dupree was simultaneously the first dead person he had encountered in his life, his first suicide and his first hanged man and Lorimer found this congruence of firsts deceptively troubling."
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Sarah in SC said:
Am working my way through the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly. He really is a standout in the crime/police thriller/mystery category. Very enjoyable-next up is Trunk Music, which is book 4.
Others in the series are Black Echo, Black Ice, Concrete Blonde, and The Last Coyote.
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Still inhaling these awesome books! I'm up to number 10 in the series. These are great books if you like mysteries and cop thrillers. DH is a few behind me, and he's really enjoying them, too!
 
Sarah in SC said:
Still inhaling these awesome books! I'm up to number 10 in the series. These are great books if you like mysteries and cop thrillers. DH is a few behind me, and he's really enjoying them, too!
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I have read all of Michael Connelly's books and love them. The last one "The Drop" was not one of his best . It was still good just not his usual greatness .
 
Last week I read "Beautiful Boy " by David Sheff . It is the heartbreaking story of his son's addiction. A few parts were slow but the rest was a great read .
 
Colin Dexter is an excellent English crime writer (discussed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Dexter).

He is well know for his creation of the Inspector Morse series which was also televised and some of the dramas appeared on the PBS Mystery series. I just finished The Dead of Jericho (reviews here: Amazon.com: Dead of Jericho (Inspector Morse Mysteries) (9780804114868): Colin Dexter: Books) Which is a 5 star book in my opinion.

Morse is one of my favorite characters of all times. He gives his partner Lewis a bad time but they work very well together and share a fond devotion of the English sort (I guess).

DW and I are also going through the many Inspector Morris DVD's (from Netflix) that star John Thaw as Inspector Morris and Kevin Whately as Sergeant Lewis.
 
Arcadia, by Lauren Groff is a must read. Very hard to describe the plot. It is a lyrical look at life through the eyes of a boy growing up in a commune in upstate New York in the 70s. We see the community develop and decline. We see the boy grow older and deal with the loss of dreams, life and death. Very compelling.
 
I purchased Isabel Allende's "Island Beneath the Sea" at an airport bookstore a couple of weeks ago and would recommend it as a real page turner. It is historical fiction and tells the story of a woman born into slavery in Haiti in the 19th century and ends in her flight to New Orleans.
 
I am reading The Hunger Games. I work with a lot of younger people who have been urging me too read it. It's interesting, but I can see that the way it's written, the author was angling to follow in the path of the Twilight series, with movies, etc. it seems to be written with that in mind, and so is not at all subtle. Like I said, it's interesting and different, but not my type of book.
 
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