What have you read recently?

[brett]

Red Sea Spies...Raffi Berg.

True story about how Israel's Mossad smuggled out just under 70,000 Ethiopian Jews (aka Black Jews) to Israel between the late 70's and early 80's through Sudan by air and by sea.

I could not put the book down.

 

[athena53]

The Man who Broke Capitalism by David Gelles, a biography of Jack Welch. I joined a GE sub just after he retired but saw remnants of his style. He'd changed a company previously know as "Generous Electric" to one that followed the thinking of Milton Freidman- increase shareholder value, no matter how you do it and no matter what the cost.

I'm happy to say that I see this changing in corporate America. Some of the efforts at ESG strike me as feel-good or shell games and a company with a wonderfully diverse board of directors may outsource its manufacturing to a country with abysmal human rights violations- but it beats Welch's approach.

 

[38Chevy454]

The Man who Broke Capitalism by David Gelles, a biography of Jack Welch. I joined a GE sub just after he retired but saw remnants of his style. He'd changed a company previously know as "Generous Electric" to one that followed the thinking of Milton Freidman- increase shareholder value, no matter how you do it and no matter what the cost.



I'm happy to say that I see this changing in corporate America. Some of the efforts at ESG strike me as feel-good or shell games and a company with a wonderfully diverse board of directors may outsource its manufacturing to a country with abysmal human rights violations- but it beats Welch's approach.

All I can say is glad that corporate world and some of academia are waking up to how Welch destroyed a great company. History deserves to take back all the incorrect praise that was heaped on Welch. Learn from mistakes and don't repeat Welch's mgmt philosophies.

 

[braumeister]

Wolf Hall is the first book in a trilogy that is a sorta, kinda, biography of Thomas Cromwell, from his own perspective. Just mesmerizing and impossible to stop reading. I'm halfway through the third book and still enjoying it as much as the first.

I know the Thursday Murder Club books have been mentioned here, and I just started the second one. Marvelous fun.

A Short History of Humanity: A New History of Old Europe was fascinating and I learned quite a lot from it.

 

[TripleLindy]

Glad I found this thread. I’ve already found a couple of suggestions that sound like they’re right up my alley.

Just finished Racing the Light by Robert Crais. It’s an Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novel and follows the fairly familiar script of the series. It’s an easy, light read, but I enjoy Crais’s style and humor. Cole is a private investigator and Pike is his muscle, for lack of a better description. The story is about a young investigative journalist who disappears after coming across a story with criminal implications for people in high places. Cole is hired to find the journalist and the fun begins. If you’re not familiar with Crais and the Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series, and enjoy light reading of detective novels, give it a try. Crais injects quite a bit of humor, which is probably what I like the most about the characters. Racing the Light isn’t his best work, as there are some loose threads that never get tied up, but I still enjoyed it.

I just started John Sandford’s Righteous Prey, which is the latest in the Lucas Davenport series. The Prey series is another detective series, but a little more intense.

 

[Trailwalker]

I just finished the Crais book also. I’ve read them all. You might also enjoy author Jonathan Kellerman—a psychologist who teams up with an L.A detective.

 

[DrRoy]

Lakota America by Pekka Hamalainen. Plenty of history there that was never covered in school.

 

[lajolla]

I read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin last month and really enjoyed it. If I had picked up the book at a bookstore and read the book jacket it would not have been something I would have read, but I'm so glad I decided to read it when it was recommended. D2 is reading it now and also loving it.

 

[Zona]

I recently finished “The Measure” by Nikki Erlick. The premise is that suddenly everyone on Earth is given a sealed box with a length of string that represents exactly how long they will live. There are some good character storylines but what I found much more interesting was a discussion about the dilemma of whether to open the box in the first place, and how society in general reacted depending on if one had been given a “short string” (ie discrimination in relationships, workplace, health benefits, etc). Thought-provoking, but also an entertaining read.

 

[Luvtoride]

I recently finished “The Measure” by Nikki Erlick. The premise is that suddenly everyone on Earth is given a sealed box with a length of string that represents exactly how long they will live. There are some good character storylines but what I found much more interesting was a discussion about the dilemma of whether to open the box in the first place, and how society in general reacted depending on if one had been given a “short string” (ie discrimination in relationships, workplace, health benefits, etc). Thought-provoking, but also an entertaining read.

Sounds interesting and a good summary. Could make a good Netflix movie/ series someday.

 

[NomDeER]

I just finished and enjoyed Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown, about the University of Washington crew team competing in the Olympics in Nazi Germany.

I really enjoyed this book, too. It's non-fiction, but reads like a novel IMO. I hear it's being made into a movie.

A novel I just read also has a little bit about crew and rowing in it, but it's quite different. It's about a woman who is a chemist and also has a cooking show in the 1960s. (She rows as does her partner.) Throw in a young daughter and dog and a bunch of other interesting characters. It's much more than that, though. I ended up thoroughly enjoying it. It's called Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus.

 

[Scrumhalf]

Red Sea Spies...Raffi Berg.

True story about how Israel's Mossad smuggled out just under 70,000 Ethiopian Jews (aka Black Jews) to Israel between the late 70's and early 80's through Sudan by air and by sea.

I could not put the book down.

My brother, a doctor working for a AID agency in Port Sudan at the time, told me this smuggling operation was an open secret among the local European NGOs catering to the Eritrean refugees who'd fled the civil war and congregated in huge refugee camps just south of the Port.
I visited him in Jan. 1986, the day the Challenger blew up, and a few years after the Mossad operation had wound up.
He told me of another house in Port Sudan occupied by a group of Americans near the Red Sea shore who flew all their food and supplies in themselves, and shunned contact with the tight-knit local AID Agency workers.
The NGOs called it "The Spook House."

 

[Luvtoride]

I just finished listening to the audiobook version of "Countdown 1945 The extraordinary story of the Atomic Bomb and the 116 days that changed the World" by Chris Wallace (and read by him). It was a fascinating detailed account of the Manhattan project and all of science, military and ethical considerations leading up to using the Atlomic Bomb against Japan.

 

[ncbill]

I am finally getting around to reading "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer."

 

[steady saver]

I just finished the audio version of The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. SO GOOD. Not a typical murder mystery. Poignant storylines with the main characters living in a luxury retirement community in England. I recommend the audio version hands down. Got it through my library.
I believe that it is being made into a movie through Stephen Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment. No projected date yet.

 

[steady saver]

Also, read Younger Next Year which someone here recommended. I also highly recommend it in audio version.

 

[Scuba]

I just read The Measure. Very thought-provoking book.

 

[Zona]

Just finished “This Time Tomorrow” by Emma Straub. The main character is a woman turning 40. Her elderly father is dying. She goes out to celebrate her birthday, passes out and wakes up on her 16th birthday. The “time travel” aspect is almost secondary. What I found interesting is how her 40-year-old self (in her 16 year old body) really starts to see her father as a person and how her relationship with him changes as a result. I think back to what my family life was like in my teens and how my hopefully-more-mature self would maybe react differently if given a do-over.

 

[athena53]

I am finally getting around to reading "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer."

Oh, I want to read that! I just listened to a podcast interview with the author, whose latest book is "The Song of the Cell".

 

[scrabbler1]

I haven't finished it yet, but I am about halfway through "Rebel With a Clause," by Ellen Jovin. Ms. Jovin, a grammar expert, went to a city in nearly each state in the last few years (until Covid stopped her after 47 states) and set up a Grammar Table in a public space to discuss grammar questions with anyone who passed by and stopped at her table. This book describes her conversations while explaining some of the trickier rules of grammar.

I learned about Ms. Jovin and her book from her appearance on C-Span in the last few months. You can view that here:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?522207-1/rebel-clause

 

[steelyman]

I see that the 50th anniversary edition of Burton Malkiel’s classic A Random Walk Down Wall Street is about to be released in 2023.

Of course, I haven’t read it but did read an earlier edition given out by a Finance professor and greatly appreciated it.

 

[FREE866]

I see that the 50th anniversary edition of Burton Malkiel’s classic A Random Walk Down Wall Street is about to be released in 2023.

Of course, I haven’t read it but did read an earlier edition given out by a Finance professor and greatly appreciated it.

Love that guy.....read his book back in 1987...


saw a video of him speaking at the bogleheads conference in October.....so good

 

[steelyman]

Love that guy.....read his book back in 1987...

saw a video of him speaking at the bogleheads conference in October.....so good

I bet it was good. My edition is from sometime in the 90’s. Later I met someone who had Malkiel as an advisor at Princeton and he felt the same.

 

[anethum]

An Immense World, by Pulitzer prize-winning science journalist Ed Yong, is quite simply one of the finest non-fiction books I've ever read. It is about how animals including insects use senses, and that includes senses which humans lack. The books cites hundreds of studies, most done in the past 30 years, which have discovered the extraordinary ways in which different animals use senses to lead their lives and survive. There are chapters about ability to sense smell, different types of vision including wide variation in color vision, and the ability to sense heat, surface vibrations, electric fields, and even magnetism. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

I also read Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer. It is a follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Less about the awkward Arthur Less. I didn't enjoy this new novel as much as his previous one.

I read a two-book novel series by Alexis Hall. The novels were titled Boyfriend Material and Husband Material. I enjoyed both of these LGBT novels which have some very clever and often humorous writing.

 

[braumeister]

An Immense World, by Pulitzer prize-winning science journalist Ed Yong, is quite simply one of the finest non-fiction books I've ever read.

I just finished that a week ago and agree.