What have you read recently?

I'm reading a 2017 book by Yuval Noah Harari called Homo Deus, which uses observations from history to guess where humanity is headed in the future. I'm only 1/3 of the way through it, and it's been only historical observations so far. But of course those will provide the rational for the predictions. History was my least favorite thing in school, but I think it was the way it was taught (names, places, dates). Harari is so fun to read. I read Sapiens before. That's some cool ways to look at how humanity came about.
 
Dostoevski's The Idiot. I read it in high school a few times and reread it after 40+ years. I have forgotten the story except for one trivial section. The book confirmed me why Dostoevski was one of my favorite writers. Now, I am reading Brothers Karamazov.
 
I just finished 2 enjoyable & educational nonfiction books:

From Here to Financial Happiness: Enrich Your Life in Just 77 Days by Jonathan Clements - I have learned a lot from Jonathan over the years, from his WSJ column days to the Humble Dollar newsletters.

Books for Living by Will Schwalbe - a book about books, in each chapter Will talks about a book and why it means so much to him. Over the course of reading the book, I've added more to my TBR (To Be Read list) and have gotten into lateral thinking puzzles.

Only 4 more books to go until I hit my 100 book challenge for the year!

​

 
Just for fun…

Books_Bill_Maher_58230.jpg
 
scfr said:
I just finished 2 enjoyable & educational nonfiction books:

From Here to Financial Happiness: Enrich Your Life in Just 77 Days by Jonathan Clements - I have learned a lot from Jonathan over the years, from his WSJ column days to the Humble Dollar newsletters.

Books for Living by Will Schwalbe - a book about books, in each chapter Will talks about a book and why it means so much to him. Over the course of reading the book, I've added more to my TBR (To Be Read list) and have gotten into lateral thinking puzzles.

Only 4 more books to go until I hit my 100 book challenge for the year!

​

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Scfr, I also read/ post at HumbleDollar and love Jonathan Clements. I will have to check out his book.
You sound like me…going down the rabbit hole finding more and more books to read as I read books (and articles )that reference other books. I use GoodReads to keep track of all my books I want to read/ currently reading / read. Are you on the site. You sound like someone I would like to follow there.
 
Currently reading "Serving the Leftovers," which is about a lady who started the US's main Pekingese dog rescue in Arkansas. If you've ever adopted from a rescue or shelter and wondered how it got started, this is a really interesting read. Honestly, I was expecting this to be like reading a series of Facebook posts, but it is a legitimate narrative story about this woman's life, how things led to her saving these dogs, and how challenging it is to keep up the fight. It's quite moving if you have a soft spot for animals.


1731240332636.png


It's available for pre-order on Amazon, but I found it's already shipping from this site:

store.bookbaby.com

Serving the Leftovers

Leasha's mundane career seemed like a leash tethering her to mediocre expectations. Searching for a greater purpose, her dream of a dog rescue and sanctuary in a society that turns a blind eye toward animal welfare seemed impossible. Her vision becomes an inspiring reality, bringing vitality to...
store.bookbaby.com store.bookbaby.com
 
And just to show that I've got range, my last book was "Filth" by Irvine Welsh. I liked it and it certainly lived up to its name. Not for the faint of heart though--this book is extremely offensive, by design.

 
I am most of the way through "Locker Room Talk," by Melissa Ludtke. Ludtke was the 26-year-old sportswriter for Sports Illustrated who successfully sued Major League Baseball, in particular its commissioner, Bowie Kuhn, in federal court to gain access to the locker rooms of MLB teams following Kuhn arbitrarily barring her from the locker rooms during the 1977 World Series between the Yankees and the Dodgers. This lawsuit took place in 1978 while women were starting to make advances throughout society to gain equal treatment. Ludtke had a difficult path to her success, encountering a backlash from fans, ballplayers, front office personnel, and male sportswriters as she tried to do her job with SI. It's a page-turner although I have found the book's editing a little sloppy due to lots of typos stemming from missing or incorrect minor words.
 
Gumby said:
We're opening new versions of our long running threads so that they'll load faster on phones. Old version is here: What have you read recently? 2009 -2020
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While thrifting this summer, we found John Grisham's The Exchange - After The Firm. While I had read many John Grisham novels, I had never read The Firm. So a few weeks back, DW found me a used copy of The Firm so I could read that one before I read his new one. The Firm is from 1991 and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I found myself setting aside extra time and even staying up past 8 pm so I could continue reading it. The Exchange - After The Firm is from 2023 and while I'm only a few chapters in, I'm not enjoying it as much. I understand some writers feel that they have to keep up with the times, but I start to lose interest when I read about a character using a cell-phone to check their e-mail. There wasn't a single mention of a cell-phone mentioned in the first book.

The same thing happened for me with Lee Child's "Reacher" novels. Reacher lived an extremely nomadic lifestyle, travelling from town to town with only the clothes on his back, and a toothbrush. He wasn't searching for adventures, but adventures seemed to find him nonetheless. That's what made him Reacher. Then Lee Child started co-writing novels with his son Andrew and all of a sudden Reacher is sending text messages. Nope. No more Lee & Andrew Child novels for me.

I'll post an update once I have finished The Exchange - After The Firm.
 
ArmchairMillionaire said:
DW found me a used copy of The Firm so I could read that one before I read his new one. The Firm is from 1991 and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I found myself setting aside extra time and even staying up past 8 pm so I could continue reading it. The Exchange - After The Firm is from 2023 and while I'm only a few chapters in, I'm not enjoying it as much. I understand some writers feel that they have to keep up with the times, but I start to lose interest when I read about a character using a cell-phone to check their e-mail. There wasn't a single mention of a cell-phone mentioned in the first book.
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Well, it is 2023. It is normal, in fact, necessary for a high flying attorney to have a cell phone!


ArmchairMillionaire said:
The same thing happened for me with Lee Child's "Reacher" novels. Reacher lived an extremely nomadic lifestyle, travelling from town to town with only the clothes on his back, and a toothbrush. He wasn't searching for adventures, but adventures seemed to find him nonetheless. That's what made him Reacher. Then Lee Child started co-writing novels with his son Andrew and all of a sudden Reacher is sending text messages. Nope. No more Lee & Andrew Child novels for me.
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"New" Reacher doesn't own a cellphone. He merely borrowed one in order to send a text message in this one instance. Surely that's not enough to condemn the entire franchise! He still travels extremely light, throws away clothes he's worn for several days and buys new ones, etc.

You might like the latest Reacher novel, "The Secret". Set in 1992 when Reacher was still in the army as a military police investigator. Not a cell phone to be found.

ArmchairMillionaire said:
I'll post an update once I have finished The Exchange - After The Firm.
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I await your review.
 
Qs Laptop said:
Well, it is 2023. It is normal, in fact, necessary for a high flying attorney to have a cell phone!




"New" Reacher doesn't own a cellphone. He merely borrowed one in order to send a text message in this one instance. Surely that's not enough to condemn the entire franchise! He still travels extremely light, throws away clothes he's worn for several days and buys new ones, etc.

You might like the latest Reacher novel, "The Secret". Set in 1992 when Reacher was still in the army as a military police investigator. Not a cell phone to be found.



I await your review.
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Actually, "New" Reacher uses "burner" phones in Better Off Dead, No Plan B, and The Sentinel, off the top of my head, all which were co-written with Andrew Child.
"The Secret" sounds like it might actually be decent. I'll have DW add it to the book list she keeps in her purse for when we travel.
Thanks!
 
Luvtoride said:
Scfr, I also read/ post at HumbleDollar and love Jonathan Clements. I will have to check out his book.
You sound like me…going down the rabbit hole finding more and more books to read as I read books (and articles )that reference other books. I use GoodReads to keep track of all my books I want to read/ currently reading / read. Are you on the site. You sound like someone I would like to follow there.
Click to expand...
@Luvtoride - Thank you for the wonderful compliment! I tried rating books on Goodreads very briefly, but didn't keep it up because I felt I should rate all of the books I read. I was really happy to find this thread here on Early Retirement because there are a lot of greate recommendations, and because I can mention only those books that I especially like.
 
The Inner Clock: Living in Sync with Our Circadian Rhythms by Lynne Peeples
Your body contains a symphony of tiny timepieces, synchronized to the sun and subtle signals in your environment and behavior. But modern insults like artificial light, contrived time zones, and late-night meals can wreak havoc on your internal clocks.
Science journalist Lynne Peeples seeks out the scientists, astronauts, athletes, and patients at the forefront of a growing movement. Along the way, she sleeps in a Cold War-era bunker, chases the midnight sun, spits into test tubes, and wears high-tech light sensors to decipher what makes our internal clocks tick and how we can reset them for the better.
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I thought she could have used a better editor, but this contains quite a lot of information, some of which was new to me.
 
I am just finishing up "The Quiet Damage," by Jesselyn Cook. Its subtitle reads, "QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family." The author follows 5 families and how their lives were adversely affected by one member getting drawn into the QAnon group (cult?) which spreads a lot of disinformation.

It's not a very long book, about 230 pages, and it's a pretty quick read. However, its overall layout I found to be difficult at times. Each chapter is a stage of all the QAnon members' descent into QAnon and escape (sometimes) from the cult. This means the book jumps around from family to family within each chapter before advancing to the next stage (chapter). I often had to go back to a previous chapter to refresh my memory about what had last happened to that family before starting to read the next chapter about that family. With 5 different families, it meant there was a lot of jumping around.
 
I've been trying to alternate between fiction & nonfiction. I just finished "The Swerve: How the World Became Modern" by Stephen Greenblatt. A detailed exploration of how the rediscovery of Lucretius' "On the Nature of Things" in the early 1400s kick-started the Renaissance and influenced modern thought. This book won the Pulitzer and National Book Award for nonfiction when it came out in 2011. A little too much time spent on the biography of the book-hunter who found a copy of the ancient text in a monastery, but other than that a very interesting book. I liked the chapter that summarized Lucretius' work, since I struggled when I read it earlier this year.
 
I broke down and picked up some cotton candy reading yesterday. The Lagercrantz extensions to the girl with dragon tattoo series. Scandinavian fiction is profoundly grim and intricate. The cinema even moreso. Not an itch I like to scratch often, but its a familiar groove I can fall in. The nurses in my building absolutely thrive on murder mystery. Quite the bloodlust. They pulled me in when our building book club fizzled.
 
I've noticed that people who post in this thread seem to read more non-fiction than fiction. I read both, but generally more fiction.

In the non-fiction category, I just read Dear Oliver, an unexpected friendship with Oliver Sacks, by Susan R. Barry. For the last 10 years of his life, Oliver Sacks and Susan Barry had a fascinating ongoing correspondence and occasional face-to-face visits. Her writing is almost as engaging as Sacks' wonderful writing. She was a professor of neurobiology during the correspondence years, so there is some interesting science in their letters.

The Sequel, by Jean Hanff Korlitz is in fact a sequel to her novel The Plot. I enjoyed The Sequel and it becomes an interesting thriller. Though I had read The Plot, I think The Sequel could be read without reading the 1st novel.

I read and thoroughly enjoyed the latest books in Alexander McCall Smith's Isabel Dalhousie series, The Conditions of Unconditional Love, and his 44 Scotland St. series, The Stellar Debut of Galactica McFee.

I read Heritage by Miguel Bonnefoy. It eventually turned into magical realism, which is not my favorite.
 
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