What have you read recently?

[Pointby2]

Just finished "The Mosquito Bowl" by Buzz Bussinger. Story follows the lives of the football players that became Marines and organized a football game in Okinawa. But the main thrust of the story is the fighting in the Pacific theater, specifically Okinawa. Lots of horrors of war stuff.

 

[Chuckanut]

I've been reading (actually listening as a recorded book) about the adventures of Cork O'Conner. Part Irish, part Anishinaabe Indian, Cork solves mysteries near Aurora Minnesota that often involve several levels of plotting and scheming. Like most series, it's best to start with the first book - Iron Lake.

If you like the Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett series I think you will also like Cork O'Conner.

FWIW,

 

[Qs Laptop]

"Titan" by Ron Chernow, a biography of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.. The story of boy who grew up in a strict fundamentalist Baptist household in upstate New York, good at math who became a bookkeeper at a small business in Cleveland. He eventually became the head of Standard Oil and the richest man in history. He lived to be 97 years old.

During the first half of his life he amassed his fortune and during the second half of his life he tried to give it all away. People usually think of Rockefeller as the person that created the first trust (basically a monopoly) in Standard Oil and spent his later years giving away dimes to strangers. This is true but the details are fascinating. For example, when oil was first discovered in northwest Pennsylvania Rockefeller's idea to band the companies together and control prices (the first oil cartel) was actually good for business as there were so many startup companies that intense competition created destructive price wars that destroyed business. This intense competition created a carnage of failed companies. Price controls helped ensure the majority of companies could survive.

When it became obvious that Rockefeller's company could easily buy out the smaller refineries he did so. My favorite story is when these smaller companies would balk at selling to Rockefeller he would say that they would fail in "X" number of months and then he would buy them anyway. If the refinery owner didn't believe Rockefeller he would show him his books and exactly how strong his balance sheet and cash positions were. Stunned by the financial strength of Rockefeller's company these other owners would cave. In fact, when word got around enterprising con men would hastily form a refinery company then go to Rockefeller looking to sell. In a little over a month Rockefeller bought out 22 competing refineries ("The Cleveland Massacre".)

Rockefeller made his fortune refining kerosene for use in kerosene lamps used in the lighting of businesses, factories, and homes. When Edison's light bulb threatened his kerosene business a new invention called the automobile came along and Rockefeller transitioned to refining gasoline, previously an unwanted byproduct of kerosene refining that had no practical application.

Eventually Standard Oil became the world's largest trust and was sued by Teddy Roosevelt's administration as part of his trust-busting campaign. The first trial was presided over by Judge Kennesaw Landis and the fine handed down to Standard Oil was the equivalent of one-half of the GDP of the United States. Upon appeal, the judgment was thrown out.

The book is over 850 pages long. I had started it the week before Christmas and just finished it last Friday. The book pulls no punches at describing Rockefeller's business practices as being unethical (though I didn't see them as being particularly offensive, considering the day and age.) The tension between his religious beliefs and his business practices was thoroughly explored and was very interesting.

 

[steelyman]

I (mostly) finished a biography of Franklin Roosevelt by Jean Edward Smith. I’ve had it on my list but the local library didn’t offer it as an e-book so I bought the Kindle version.

The material is more from my parents/grandparents’ generation but well worth reading.

I say “mostly” because it’s quite long and has many footnotes in the text that I skipped over to maintain continuity. It seems very thoroughly researched and doesn’t focus solely on what FDR is best known for: The Depression/New Deal and World War II (but those are covered too). I learned a lot about the politics of that time.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000QFBXD2

 

[braumeister]

The History of Philosophy by A. C. Grayling.

I was one of those tiresome liberal arts majors in college, and I remember most of my philosophy classes as dull, dry, and boring. But I remembered enough of it to occasionally dip my toe into a particular philosopher or two over the years, and they have generally been good experiences.

This is an incredible book in a couple of ways. First, he covers the whole gamut of philosophy, and second, his explanations are so clear and so entertaining that I found myself looking forward to each new section. I actually learned a lot here. Also, since I have been traveling a lot lately, I treated myself to the audiobook and his narration is wonderful.

The story of philosophy is an epic tale, spanning civilizations and continents. It explores some of the most creative minds in history. But not since the long-popular classic by Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, published in 1945, has there been a comprehensive and entertaining single-volume history of this great, intellectual, world-shaping journey.

With characteristic clarity and elegance, A. C. Grayling takes the reader from the age of the Buddha, Confucius, and Socrates through Christianity’s capture of the European mind, from the Renaissance and Enlightenment on to Mill, Nietzsche, Sartre and, finally, philosophy today. Surveying in tandem the great philosophical traditions of India, China, and the Persian-Arabic world, and astonishing in its range and accessibility, Grayling’s The History of Philosophy is destined to be a landmark work.

 

[Marita40]

Louise Penny’s Gamache mysteries in order. On #6. I would love to move to Three Pines. Except for all the murders, of course.

 

[Avalon]

I read roughly a book per week over the winter months. This has been the most unusual and enjoyable so far.

Mr. Spaceman by Robert Olen Butler.
https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Spaceman-Robert-Olen-Butler/dp/0802137822

"There are three things about this planet which are too wonderful for me. Make that four things. The way of dreams in the mind; the way of tears in the eye; the way of words in the mouth; and the way of my wife Edna Bradshaw when she acts like a cat and love-nibbles me into her arms." This is the voice of Desi, the hero of Robert Olen Butler's novel Mr. Spaceman, who has kept a quiet vigil above the Earth for decades while studying the confusing, fascinating, and frustrating primary species of our planet, occasionally venturing to the planet's surface to hear their thoughts and experience their memories using his empathic powers".

 

[Pointby2]

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.

Based on your review, I read this last week. Eye opening. Since then I haven't been able to smush spiders in the house. I also captured and released a lizard in the garage.

 

[anethum]

I read a couple of novels which were on various "Best novels of 2022" lists. Both were OK but I was nonetheless somewhat disappointed with both. The Town of Babylon by Alejandro Varela is about a young man who goes back to his hometown in NY state to take care of his ailing immigrant father, and also attends his 20th high school reunion. Lots of messed up lives among his classmates.

The other novel was Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. It follows the lives of 2 people who meet when they were teenagers over gaming, reunite in college, and eventually team up to create video games. Though I have zero interest in gaming, that didn't detract from the story for me. But I found the book dragged on and on and would have been better with about 100 pages cut out.

I had mistakenly reserved from my library a different novel titled Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and after reading about 40 pages, I began to realize this couldn't possibly be the novel I had intended. This novel with just 2 Tomorrows in the title is sci-fi, which holds little interest for me. When I realized my mistake, I stopped reading it, returned it, and reserved the correct title. But maybe I should have stuck it out with the wrong novel.

 

[Catkins]

Recent Best Reads

Animal Kingdom by Kira Buston!
Crane Wife by CJ Hauser

 

[Chuckanut]

Louise Penny’s Gamache mysteries in order. On #6. I would love to move to Three Pines. Except for all the murders, of course.

+1

Inspector Gamache is a great character but he reminds me of Jessica Fletcher and Hercules Poriot. If one of them shows up in your neighborhood either you or one of your neighbors is going to die.

 

[Markola]

I mostly read history. After 30 years of looking at it on my bookshelf, last night I finished the 1140 page tomb, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” by American journalist William L. Shirer, first published in 1960. He researched it exhaustively, leaning on his decades in Berlin before and during the war, using a lot original documents unearthed by the western liberators, attending the Nuremberg Trials himself and interviewing Nazi officials while they were still alive.

I bet Vladimir Putin read this landmark book, too, for it is a virtual playbook for how a dictator comes to power by methodically absorbing all of society’s institutions, including the church, builds an offensive military in the name of “defense,” invades neighboring countries under false pretexts to protect ethnic nationalists in those countries, through lies and broken treaties, by blaming the aggression on the victims, and by funding ideologically aligned media and politicians in America to try to keep us neutral. Eventually, the dictator’s ambition overextends and the house of lies at home collapses when failures mount and no one around the dictator trusts one another.

 

[Chuckanut]

I just finished The Last Judgement by Iain Pears.

It's another Jonathan Argyl mystery. This time the young struggling art dealer does a favor for a friend and ends up in an intrigue of murder and deceit while delivering a painting that was stolen. Or was it? With his Italian girlfriend, a member of the Italian art recovery squad, they get involved in art theft, murder, and former WW2 collaborators in France.

 

[Dreamer]

I listened to The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough while walking. It was for a book club that I am in.

I read The Measure by Nikki Erlick. I really enjoyed it. It made me think about one's life and how entertwined people's lives can be. Also, made me rethink about if I had a sure way of knowing when I would die, if I would want to know. It made me cry in a few places, but my DD says that I can cry at some commercials.

 

[braumeister]

I listened to The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough while walking.

His narration is just mesmerizing. That one, along with 1776, are probably the two most enjoyable audiobooks I've ever heard.

 

[Qs Laptop]

I mostly read history. After 30 years of looking at it on my bookshelf, last night I finished the 1140 page tomb, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” by American journalist William L. Shirer, first published in 1960. He researched it exhaustively, leaning on his decades in Berlin before and during the war, using a lot original documents unearthed by the western liberators, attending the Nuremberg Trials himself and interviewing Nazi officials while they were still alive.

I've read this book twice now, most recently a couple years ago. To me, one of the most jarring things about the book was the fact that Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" was a best seller in Germany and a favorite wedding gift for years. In the scheme of Hitler's history, not that big of a deal, but it just seems so wrong to me.

I bet Vladimir Putin read this landmark book, too, for it is a virtual playbook for how a dictator comes to power by methodically absorbing all of society’s institutions, including the church, builds an offensive military in the name of “defense,” invades neighboring countries under false pretexts to protect ethnic nationalists in those countries, through lies and broken treaties, by blaming the aggression on the victims, and by funding ideologically aligned media and politicians in America to try to keep us neutral. Eventually, the dictator’s ambition overextends and the house of lies at home collapses when failures mount and no one around the dictator trusts one another.

Since reading "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" this blueprint for invading other countries is used by lots of dictators.

But Putin need not follow Hitler's lead, he has Stalin as his tutor. I'm currently reading "Between Hitler and Stalin", which is an account about how the two dictators treated the nations located between Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1930's and 40's (Ukraine, Poland, Belarus.) Hitler comes out of this comparison looking like a church deacon compared to Stalin. And wow, has Ukraine been abused over the decades. Just terrible. Do a search on "Holodomor" and get ready to be shocked.

 

[donheff]

My next door neighbor went for a walk from our Capitol Hill DC neighborhood a couple of years ago and kept strolling all the way to New York City. Neil King is a former Wall Street Journal reporter and has a way with words. You can get a taste of his style from a piece he wrote for today's Washington Post (may be behind a pay wall).

His book: "An American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal,” comes out next week but is available for preorder on Amazon.

 

[braumeister]

The story of North America from the viewpoint of the Native Americans.
I'm halfway through it and it's just amazing. I've learned so much already and it's well written as a bonus. Highly recommended.

Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America by Pekka Hämäläinen.

 

[Calico]

I just finished two books by Sue Halpern. I very much enjoyed both.

Nonfiction: A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home: Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher

The book chronicles Halpern's experiences during several years of volunteering with her labradoodle at the local nursing home. It is both heartwarming and heartwrenching.

Fiction: Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

A group of disparate characters cross paths in the local library in a rundown New Hampshire town. Friends are made; secrets are revealed; lessons are learned. The characters are interesting, and I'm a sucker for any story that takes place in a library!

 

[Mark1]

I recently read and really enjoyed Mendeleyev’s Dream by Paul Strathern. When I picked it up at the library I was expecting the 300 pages to be mostly about Mendeleyev and the Periodic Table, when in actuality they only represented the last 30 pages, or so.

When I was looking for the title on the internet, I noted that Bill Gates wrote a very nice summary on the book for those interested.

https://www.gatesnotes.com/Mendeleyevs-Dream

 

[steiny]

Good book about the founder of Home Depot

 

[Ally]

We went with our daughter and teen grandchildren to the Grand Canyon on spring break. My favorite purchase was this book, which was very good!

 

[Doribe]

We went with our daughter and teen grandchildren to the Grand Canyon on spring break. My favorite purchase was this book, which was very good!

View attachment 45619

I love that book. Mandatory reading for my three sons.

We now collect as many "Death in the __x_National Park_x_" books.

 

[MuirWannabe]

I love that book. Mandatory reading for my three sons.



We now collect as many "Death in the __x_National Park_x_" books.

I love it too. So many ‘here, hold my beer stories’. And although I’m from Texas, it’s kinda humorous how many in the book were from my beloved state

 

[mf15]

North of the River, Mark B. Higginson.
Fiction,but close to reality,of what went on Korean DMZ 1969,artillery unit.
How do I know, was there 1971 in an artillery unit.
Oldmike