What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

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AnnetteLouisan
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by AnnetteLouisan »

Fallible wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 8:20 pm
AnnetteLouisan wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 6:51 pm
nisiprius wrote: Wed Jun 22, 2022 5:54 pm
wilson08 wrote: Wed Jun 22, 2022 2:48 pm Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

I occasionally read an iconic classic novel that I bypassed during my student
years and such was the case with the well known Robinson Crusoe....
It is always, at least, interesting to read classics that have become bywords. (I'm working on Frankenstein; or, the New Prometheus.)

What often happens is that a book is a huge success, and becomes a byword; then they make a movie or movies or plays from it, and to a large extent the movie or play supersedes everyone's idea of what the story is; and then large numbers of pop-culture glancing references, jokes, moments in comedy routines or sitcoms, supersede even the movie.

And the original often gets mixed up with various books that are inspired by, or have borrowed ideas from, the original. Thus, our ideas of Robinson Crusoe probably get mixed up with The Swiss Family Robinson, and a book, no longer well-known--at least not in the US--The Coral Island, by R. M. Ballantyne. By now, the movie Castaway has probably gotten mixed in, too.
I found that to be true with Gone with the Wind. I saw the movie several times, as most of us of a certain age and place have, and never dreamed the book, which I read much later in life, could outdo the film. It did. Such richness of detail, and gripping from start to finish even though the ending is known to us.

Drat that Ashley Wilkes!! He really did love Melanie more than he loved Scarlett, after all.
After reading the book and seeing the movie, I finally decided that among the three, everybody loved, liked, respected, hated, and/or feared everybody else and maybe even including themselves. It's part of what made the movie so memorable, I think.
Very astute insight. I agree. Many tortured souls in that book, not least the invulnerable seeming Rhett and the tragic but ever smiling Belle Watling.

That moment when Scarlett finally gets it, Ashley really was unworthy of her love, he really loved plain old meek Melanie more than her all along, and Melanie knows all about it and even on her deathbed still sees the good in Scarlett, because Melanie, gracious to the last, truly is the better and even the stronger person, and asks Scarlett to take care of Ashley, it’s a killer.

(Oh yes I know, something about war and reconstruction of the South was going on in there too, I guess.)
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Fallible »

AnnetteLouisan wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 8:37 pm
Fallible wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 8:20 pm
AnnetteLouisan wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 6:51 pm ...
I found that to be true with Gone with the Wind. I saw the movie several times, as most of us of a certain age and place have, and never dreamed the book, which I read much later in life, could outdo the film. It did. Such richness of detail, and gripping from start to finish even though the ending is known to us.

Drat that Ashley Wilkes!! He really did love Melanie more than he loved Scarlett, after all.
After reading the book and seeing the movie, I finally decided that among the three, everybody loved, liked, respected, hated, and/or feared everybody else and maybe even including themselves. It's part of what made the movie so memorable, I think.
Very astute insight. I agree. Many tortured souls in that book, not least the invulnerable seeming Rhett and the tragic but ever smiling Belle Watling.

That moment when Scarlett finally gets it, Ashley really was unworthy of her love, he really loved plain old meek Melanie more than her all along, and Melanie knows all about it and even on her deathbed still sees the good in Scarlett, because Melanie, gracious to the last, truly is the better and even the stronger person, and asks Scarlett to take care of Ashley, it’s a killer.

(Oh yes I know, something about war and reconstruction of the South was going on in there too, I guess.)
That's the Civil War, right? Whatever, horrific as it was, there were times when it had nothing on Scarlett and the war on the homefront.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by AnnetteLouisan »

Fallible wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 9:54 pm
AnnetteLouisan wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 8:37 pm
Fallible wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 8:20 pm
AnnetteLouisan wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 6:51 pm ...
I found that to be true with Gone with the Wind. I saw the movie several times, as most of us of a certain age and place have, and never dreamed the book, which I read much later in life, could outdo the film. It did. Such richness of detail, and gripping from start to finish even though the ending is known to us.

Drat that Ashley Wilkes!! He really did love Melanie more than he loved Scarlett, after all.
After reading the book and seeing the movie, I finally decided that among the three, everybody loved, liked, respected, hated, and/or feared everybody else and maybe even including themselves. It's part of what made the movie so memorable, I think.
Very astute insight. I agree. Many tortured souls in that book, not least the invulnerable seeming Rhett and the tragic but ever smiling Belle Watling.

That moment when Scarlett finally gets it, Ashley really was unworthy of her love, he really loved plain old meek Melanie more than her all along, and Melanie knows all about it and even on her deathbed still sees the good in Scarlett, because Melanie, gracious to the last, truly is the better and even the stronger person, and asks Scarlett to take care of Ashley, it’s a killer.

(Oh yes I know, something about war and reconstruction of the South was going on in there too, I guess.)
That's the Civil War, right? Whatever, horrific as it was, there were times when it had nothing on Scarlett and the war on the homefront.
Yes I was being a little tongue in cheek of course. It’s hard to convey in text but I thought I had. Of course the Civil War was more important.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Fallible »

AnnetteLouisan wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 9:57 pm
Fallible wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 9:54 pm
AnnetteLouisan wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 8:37 pm
Fallible wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 8:20 pm
AnnetteLouisan wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 6:51 pm ...
I found that to be true with Gone with the Wind. I saw the movie several times, as most of us of a certain age and place have, and never dreamed the book, which I read much later in life, could outdo the film. It did. Such richness of detail, and gripping from start to finish even though the ending is known to us.

Drat that Ashley Wilkes!! He really did love Melanie more than he loved Scarlett, after all.
After reading the book and seeing the movie, I finally decided that among the three, everybody loved, liked, respected, hated, and/or feared everybody else and maybe even including themselves. It's part of what made the movie so memorable, I think.
Very astute insight. I agree. Many tortured souls in that book, not least the invulnerable seeming Rhett and the tragic but ever smiling Belle Watling.

That moment when Scarlett finally gets it, Ashley really was unworthy of her love, he really loved plain old meek Melanie more than her all along, and Melanie knows all about it and even on her deathbed still sees the good in Scarlett, because Melanie, gracious to the last, truly is the better and even the stronger person, and asks Scarlett to take care of Ashley, it’s a killer.

(Oh yes I know, something about war and reconstruction of the South was going on in there too, I guess.)
That's the Civil War, right? Whatever, horrific as it was, there were times when it had nothing on Scarlett and the war on the homefront.
Yes I was being a little tongue in cheek of course. It’s hard to convey in text but I thought I had. Of course the Civil War was more important.
You did convey the tongue-in-cheek just fine. :thumbsup I was just picking up on it, taking it a bit further.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

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To Die For, by J. M. Dagliesh.

A mystery set in Norfolk, England with two murders and one damsel in distress. Recommended.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by FRANK2009 »

Just read "Distant Skies" by Melissa Priblo Chapman. This non fiction work takes place in 1982. A young woman decided to travel from upstate New York to California on horseback. In between long lonely days with bad weather, the author meets some amazing people. She also discusses her love for the horse, mule, and dog she travels with. My short summary of the book doesn't do justice for a fantastic book!
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ulfsark »

Just finished reading "The Way of All Flesh" by Samuel Butler. I found it to be very entertaining and loved how the author connected seemingly meaningless events to other seemingly meaningless events in much the same way we may recognize some one we've never talked too from the gym at the supermarket. Such events in the novel have a subtle foreshadowing to them that once discovered, prove to be a joy.

As for the more serious aspects, I found many passages that deserved more serious thought. One particular quote that I liked that I also think encompasses the author's core message is excerpted from one of the former as follows: "It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies." I find this to be true amongst subjects as diverse as philosophy, politics, art, and religion.

I also particularly liked what the author had to say on speculation and found his passages on the harm incurred from money loss to be fascinating. In an age where online communities shy away from debentures in favor of common stock for those younger than the elderly, it seems as though none have had a true facer young, or sufficiently badly.

I aim to re-read this book again when I am older, and am interested to see if it holds up to my initial thoughts on it. Hopefully by then it will have gained more recognition and perhaps have worked its way into a college student's curriculum.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

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Last edited by Zeno on Mon Jul 11, 2022 9:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

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With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa - Earnest Sledge

Grim, unflinching look at the brutality of combat in the Pacific from the POV of a Marine Corps rifleman. The rabid hate the Marines and Japanese had for each other during the fighting was an eye-opener. I knew it was bad, but this takes it to another level. Life on the front-lines was just unimaginable. Not a book I will soon forget.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

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Crooked River by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

I almost never read fiction, but I always read books in the Agent Pendergast series. Some stores put the books in fiction, some in mystery and one even put them in the sci-fi section - though that's a stretch. This one is, like many others, a bit gory, but not too much so.

While I don't travel to FL, visitors to Sanibel might find this of particular interest.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

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Mr. Rumples wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 6:20 am Crooked River by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

I almost never read fiction, but I always read books in the Agent Pendergast series. Some stores put the books in fiction, some in mystery and one even put them in the sci-fi section - though that's a stretch. This one is, like many others, a bit gory, but not too much so.

While I don't travel to FL, visitors to Sanibel might find this of particular interest.
If you want a taste of Florida without actually going there read Carl Hiassen. His books are pretty much on the mark of the real Florida.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

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"Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte. Really enjoying it so far and I'm not very far in. Beautiful writing from an author who had a difficult life.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

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telemark wrote: Wed Oct 09, 2019 2:14 am Lolly Willowes, or The Loving Huntsman by Sylvia Townsend Warner

This was brought to my attention as a creepy British novel and it is certainly British. Otherwise, it reminds me more of Shirley Jackson, in that the various supernatural goings-on are mostly a distraction from the real horror, which is the things people do to one another, often without quite being aware of it.


Was researching Warner and came upon this post. You definitely sold me on it, as I love Shirley Jackson (especially her final novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle).

I see that the book is listed in "top 10 forests in fiction".
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by rockstar »

Two books right now.

Slow Horses and Snow Crash.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

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I removed a book review regarding a well-known COVID expert. See: Please read before posting on coronavirus/COVID-19

I also removed several responses which derailed the discussion. Please don't use this thread as a pretext to discuss topics outside the forum guidelines.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by nisiprius »

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. It is decades since I last read it. Very, very interesting. Also... you know... it actually is really good. I'm just at the point where Huck decides makes his famous decision, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” rather than send a letter to Mrs. Watson telling her the location of the fugitive, enslaved Jim. Many critics feel the rest of the book goes downhill from there so I'm braced not to like the rest as well.

This time, I am conscious of the strange double cultural filter, because Mark Twain is writing in 1884 about a time "forty to fifty years ago." So it is an exercise in nostalgia from an 1884 point of view... over a period of time when US culture changed radically. And on top of that, Mark Twain, as a humorist and entertainer, cannot necessarily be trusted to be literally accurate in what he reports (and through Huck's eyes). Huck does not seem to be an "unreliable narrator," but Mark Twain might be. Certainly the book contains "stretchers" and we may not recognize as stretchers what might have been obvious in 1884.

So when Huck, for examples, mentions a bed in a middle-class house in a small Mississippi river town as having a feather-bed on top of a "straw tick," I don't know if Twain's readers would have been astonished at the primitiveness of things in 1840 or... what kind of mattresses did Samuel Clemens sleep on in his house in Hartford? Was this just normal bedding in 1840 and in 1884?

When Huck talks about the relative merits of sleeping on a straw tick versus a corn-shuck tick, did Twain's readers take that as a measure of Huck's low circumstances, or is it something they would personally know from their own experience?

I hadn't remembered how rich and evocative the many descriptions of nature and the Mississippi River are.

Mark Twain is irritatingly fond of complicated, tricky plots with unlikely coincidences in them. I guess he thought his audience liked them. (I've always wondered whether the Connecticut Yankee just happening to remember the date of the total eclipse was an intentional joke, or whether he really means for his readers to believe it.)

It is really hard to decide how realistic the Duke and the Dauphin are. Notice that they are much, much nastier characters than Harold Hill in "The Music Man."

I'm catching many more tongue-in-cheek references than I did before.

I suddenly realized that a lot of the descriptions are clearer if you "translate" the word "style" as "cool." Huck Finn thought Tom Sawyer was cool. "We ain’t burglars. That ain’t no sort of style" = "We ain't burglars. That's not cool." etc.

I wonder how many younger readers are able to appreciate what is really going on in all of the garbled history talk in the "Duke and the Dauphin" section, like
My, you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom. He was a blossom. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs. ‘Fetch up Nell Gwynn,’ he says. They fetch her up. Next morning, ‘Chop off her head!’ And they chop it off. ‘Fetch up Jane Shore,’ he says; and up she comes, Next morning, ‘Chop off her head’—and they chop it off. ‘Ring up Fair Rosamun.’ Fair Rosamun answers the bell. Next morning, ‘Chop off her head.’ And he made every one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and called it Domesday Book—which was a good name and stated the case.
Or the Duke's attempt to reproduce Hamlet's soliloquy from memory. Or the fact that the Duke and the Dauphin, in claiming to be David Garrick and Edmund Kean, are using the names of actors (then) so famous--and so dead--that you might expect people even in a small river town to be suspicious.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

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Our Final Invention - James Barrat.
AI and the end of the human era.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by bertilak »

nisiprius wrote: Sun Jul 03, 2022 1:01 pm Mark Twain is irritatingly fond of complicated, tricky plots with unlikely coincidences in them. I guess he thought his audience liked them. (I've always wondered whether the Connecticut Yankee just happening to remember the date of the total eclipse was an intentional joke, or whether he really means for his readers to believe it.)
Twain was even more fond of, and famous for, exaggeration. Much of what he wrote was not intended to be "believed" but simply to be fun and to advance the plot. I think contemporary readers understood this.

In Twain's time the public was much more familiar with literature and history, so they probably "got" the humor in many of the references.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by egri »

Intact, by MG (ret) John Raaen. As a 1LT, he commanded the Headquarters company of the 5th Ranger Battalion at Omaha Beach. Today he's the last living officer to have landed with the first wave, and the last living officer from the WWII Ranger battalions.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ruralavalon »

I have reread The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn several times since retirement just to enjoy the story, never giving much thought to such historical details.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Will do good »

This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Young Doctor. By Adam Kay.
Very funny book about what medicine is like in UK.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by RANkiDEr »

How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them
By Barbara F. Walter

From the website.."A leading political scientist examines the dramatic rise in violent extremism around the globe and sounds the alarm on the increasing likelihood of a second civil war in the United States."

https://www.harvard.com/book/how_civil_wars_start/
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by nisiprius »

The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War, by Malcolm Gladwell. Really, really, really good if you have any interest at all in Curtis LeMay, the struggle between U.S. military doctrines of daylight high-altitude precision bombing and nighttime carpet bombing, the morality of the use of napalm and incendiary attacks, how well the Norden bombsight actually worked, etc.

I believe nonfiction accounts have gotten better since writers have dropped the pretense of objectivity, and have decided to be candid about exposing their own points of view--expressing them clearly while also trying to be factually accurate.

One weird detail: (US flyers trying to do precision bombing of Japan were thwarted by the jet stream; nobody in the US knew about it, and initially officers were skeptical of the truth of what pilots were telling them).
A Japanese scientist named Wasaburo Ooishi had actually discovered the jet stream in the 1920s in a series of groundbreaking experiments. But Ooishi happened to be devoted to the artificially constructed language called Esperanto, which was briefly in vogue in that era, and he only published his findings in Esperanto, which meant of course that almost no one read them.
The book is based on, or related to material that Gladwell produced as an audiobook and/or a series of podcasts on "Revisionist History." I listened to the podcasts and feel very slightly frustrated because they are not at all identical; the podcasts contain material not in the book, and the book contains material not in the podcasts.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by nisiprius »

The Eustace Diamonds, by Anthony Trollope, and I'm indebted to AnnetteLousian for getting me started on Trollope. One interesting detail I hadn't known is the original meaning of the word "heirloom." I thought it just meant a cherished object handed down by custom within a family, but apparently the original meaning was something that was, effectively, owned and belonged to the family estate itself, which no individual family member owned or had the right to give way. Or something like that.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by dodecahedron »

Dan O’Brien Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch and its sequel Wild Idea:Buffalo and Family in a Difficult Land, inspiring and lyrical memoirs by a renaissance man environmental biologist and writer/rancher, who is willing to acknowledge his mistakes and human flaws, and does not take himself too seriously.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by dodecahedron »

Inspiring in a more poignant and heartbreaking way; Andrea Elliott’s Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City, which won the 2022 nonfiction book category for its deeply immersive and compelling account of a teen growing up in a complex family entrapped in multigenerational homelessness in Brooklyn.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by BIGal »

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results

Check it out
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by tooluser »

BIGal wrote: Tue Jul 05, 2022 8:00 pm Atomic Habits by James Clear
Seems good. I started it, and even diagrammed out some ways to change my life, but I failed to develop the habit of finishing the book. I intend to get back to it at some point.
Like good comrades to the utmost of their strength, we shall go on to the end. -- Winston Churchill
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by roamingzebra »

I just finished "The Dry" by Jane Harper, a detective novel that takes place in Australia. The main and secondary mysteries were solid and the writing was excellent. Harper provides the kind of detail that brings characters to life.

The one thing I didn't care for was the small-town mentality of the farming community. That grated after awhile. I'm hoping the other books in the series take place in larger towns or with less parochial mentalities.

Even if not, the central mysteries will probably propel the book along as they did in this debut novel of the Aaron Falk series.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ulfsark »

Finished three works over a 4th of July sojourn:

"Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets" by Nassim Taleb. While Taleb is susceptible towards glaring at us groundlings from his ivory tower, I enjoyed his expositions on induction, Karl Popper, and behavioral economics' heuristics. As I own the box set of Incerto, I plan on reading his other books on some yet to be determined date.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Shakespeare. Inspired by the desire to see the play performed in July/Aug, I picked this up for the first time and was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to read compared to his other plays such as King Lear.

"The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov. After one friend suggested it would be a good, light read, the friend group I was traveling with decided to take it up. It proved to be a potent discussion topic and sparked a heated debate amongst friends drinking Long Island Iced Teas.

As of now, I plan on starting "The Red and The Black" by Stendhal.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ResearchMed »

I finally got back to another book in Donna Leon's series of Commissario Guido Brunetti mysteries, set in Venice:
"Give Unto Others".

This is light reading, and it's especially pleasant to be remembering our visits there. As usual, with the hardcover version, inside the front cover and facing page, there is a map of Venice, with identification of some of the main locations mentioned in the book.

I read several of these shortly before our recent trip, somethig like 5+ years ago. My previous visit was decades ago, and I really didn't have a sense of the city map and locations relative to each other, etc.
Having read several of these, and referring frequently to those maps as I read each book, I really felt that I had a sense of "where things were" (and where *I* was in the city).

Reading this was a welcome diversion from real life these days, along with some fond memories of travel.

RM
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by roamingzebra »

Am enjoying the second novel of Jane Harper's Aaron Falk series -- "Force of Nature". The mystery takes place in the Australian bush. As I've done some hiking there, it has some extra meaning.

I also found out that the first book, "The Dry" was made into a movie, and "Force of Nature" is currently being filmed. Eric Bana plays Falk in both movies. I'm not familiar with him, but he seems to get good reviews.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Aventinus »

Lonesome Dove!

Amazing western novel so far, picked up after watching the show. Good break from nonfiction.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by heartwood »

roamingzebra wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 2:07 pm I just finished "The Dry" by Jane Harper, a detective novel that takes place in Australia. The main and secondary mysteries were solid and the writing was excellent. Harper provides the kind of detail that brings characters to life.

The one thing I didn't care for was the small-town mentality of the farming community. That grated after awhile. I'm hoping the other books in the series take place in larger towns or with less parochial mentalities.

Even if not, the central mysteries will probably propel the book along as they did in this debut novel of the Aaron Falk series.
I've read each of her novels and enjoyed them all to varying degrees. Without going back and checking I think they all take place in small or rural areas.

The Dry is supposedly available as a movie on Showtime, Hulu and others. I have not watch it.

I am waiting for a new book from her.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by AnnetteLouisan »

nisiprius wrote: Tue Jul 05, 2022 9:11 am The Eustace Diamonds, by Anthony Trollope, and I'm indebted to AnnetteLousian for getting me started on Trollope. One interesting detail I hadn't known is the original meaning of the word "heirloom." I thought it just meant a cherished object handed down by custom within a family, but apparently the original meaning was something that was, effectively, owned and belonged to the family estate itself, which no individual family member owned or had the right to give way. Or something like that.
I’m so glad you are enjoying Trollope! I feel sorry for his female relatives though, who’d have had to be known as Miss or Mrs Trollope… perhaps they were the original source of what later became used as an invective?
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by bf0123 »

Aventinus wrote: Sun Jul 10, 2022 2:22 pm Lonesome Dove!

Amazing western novel so far, picked up after watching the show. Good break from nonfiction.
I wish I could go back in time, prior to when I first read Lonesome Dove. So I could, again, have the pleasure of picking it up for the first time . It is the most cinematic novel I've read, the characters 'return' to me again and again. Enjoy...
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Fallible »

ulfsark wrote: Sun Jul 10, 2022 11:57 am Finished three works over a 4th of July sojourn:

"Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets" by Nassim Taleb. While Taleb is susceptible towards glaring at us groundlings from his ivory tower, I enjoyed his expositions on induction, Karl Popper, and behavioral economics' heuristics. As I own the box set of Incerto, I plan on reading his other books on some yet to be determined date.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Shakespeare. Inspired by the desire to see the play performed in July/Aug, I picked this up for the first time and was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to read compared to his other plays such as King Lear.

"The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov. After one friend suggested it would be a good, light read, the friend group I was traveling with decided to take it up. It proved to be a potent discussion topic and sparked a heated debate amongst friends drinking Long Island Iced Teas. ...
All great reads and I did find "Midsummer" easier to understand and enjoy as a play. I found "Lear" fairly easy to comprehend, thanks largely to the Fool. And "The Last Question" I thought ultimately had only one answer: more questions. :happy
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ruralavalon »

The Frontier in American History, by Frederick Jackson Turner.

Written in 1920 this covers the expansion of the U.S. on the frontier from colonial times through about 1890. The first 50-60% of the book is interesting, the latter part is more of a discussion about how the U.S. might develop in the future with no open frontier for settlement.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ruralavalon »

The Raven Song, by J. M.Dagliesh.

A mystery set in Norfolk, England. A single mother is found murdered, and her disabled child is missing. Recommended.
"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein | Wiki article link: Bogleheads® investment philosophy
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by WestCoastPhan »

"The End of the World is Just the Beginning" by Peter Zeihan. Very interesting analysis of various countries and sectors.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by jasminetea »

The Psychology of Money By Morgan Housel.

Atlas of the Heart By Brene Brown.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by MP173 »

I have read most of Lawrence Block's novels and enjoyed his work. Interesting how he has developed a number of serial charactors over the years.

I picked up "Enough Rope" a collection of Block's short stories, including shorts on Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbarr, Keller and others. Currently I am in the front section which are random characters. The shorts are usually about 10 pages and are often very dark, but very entertaining.

Any Block fans out there will enjoy this collection.

Ed
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Artful Dodger »

I'm roughly 2/3s of the way through "Anna Karenina" and wanted a break, so started C. S. Lewis' Narnia books. I picked up Saturday as a daily deal from Audible. All seven books are included with each read by a different person, generally a well-known stage or screen actor. Kenneth Branagh read the first, "The Magician's Nephew", which I finished in one listen working in my garden Sunday. I also listened to the first two chapters of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" read by Michael York. They are children's books and Christian allegory but very creative and thoroughly enjoyable. The books, written in the early 50s have stood the test of time.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by MaxRN »

I greatly enjoyed “Trip to Eyota” by Martina Hubler. Fast-paced, funny, road trip story about a frazzled traveling salesman who gets stuck with a ghost traveling to Minnesota. It is merely coincidental that the author is my DW. :D
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by mancich »

"America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy" by Robert Zoellick. It is a little "weighty" but an interesting read.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by abuss368 »

“Tower of Lies” by Barbara Res who was responsible for developing and constructing Trump Tower and The Plaza Hotel in the 1980s. Excellent read.

https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Lies-Eight ... 507&sr=1-1

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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ruralavalon »

Barkingsparrow wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 8:29 pm With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa - Earnest Sledge

Grim, unflinching look at the brutality of combat in the Pacific from the POV of a Marine Corps rifleman. The rabid hate the Marines and Japanese had for each other during the fighting was an eye-opener. I knew it was bad, but this takes it to another level. Life on the front-lines was just unimaginable. Not a book I will soon forget.
With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa is an excellent look at the U.S. Marine Corps in the Pacific in World War II.
"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein | Wiki article link: Bogleheads® investment philosophy
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Carol88888 »

The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis. He makes the vanities of old age appear very funny.

Also listening to "Thew HIdden Life of Trees".
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ososnilknarf »

bf0123 wrote: Mon Jul 11, 2022 1:47 pm
Aventinus wrote: Sun Jul 10, 2022 2:22 pm Lonesome Dove!

Amazing western novel so far, picked up after watching the show. Good break from nonfiction.
I wish I could go back in time, prior to when I first read Lonesome Dove. So I could, again, have the pleasure of picking it up for the first time . It is the most cinematic novel I've read, the characters 'return' to me again and again. Enjoy...
One of my all-time favorite novels. Augustus McCrae was a great character who sticks with me years later.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by bertilak »

Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage (1998)

Fascinating. Suspenseful. An amazing cast of characters. The story is major part of the Cold War espionage between the USA and the USSR. Submarines were at the top of the secrecy hierarchy.

Some points of interest:
  • USA Submarines tracked USSR “boomer" subs, those with long range nuclear missiles. They needed to be destroyed if the cold war turned hot.
  • USA submarines tapped underwater cables, often within USSR territorial waters. These subs carried self-destruct explosives in case they were trapped by the USSR.
  • The technological innovation involved for all of this. It is an undersea version of the space race, but not as public – not by far.
  • The Glomar Explorer, Howard Hughes’ CIA-funded deep-sea salvage boat intended to retrieve a sunken Soviet sub, only partially successful.
  • The contest between Naval Intelligence and the CIA over control and funding of submarine intelligence gathering. The navy (mostly) won.
  • The John Walker spy scandal, where USA submarine secrets were given to the USSR. This helped the USSR almost keep up with USA submarine technology, strategy and tactics.
  • The expense of maintaining similar activities was a major contributor to the eventual disintegration of the USSR.
I would like to find a similar story covering the 20+ years since this book was published.
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