So what, you are reading? v. 2017

Discussion in 'Books' started by Ismitje, Jan 1, 2017.

  1. Ismitje

    Ismitje Super Moderator

    Dec 30, 2000
    The Palouse
    Club:
    Real Salt Lake
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Spanning the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, I am reading Stuart Archer Cohen's This Is How It Really Sounds about a trio of guys named Pete or Peter Harrington, and their intersecting stories. It is set largely in Shanghai where one of the Peters has fled after bilking thousands of people out of their investments, legally but sketchily, and the intersection of their stories after that.

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    Welcome to the new thread!
     
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  2. BlueDamian

    BlueDamian Member+

    Jun 7, 2005
    In the shade
    Nat'l Team:
    Colombia
    Got this one for Christmas and started reading it today. Set in the early days of the Soviet Union, a Russian count is sentenced to house arrest in a luxurious Moscow hotel for the crime of writing a poem.

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  3. Excape Goat

    Excape Goat Member+

    Mar 18, 1999
    Club:
    Real Madrid
    I downloaded a sample of it from amazon. I will get to it very soon.
     
  4. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
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    Russell Kirk: American Conservative a 2015 biography written by Bradley Birzer.

    Without Kirk to shape a conservative movement as a mood, a predilection, and a predisposition, conservatism narrowed and divided, permitting one part of it -- the political -- to represent the whole. As of the writing of this book, loud, obnoxious, and plastic radio and television personalities dominate the voice of conservatism as it is understood by the American public. What a far cry a rant against a liberal arts major on a popular radio show is from Kirk's employment of a specific editor for the poetry to be published in {his quarterly journal} Modern Age. Kirk's conservatism in 1959 has almost nothing in common with the populist and popular conservatism of today's modern media. We might as well be comparing the Platonism of Petrarch with the brutality of Machiavelli
     
  5. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    Daniel Deronda – George Eliot


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    Large parts of this are tedious, but they are worth wading through because the rest is her best work.


    "The general conviction that we are admirable does not easily give way before a single negative; rather when any of Vanity's large family, male or female, find their performance received coldly, they are apt to believe that a little more of it will win over the unaccountable dissident."
     
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  6. usscouse

    usscouse BigSoccer Supporter

    May 3, 2002
    Orygun coast
    I've watched a lot of their shows, I'm probably not the only one. So, when this was on the shelf in the library we picked it up.
    They seem like they enjoy life and what they do. I've built a few homes and remodeled a few as well so i like watching what they do and I find them fun.

    The book "The Magnolia Story" is just their story.
    image.jpg
     
  7. Bluto11

    Bluto11 The sky is falling!

    May 16, 2003
    Chicago, IL
    #2 on my quest to read a book about each President, took a little break over the holidays and had some cheap action adventure filth to read!

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  8. usscouse

    usscouse BigSoccer Supporter

    May 3, 2002
    Orygun coast
    He should have titled this "The Life and Times Of Saint John Adams"
    Was he really that squeaky clean..:)
     
  9. Bluto11

    Bluto11 The sky is falling!

    May 16, 2003
    Chicago, IL
    Only about 80 pages in, but so far, so squeaky clean
     
  10. usscouse

    usscouse BigSoccer Supporter

    May 3, 2002
    Orygun coast
    It is a good read. And covers his "busy" life very well. He comes off so very, very clean
     
  11. Ismitje

    Ismitje Super Moderator

    Dec 30, 2000
    The Palouse
    Club:
    Real Salt Lake
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I've finished a trio of crime/mystery novels from Colin Cotterill, who has two series ongoing. I started with the more recent one, about a mid-30s crime reporter named Jimm Juree (and her family) in a broken-down resort in southern Thailand. Interesting enough to get me to start the other series about the only coroner in Communist-era Laos. These three:

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  12. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West - Dale Morgan


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    Smith made the effective discovery of South Pass, and was the first to reach California overland from the Missouri frontier, the first to cross the Sierra Nevada, the first to cross the Great Basin , and the first to travel by land up through California to Oregon.
     
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  13. usscouse

    usscouse BigSoccer Supporter

    May 3, 2002
    Orygun coast
    Fascinating story if you like the story, the history of white (had to say that didn't I? :)) America. Another of my favs is the all encompassing "Men to Match my Mountains" Irving Stone.
     
  14. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
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    The Very Rich Hours of Jacques Maritain: A Spiritual Life a sort of biography/extended essay about the French philosopher by the American Catholic philosopher and mystery novelist Ralph McInerny
     
  15. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth is on my to-read list. ;)
     
  16. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    Doctor Sax – Jack Kerouac

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    Some of this is very good, and some is very weird.
     
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  17. usscouse

    usscouse BigSoccer Supporter

    May 3, 2002
    Orygun coast
    Got to find it. It's not listed in my library.

    Amazon has some listed from $8.07. to $52.00
     
  18. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
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    The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling by novelist Charles Johnson.
     
  19. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett


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    This is very good, but I kept having pictures in my head of the actors from the film, especially Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet
     
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  20. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
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    The Film Club by Canadian novelist and TV guy David Gilmour who, as the jacket says, lets his 16 y/o son drop out of school if he watches three films with him per week. An interesting father-son memoir, with a genrous side helping of mid-life crisis.

    A lot more images of the book turn up on a search if you add < -Pink, - Floyd >, incidentally.
     
  21. Val1

    Val1 Member+

    Arsenal
    Mar 12, 2004
    MD's Eastern Shore
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    download.jpg

    Isaac Asimov -- Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare


    OK, it's the 22nd day of January, and I already know this will be one of the best books I read all year. I have read a fair amount of Shakespeare the past couple of years, as well as half a dozen bios of The Bard and I am currently reading Hamlet and doing an in-depth study of the work with the American Shakespeare Theater's producer's manual, so I have read about this guy. And this is the best, most interesting survey of Shakespeare and his plays that I have come across. It's like reading the 1911 Britannica, except that every contribution is by the same guy. This is a stunning work. After reading Asimov's chapter on Cymbeline, I know want to read the play. And I've never wanted to do that....
     
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  22. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
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    Solzhenitsyn: A Soul In Exile by Joseph Pearce.
     
  23. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald - Matthew Bruccoli

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    Excellent and interesting biography.

    “Fitzgerald was a better just plain writer than all of us put together. Just words writing.” – John O’Hara
     
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  24. Atouk

    Atouk BigSoccer Supporter

    DC United
    Apr 16, 2001
    Arlington, VA
    Club:
    Queens Park Rangers FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
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    Harlan Ellison -- An Edge in My Voice

    Collected columns from L.A. Weekly and Future Life Magazine, 1980-83 (& one in 84). Terrific stuff.
     
  25. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
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    Dearest Annie: You Wanted a Report From Berkson's Class; Letters From Frances LeFevre to {her daughter, future poet } Anne Waldman (2016), edited by Lisa Birman. Letters from a mother to her college age daughter in the early and mid sixties. An interesting portrait of a parent sibling relationship similar to the father son relationship in The Film Club.
     

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