I have to give @Minnman a shoutout for this, since he first brought this guy to my attention... Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane, a new book by a great English naturalist. I found it at an indy bookstore on vacation and bought it without skimming. I was a bit ticked when I saw that about 1/3rd of the book consists of glossaries of British Isle dialect words for land and seascapes, words that are vanishing from everywhere except glossaries. But that is something I'm enjoying more and more. The rest of the book is chapters devoted to writers and writings that influenced Macfarlane, some I've heard of and others I'll be looking for on interlibrary loan (since many of them aren't for sale in the US)
This turned up on the holds shelf at the public library at a good time: Al Franken: Giant of the Senate, a quite funny and interesting memoir by the Junior Senator of the Great State of Minnesota, Al Franken. I've done the handshake with three senators in my life, all f whom have a connection with Franken: Paul Wellstone, whose senate seat he occupies, Paul Simon, whom he played in skits on SNL back in the day, and Everett Dirksen, namesake for the building wherein he works.
Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary, and outstanding biography of the Black Elk, along with a readable history of the wars between the US Army and the Lakota during the first two decades of his life. I just finished the chapters on his time with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show, where he and six Indians got left behind in the Whitechapel area of London during the early days of Jack the Ripper, a crime for which they were suspects for awhile. He also seems to have knocked up a wealthy Parisian girl during the Paris swing of a later tour. Damn fine book by Joe Jackson
A book I started last year but DNF because some wanker put a hold on it... Out On Your Feet: The Hallucinatory World of Hundred-Mile Walking by English journalist and certified Centurion Julie Welch. The cover is a partial illustration of things walkers see as they attempt to complete 100 mile walks over some grueling terrain in under 48 hours (the baby elephant one walker saw around the 95th mile was being giving a ride to an Indian ********** and her baby). Some people run the course in around 22hours, but most require lising two nights sleep. I think I'll set my limit at fifty miles and one full day. Thanks.
I was glad to start this series right before the third of the trilogy was released a week or so ago: it's N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth series. Someone on BigSoccer praised the first two books awhile back, and I sat on that recommendation long enough that I wouldn't need to wait too long for the third to come out. These came out in consecutive years, and the first two each won the Hugo Award for best Sci-Fi novel. I personally found the first one amazing, and the other two not quite up to the same level; reviewers suggest the third will also win the Hugo, which would make it the most honored trilogy ever.
Walking, Writing, & Performance: Autobiographical Texts by Deidre Heddon, Carl Lavery, and Phil Smith, mostly essays and scholarly commentary on walking as a performance art, etc. The autobiographical essays on the walks are interesting. Some of the scholarly essays are the sorts of things that give thinking a bad name.
Great Plains by the terrific and funny ian Frazier. Note to self. Track down his Siberia book and maybe finish it this time.
I picked this up the other day at the used book store: It's a 1950 bio of Ernie Pyle, who was one of the most important people to the average American during World War II. He was a war correspondent (maybe more like a war columnist?) with a knack for communicating the complexity of war from the perspective of whomever he was writing about, in a way that people on the home front related to. He was killed in the Pacific Theater at the end of the war. Author Eric Miller was a longtime friend and one-time editor; the book is The Story of Ernie Pyle.
PS. I Still Love You by Jenny Han I also want a Peter Kavinsky please... I can't wait to watch it on the big screen I hope that they will follow the story in the book.
While I enjoyed historical novels, I am the type of readers who enjoyed a book about heroic swordsmen glorifying wars. So I never read Bernard Cornwell before. I actually enjoyed Last Kingdom(I did not know it is a TV series in the UK)very much. I am now on Book 4.
I started Cornwell about a month ago, the Sharpe's Rifles series. I've read the first five, and I was initially impressed that the first book in the series was so polished right out of the gate - until I learned it was the fifteenth one written as Cornwell went back and expanded the protagonist's backstory. I borrowed or picked up most of them at the library or local used bookstore, but purchased book six online. It was delivered Friday, but to an address in Malibu, CA instead of here on the Palouse, so I am still waiting. I have read Tiger, Triumph, Fortress, Trafalgar, and Prey so far.
Mythogeography: A Guide to Walking Sideways Compiled From the Diaries, Manifestoes, Notes, Prospectuses, Records and Everyday Utopias of the Pedestrian Resistance, a book that is a lot less pretentious and tendentious than it sounds, by artist Phil Smith.
It doesn't sound so much pretentious as it does fictitious. As in, not a work of fiction but something you invented.
I wish I had the ability to do that. As well as the time to create a plausible enough web presence... Also, if I had made it up, my version would be typeset in Garamond, and not the eye-straining sans-serif this version of Mythogeography uses.
I Like Cornwell...! I've read everyone of his some 38 books (20 of them Sharpe stories) and have his name pop up whenever he has a new book out. About one a year! He has a few (16) Sharpe stories on DVD done for Television. With Sean Bean as a very good Sharpe. Some will know him better as Eddard Starke from GOT. Cornwell blends his protagonists well with real historical figures and events. Then "in his spare time" he takes people on tours of the Wellinton-Napoeonic battle sights. It's coming to a time that I may just have to revisit with Bernard. That's Bernard, By the way, not Bernarhd, he's your French hair dresser. Has a friendly website as well. http://www.bernardcornwell.net/
Oh...... What I really dropped in for was to let fans know that Kurt Vonnegut is back. Well he has a new unpublished book of short stories out. Previously Unpublished Kurt Vonnegut Stories Arrive In The Nick Of Time Five never-before-published works of short fiction bring the author’s unique “ways of looking at the world” back into the spotlight. By Katherine Brooks OLIVER MORRIS VIA GETTY IMAGES “This collection pulses with relevance,” Dave Eggers writes in the foreword to Complete Stories, a soon-to-be-released collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s short fiction that’s set to include five never-before-published stories by the Slaughterhouse Five author. The eagerly anticipated book, edited by longtime Vonnegut associates Jerome Klinkowitz and Dan Wakefield, hits shelves on Sept. 26. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...-unpublished-work_us_59b2f609e4b0dfaafcf7f821
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling - Henry Fielding "An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money."
The Last Days of New Paris, a novel wherein an engineer and surrealists fighting in the resistence create a bomb that defeats the Nazis by unleashing the forces of the unconsciousness. It works, but it ********s up the fabric of time and space so that Paris in 1950 is cut off from the world and consists of armies of Nazis, the Resistence, and French people who have been driven crazy. Oh, and images from surrealist art are running rampant. The more predatory ones are pretty dangerous, and hungry. By China Miéville, whose books I haven't read before.
Took a break from 18th Century novels to re-read one of my favorite books -- Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard - Joseph Conrad “Silver is an incorruptible metal that can be trusted to keep its value for ever.”
I've been reading this year, but not posting here. Read some LaCarre to much enjoyment. Then, in the spring I read an article about the emerging trends that seem to be inevitably marching humanity towards a cyborg future. The article referenced a series of extremely well-researched sci-fi novels by Ramez Naam named Nexus: Install. It puts us about 20 years in the future. They are experimenting with programmable 'drugs' that infuse the brain, augmenting abilities, particularly the ability to communicate directly with other users and sometimes control other's minds. It is a rip-roaring action story, but the enabling technology is fascinating and contrasts of perspectives on the drugs value and morality thought-provoking (for me). Needless to say, the US authorities say "Drugs are Bad, m-kay..." and have all this stuff outlawed, creating a stupendously oppressive system for cracking down on it. Meanwhile, the Chinese are engaged in cloning and augmentation and some of the Asian power elite sees this as the next evolutionary step for humanity, and/or weaponize-able. So, I've decided to use this book, along with some other non-fiction books to lead a capstone seminar for graduating senior psych students in the spring that I've titled: Our Cyborg Future. I expect us to have a good bit of fun trying to speculate based on principles they've learned as undergraduates.