It's been awhile, but I'm pretty sure I didn't finish his novel, either. I like his short stories, though. Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel, a pretty decent book that is a bit dry in spots, butbthat's not really surprising since it's Alexandre Christoyanopoulos's dissertation. But hey, it was free online, so no complaints.
The Attributes - Rich Diviney It's another book written by a former SEAL, but this one is non fiction and not written by a guy named Jocko. Diviney does a good job of specifying the difference between attributes and skills, selecting the most universally useful attributes and grouping them logically, and giving examples of how to apply them in multiple scenarios. This book has more value for team building and individual development than nearly anything else I've read and is light years better than most of what is pumped out by the "experts" in those fields.
Loaves and Fishes: The Inspiring Story of the Catholic Worker Movement, a second "autobiography" by Dorothy Day, who in this volume focused on other people and the day-to-day operations of her Catholic worker houses in NY and elsewhere.
two books test-read for future classes. The first... REJECTED... Springtime for Snowflakes: Social Justice and its Postmodern Parentage is short, so I thought it might be good in a first year writing class paired with something from another perspective... but . . . well, while terrible in some respects, it isn't all bad: the 100 page memoir of his college and grad school career was interesting, and the process of becoming skeptical of certain aspects of postmodern theory as well. . . but I found it interesting because author Michael Rectenwald went to grad school at the same time I did, read many of the same books, and struck many of the same poses around a seminar table. Can't imagine first year college students caring about that in the least. Anyway. . . then he became a twitter troll. . . about one third of the book are a collection of his "best tweets" (and I'd hate to see the ones that missed the cut). Excellent for demonstrating the being online too much can be damaging to your mind. Basically, pretty much everything he accuses "social justice warriors" of doing, he will do multiple times in the book, without irony or any apparent self-awareness. And . . . for a Catholic Studies class. . . Treasure in Clay: The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen which might be interesting if I decided to focus on Catholicism in American Culture, since for a few years in the 1950s he had the second highest rated prime time TV show in the United States (after Milton Berle), which is hard to imagine. But the book is more of a collection of anecdotes, so it isn't really a great literary work, which is what I'm looking for. Did not know he grew up about 50 miles from where I grew up (around 60 years later).
For the first time in my life, I decided "you know what? I can just look this up on Wikipedia" and stopped reading a book. There's only so many times I can read about Inuit guides as ignorant savages - not in quotes from the source material but in the author's own words in a 2015 book - and keep going. Anthony Galvin's Great Polar Fraud.
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. I'm reading the Bernofsky translation, which is the most recent. It's a novella about the descent of Gregor Samsa from human to insect. Perhaps it's Kafka's most famous work. I should make fairly quick work of it.
Check out Kafka's In The Penal Colony while you are at it. That one has, probably due to the state of the world and quality of the translation, stuck in my mind even moreso than Metamorphosis. They are both pretty quick reads.
The First World War by John Keegan. It's a 1 volume story of the conflict. Written in a British style. Should be a good read.
Mission Critical (Gray Man #8) - Mark Greaney The 8th book in the series. There's everything from Russian assets and a conglomeration of the intelligence agencies of English speaking nations to a Scottish castle and Dutch banker being kidnapped off of a CIA flight. Secondary characters are always in danger of getting red shirt treatment, the hero is borderline invincible (though he takes much more damage in this one), and the unnecessary but interesting and well written love interest continues to live. Greaney has mastered the spy novel and elevated it above the mere potboiler status it serves for many authors in the genre.
The Last Honest Man in America: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys -- And One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy a very readable book about legendary Idaho Democratic senator Frank Church, focusing on what events pushed him to take stands against the American war machine and EMPIRE by journalist James Risen Damn fine book about a guy who made a huge positive impact on the country, and on @Ismitje 's state..
The King of Kings County by Whitney Terrell - Part coming of age story, part fictionalization of the development of Kansas City in the '50s and '60s, including all the chicanery driving white flight into Kansas. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin - I'll definitely be saving this to offer my kiddoes when they get a bit older. Not one extraneous word in the whole book. A classic for a reason. Now working on The Rose Code by Kate Quinn, another neighborhood book club selection. I usually don't care much for historical fiction set during World War II, but I'm enjoying it so far. Led by a pretty great trio of female characters who worked at Bletchley Park during the war.
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy "Things are as they are, and will be brought to their destined issue."
If you haven't watched this British show, you should check it out. Only seven episodes and three story arcs, alas.
Gentlemen Pre Blonds - good The Last of the Mohicans - stopped after 100 pages, Twain was right, way too verbose very much enjoying The Master and the Margarita, about 60 pages in.
I liked it, before I started thought I would but after I started I was kinda lukewarm to it. Glad I stuck with it, I apparently like absurd things. Haven’t read much Vonnegut, I do have the “Welcome to the Monkey House” short story collection which I really like.
It takes a minute getting into it, but all his books are really fast reads, unless you want to mull over what you just read. Kinda like Voltaire. Most all of his books live in that Cat’s Cradle universe. Bokononism is just fantastic stuff. Time travel is another fun realm, along with his Kilgore Trout character (a stand-in for himself as a writer). There’s a bunch of great content, and Vonnegut would have been a great person to have a beer with. Slaughterhouse 5 is something else though, a pretty serious and poignant read, but still with humor and humanity.
We did watch this several years ago and enjoyed it. I really appreciate short-run TV shows since I struggle to stick with anything that runs on and on.
This is a plausible theory, but other critics argue that Kilgore Trout is sort of an archetype for the standard hard working, at times hacky, writer who toiled away in the musty cellars of sci fi pulp factories*. The fact that "Kilgore Trout" sounds a lot like the name of the great, and wildly uneven SF writer Theodore Sturgeon is usually the basis of this assertion. *of course, that describes Vonnegut's early career, too.