Had a great time in grad school once when we read that book. Turns out that there was a time when Scribner published two different versions: one that started at the beginning, and the other that started in the middle. Same material, same number of pages, but presented in a different order. The first hour of the discussion was really baffling because everyone was literally on a different page. Worked out well, though, because in the end we could debate the decisions of the Scribner editor who, based (IIRC) on a recently discovered letter from Fitzgerald, that he wanted a different order of presentation than was published. Which one was better? I can't remember what we decided, or even what I argued, but the class session went by pretty fast.
You could get a used one up to 2020. I'm thinking that I will be replacing with electric, no matter what. That's going on the list.
Maybe someone will discover a letter from Joseph Conrad saying that he wanted Nostromo to be a chronological narrative.
Had enjoyed Thomas Mullen's Dark Town trilogy, which made me want to check out his older stuff. Finished The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers earlier this year. Now finally gotten around to his debut "Last Town on Earth", a pandemic story about a fictional town in Washington quarantining during the Spanish flu. Which is kind of a weird read post-COVID-19 and with the realization that Mullen wrote this stuff back in 2006. A lot of stuff that reads as familiar that somehow shouldn't be?
Knock wood we won't need one for a bit. The 2007 is going strong (we haven't hit 90k miles on it yet)
I read Prophet by Frank E. Peretti in the library today. It has pro-life propaganda, homophobia, and Peretti's usual right-wing beliefs. To quote Obama, "I would be against this if it was happening." Like his other early stuff, it is at least, an enjoyable read.
I read something about Eleanor Roosevelt every year or two. One of the organizations I direct at UI was launched with a visit by her in 1938, and it's remarkable how many people I invite to speak who respond to her having been the inaugural speaker even 85 years later. This book is a collection of the pseudo-advice column she wrote for more than 20 years. Not a great book to have from the library - it's more of a 2-3 entries every other day sort of read than one you have pressure to finish within the time frame of being checked out. But it is definitely interesting; many of the questions and responses are more about political, social, racial, economic, and other topics of the day than what one would normally associate with an advice column. And the editor, Mary Jo Binker, does a nice job of contextualizing what would have been common knowledge when a specific question was posed for today's readership.
The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800-1900, an interesting book for someone born in the Old Northwest (as it was called at the turn of the 19th century) by a historian that is admirably though probably futilely calling for a revival of interdisciplinary regional studies, John K. Lauck, of the University of South Dakota. If @bigredfutbol gets around to reading it, I'd be curious to hear the take of someone who knows a lot more about history and historiography than I do. There's a bit more boosterism than he needs, but other than that...
Boosterism and the American Midwest - the Old Northwest too for that matter - go hand in hand. My American History grad coursework was all about it in those two areas.
And the book is published by U of Oklahoma press. So go figure. The line has always shifted, to say the least. People in eastern Nebraska might consider themselves from the midwest, and Ohio is in the East. Nebraska might as well be in the west as far as Ohioans are concerned. Of course, as far as people like my wife's family is concerned, "Iowa" is just a variant spelling/pronunciation of "Ohio" or for that matter, "Idaho."
Homegrown Hero by Khurrram Rahman. It's a British novel about Islamic fundamentalism. Apparently, it's the second in a series. Okay, so far.
From Warm Center to Ragged Edge: The Erosion of Midwestern Literary and Historical Regionalism, 1920-1965, another book exploring the culture and literature of my ancestral homelands, focusing on the surprisingly influential (and seriously limited) "Revolt From The Village" thesis which defined midwestern writers based on their rejection of all things midwestern. Which worked for some books by some writers (Babbit by Sinclair Lewis, Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, for example), but not for every writer or, for that matter, for every book by those writers just mentioned. Interesting reading of a lot of writers I've never read or in some cases, even heard of. The part about history is pretty interesting too. I've said before, that if someone had presented history to me as a genre of writing and not the obsessive memorization of dates, I probably would have pursued it. Anyway, another book by Jon K. Lauck that was worthwhile... even the footnotes, which comprise roughly 60% of the book.
I was hoping to find a book about meditating while running but this was more a book about the similarities of meditating and running.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I looked into the idea of "Walking meditation" for similar reasons. There really is such a thing as walking meditation. But you walk really, really slowly. It's not quite what I have in mind on most of my walks, and I don't really have the patience to spend 20 minutes on a lap around my living room. anyway... We Will Win the Day: The Civil Rights Movement, the Black Athlete, and the Quest for Equality, an interesting history on just what the title says by historian of sports Louis Moore. Most of his sources are from the Black press, which is pretty interesting because even there you find a split between "shut up and play" advocates (though more rare) and those who insist black athletes must speak out. And there's some interesting material. . . I have a pretty good idea of how baseball and football were integrated (though I didn't know that legendary baseball owner Bill Veeck wanted to buy the Phillies and put around a dozen brothers on the team in 1942!!!! But baseball's owners wanted nothing to do with that. And the part about integrating bowling was interesting (African American bowlers in Buffalo were crucial).
Because of the pandemic, I went back and reread some of the classics I encountered in High School. I hated this book when I was 17 years old. At the age of 53, I understood it better, but still could not understand why this was a classic. I came from a society where class stratification might be more common than the Americans. So i might be more familiar the idea of "old rich vs new money". For me, it is just a fact of life. Fitzgerald intertwined that theme with love and marriage. I actually could identify with Gatsby because I did not marry the love of my life. Long story. I was Jay Gatsby in a certain way. Our stories had some similarity. Instead of a war, it was college for me. I still peeked at her Facebook page occasionally, even though she set it on private, but I came to terms with the reality of the situation long time ago. I saw the girl 3 years after our breakup. While I was still haunted by the breakup, my feelings for her were very different. I was not the same man anymore as she was not the same girl anymore. So I understood Gatsby's love for Daisy, but I could not understand why he could not come to terms. I thought about the Count of Monte Cristo when I read that book. The Court's love for Mercédès had also subsided in the book. Of course, i am happily married to the same woman for 21 years while Gatsby was a lonely man with loads of money. The Count on the other hand had found a young Haydee. So I could understand why the Count and I moved on.
The Future Is Analog - David Sax The follow up to his book The Revenge Of Analog from 2016. Not quite as interesting as the first one as he uses the pandemic as an excuse for an outline of chapters that are extremely forced. Looks at analog resurgence in several areas of life and does a pretty good job with a few of them. The Terminal List - Jack Carr You can tell Carr is an ex Navy Seal as his understanding and description of weapons, tactics, etc. is excellent. Unfortunately, he writes dialogue at an almost elementary school level. Fun read, and I'm most of the way through book 2 in the series, but woof is that dialogue a chore to get through at times. Death of the Territories - Tim Hornbaker I'm still a fan of 70s-early 00s pro wrestling, and occasionally of stuff today. Hornbaker is more historian than skillful writer. The material, especially how Vince took over from his dad, how several other territories tried going national before he did, and how many of the older promoters essentially put themselves out of business had me glued to this book for about 3 days. It's an incredibly well sourced look at a bizarre part of the entertainment landscape in the US. How To Eat - Bittmann & Katz An interesting little Q & A book where the authors try to run through the basics of all food consumption. Covers everything from fad diets like Paleo and Keto to sourcing meat and when to use supplements. Freedom - Sebastian Junger Junger and 3 friends illegally walk the rails along the Juniata River. Broken into 3 sections, each with an overarching theme, and stories of the actual trip are kept short and used to introduce larger themes of freedom in various times and places.
True Believer - Jack Carr He either got a ghost writer, took some classes, or just improved naturally from the first to second book in the series, because the quality of the dialogue is several ticks higher than in The Terminal List. It's still not great, but it's also not a distraction like it was at times in that one. True Believer is about 75 pages longer than the previous book and has a much better structure. Terminal List was a single overarching thread of revenge, while True Believer covers a variety of topics including the political and social structures of historical and modern day southeastern Africa (especially Zimbabwe/Rhodesia and Mozambique), Syrian civil war, and the role of Russian influence in both American and European politics. It was weird to have one of the threads dedicated to international espionage where Russian nationalists are trying to manipulate public sentiment to restore Putin to power and allow for a full military takeover of Ukraine. Carr, a former Navy Seal, had this book published in July of 2019 but it does make you wonder just what he was drawing from for inspiration considering the current state of that particular conflict.
Home State: a Prose Poem, really 100 prose poems about Illinois, my home state, and that of the author, Dave Etter