Everest, the West Ridge - Thomas Hornbein 1963 American expedition. Hornbein and Unsoeld make first ascent of West Ridge, then descend by standard South Col route after spending the night in a bivouac at 28,000 feet.
I neglected to mention the "island novel" that paired with The Island of the Colorblind: Francesca Segal's Welcome to Glorious Tuga about a veterinarian/zoologist goes to a remote British Territory in the Atlantic to study the tortoise population, and interacts with a pretty distinctive island culture and community. I expected I would DNF this when I started it but it captured me pretty quickly, and I appreciated the world building and believable relationships. It mainly explored belonging - who is a Foreigner From Afar and who matriculates - but medical care for both humans and animals is a strong subtext, and that's where I found the two books overlapped in interesting ways.
Speaking of DNF, this one gets crossed off my DNF list... The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which I can't for the life of me remember why I put it aside. Damn fine book about two cousins who unite to fight fascism through the comic books. And what makes it really great is that Michael Chabon gradually reveals backstories for all involved. My wife and I are going to see the Metropolitan opera's version in the cinema in a couple weeks. We'll see how they get all this down to two and a half hours. By all accounts, it's a damn fine opera. Which is a feat, since this is also a damn fine novel.
These Truths by Jill Lepore. I believe that this book was posted in a previous thread. This is a history of the United States. it seems that this won't be the most conservative book that I have read. Looks somewhat interesting.
Hang On St. Christopher - Adrian McKinty RUC detective in Belfast in 1992. Eighth book in the series, and still going strong.
Born to Walk: The Broken Promises of the Running Boom and How to Slow Down and Get Healthy -- One Step at a Time a book that is an extended and respectful response to Christopher MacDougall's Born To Run, which inspired many people to go super long distances, which in many cases wasn't the best decision. The author Mark Sisson has dozens of marathons and iron-man triathlons to his credit, and he eventually learned that the over-training for these events, rather than making him bulletproof in terms of cardio-vascular health, was actually damaging his cardiovascular health. Long story short, walk, engage in resistance training, do, but don't overdo intense interval training, and eat real food. There was a time when I weighed too much, and I thought, well, if I ever get my weight down close to what it was in my early 20s I'll start running again. Then when I got there, I decided not to do so, since what I was doing (walking every day, really hard maybe once or twice a month), doing age appropriate exercises in the weight room, and (trying to) not be overeating all the time) worked just fine.
The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne by Ron Currie Part crime thriller, part family story of a Canuck clan in Maine. The titular character is somewhat reminiscent of the Mags Bennett character from the second season of Justified.
Night Flight - Antoine de Saint-Exupery Very good short novel set in early days of airmail in Argentina.
I finished Stefan Fatsis' Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat To) the Modern Dictionary, I had fully intended to skip hither and thither through this but found myself interested in every chapter, segment, and sentence. It is both a history of the American English dictionary (primarily Merriam Webster, which has the best extant archives and allowed him to embed) and a really good exposition on how words are defined, and those definitions reacted to by academics and the public alike. Also a bonus: it's a fun read. The last several chapters run right up to 2025, including the emergence of AI and how it impacts lexicography.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I’ll have to check that out. Farsi’s is a pretty decent writer. Sounds like it could give my current reigning “best books about dictionaries” a run for its money (Reading the O.E.D. by Ammon Shea, about a guy’s successful attempt to read the entire Oxford English Dictionary, all 20 volumes, in one year) A Burning In My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene Peterson, a noteworthy writer on biblical theology and pastoral issues who’s probably best notion, as the dustcover tells us, for his bible translation, The Message, which is quite readable but which many fundies hate because it’s not in Jesus’ real language, which is found in the King James Version. Biographer Winn Collier focuses more on Peterson’s life as a pastor than as a writer, but that was his call. Still a pretty readable biography.
I would say the biggest issue with The Message was that the early attempts at New Testament books are quite good, he did Ephesians simply for his own church and took his time on it, but once he got the contract to do the whole thing it started getting pretty goofy. The 2002 version was rough but the 2018 revision is actually useful in helping people get past some of the archaic language and grammar of older translations. Here's Psalm 1:1 from the 2002 version: Now the 2018 revision: Basically the early version of it felt like a good idea that was turned into a cash grab, especially the Old Testament, when it was likely just the publisher pushing him to finish too quickly in the first place. Once he had time to apply his usual thought and care to it, the end product was significantly better.
According to the bio, he wouldn’t spend too much time on the people ripping him for not sounding like the KJV (which is great in into own right, and had tons of influence on English and American literature). However, several correspondents would make reasonable arguments. He responded to many of them with letters saying things like, “yo7’re right. I flubbed that one.” Credit to him for that.
Gaston Rebuffat - Starlight and Storm French climber recounts his ascent of six great north faces of the Alps.
Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds a book that is pretty well described in the subtitle by comic and former VH-1 presenter (and cradle Catholic whose mother was a former nun and whose father was a former Franciscan friar) John Fugelsang. Pretty humorous, which you'd expect from a comic.
I purchased it, but have not managed to get around to read it. I like John Fugelsang for the most part.
I led a conversation with Richard Haass - former president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a very calm, informed voice in the discussion of how US actions impact the unfolding of global events - earlier this week. The topic was his 2023 book The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens, and we organized it as part of wider programming related to America250 commemorations. People who attended received a copy of the book; it was fun developing the questions and he is quite accomplished at this sort of exchange, so it went well. He did mention it was nice not to have to talk about Greenland for an hour or so. The main thesis is simple: democracy works much better when citizens remember that rights are complemented by obligations, and pursue them alongside their rights.
Billy Summers was a hitman hired to kill a convicted killer. The setup has echoes of the Lee Harvey Oswald assassination narrative — a sniper, a public hit, a fall guy — but the story goes much deeper. I seldom read Stephen King's books because they are usually long. This one is only 430 pages, and I read a good review.
Beach Read by Emily Henry. This is a romance, which is not my usual read. It should be an a somewhat interesting read.
Shoot the Piano Player - David Goodis Excellent 50s noir crime novel. Originally published as Down There, but re-named to match the Truffaut film that was based on the novel
Masters of the Game: A Conversational History of the NBA in 75 Players in which two old timers, journalist and "as-told-to" guy Sam Smith and extremely successful NBA coach and former decent player Phil Jackson discuss the 75 most significant players from the likes of George Mikan and Dolph Schayes to Giannas Antetokounmpo. Decent book. Interesting that several of the first greats retired early (or in the case of Paul Arizen, took a demotion to the weekend only Eastern Basketball League) in order to devote full attention to their corporate jobs, which paid significantly more than they were making in the league. Interesting, though in some of the 75 chapters they barely mention the player presumably under discussion. It's like a transcript of a podcast more than a book in some respects
I was wondering about the book, after hearing the two of them on NPR. That was such a non-linear conversation that I wasn't sure about how they would work on the page.
It is almost just as non-linear as that interview. But it was on order at the library so I put a hold on it. .