It's a really good book. The bibliography will keep my inter-library loan librarians busy for awhile. Currently on one I was surprised to find at my local public library... On Opera by British philosopher Bernard Williams, who when I was an undergrad philosophy minor was one of my favorite philosophers. He also knows quite a bit about music, which makes this a better book than I thought it would be. Quite a few conductors and singers were students of his at Cambridge, which surprised me.
The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life - Francis Parkman "It is the picturesqueness, the racy vigor, the poetic elegance, the youthful excitement, that give The Oregon Trail its enduring appeal, recreating for us, as perhaps does no other book in our literature, the wonder and beauty of life in a new world that is now old and but a memory." -Henry Steele Commager
I've resumed my volunteer reading for the retired nuns that founded the college where my wife works. Strangely enough, the first two books tied into the William Dalrymple book on Middle-Eastern Christianity... [ John Chryssavgis: In the Heart of the Desert: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers Also... Desert Father: A Journey in the Wilderness with Saint Anthony by Aussie novelist James Cowan. Both are pretty interesting. This next one tests my lung capacity at times... Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton. Similar to my experience of reading Emerson: No need for a highlighter because there is quite a lot that is good, but sometimes I wish I had a black magic marker, because some of it... well, the worst of it passed its expiration date awhile ago.
Finished Occupied City and thought it was ok. Interesting story and how it is told, but the style wore on me near the end. Just started:
Almost finished with this. Not nearly to the standard of his Mars Trilogy but just good enough for me to continue reading.
Interesting "side line" you have going there. Seems like a well worthwhile thing to do. Getting to read and share. I'm not at all good at reading aloud,my eyes start getting ahead of my voice and it all ends garbled. I read to my daughters way back when and had fun at bedtimes. Peter Pan was a favourite. Good for you sharing your time like that.
I downloaded this book after seeing it on an ad from my Kindle. I am into Ottoman history and the book was cheap. So I just bought it. I knew the major events of the story well....let's say I knew how the battle was fought, who would die at the end of the novel and how they died. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it.
Susan Howe, My Emily Dickinson. A "personal" reading by a post-modern poet of the 19th Century poet who wasn't really published until pretty far into the 20th. Tried to read it when it first came out when I was in college and didn't dig it. I must've been passing through a more pronounced moron phase of my young adulthood than usual...
The Glorious Cause : The American Revolution, 1763-1789 - Robert Middlekauff Part of the Oxford History of the United States, this is an excellent general history of the era.
On the plane east last week I finished this in honor of Terry Pratchett's passing: Small Gods is one of my all-time favorite books. It manages to satirize religion without being preachy or even judgmental, and it's funny. RIP to Mr. Pratchett, whose work is almost always much more than it seems.
On the journey back, this first: Robert Lautner's 2014 Road to Reckoning is a frontier coming of age story set on the Pennsylvania frontier, narrated by the protagonist at the end of his life about when he was on the road with his father at age 12. Dad is murdered early in the book, and the boy ends up paired with an grizzled old timer heading back towards civilization. It is a rather slight read, an interesting one but not one I will read again. Most of the way through this now: Jonas Jonasson's The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared is a hoot. It flips between 2005 when the titular old guy does his thing and the rest of his life, which is varied and fun.
I've just started the "Expanse" series with "Leviathan Wakes". Recommended in the TV thread by 'Goodsport' as a good read and a coming in 2015 TV series supposedly on a par with Game of thrones. The book is starting off well with good characters and a good story line. Leviathan Wakes is set in a future in which humanity has colonized much of the solar system, but not interstellar space. In the Asteroid Belt and beyond, tensions are rising between Earth's United Nations, Mars and the outer planets. By chance, Jim Holden, executive officer of an outer planets ice freighter, and his crew – his second-in command Naomi Nagata, the pilot Alex Kamal and the mechanic Amos – witness the destruction of their ship, and on Ceres, police detective Miller is searching for the runaway Earther Julie Mao. Both men eventually find themselves entangled in a conspiracy by an Earth-based corporation to weaponize an alien replicator molecule, which is released on Eros Station to disastrous effect as war breaks out between the inner planets and the outer settlements. After commandeering a Martian corvette, dubbed the Rocinante, Miller, Holden and his crew help the leader of the Outer Planets Alliance, Fred Johnson, neutralize the threat. The alien growth that has consumed Eros eventually settles on Venus, beginning to transform the planet. James S. A. Corey is the pen name used by collaborators Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Under that name they wrote Leviathan Wakes (2011), the first of several science fiction novels in a series called The Expanse. Leviathan Wakes was nominated for the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novel and the 2012 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. The second novel, Caliban's War was released June 2012, and the third novel in the series, Abaddon's Gate, was released June 2013.[1] Cibola Burn is the fourth full length story in the series, which was published on June 17, 2014, along with the announcement that Orbit Books has signed Corey for additional books in the Expanse series, bringing the total to 9
Have to share this. From my daughters Facebook, entitled: Oh, the places he's read about. Oh the places He's read! Rarotonga Sidney. Australia. Dad and sis looking on. Machu Picchu. Peru Shanghai. China. Whangapoa. New Zealand.
The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea - James Fenimore Cooper Not as much action as The Last of the Mohicans. Chingachgook is back, but disappears for a long time. Things pick up later and the end is well done.
This book has quickly become part of my "essential soccer reading" list: James Montague's Thirty One Nil is a terrific review of sports and politics, without trying to be. I am adding it as required reading in one of my classes.
So, I posed the same question to my daughter. She, and her husband teach in Shanghai American School. Elih reads ...most things that are put in his hands. His English teacher helped us greatly when Elih was in elementary school. She had books ready for him and then when he had read everything there, she took him to the middle/high school library when he was 5th grade he chose our family trip to Egypt - he was reading "The Red Pyramid" at the time - so we had to add that to our itinerary. So favourites that I have seen in the past- Rick Riordan (of course),Will Hill - science fiction, Ramose series, Carole Wilkinsone (series fav in 6th grade). Now in 8th grade he is becoming more exposed to different genre in class. We had some interesting conversations over "To Kill a Mockingbird" and he is currently working on "The House on Mango Street". Meanwhile my Amazon account emails let me know i have ordered at least one new book a week and wants my review on titles I have never heard of... And their photo of the red pyramid in Egypt. Elih with his sister Talia. You asked..
Got a kick on how much time he spends talking about Liverpool and the players. Still showed the old inferiority complex and envy in trying to be like them.
I was looking for a book similar to "Don't Put Me in, Coach" by Mark Titus. I enjoyed this book more than "Don't Put Me in" probably because this book was about professional basketball. He was "whining" about his foreign experience, which I found his stories hilarious. I meant he was complaining about living in Barcelona.... living in an apartment next to a beach full of hot, topless female sun bathers.
My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson by Al Habegger. Solid literary biography that has extensive information on ancestors as well, which isn't padding in this case. Habegger's a good enough biography that I'll keep an eye out for his other bio, the life of Henry James, Sr., father of novelist Henry James, Jr. and his philosopher/psychologist brother, William James.
Another omnibus collection from Lois McMaster Bujold: Two novels and a novella in this one. I am enjoying the first book, Cetaganda.