I haven't posted here or a while. Thought I'd have time for reading this past summer but that didn't work out. Then the books I've read since have just been more of my regular authors who publish about a book a year. I enjoy them (a lot) but nothing to rave over. Bernard Cornwell does great battle scenes and I like the way he describes the beginning of Christianity in Britain. "The Pagan Lord" The Lee Child's (Jim Grant) Jack Reacher series. The latest was "Personal" #19 I've started a book now that is, for me, really engaging and really well written. The author claims it took 10 years to finish it, it's so well crafted I can see why. "All the Light we Cannot See" Anthony Doerr. Well worth your time. Good Read Choice 2014 winner. "Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure. Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work."
I've seen that book on three different "year's best" list this afternoon. Holy crap: I just went to see if my library has it... I'm 50th in line! I'll probably get Downton Abbey Series Six before that comes in...
It was my wife who found a review early on. She scans the Sunday papers for books and movies. She was just second in line. Just checked, the number now is 82.
Called in the library on my way home and dropped books off. Then found the latest John Sandford "Deadline" on the shelf. A Virgil Flowers story. I like Sanford a lot, I've said before: I wish I could write like him. Got into his "Prey" series way back. Realistic conversations and cop humour. Good read, some LOL moments with the cop humor.
Sink 'Em All - Charles Lockwood “Uncle Charley” was Commander, Submarines, Pacific Fleet from Feb 1943 til the end of the war. An interesting account of the “Silent Service.”
Who Fears Death by NNedi Okorafor A young woman with certain...abilities in a post apocalyptic West Africa. Very good so far.
Either 2nd or 3rd on my list of favorite running books behind Born to Run and maybe Eat to Run, Matt Inman uses his fantastic sense of humor to deliver what is actually some sound advice about distance running and by far the best definition of a marathon ever.
I started the third tome in the Ken Follet trilogy. Another of those "well I've read the first two got to see how it ends." Starts in the 60's in the "Cold War" Got to admit, I'm not a fan of Follett. Well I liked "Eye of an Eagle" a lot. But I tire of his: He said, she said style and his dialog, conversations don't come over as real. People don't talk to each other like that. Of course that's just IM (Not so H ) O. He does however puts an interesting story together and that's what keeps me. This'll keep me going over Xmas.
Wrapping up the year with one more walking book... Wild: Lost and Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed. I was a bit alarmed when I found out it had been made into what sounds like a chick flick starring Reese Witherspoon, but the book is pretty good so far. I figure that if I could get through Eat, Pray, Love with my heterosexuality intact, I was good to go on this one, which like I said is worthwhile so far.
Eat pray love is a book for the Rape/sexual assault thread. From what I've read about Wild, seems similar.
Not a bad read, I enjoyed it. My wife has it on her list to see. (That means I get dragged along, kicking and screaming ) In the 70's (Did I hear a groan..) I hiked those trails about every summer weekend though the Sierras, long before there was a Pacific Crest Trail. They ruined a couple of my favourite Golden Trout fishing lakes when they worked the trail. I lived at sea level, beach cities LA. and hiked a different pass up from Owens Valley (395) each time. Those passes range between 10,000 to 11,500. Lottsa switchbacks.
I'm making a huge dent in it, though I'm hoping that the current weather forecast is right and that we get a couple hour's break in the rain so I can get a hoof in.
Another classic that I'm finally getting around to. The first one that I've read that matches up with more of the common description/modern depiction of the story.
Always a good read, one of the earliest of novels. Based on the book "The Life and Adventures of Alexander Selkirk" The island was called Juan Fernandez, it has now, I believe, been changed to Isla Robinson Crusoe. About 300 miles west of Chile. I know you wanted to know that..
Another fun book as a companion: The Man Who Saved Robinson Crusoe: The strange surprising adventures of the original Robinson Crusoe and his most remarkable rescuer James Poling I used to love this genre as a kid...OK and a young man. Tarzan of the Apes, Swiss Family Robinson etc. Can't tell, can you?
Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, the 150th Anniversay Edition, by Walt Whitman, ed. David S. Reynolds, the original 1855 edition, with excerpts from several reviews, most not very complimentary...
Mrs. Ismitje and I are both reading books from Lois McMaster Bujold this fine holiday week. I picked up an "omnibus" of two books and a short story. The first is a book called The Warrior's Apprentice, the second a Hugo and Nebula Award winning story published first in Analog called "The Mountains of Mourning," and the third a Hugo-winning novel called The Vor Game. I just about finished what would be the first third and love it.
Had a gift card for the book store, so on recommendation, picked up this: Looks to me the most intriguing from everything I'm interested in (usually don't gravitate towards magical/mystical type books or characters). Thanks NER And I found it amusing that my mom picked up this, so she could complete her trilogy.
Black Mountain Days: a Memoir by Michael Rumaker. An account of the author's time at a long defunct experimental arts college in very rural North Carolina in the early fifties. His teachers were all soon to be influential poets, painters, composers and dancers, as were a lot of his classmates.
And it did! Much as I dislike Follett's dialog, his story line is hard to fault. Sucked me back in to the continuation of the previous two 'parts' of his story. From just before the emergence of the Berlin wall to the tearing down of it. The Kennedy Khrushchev years to the Nixon admin. Well researched and laid out. US history rightly has the Cuba crisis as a Khrushchev Kennedy battle and it "really nearly" came down to world annihilation due to the war hawk militant advisors on both sides. The two leader kept it together and decided not to end the world as we knew it. Kennedy kept the missiles out of Cuba(r) and Khrushchev had the missiles removed from Turkey. Relief from me, I was a reservist (TA) in Liverpool. Britain had nukes and were allied to the US, the Russians hadn't forgotten us and we were just 4 minutes away from someone pushing a button! I received a letter that week and a rail pass and was told pack my shit, to listen to BBC for instructions of where to muster.
Since I'll probably finish this before we head out tonight... Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli, a young writer (Mexican, raised in South Africa, living in NYC, publishing in works in both Spanish and English, but in spite of extensive translation credits, she doesn't translate her own writing... unless the translator of this text is a pseudonym for ... Valeria Luiselli).
I went back to my younger days and pulled a nearly-all-nighter reading last evening, figuring I was going to be up late tonight as well. I finished the Bujold book, which I enjoyed, and am thumbing through some short stories so I am not stuck in the middle of one tonight. And I think EvanJ jumped the gun on that new thread!