Books: What have people been reading recently?

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: kendall
Date: 11 Dec 10 - 08:51 PM

Seize the Fire by Adam Nicholson.
It's about Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson. It goes into some detail about the condition of the French and Spanish fleets. Quite an eye opener. Haven't gotten to the battle of Trafalgar yet.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Joe_F
Date: 11 Dec 10 - 08:13 PM

Bat Goddess: I don't pretend to have followed it all (even tho I have a degree in physics), but it is entertaining.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 11 Dec 10 - 12:22 PM

Joe, a friend gave me "Black Hole War" a few weeks ago -- not sure when I'll get a chance to slip it into my reading stream.

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,bankley
Date: 11 Dec 10 - 09:02 AM

Cobb

God is not Great

Tom Waits The Wild Years

Whispering Pines /The Northern Roots of American Music

The Autobiography of Charles Chaplin

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: katlaughing
Date: 11 Dec 10 - 05:13 AM

Just finished World Without End by Ken Follet. Kept me up at night to read on...his characters are so compelling and historical research so well done.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: robomatic
Date: 10 Dec 10 - 11:59 PM

Speaking of San Diego, I was introduced to the book 'Fragment' which I quite liked. It is a return to the kind of thing Michael Crichton started his career with, a scientific excursion to the possibilities that nature might have thrown at us, or we have yet to find out. Quite enjoyable.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Eiseley
Date: 10 Dec 10 - 11:55 PM

I'm so excited! When I go down to San Diego next month for the American Library Association's midwinter convention, I'll spend a day at the San Diego Maritime Museum where they have the ship Surprise that was used in the Master and Commander movie. But for me, it will be the fast privateer Aubrey sailed on so many occasions. What an adventure!

Oh, I may go to one or two library meetings as well.

Eiseley

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Joe_F
Date: 10 Dec 10 - 09:22 PM

The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics, by Leonard Susskind (2008)

American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power, by John Kenneth Galbraith (1956)

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Amergin
Date: 10 Dec 10 - 05:53 PM

I read The Watchmen by Moore/Gibbons yesterday.....wow...one of the few books that sucked me right in....and I'm not even a comic book type of person....but this was a very deep novel.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 10 Dec 10 - 05:49 PM

I've just finished Richard Mabey's latest called,'Weeds'. It's a book about the relationship between our species and wild plants. If we notice them at all we despise them, or even hate them, but, at the end of the day, we couldn't do without them. Mabey reckons that when agriculture was invented in the Middle East, thousands of years ago, the topsoils in that region were very fragile and without weeds to bind them together they would have soon blown away and the 'great experiment' would have come to an abrupt end.

Like all of Mabey's books it's a profound meditation on the 'nitty-gritty' of the environment. I've come to the conclusion that vast, windy generalisations about the environment are a waste of time - God is in the details!

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: fat B****rd
Date: 10 Dec 10 - 09:56 AM

The Aubrey/Maturin film "Master and Commander", and the books, led me to Boccherini. Good stuff on several levels that Mr.O'Bryan.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 10 Dec 10 - 09:56 AM

"The Greatest Show on Earth" by Richard Dawkins.

I was reluctant to say that as mentioning him gets you accused of persecuting our religious brethren. But that risk apart, it makes you think....

On the fiction side of things, I am rediscovering the joy of reading Inspector Morse stories. One of the rare occasions where the books and TV series are both excellent. (James Herriot being another.)

Also reading Viz.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 10 Dec 10 - 09:49 AM

I have just finished The Yellow Admiral..a grand yarn it is too..my only disappoitment is that now I have only two left to read. Have also recently read The Misalliance by Anita Brookner...very good indeed.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Eiseley
Date: 09 Dec 10 - 07:57 PM

I just finished the 17th of the Aubrey/Maturin books. Now I will go listen to some Locatelli and begin the 18th: The Yellow Admiral.

Eiseley

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: bobad
Date: 09 Dec 10 - 07:12 PM

Confessions of an Irish Rebel by Brendan Behan

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 09 Dec 10 - 06:54 PM

Actually, I thought carrying it around would constitute useful exercise! In any case, it is not so much a "diet" book as a marvellous way of learning about people around the world - what they eat, what they do, how they live/survive... And terrific photos of the world in which they live - villages in the Andes, Africa, India, cities, hamlets... An incredible, food-based story of today's world.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: EBarnacle
Date: 09 Dec 10 - 03:59 PM

A diet book which weighs more than 5 pounds seems to send the wrong message.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 09 Dec 10 - 03:29 PM

Just came back from the library with and then spent about two hours reading and perusing:

What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Alusia.

From the 800 calorie diet of the Maasai herder to a 12,300 C diet of a British "Snacker Mom", this is a trip around the world, peeks into the lives of an incredible variety of people, what they eat and how they live. Wonderful photos and some interesting essays, including The Pleasures of Eating by the wonderful Wendell Berry. In large format - must weigh over five pounds!

While not a "dieting" book, it is full of ideas about different healthy and interesting things to eat. I was so busy looking at it, I did not stop to eat.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 08 Dec 10 - 08:36 PM

An unauthorized bio of Angelina Jolie, by Andrew Morton. Very interesting psychologically.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Dec 10 - 05:38 PM

Pulp History by Talbott.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: EBarnacle
Date: 08 Dec 10 - 05:30 PM

Are you talking about the same book?

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 08 Dec 10 - 05:09 PM

The only book by Hiaasen I managed was HOOT. A terrific book geared to empowering the young people in our midst. Totally wonderful and, for me, anything that encourages the young to stand up and be counted is top notch.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: mousethief
Date: 08 Dec 10 - 01:42 PM

I wonder if, as with many authors that achieve a level of fame and sales, the reviewers just aren't allowed to say "this really sucks compared to his early stuff"? They'd get the axe for upsetting a perfectly profitable apple cart. No more Hiaasen for me. Besides what I wanted was a mystery. I went into a mystery specialty book shop ("Whodunit? Books" even!) and specifically asked for a funny mystery. There was nothing mysterious about Sick Puppy (precious little funny either) except how the reviewers found it so funny when it was riddled with cliches and as funny as the shipping report.

Off to read Murder with Peacocks.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 08 Dec 10 - 07:36 AM

Finally got around to reading the other two books in the Philip Pullman 'Dark Materials' series (The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass), as last time I read the first one, I just couldn't garner enthusiasm for the second. This time, I have been hooked.

Otherwise it's a book on the Slave trade and its abolition ('Bitter water and sweet', by Sian Rees who wrote 'The Floating Brothel') orthe writings of Hildegarde of Bingen, one of my favourite nuns.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Wesley S
Date: 08 Dec 10 - 07:12 AM

Just to offer another viewpoint - I laughed out loud several times while reading "Stormy Weather". But I grew up on the coast of Florida. Perhaps living there made it funnier.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,Bat Goddess in Boston
Date: 08 Dec 10 - 06:28 AM

Mousethief -- Carl Hiaasin's earlier books are the funniest. Sick Puppy, so so. Give Stormy Weather a miss.

But Tourist Season and the other earlier ones...yes, you may well howl. They are wonderfully warped.

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: theleveller
Date: 08 Dec 10 - 04:11 AM

Just finished Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan and The Hill of Dreams - not as disturbing as I remember.

I'm now re-reading John Cowper Powys's Maiden Castle for the first time in many years. It confirms my earlier opinion - that it's not anywhere near as good as A Glastonbury Romance, which is one of the greatest English classics.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: mousethief
Date: 08 Dec 10 - 02:43 AM

Okay, just finished Sick Puppy by Carl Hiaasen. The blrb on the front cover said that from cover to cover it is a "howl" and the back cover promised it was laugh-out-loud funny.

I laughed out loud, once, on page 466. Of 511. Never howled.

Very convoluted, somewhat clever. But laugh-out-loud funny?

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: EBarnacle
Date: 07 Dec 10 - 08:39 PM

Just a minor drift--Ian Fleming was one of the principles involved in "The Man Who Never Was."

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Wesley S
Date: 07 Dec 10 - 12:42 PM

"Catcher in the Rye". I haven't read it since high school.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: LilyFestre
Date: 07 Dec 10 - 11:12 AM

Just finsihed up Tuesdays With Morrie (absolutely LOVED it) and am now starting The Blue Orchard by Jackson Taylor.

Michelle

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,Bat Goddess in Boston
Date: 07 Dec 10 - 08:35 AM

I just started re-reading Ian Fleming's James Bond series -- last read circa 1965 when I was in high school.

I brought several with me to Boston to occupy myself while we were hanging out close to mass General -- we travelled very light as we both have current mobility problems and have to schlep our small bags through North Station, trains, shuttle buses, cabs and on foot. Paperbacks in the '60s weren't the bloated things they are today and had smaller type, close leading and many fewer pages. I think publishers today produce such fat books merely to justify the $8-10 price tag. These Signet paperbacks were originally 50 cents -- more expensive than the 35 cent average at the time.

Discovered I haven't a copy of "Casino Royale" so started with "Live and Let Die". Wrapped that up the other day and yesterday finished "Moonraker". Interesting, Bond was driving a 1930 supercharged Bentley -- more of a John Steed car than the James Bond sports cars of the films. Also, interestingly, he didn't get the girl at the end -- Gala (with whom he'd been naked but innocent)marries her fiance a couple days after she and Bond save London.

Just started "From Russia With Love" this morning.

Bond smokes 3 packs a day (according to "Live and Let Die") and everyone else seems to be smoking at least as much. He also has a housekeeper named May, has a tax-free thousand pounds a year, plus his salary of (net) about a thousand pounds.

I've already learned about "Truman shirts" and the South Goodwin Lightship Disaster.

I need to find out what Signet copies besides "Casino Royale" that I need to scare up.

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 06 Dec 10 - 06:22 PM

Amos: That book,The Seven Mysteries of Life, looks interesting. Especially since Amazon paired it with Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing by Robert Wolff, a marvellous book. I'll keep an eye out for it.

My fav of recent months is still The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Aubrey. It is wonderfully translated from French. An elegantly written novel with a story that unfolds as insightful and unique. Both my male friend and I found it hard to put down, a page turner that needed focus.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 Dec 10 - 06:16 PM

Just finished another Kirk Mitchell Native American murder mystery, Sky Woman Falling. His aren't as good as Hillerman, but they are still good reads and I really get a kick out of the two main characters.

I just received the paperback of Ken Follet's World Without End and am about one third into it. I love that he carries on with the descendants from the first book AND gently reminds the reader of who belongs to whom in the family trees.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: fat B****rd
Date: 06 Dec 10 - 02:44 PM

Painted Ladies the penultimate Spenser novel by the late Robert B Parker.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: EBarnacle
Date: 06 Dec 10 - 01:56 PM

I've just begun The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: David C. Carter
Date: 06 Dec 10 - 01:41 PM

I am two thirds into Life by Keef...It brings back memories of life in and around London at that time.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 06 Dec 10 - 11:09 AM

I am still reading and really enjoying the Patrick O'Brien series. Have just finished a book by Olga Grushin called The Line, best book I have read in ages. Also reading Tony Blairs book..Journey, My Political Life..not sure what to make of that.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Amos
Date: 22 Nov 10 - 12:04 PM

HEre's a really interesting read: The Seven Mysteries of Life. Despite its title it is a profound exposition of every level of life from the microscopic to the macroscopic, and all the systems involved therein, and remarkably well done considering the ambitious scope of the work.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 22 Nov 10 - 11:23 AM

Yes, Edthrfolkie, TMG stands up to re reading and adult reading well.

Personally, I think Moonfleet does too. Maybe that one is more my sense of childhood adventure and nostalgia but my 70+ yr old mother is currently getting something out of it and it is new to her.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Becca72
Date: 22 Nov 10 - 10:29 AM

"The Most Evil Women in History" by Shelley Klein.

It was a birthday gift from a dear friend...I wonder if she's trying to tell me something??

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Nov 10 - 10:13 AM

sitting bull by alexander b adams,every American should read it

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Rapparee
Date: 22 Nov 10 - 10:08 AM

Jamestown: the buried truth by Kelso.

Nonfiction, archeology: the original Jamestown fort site is NOT under water! Great read.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 22 Nov 10 - 08:36 AM

A book about Victorian the Home. It follows absolutely everything to do with how an upper/middleclass Victorian home was run and the etiquette of the time and covers what was happening in society outside the family home and the double standard hypocracy of the time. It's one of those books that I can't put down for long.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 21 Nov 10 - 12:06 PM

Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness - (Eugene H. Peterson) In this book Peterson clarifies the pastoral vocation by turning to the book of Jonah, in which he finds a captivating, subversive story that can help pastors recover their "vocational holiness". Peterson probes the spiritual dimensions of the pastoral calling and seeks to reclaim the ground taken over by those who are trying to enlist pastors in religious careers.

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Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (Parker J. Palmer). The old Quaker adage, "Let your life speak," spoke to author Parker J. Palmer when he was in his early 30s. It summoned him to a higher purpose, so he decided that henceforth he would live a nobler life. "I lined up the most elevated ideals I could find and set out to achieve them," he writes. "The results were rarely admirable, often laughable, and sometimes grotesque.... I had simply found a 'noble' way of living a life that was not my own, a life spent imitating heroes instead of listening to my heart." Thirty years later, Palmer now understands that learning to let his life speak means "living the life that wants to live in me." It involves creating the kind of quiet, trusting conditions that allow a soul to speak its truth. It also means tuning out the noisy preconceived ideas about what a vocation should and shouldn't be so that we can better hear the call of our wild souls. There are no how-to formulas in this extremely unpretentious and well-written book, just fireside wisdom from an elder who is willing to share his mistakes and stories as he learned to live a life worth speaking about. --Gail Hudson

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Search for the Beloved Community: The Thinking of Martin Luther King Jr. (Kenneth L. Smith, Ira G. Zepp). Search for the Beloved Community examines the thinking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the influences that shaped it. Late co-author Kenneth L. Smith was one of King's seminary professors. His firsthand knowledge of King's seminary studies provides the background for an incisive analysis of the influences of the Christian tradition and of Mahatma Gandhi upon this outstanding leader.

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Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940 (Grace Elizabeth Hale). First-timer Hale's impressive examination of the Jim Crow Southan erudite intellectual survey of the sweeping social, historical, and economic trends that shaped white racial identity in opposition to blacknessis obscured by deadly academic jargon. The central myth Hale debunks is that whiteness is an organic, rather than manufactured, racial identitythat it is, somehow, the American norm. She identifies several large cultural forces that influenced white racial identity. The replacement of local merchandise with a national mass market, for example, gave rise to advertising (much of it created in the North) that manipulated southerners' nostalgic remembrance of loyal, subservient slaves by using African-American icons like Aunt Jemima to sell goods to a nationwide audiencepresumed to be entirely white. Advances in printing technology made it easier to distribute demeaning images of African-Americans, reinforcing negative stereotypes. Just as black racial identity was largely defined in relation to whiteness after Reconstruction, Hale asserts, whiteness was defined by blackness. Analyzing how whites of different economic and educational backgrounds shared a unified sense of supremacy, she fleshes out Ralph Ellison's famous declaration: ``Southern whites cannot walk, talk, sing, conceive of laws or justice, think of sex, love, the family or freedom without responding to the presence of Negroes.'' But in place of Ellison's simple eloquence, Hale raises an impenetrable thicket of theoretical jargon (terms like transhistorical, isomorphic, and dialectics rain like candy from a Mardi Gras float). She glosses the Civil War's outcome thus: ``Union victory delegitimated that nascent nationalist collectivity, the Confederacy.'' Furthermore, her contention that ``this corresponding depth of racial obsession occurred only with passing'' for African-Americans spectacularly understates the totality with which whites controlled black life during Jim Crow's dark reign. One senses in Hale's (American History/Univ. Of Virginia) cogent, encyclopedic scholarship the debut of an important new intellectual voiceall the more reason to regret the cloaking of provocative thinking in the fusty duds of academic prose. (8 pages b&w photos) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Introduction to the Bible, An (Christian E Hauer, William A Young). An Introduction To The Bible approaches the Bible by considering it from three different 'worlds'-- literary, historical, and contemporary worlds. This unique approach underscore the dynamics of each of world and the methods scholars have developed to study them. The authors are especially careful to distinguish the historical and literary worlds for readers new to the discipline. Readers are also encouraged to consider and discuss the contemporary significance of the Bible.

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Praying Shapes Believing: A Theological Commentary on the Book of Common Prayer (Leonel L. Mitchell). Mitchell's basic assumption is the old "lex orandi lex credendi" proviso: how we pray influences what we believe. Since the Book of Common Prayer is the center of how Episcopalians corporately pray, it follows that an examination of it can reveal the theology to which it gives rise. Looking at every aspect of the Book of Common Prayer, Mitchell examines the connection between liturgy, scripture, prayer, and theology. The examination is thorough, running through the liturgical calendar, the Great Vigil, baptism, Holy Eucharist, pastoral offices, and ordinations.

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... and several 80-pg long study-booklets (plus the respective Biblical books) here: http://www.gcfweb.org/institute/index.php

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It's all college-level reading that I chose for fun (not because assigned). Also a couple of concurrent audiobooks from Librivox.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: fat B****rd
Date: 20 Nov 10 - 03:13 PM

Just finished Life by Keef. Great!! and just starting The Anatomy Murders by Lisa Rosner, which is all about Burke and Hare.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Eiseley
Date: 20 Nov 10 - 02:40 PM

I'm reading The Nutmeg of Consolation by Patrick O'Brian. I never want these books to end!

Eiseley

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Edthefolkie
Date: 20 Nov 10 - 02:22 PM

Jon, "Tom's Midnight Garden" is the most wonderful book. First heard of it when I was about 10 via BBC Children's Hour (showing my age)and have reread it at about 5 yr intervals ever since. Philippa Pearce manages to say pretty profound things about childhood, old age, loss, time. I was really sad to hear of her death a few years ago - maybe she's skating down the Cam with Tom and Barty in Heaven, hope so.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Nov 10 - 09:56 PM

Daughter of Time was excellent. Jon, I just gave my copy away, but would have gladly sent it to you. BTW, Night Owl was thrilled to hear from you.

I've just started A Stranger in the Kingdom.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 18 Nov 10 - 09:17 PM

The Daugter of Time is a book I'd really like to read some day.

As I seem to been on time with this and Tom's Midnight Garden...

I think Allison Uttley's a Traveler in Time is a gem.