BOOKS THREAD

Just finished "White House Ghosts," a look at presidential speechwriters from FDR to W.

Good stuff.

But for a book where there are a bunch of anecdotes about big debates over single words or phrases and the care that went into language and style, there are an awful lot of basic copyediting mistakes.

 

I've long been fascinated by the Lost Colony - the English settlers who arrived in the Roanoke area in 1587 and seemingly disappeared (yes, I'm aware that I'm a dork, but thanks for thinking it anyway). I just finished James Horn's "A Kingdom Strange - The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke" and really enjoyed it. It was a very quick and compelling read. He puts forth a theory, supported by some reports, of what happened to the colonists. I haven't read much about the whole episode to really know if what he claims is bull, but I was entertained.

 

About a month ago, Mrs. Birdscribe picked up "Southern Storm--Sherman's March to the Sea" by Noah Trudeau and handed it over to me.

In between readings for work, I'm about 60 pages in and it's interesting thus far. I've already learned several things I never knew in all the books I've read and the History Channel documentary on The March.

 

Don't think I mentioned this book on here before. It's a plug for a friend, but also a superb collection of short stories.

Spit Baths, by Greg Downs. Won the Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction a few years back. Most of the stories are set in the South, but even Yankees will enjoy it.

http://www.gregdowns.net/index.htm

 

Just finished it last night and I'll agree 100%. What makes Lewis a great writer is his ability to take Average Reader into a world like the subprime mortgage market and CDO's and makes them more or less comprehensible. But the strength of Lewis's writing has always been his portrayal of the people behnd the story, whether it's in Liar's Poker, Moneyball, Blind Side and now this book.

Am going to read "Too Big to Fail" once I've finished HC's last book, "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea" by Barbara Demick

 

Let me put in a big plug for this book. Fascinating look at the lives of ordinary people in a country we know little to nothing about. Couldn't put it down and can't stop thinking about it.

 

Just finished Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. Fascinating and funny look at what can happen to our bodies after we die.

There were a couple of things that a copy editor missed, however. Somebody was coming to "piece" with a decision they had made. And the hill on which Jesus died was referred to as both "Calvary" and "Cavalry."

Still a good read, however.

 

If you like that, her follow-up was Boink, or something like that, about sex research.

 

It took me a while to get into Motherless Brooklyn, and I'm not sure if the time invested was worthy of the payoff. I laughed out loud at a couple of things and overall enjoyed the book, but it wasn't great.

 

Recently finished "Blood's a Rover" by James Ellroy. He's such a unique writer, but I tired of it pretty quickly. I'm not sure how it was any different than the other two parts of the trilogy (The Cold Six Thousand and American Tabloid) and frankly I think it was a miss.

 

Yes, yes, yes. Motherless Brooklyn is the only book in, I don't know, 20 years that I started reading and stopped because I couldn't get into it. I picked it back up a couple of years later and finished it. Meh.

 

Alan Furst's new one, Spies of the Balkans, is as great as the rest of his stuff. He just effortlessly and casually nails the atmosphere of WWII Europe everytime.