BOOKS THREAD

Also known as "The Continuing Decline and Fall of Western Civilization."

People like this make Paris Hilton look like a quantum physicist.

 

Just finished Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father's Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater. A food writer in Seattle wrote about trying to get his daughter, Iris, to go beyond what most kids it. It was just OK, not as good as I had hoped, and many of the recipes are beyond the scope of most home cooks. He comes across as kind of snarky at times. I spotted the book last year and got it as a Christmas gift, so I'm glad I finally read it.

Got a couple of new ones on my beside table to start now, including Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing by Stephen King. Really looking forward to that one.

 

I wonder if Snooki's hiding a bomb in that hive like Debbie Harry in the original "Hairspray."

 

Just finished "Life," the Keith Richards autobiography. I found it an excellent read, but I do believe that the more serious you are about music, the more you will get out of it, because most of the book is "theory and practice of rock", not a memoir per se.

 

Read "Rogue Island" by Bruce DeSilva during the snowstorm. An excellent read, especially for any crime thriller fans out there.

 

"Unbroken" rocked my world. I did not want it to end.

Still haven't finished "Freedom." But I really want to one of these days.

Started "The Imperfectionists" by Tom Rachman. Spectacular. One hell of a writer.

 

I'm reading three books right now. One when I go to lunch, one at home and one is in the bag I take to cover games, I can read before games and at halftime.

Lunch book - "In the Company of Soldiers: A Chronicle of Combat" by Rick Atkinson. An embedded reporter with 101st Airborne in the First Gulf War.
Home book - "Dead or Alive" Tom Clancy's newest book.
Work bag book - "Horse Soldiers" by Doug Stanton. About two SGO teams sent to Afghanistan to help the Northern Alliance. They travel everywhere by horse and bring havoc to the Taliban thanks in part to laser-guided air strikes and leave the Taliban so scared they can't sleep at night for fear of being killed.

 

Am waiting for "Unbroken" from the library but I think I'm the only person that loved "Freedom" - most everyone else had reservations. Did want to add a second thumbs up for "The Imperfectionists". Really enjoyed that one.

 

Just read The Forsaken, by Tim Tzouliadis. It's a non-fiction account of the thousands of Americans who moved to Soviet Russia in the midst of the Depression. The vast, vast majority either were killed outright during the great purges or died in the gulag.

I'm a tree-hugging lefty but this account really shows the sheer Satanic evil of Stalinism.

 

If you have the hours set aside, "Unbroken" is really something you could read in one sitting.

Also read "Lord of Misrule" in recent weeks, and based on the level of expectation I had for it, it was a real disappointment. I never warmed up to it, and about 100 pages in, I just wanted it to be over. And I'm a horse person. I'm no literary critic, far from it, so it seems a little funny ripping a National Book Award winner, but it just seemed stylistically self-conscious, to the point of being a distraction and an annoyance.

 

Just finished "Innocent", Scott Turow's sequel to "Presumed Innocent". Really, really good. Was great revisiting these characters 20 years later and the story is compelling and told in the voices of a number of different characters over multiple time lines. Very highly recommended.

 

"Innocent" is a fantastic book. I second the recommendation.

Finished "The Imperfectionists" and really enjoyed it. Now reading "Cleopatra" by Stacy Schiff. Strong start to this one.