BOOKS THREAD

Agreed on that, and I've read everything Pelecanos has done. I can't recommend his earlier work strongly enough, but The Cut just seems a little too close to his other series... without being quite as good.

 

What's everyone's favorite Pelecanos book(s)? Always wanted to read more of him.

 

I started with "King Suckerman," which I loved. It's set in the 70s with a bit of the vibe from the Blaxploitation movies of the era.

If you haven't read them I would strongly recommend the Right as Rain-Hell to Pay-Soul Circus trilogy featuring Derek Strange and Terry Quinn, and definitely do them in order. They're tremendous.

Outside of those you can kind of jump around. On some level everything he's written is part of a series that's being written out of order. Central characters in one book set in the 90s will show up as teens in books set in the 60s or 70s.

 

Right as Rain was awesome. Very good read.

I wanna get into Pelecanos, I am finished with all of Michael Connelly's work and need someone new to get in to.

 

I'm headed to a Lee Child reading and signing tonight. The new Reacher book comes out; it's gotten great reviews so far. If you're into huge ex military cops kicking ass. Which I am.

 

Checked out the new Klosterman book and the new Sedaris collection from the library a week or two ago. Neither was their best book, not even close, but both were enjoyable for what they were: Klosterman makes you read somewhat critically about pop culture and feel like you're in a freshman philosophy class, and Sedaris makes you laugh at his self-deprecation. Fun, easy, late summer reads before I get into a more serious fall mode.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/dec/11/highereducation.news4

 

Nice. I've read three or four of the Reacher books. The first couple I read were in the middle of the series, so I'm starting at the beginning and working my way down. Finished two in the past couple weeks. Huge fan of this series. Have loved each one I've read so far.

 

The event was a blast. He spoke for a bit, then took a lot of questions from the crowd. Someone asked him where he learned about the techniques Reacher uses in fighting and he said they were all tested on the streets of Birmingham, England when he was a kid, including one time when he took on five kids in an alley (Child's like 6-4 himself and was big as a kid) and took out the ringleader first, a tried and true Reacher method. I got the chance to ask if he ever feels boxed-in by how fans think Reacher should act and he gave a pretty lengthy answer and finished it by saying it wasn't him, it was all about Reacher. And if I had a problem with it, take it up with him. It felt good to be (jokingly) threatened by Jack Reacher.

I only started reading them probably five years ago. Quickly caught up with all of them and now eagerly await each new one every year. I read them out of order originally too; didn't read Killing Floor until probably the fifth or sixth one. I think they've all been fantastic, this new one is the 18th. There's probably two that I didn't like quite as much but otherwise no complaints.

And Child himself is a really interesting dude and on his website you can read some really fun interviews he's given. Fired at 40 after working in TV, decided to write a book to try and support his family and created Reacher.

 

Very cool, STG. I just finished Killing Floor last week, actually. Have read a few middle books, but plan on starting the second one, Die Trying, this week.

I just read an interview he did with the NYT about how he prefers a small apartment with a great view instead of a more extravagent home. Kinda like Reacher. Wants what he needs and nothing more.

 

I just read "The Boys in the Boat," a true-life best-seller by Daniel James Brown, and I enjoyed it a lot.

I now know more about rowing/crew than I ever thought I wanted to know, but the story of the U.S. Olympic "eight" rowing team that went to the 1936 Games was nonetheless compelling.

The book -- all 400-plus pages of it -- could have been a bit shorter without losing anything. But I came to care a lot about the main protagonist and his crewmates in the boat, which carried an unlikely group of young men to victory against the backdrops of the Great Depression and Nazi Germany.

The best part of this sports/historical novel, though, had less to do with either sports or history, and most to do with the life story of Joe Rantz, a late addition to the University of Washington varsity crew team that went to Berlin for the 1936 Olympic Games.

As someone with a large, tight-knit family, it's hard for me to fathom any parents more or less disowning a young boy, first when he was 10 and kicked out of the family home to sleep in a nearby schoolhouse, and then really and truly abandoning him when he was 15 and left standing, bewildered and in shock, on the front porch as his father, stepmother and half-siblings simply but purposely just drove away without him -- with no real explanation or empathy. Left to his own devices, Rantz made his own way, first to UW, then onto the crew team, and finally, to the 1936 Olympic Games.

Another part of the story that I also found interesting -- amazing, even -- was what a big deal rowing apparently was back then, when it frequently attracted crowds of several thousands to the lakefronts, and it brought out upwards of 75,000 people out on a crummy, rainy day to watch the final sessions of boat races at the Olympics. I really can't imagine that with rowing, not even Olympic rowing.

Good book, though, and I now have much more of an appreciation for rowing.

 

Started Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane, lots of characters to sort out in just the first 80 pages.