What books are you reading these days?

Barreling through Louse Penny’s “Inspector Gamache” mystery series and loving it.

Proust

Ever so slowly.

Going for some light reading these days: Just finished “The Other Boelyn Girl”, and just started “The Constant Princess”. I grabbed up four Phillippa Gregory novels at the library bookstore, so thought I’d give them a shot.

It’s a goal in my life to see a naked sky. I’ve never seen the Milky Way, except in photographs.

Chiltons Service Manual, ‘94—‘01 Honda Integra.

I’m reading a series of books that is more like a series of diaries. They are called Dear America and are quite informative. I recommend them.

They Thought They Were Free and Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Latin America At the Crossroads by Roberto Regalado

The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes by Conevery Bolton Valencius

And for fluff….

Star Wars: the Force Awakens (novelization) by Alan Dean Foster

I am reading Book Three in the Jane Whitefield series Shadow Woman by Thomas Perry. He is a wonderful author, his stretches back during the time of the Senecas and the Iroquois nation are very evocative.

Just finished Bone Labyrinth and Sandstorm (first one) by Thomas Rollins.

I’m reading a book about Deaf culture called “For Hearing People Only“by Matthew S. Moore and Linda Levitan. It answers a lot if questions I had. I’m also reading “The Joy of Mathematics’” by someone whose name I forget. I bought both of them for $4 or less at thrift stores.

No new books right now but am a major ‘Smithsonian” fan and look forward to that every month and have recently been on a 1940’s b&w film noir jag.
The recent Smithsonian had a fantastic article on the early Jamestown settlers and have unearthed some old graves and artifacts. What was really interesting was the amount of tooth decay from switching from a wheat based european diet to a corn based western diet. Every corpses jawbone was riddled with cavities and abscesses, some serious agony goin’ on for those poor colonists.

@dxs The joy of mathematics. lol

The first book I finished this year was Jade Dragon Mountain, a good first novel by Elsa Hart. Currently I’m reading Sir Walter Scott’s 1825 novel of the Crusades, The Talisman. There’s another half dozen in various stages of progress as well.

The Eye of Zoltar by Jasper Fforde. It’s the third book of his Chronicles of Kazam series. I have two of his other books waiting in my queue. The Big Over Easy and Shades of Grey.

Next for me is The Handmaid’s Tale by by Margaret Atwood.

Also: I encourage anyone who has never seen the sky without light pollution to make it a life goal. The first time I did was in Montana, around 16. The beauty struck me in an unimaginable way. Then, when I turned my head slightly to the left and I saw the band of the Milky Way, I immediately broke down and started crying. Even now, it’s enough to bring me to tears. I want to see the sky like that again before I die.

@DrasticDreamer Oooh yes! I too have experienced that mystical and joyful awe several times. In the middle of the Nevada desert and high up in the Sierras here. One year I drove waaay up into the remote mountains to watch the Perseid meteor showers. It was mind blowing.

Blood on The Moon by James Ellroy. It’s the first book I’ve known that shamelessly use profanity whenever it wants. Reading through the profanity itself is amusing.

I’m reading ‘The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War’ by George Hicks. Just a little light reading.~

The news that Japan and South Korea have reached agreement on compensation and helps for the remaining women prompted me to read this book.

Atlas Shrugged (again).

Take that haters.

Quiet, a book on introverts, extremely good. It teaches me a lot about myself, and I’ve been using the included rating system to teach my family where they are on the spectrum.
I tested at 17/20, surpassed only by my dad – 20/20.

Let’s Take the Long Way Home, a memoir about friendship and eventual death. It reminds me of my best friends, and the author has a wonderful writing style. Befittingly, she is called “Gail”.

The Rosie Effect, which I liked just as much as I liked the prequel.

What The Dog Knows, a book about working dogs. I’ve only just started this one, but I’m enjoying it.

The Bible, of course, and I am about to start a book on Mel Gibson’s problems with making a movie about the Maccabees.

I’ve got a few on the go at the moment. For the book club, I need to get Elizabeth is Missing which looks quite good. I am a little way through The Shock of the Fall which started off promising but I’m not sure where it is going and I’m not sure if I like where I think it is going but I will get back to it. I have recently discovered Neil Gaiman and have read about 4 of his books already and have bought some of his children’s books for my children. I got a book about economics for christmas which was surprisingly enjoyable: The Undercover Economist Strikes Back: How to Run or Ruin an Economy by Tim Harford.

@Stinley

If you haven’t read it already then I highly recommend American Gods next. It is, in my view, Gaiman’s masterpiece.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand…its really awesome..)

Recently read below books as well which were also good..Susan Jeffer’s Feel the fear and do it anyway..have you read it?

I’m reading Ada’s Algorithm, which is a biography of Ada Lovelace, often credited as being the first programmer.

@Darth_Algar It’s one of the ones I’ve read and is brilliant. Such a big theme

Just finished a bunch of books on the history of Southeast Asia which got me interested in the Japanese occupation of SE Asia during WWII (and a temporary reprise of the French Indochina and Vietnam Wars), which got me into pre-WWII Japanese Imperialism, which got me interested in the origins of their modern navy, which got me interested in US foreign policy toward Japan from the 1850’s through Dec. 7th, 1941—especially those of the two Roosevelts, which got me interested in American isolationism after WWI, British Isolationism after WWI, French unpreparedness during the interwar years, Soviet foreign policy during the interwar-years, which got me interested in world-wide isolationism and the various worldwide arms limitations treaties between WWI and 3 September, 1939, (including a little two-day side-trip into a detailed description of the Battle and Evacuation of Dunkirk), which got me interested in Nazi and Japanese re-armament and expansionism from 1919 through 1941, in which has led me to my present cherrypicking:

A War to be Won, by Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, 2000.
Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History, by Gordon W. Prange; 1986.
Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor, by Leonard Baker; 1970.
Germany 1866–1945, by Gordon Craig, 1978.
Winston Churchill, vol. 5, 1922—1939, by Martin Gilbert, 1976.
Alistair Horne, To Lose a Battle: France 1940, by Alistair Horne, 1969.

The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries of John Colville, Volumes I & II, 1939 – 1955, by John Colville, Private Secretary to Prime Ministers Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee.

—along with concurrent online forays into Wikipedia, the Congressional Record Archive, Department of State Foreign Affairs Magazine archives, the New York Times archives, etc. When I’m able to access the goddamned internet, that is.

The study looks like a bomb went off in a library. Looks like home.

This all started a couple of months ago when I decided to take another look at the American war with Vietnam after staying away from any in-depth study of same for the past 30 or so years. But, as you can see, one war leads to another…

@Espiritus_Corvus, has your daisy-chain reading list led you into books about North Korea?

@Stinley

In that case there’s also a follow-up novella involving Shadow, titled ‘Monarch of the Glen’, in the anthology Fragile Things.

I’m reading “A Strangeness in My Mind” by Orhan Pamuk; the author is a Nobel-prize winner for literature. So far I can see why :)

@Jeruba

Yes, but mainly concerning what led up to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. The origins go back before the 1600s. The Russian objectives were always northern China and the Korean Peninsula, which threatened the Japanese. So, the Japanese occupied the Korean Peninsula first as a military base—a buffer zone from Russian incursion—but quickly became economically dependent upon Korea’s cheap commodities, such as rice and ores. The Japanese occupations were brutal.

Every historian seems to agree that treaties made between Korea, China, Japan, and the European powers were “unequal” from a Korean standpoint. I personally would characterize these treaties as invariably and unnecessarily cruel. Korea’s exploitation and loss of control of her natural resources—to the point of the starvation of her citizens—caused centuries of interior instability. The Korean people rightly blamed their government and wanted change, but were powerless to make that change. It’s a sad history that showed the larger powers at their bullying best (including the US, especially under the TR Roosevelt administration) and it didn’t change until the southern part of the peninsula came under US protection in 1953.

The Russo-Japanese War 1904–1905, by Jukes, Geoffry, Osprey, (2002)
The Origins of the Russo-Japanese War, by Nish, Ian Hill, London (1985).
Theodore Rex, by Morris, Edmund (2002), NY Random House (2002)
The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War by Bradley, James [the author of The Flags of Our Fathers (2009).