Recently Read Books

[ZooCougar]

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (Science Fiction)

If you think that humans will ever travel to another solar system and colonize it then this book will probably throw a damper on this belief. Seriously, we’re better off not screwing up earth.

Empire of the Summer Moon (Non Fiction History)

I could not put this down because the whole thing was so fascinating. This is about the Comanche and how they ran circles around Spain, Texas the US and every other Native American tribe for basically hundreds of years.
And their greatest leader was the son of a Comanche warrior and a white woman who was taken prisoner when she was 9.

This is a tell it like it is sort of book. So if you aren’t ready for a few popular beliefs to be blown to shards then don’t read this.

 

[Waquoit]

I'm not particularly a Dead fan, even so I just read Fare Thee Well, the story of the band post-Garcia. Quick takeaway, Phil Lesh is a tool.

 

[8893]

I'm not particularly a Dead fan, even so I just read Fare Thee Well, the story of the band post-Garcia. Quick takeaway, Phil Lesh is a tool.

Then let me heartily recommend the 30-hour, unabridged audiobook Long Strange Trip, which will counter that with evidence that Lesh was second only to Garcia in terms of his impact on the greatness of the band. It's also a helluva listen filled with great storytelling.

 

[HuskyHawk]

I'm reading Dune now. Had started and failed several times. It is good but somewhat tedious.

 

[WestHartHusk]

Extraterrestrial is a short but interesting read, written by a Harvard astronomer. It makes a pretty compelling argument that we may have been subject to an extraterrestrial drive-by recently, but more importantly urges us to shift they way we think of - and explore - the universe.

Also just read To Sleep Among the Stars. Fun read about a future where humans are colonizing and commercially space, how we travel and what we discover. It was probably longer than it needed to be.

 

[ZooCougar]

Extraterrestrial is a short but interesting read, written by a Harvard astronomer. It makes a pretty compelling argument that we may have been subject to an extraterrestrial drive-by recently, but more importantly urges us to shift they way we think of - and explore - the universe.

Also just read To Sleep Among the Stars. Fun read about a future where humans are colonizing and commercially space, how we travel and what we discover. It was probably longer than it needed to be.

Interesting. After reading Aurora colonizing space just seems almost like a dead end. And this is from the guy who wrote those Mars books.

 

[BigErnMcCracken]

A plug for A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James. It's a fictionalized account of the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in '76 but it's so much more than that. It's a really challenging book, complex plot, told through dozens of characters each with their own voice over a period of decades. It took me a few tries to get into it but I'm glad I did. It is an absolutely astounding piece of work.

 

[Hey Adrien!]

Last week, I finished Feinstein’s Raise a Fist, Take a Knee.

On pure writing, it’s not his best work, but it’s a very good case study of modern race relations in sports and a timely, well researched book.

 

[8893]

Anyone looking for a good vacation/beach read, I recommend The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Very interesting and easy read. I finished it in two and a half days. Short chapters, around 300 pages.

I didn't know much about the multiverse concept and this was a good introduction to it, with an It's a Wonderful Life-type theme running through it. A healthy dose of self-help therapy, too.

The premise is a 35-year old woman who has reached a crossroads of sorts and is questioning her will to live when she discovers a library in between life and death that contains books of all the other lives she could have lived if she had made different choices.

I have a handful of non-fiction books that I am in the middle of, and I have come to realize that I don't enjoy reading non-fiction nearly as much, likely because I spend much of my day doing that for work. I knew I needed a sure-fire beach read for vacation and this fit the bill perfectly.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Anyone looking for a good vacation/beach read, I recommend The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Very interesting and easy read. I finished it in two and a half days. Short chapters, around 300 pages.

I didn't know much about the multiverse concept and this was a good introduction to it, with an It's a Wonderful Life-type theme running through it. A healthy dose of self-help therapy, too.

The premise is a 35-year old woman who has reached a crossroads of sorts and is questioning her will to live when she discovers a library in between life and death that contains books of all the other lives she could have lived if she had made different choices.

I have a handful of non-fiction books that I am in the middle of, and I have come to realize that I don't enjoy reading non-fiction nearly as much, likely because I spend much of my day doing that for work. I knew I needed a sure-fire beach read for vacation and this fit the bill perfectly.

This is so timely. I have about 4 non-fiction books I started on my kindle. Latest is The Big Picture "Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on Higgs bosons and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions. Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void? Does human purpose and meaning fit into a scientific worldview?" Man, not a beach book for sure. I'll get through it eventually.

I also dove into The Craft, which is about the history of the Free Masons. Didn't finish, but this is at least a little more of a history and story and less taxing than The Big Picture. It's quite interesting really, the impact they had (have?).

Since I needed something fiction and faster paced after finishing Dune and the Alex Verus series, I started the old Earthsea series, from 1968, by Ursula K Le Guin. I liked her short stories when I was in high school and college and didn't realize she had written this series. Seems to fit the bill for my beach book. The great thing about a series like this is that (a) it's available from the library and (b) if I like it, there are several books to read and I'm set for the summer.

 

[billythekid]

I just finished The Faithful and the Fallen fantasy series by John Gwynne. It's a four-book series and is one of the better fantasy stories I've read in a while. It has some standard fantasy tropes, like The Chosen One, but does it in a unique way that doesn't feel tired. The author writes some of the best battle sequences that I've read. Each book is 700+ pages, so plenty of content to get you through the Summer.

 

[Hey Adrien!]

Glad this thread was revived.

Last week, I finished The Legends Club: Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Valvano and an Epic College Basketball Rivalry by John Feinstein.

Maybe subconsciously inspired to read this book after Coach K's retirement, this was yet another excellent Feinstein book that goes deep into each coach's life and how they are intertwined.

For how much I hate Duke basketball, this book definitely warmed me to Coach K, the person, but if you can compartmentalize it's a great read and a worthy investment of time.

 

[8893]

this book definitely warmed me to Coach K

Definitely not a selling point for me!

 

[HuskyHawk]

I just finished The Faithful and the Fallen fantasy series by John Gwynne. It's a four-book series and is one of the better fantasy stories I've read in a while. It has some standard fantasy tropes, like The Chosen One, but does it in a unique way that doesn't feel tired. The author writes some of the best battle sequences that I've read. Each book is 700+ pages, so plenty of content to get you through the Summer.

I'm mostly an urban fantasy guy (Dresden Files, Alex Verus series, Kate Daniels series) but might give this a go. Still painfully waiting for Patrick Rothfus to get off his butt and finish the Kingkiller Chronicles.

 

[billythekid]

I'm mostly an urban fantasy guy (Dresden Files, Alex Verus series, Kate Daniels series) but might give this a go. Still painfully waiting for Patrick Rothfus to get off his butt and finish the Kingkiller Chronicles.

If you prefer urban fantasy, check out The Green Bone Saga, by Fonda Lee. Takes place in a fictional city/state with a definite Asian flavor. It feels more like an organized crime story with magic elements than a more traditional fantasy. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Loved Kingkiller Chronicles, but gave up on waiting for Rothfus to finish it. Too many other good books out there to enjoy.

 

[Vancat]

Fans of Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow, if you haven't already, read Innocent by same. I reread PI first. Great book! Guess what, I enjoyed Innocent even more! It has the same characters as PI, a few years down the line. Rusty Sabich, wife, Sandy Stern, etc. Kudos to Turow, he never gives away the twist in PI when talking about their past lives.

 

[CL82]

So, during Covid I was reading a lot of stuff that I could download e-books for from my local library. Part of that was the Pendergast series by Preston and Child. They start off with Relic* in which Pendergast plays a supporting role and then there’s something like 20 books in the series. There were a half dozen of books that were not available electronically. My project this summer has been to get the hardcopies of those books and finish up the series.

In overview Pendergast is an FBI special agent with a special forces background and incredibly high IQ. Think of him as a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Reacher. He lacks the physical presence of Reacher, but he is perfectly willing to take matters into his own hands when he needs to. It often deals with cases that appear to involve supernatural circumstances to which Pendergast, sometimes, discovers a real world explanation for. It is a great summer reading series and I highly recommend it.

Preston and Child also wrote the Giddon’s Sword series in which a former elite thief finds out that he is dying of cancer and is hired by an engineering firm to solve difficulty issues. I think there’s only four or five books in the series. It’s also great summer reading.

* They made a movie from the book Relic which kind of sort of deals with the same subject matter, but the Pendergast character is entirely eliminated and much of his role is given to a New York police detective who is a supporting character in the novel. The movie is terrible, but the book is good.

 

[HuskyHawk]

So, during Covid I was reading a lot of stuff that I could download e-books for from my local library. Part of that was the Pendergast series by Preston and Child. They start off with Relic* in which Pendergast plays a supporting role and then there’s something like 20 books in the series. There were a half dozen of books that were not available electronically. My project this summer has been to get the hardcopies of those books and finish up the series.

In overview Pendergast is an FBI special agent with a special forces background and incredibly high IQ. Think of him as a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Reacher. He lacks the physical presence of Reacher, but he is perfectly willing to take matters into his own hands when he needs to. It often deals with cases that appear to involve supernatural circumstances to which Pendergast, sometimes, discovers a real world explanation for. It is a great summer reading series and I highly recommend it.

Preston and Child also wrote the Giddon’s Sword series in which a former elite thief finds out that he is dying of cancer and is hired by an engineering firm to solve difficulty issues. I think there’s only four or five books in the series. It’s also great summer reading.

* They made a movie from the book Relic which kind of sort of deals with the same subject matter, but the Pendergast character is entirely eliminated and much of his role is given to a New York police detective who is a supporting character in the novel. The movie is terrible, but the book is good.

For those that don't use their library, mine is part of a local group library serving several towns. It now connects to an app called Libby, that lets you input your library card and then access all the audio or e-books available, put holds on them on your device etc. It's pretty great.

 

[CL82]

For those that don't use their library, mine is part of a local group library serving several towns. It now connects to an app called Libby, that lets you input your library card and then access all the audio or e-books available, put holds on them on your device etc. It's pretty great.

We just switched to Libby, which I haven’t used yet. Formally we used an app called CL reader, which I liked.

 

[ClifSpliffy]

 

[Palatine]

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (Science Fiction)

If you think that humans will ever travel to another solar system and colonize it then this book will probably throw a damper on this belief. Seriously, we’re better off not screwing up earth.

Empire of the Summer Moon (Non Fiction History)

I could not put this down because the whole thing was so fascinating. This is about the Comanche and how they ran circles around Spain, Texas the US and every other Native American tribe for basically hundreds of years.
And their greatest leader was the son of a Comanche warrior and a white woman who was taken prisoner when she was 9.

This is a tell it like it is sort of book. So if you aren’t ready for a few popular beliefs to be blown to shards then don’t read this.

The real question is whether a technological society should live on a planetary surface at all? It sounds absurd. However, the the riches and resources in a place like the asteroid belt dwarf Earth. The obvious obstacle is oxygen but that may not be a problem as our technology advances.

 

[John]

Finally reading the Dark Tower series, currently on Wind Through the Keyhole (reading them in the story chronological order, not the order they were written in).

 

[ZooCougar]

The real question is whether a technological society should live on a planetary surface at all? It sounds absurd. However, the the riches and resources in a place like the asteroid belt dwarf Earth. The obvious obstacle is oxygen but that may not be a problem as our technology advances.

Yeah. After reading this book I am not optimistic at all.

 

[nomar]

I recently enjoyed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel, who in 2020 gained a lot of notoriety for Station Eleven (a 2014 novel about a virus that wiped out of most of humanity). I actually preferred Sea of Tranquility.

A book I was very disappointed in was To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara. I loved The People in the Trees and A Little Life. I think she confused the success of A Little Life with a desire among her readers to see her characters suffer. I couldn't even finish To Paradise. It was masochistic.

 

[nomar]

Finally reading the Dark Tower series, currently on Wind Through the Keyhole (reading them in the story chronological order, not the order they were written in).

I recently read The Running Man. I was a huge fan of the movie, cheesy as it was. I knew they were very different stories but I didn't quite realize how different. I read Edgar Wright is planning on making a movie that is more faithful to "Bachman's" book.

It's really interesting that King didn't anticipate the internet at all in 1982. Three years later, Card anticipated social media and influencers in Ender's Game.

 

[Hey Adrien!]

Every year, my school does a summer reading program where we read one of four books and then once we return to school, we mix teachers and students for community book groups.

Usually, the books aren't very good and I've learned that I'm a better participant of the group if I haven't even read the book (ask more questions than give answers, it gives the kids more leadership ; ) but this year, I was intrigued by my book selection, Echo by Pam Munoz Ryan.

I taught her book Esperanza Rising a decade ago when I used to teach English and remember liking it, so I started reading Echo and was pretty hooked from the start.

It's a historical fiction YA novel that centers around WWII. A harmonica threads together the narrative of three main characters with a little magic realism thrown in too. At about 600 pages long, it's a commitment for a YA novel, but it's excellent. Since I've been teaching math exclusively in the last decade, I've been off the loop of good YA novels, but Echo holds its weight as simply an excellent book, just one that can be read by teenagers and adults.

If you have a 7th-9th grader who loves to read, I recommend this book highly and if you enjoy good YA books, then give it a try. Very worth my time and a good summer read too.

 

[HuskyHawk]

The Girl With All the Gifts. This was very good. It’s nominally a zombie premise, but not really. The lead character is fascinating and really well done. Definitely gives you a lot to chew on, moral dilemmas abound. Fast paced, exceeded my expectations.

 

[CL82]

I am finishing up Preston and Childs Pendergast series:

Picture of Pendergast as an FBI agent with Sherlock Holmes intellect and observation skills and Reachers ruthlessness. The tails often nibble on the edges of the supernatural which Pendergast sometimes refutes. I enjoy these books. They are a good summer read.

 

[HuskyHawk]

I am finishing up Preston and Childs Pendergast series:

View attachment 77929
Picture of Pendergast as an FBI agent with Sherlock Holmes intellect and observation skills and Reachers ruthlessness. The tails often nibble on the edges of the supernatural which Pendergast sometimes refutes. I enjoy these books. They are a good summer read.

That's a lot of books.

 

[CL82]

That's a lot of books.

Haha, yeah I guess it is. I only read numbers 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 16 & 17 this summer. I found these authors during Covid and I read everything I could download electronically from my library. This summer‘s project has been filling in the gaps. I just need to read number 9 and I will have finished it. I’ve requested it and I’m waiting for it to come to my library. Fortuitously, these authors are really good about writing each one of their novels as a standalone. There are only two sets of three novels that need to be read in sequence. They were part of what I read this summer.

For what it’s worth, I enjoy long book series. It’s the equivalent of binge watching TV in that you get to immerse yourself in the characters and there is no wait for the next book to come out. My favorite is the Aubrey - Maturin novels by Patrick O’Brian (the Master and Commander series). They are excellent if you are a fan of historical fiction. I’ve read through the series twice and read a few favorites more often. A close second would be the Reacher series, even though they’re very different stylistically.