If you like it, I highly recommend David McCullough’s bio of him. Well-researched and very readable.
I finished Blood Moon by Sandra Brown. A decent mystery about a series of abductions of teenage girls in Louisiana, but unfortunately much of the narrative focused on the relationship between the male detective and a female reporter. I’m not a prude by any means, but the sex scenes were a bit over the top. Plus, the ending was incredibly weak. I don’t believe I’ll read any more works by this author.
Next up: Deadbeat by Adam Hamdy
Starting today on The Butcher’s Masquerade, #5 in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.
Back in January I read the obit for Thomas Perry, the author of the Jane Whitefield series, so I went through all of those during the spring. Been rereading the first 9 volumes of the Outlander series - wishing the author would get the lead out and finish #10. It’s been almost 6 years. Just started “The Secret of Secrets” by Dan Brown. Meh so far, but only a few chapters in.
Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History Moudhy Al-Rashid
A look at what the ancient texts of the Middle East, recorded on clay tablets in cuneform, tell us about life in ancient times, from the epics of Gilgamesh to the mundane details of the case of a man accused of stealing sheep.
Pretty interesting all in all. I wish it had included at least a few illustrations.
Finished Rex Stout’s Tecumseh Fox mystery Double for Death. Not thrilled.
On to The Girl in the Picture by Denise Chong. It’s the story of the Vietnamese girl Kim Phuc, who in 1972 had torn off her napalmed clothes and ran naked down the street, one of the iconic images of the Viewtnam war.
I have been on a kick of rereading entire runs of comic series that I first read long ago. Last month I reread all of Invincible. This month I reread Irredeemable by Mark Waid and now I am working through all of Astro City.
I’ve finally gotten around to reading David Weber’s ‘Honor Harrington’ series. Currently about halfway through A Call to Vengeance, the third book in the ‘Manticore Ascendant’ sub-series by Weber and Timothy Zahn. They’re pretty good, but there are oddities like his use of the Brit term “ratings”. And he seriously overuses the word “hatches”, which always disturbs my suspension of disbelief when I picture people entering a compartment through the deck or the overhead instead of walking through a door. Overall I much prefer Drake, Bujold and Stirling.
Finished Harry S. Truman, by Margaret Truman, which had lots of interesting historical anecdotes; and Turn Homeward, Hannalee, by Patricia Beatty, which is a children’s historical novel about southern mill workers who are sent north by order of Sherman during the Civil War so that they can’t work for the Confederacy. It’s based on a true incident, and is well-written.
Next up: Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, by Laura Spinney; and How to Mars, a science fiction novel by David Ebenbach.
Could be why he died a little early at age 62. He steadfastly refused healthy habits, eating what he pleased, drinking and smoking until his heart just gave out.
And I finished his A Life on the Road. I did read this about 30 years ago, give or take. An excellent book regardless of whether you are familiar with CBS News’ “On the Road” segment. His memoirs of his early life as a journalist and his time “On the Road” for the show. A fascinating read. If the chapter where Kuralt meets an old Russian dentist in Moscow in 1988, who regales him with how American POWs saved the lives of him and many other Soviet POWs in a Nazi camp, does not bring a proud tear to your eye, you just may not be human.
On a side note: In both of these two books of his I’ve read, this one and the earlier On the Road with Charles Kuralt, he mentions a Montana woman named Patricia Shannon he met in Reno, Nevada shortly after the Martin Luther King Jr assassination in 1968. She was the impetus behind building a park in honor of MLK in a poor section of Reno. He does not go into their relationship, but Wikipedia tells how after his death in 1997 it was revealed he had ended up keeping her as a mistress all those years, unbeknownst to his main family. He paid for her tuition for design school and financially supported her and her three children. Left her some property in his will too. This is an arrangement I’m very familiar with, as it is quite common here in Thailand. It’s a little more formalized here, with the mistresses called “minor wives,” or mia noi, and enjoying a semi-legal status. My own father-in-law had a whole second family and mia noi of his own. His main family consisted of four children – one son (the eldest) and three daughters, of whom my wife was the youngest. His second family was a mirror of that, with three sons and a younger daughter. It was all open and aboveboard, and this second family even attended my wife’s and my wedding in Bangkok 32 years ago. And when he died, the family uncovered evidence that the randy old goat might have had even a third family squirreled away somewhere, but that was never determined for sure. But I digress.
Next up is General of the Army: George C. Marshall, Soldier and Statesman, by Ed Cray. But I cannot start it until next month. We are moving upcountry at the end of next week and will be busy with the move. Settling down permanently in a nice little resort town on the Gulf of Thailand coast of the Malay Peninsula, 2-1/2 hours south of Bangkok. I’ll have to pick up this book once we’re all settled in next month.
Seconded. A wonderful book.
Francois Mitterrand and Charles Lindbergh had secret second families, too.
Lindbergh had secret second, third, and fourth families. Two of his mistressses were sisters.
Finished listening to Deadbeat by Adam Hamdy. The narrator is a man whose life was turned upside down when he killed a young woman when driving drunk. He’s lost his career, marriage, and daughter. But when a mysterious benefactor offers him a large sum of money to kill a notorious nightclub owner, he sees an opportunity to get back on his feet and turn his life back around. Of course, things take a violent and downward turn as he struggles to find the truth.
Would recommend.
Next up: Find Me by Alafair Burke
Finished Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, by Laura Spinney, which is quite interesting; and How to Mars, by David Ebenbach, which is the best SF I’ve read so far this year, and one of the best books.
Next up: A Grizzly in the Mail and Other Adventures in American History, by Tim Grove; and Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear, by Seanan McGuire.
I finished Calculated Whisk by Lindsey Buroker, a dragon chef aims for a cooking contest and shenanigans ensue. A fun cozy book, nothing to serious.
My April T. Kingfisher book is Clockwork Boys , sitting down with her books is like meeting up with a dear friend to ust have a good conversation and share some iffy jokes.
I tried and got most of the way thru The Last Smile in Sunder City. First I do not like Self Loathing characters. Then, it is very grim, and quite dark/ It is billed as “Fantasy” but other than the fact it is set in a world where magic once existed, there is nothing fantastical in it- yes, there are goblins, who are just short people now, Vampires who have nothing vampiric about them anymore ect.
In other words, all the fantasy races are becoming more or less human-like. Oh and humans are hated.
The book is actually compared to Terry Pratchett- which is heresy- nothing humorous, nothing in the way of characters you might like. And also Harry Potter- which is almost as bad. If i had to compare it to anything- I’d say Sin City- without the special girls.
Also, the Sunder City no longer has any reason for being a city once the magic went away. No products, no jobs, nothing growing, etc. I mean, you dont expect a fantasy to be realistic, but this book really isnt a fantasy.
Dead Silence S.A. Barnes
Sci-fi/horror. A crew exploring the outer solar system stumble across the wreck of a luxury passenger ship that disappeared decades earlier. Of course, everyone on board is dead. But as they explore the ship, they find it is not as lifeless at it seemed…
Good read, if you enjoy this kind of thing
Finished A Grizzly in the Mail and Other Adventures in American History, by Tim Grove and Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear, by Seanan McGuire, both of which were okay.
Next: Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman’s March and the Story of America’s Largest Emancipation, by Bennett Parten; and My Land Has a Voice, which is a collection of short stories by Jesse Stuart.
Now about a third of the way through To Paradise. The second portion of the book is set in present-day NYC, or something close to it, with allusions to a plague or disease that sounds something like AIDS, but not quite. Many of the character names from the first section appear here, as well, but it’s hard to tell if they’re descendants or something else. Reminds me a little of Cloud Atlas, in a way.
Taking a break from the Tulathimutte book for the moment.
While on the beach in North Carolina last week I finished four books:
One True Sentence by Mark Cirino and Michael Von Cannon is a fascinating collection of essays about Ernest Hemingway’s best sentences, with contributors including Russell Banks, Andre Dubus III, Sherman Alexie, Sean Hemingway and Stacy Keach, and an introduction by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Highly recommended for any and all fans of Papa.
Love Wins by Debbie Cenziper and Jim Obergefell is nonfiction about the court case that led to SCOTUS finally protecting same-sex marriage. I learned a lot from it, but it’s curiously flat in style.
The Roses Speak by James Menkhaus is a collection of personal accounts of those living with cystic fibrosis, a genetic lung disorder. A compassionate, heartfelt book.
I also re-read an old favorite, Captain Kidd’s Cat by Robert Lawson, 1956 classic kidlit told from the perspective of McDermot, the notorious (but not actual) pirate’s snarky pet. Clever and engaging, with Lawson’s wonderful, distinctive line drawings.