I saw Bill O’Reilly’s name on the Lincoln book and thought “That CAN’T be unbiased scholarship…”
Okay I finished http://Grooming_Gossip_and_the_Evolution_of_Language Which was rather good as long as you have patience with a couple tons of observation on the grooming behaviors of primates. I think his tone got a touch arrogant at the end and I winced every time he refered to the deaf as “dumb” Book was written in the early 90s
Right now I am reading The_Riddle_of_the_Compass It’s a pretty basic intro book with an annoying amount of filler. I’m enjoying it nevertheless.
Recently finished The Hangman’s Daughter, which is basically a mystery novel set in the mid-17th century, featuring the town hangman and the local doctor as the detectives. It interested me enough to borrow the second in the series, The Dark Monk, to see if the series improves or goes downhill. Both are free to borrow with Amazon Prime.
Finished working on my friend’s book – not long, about 90 Word pages – and John Fowles’ The Magus. The Fowles book was … interesting. A little too preachy, which always annoys me. Not sure what to make of it. One of those you have to think about. Definitely held my interest. Mid-20s Brit takes a teaching job at a private school on a Greek island for the 1952-53 term. Life-altering experiences ensue involving a wealthy reclusive island resident who may or may not have been a Nazi collaborator.
Now it’s back to Michael Connelly and one of his earlier works that our library did not have but a bookstore did: Blood Work. A retired FBI agent in his mid-40s has a heart transplant but discovers the donor was a murder victim, so he sets out to find the killer. It was made into a Clint Eastwood film of the same name. We watched it 10 years ago, but I hear the film was changed quite a bit.
I finished David Cordingly’s Cochrane, subtitled The Real Master and Commander.
A biography of Thomas Cochrane, Lord Dundonald, a British naval hero of the nineteenth century.
The characters Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey are based on him.
Somewhat of a prima donna, very concerned with making prize money to rebuild his family’s estate, and certainly the best guy in ship to ship actions. He played a naval role as a mercenary in the liberation of Chile, Brazil and Greece.
Have you ever read anything else by Christopher Moore? I think *Lamb *is hilarious, but it might not be the best introduction to Moore’s sense of humor.
I read Christopher Brookmyre’s novel One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night, which was crude and violent and yet a lot of fun, as usual. It has a plot similar to another of his books: a group of isolated civilians forced to defend themselves from a gang of armed, if rather inept, mercenaries. This time it’s a fifteen-year school reunion which is being held on an oil rig that has been converted into a luxury resort. Brookmyre’s work is very Scottish, and some of the dialog is written in thick dialect, which I thoroughly enjoy. I can even understand most of it now.
Brookmyre tends to be full of righteous anger at the state of the world, and he spends as much time ranting as he does storytelling, but he nevertheless usually manages to be clever and hilarious and exciting. He produces characters to root for, and characters you love to hate, and the bad guys always get their comeuppance in the end.
I also just finished reading Bess of Hardwick, by Mary S. Lovell. Bess was at the center of Tudor England: she was one of Queen Elizabeth’s Women of the Bedchamber; she was friends with poor Jane Grey and her sisters; and Bess and her fourth husband were the appointed jailors of Mary Queen of Scots for fifteen long, troublesome years. I enjoyed the book very much.
Now I’m in the middle of Call the Midwife, by Jennifer Worth. It’s a memoir about the author’s experiences working as a midwife and general nurse in London’s East End in the 1950’s. (I just finished watching the first season of the BBC show based on this book.) So far it’s pretty good, although it’s not as much about midwifery as you’d expect, but more generally about life in the slums of the East End.
I returned to Edwin Thomas, *The Chains of Albion. * The second novel of an RN Lieutenant (Lef tenant) Martin Jerrold, almost the nautical Flashman I seek in literature. Unfortunately there are only three, his publisher having killed the series.
I just finished Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, and was delighted with it. Maybe an added bonus is that based on the book copy I didn’t expect I would like it all that much. It’s a look at how soldiers are treated upon return from Iraq.
No, this is my first and just might be my only experiment with Moore, I’m afraid. After 70 pages, perhaps three smiles and no outright laughs, I’ve jumped to the last few chapters to see how he handles Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection.
I also took some time this weekend to read the YA history book The Wright Brothers, a Newbery Honor winner by Russell Freedman. It’s pretty good, with just enough aeronautical science to get the point across, and lots of photos taken by the Wrights themselves. I learned that they never finished high school, let alone went to college, and spent less than $1,000 on their first aircraft - even while Samuel P. Langley, with the full weight of the Smithsonian Institution behind him, spent more than $74,000 on an aircraft which twice crashed into the Potomac immediately upon takeoff. D’oh!
I’m re-reading “World War Z” by Max Brooks in anticipation of the movie with the same title.
I’m also finishing up “50 Economics Ideas You Really Need To Know” as my lunchtime reading at work. It’s a great introduction to economics book - 50 small segments that are easily digested.
I had the same reaction to Moore. A friend insisted I read his books because they were just so funny. I read one and spent the whole time wondering when exactly I was supposed to laugh. I don’t even remember the name of the book now, that’s how unimpressed I was with it. It wasn’t Lamb, though, I know that.
Similar to my reaction to Moore, although I was pretty sure where he wanted me to laugh; I just found his sense of humor totally uninteresting to me, to the extent that I found myself getting angry at him. I don’t think I gave him more than half-a-dozen pages.
I just finished reading No Country for Old Men. Good, if flawed. The narrator keeps going on about the current breed of criminals is so much worse than any that have come before. I’d like to introduce him to another McCarthy character–Judge Holden from Blood Meridian–and see if he changes his mind.
Currently I’m reading Dancing with Bears, by Michael Swanwick. Fluffy and funny post-apocalyptic Russian con-artist story. Enjoyable, but not as riveting as No Country was.
A couple of hardcover books that were on pre-order have arrived, but I’m spoiled by the Kindle and I’m not reading them because they’re so damned heavy.
So I’m reading Sixpence House by Paul Collins. It’s a $1.99 Kindle special (nonfiction), and it’s about a young couple who move from San Francisco to a small town in Wales that’s full of bookstores. Collins is talking about books and reading and small towns and it’s lots of fun. I like books about books and reading.
Just finished Jennifer B. Pickens’s Pets at the White House, a well-illustrated coffee table book about Presidential dogs, cats and other critters since the Kennedy years. History lite, nicely done.
I pitched Nelson Demille’s new book, The Panther, half way through. I normally like his smart-ass John Corey novels for some fast paced thrillery fun, but this one is a cartoon of a phoned-in mess.
Well, I’ve just finished my re-read of Sergei Lukyanenko’s Watches series–Night Watch, Day Watch, Twilight Watch and Last Watch. Just as good on the re-read as originally, and I’m really looking forward to the next one, New Watch.
Now I’m a bit adrift… picked up another Nero Wolfe to tide me over until I find something to sink my teeth into…
