Well, wind of my soul, I found The Spirit Catches You to be completely fascinating and un-put-downable. I hope you enjoy it too (although enjoy is probably not the right word). Disturbing and compelling, maybe. I think your own experiences might make it even more so. I’m sorry about your loss.
Agreed, agreed, agreed.
Wonderfully written, wonderfully informative, wonderfully compassionate. If you can manage it, and I certainly understand if you can’t, it is well worth the time.
I’m on my eighth Craig Johnson novel of the Longmire series. The dude can write.
Aha! Thanks. I never would have remembered that. So is Dwight also:
… the agent who met with Jake in the hotel after the assassination was foiled and advised him to disappear?
I don’t have a copy of 11/22/63. Checked it out of the library at the time.
No, that was a real person (although obviously doing fictional things), long mentioned in conspiracy-theorizing about the JFK assassination: James P. Hosty - Wikipedia
Oh good! It’s certainly a good sign to know this book has been so well-received by other members in the Doper community. (Haven’t made any progress since I posted, so I still can’t really say my thoughts on the book yet.)
I see. Thanks again. 11/22/63 really is a great book.
Agreed, and two of my well-read historian friends who are VERY into the JFK assassination say it’s quite accurate.
Over the weekend finished Dominique Enright’s The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill, which had some of his best quips, observations and zingers. Some minor factual errors, but worth a read.
Also reread a childhood favorite, F.N. Monjo’s The One Bad Thing About Father, about life in the White House as if told by one of Theodore Roosevelt’s rambunctious little boys. Funny and charming.
I finished Dragons at Crumbling Castle by Terry Pratchett Friday (busy weekend was BUSY!) Even though the stories were written for young children, anyone who enjoys Sir Terry’s humour will likely enjoy them as well.
I started The hollow Boy today. Starts right off with a BANG as usual! I’m getting to like this series more and more.
I finished reading New Arabian Nights, a book of short stories (some of which are connected) by Robert Louis Stevenson. It got off to a bang with “The Suicide Club” cycle, which I thought was terrific, and “The Rajah’s Diamond” cycle, which was also great – Prince Florizel and Col. Geraldine really had a Harun al-Rashid/Jafar plus Holmes/Watson vibe which I really liked. However, the last set of unrelated stories were much less interesting to me.
I just finished it yesterday and absolutely loved it. One of my favorite things about these books is the subtlety with which Stroud describes the Lucy/Lockwood relationship.
Starting today on Undermajordomo Minor a humorous and peculiarly-flavored fairy tale for adults by Patrick DeWitt. I’m expecting great things, since DeWitt also wrote the nicely True-Gritesque The Sisters Brothers.
Whaddaya mean “gritesque” isn’t a word?
Oh absolutely! I do like that his teens aren’t short adults, they act and sound like teens. I just reached the bloody footprints… Stroud really does NOT like staircases, does he? Particularly spiral ones 
Finished The Hollow Boy by Jonathon Stroud just minutes ago! WOW! What a ride! And what an EVIL, EVIL cliffhanger to leave us on!
Dung Beetle want to take bets on who owned that cigarette? Or do wee think it is glaringly obvious?
Started Paths of Glory by Humphrey Cobb. I’ve seen the Kubrick film lots of times, and own the DVD. But I didn’t realize it was based on a book. Kubrick apparently read it as a teenager and was struck by it. (the book came out in 1935). It had been turned into a play, and the playwrite hoped to film it, but both he and Cobb were long dead by the time the Kubrick film, starring Kirk Douglas, came out in 1957. The paperback I found I a used book store was a movie tie-in. Like my paperback copy of Spartacus, it has modern-art drawings on the cover of Douglas as the lead character.
Interesting, so far.
Started Aloha from Hell by Richard Kadrey, one thing about his writing, it gets right to the action!
Yeah, I think it was meant to be.
I have another Sandman Slim in my TBR pile too, but it’ll still be a little while before I get around to it!
And I believe the novel was based on a true incident.
Cool. Pretty true to the movie?
An appalling one, yes: Géraud Réveilhac - Wikipedia
So far, the novel and movie are very similar. I understand that Kubrick added the last scene, though, with the German girl singing, which is not in the book. One reviewer thought that Cobb would have appreciated that scene, though.
As mentioned, there was a similar incident in WWI in France, and which Cobb based his book on. Nevertheless, when Kubrick’s film came out, the French government protested about the depiction of the French army (although not to the point of banning the film in France, despite what rumors say)