Blind Man’s Bluff - The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew
The title says it all. Very interesting, exciting, well told history.
The Elephant To Hollywood, memoirs by Michael Caine. He had previously written a doorstop of an autobiography, but this new shorter one includes some updates on his life since then. A real pleasure to read, he’s led a happy, productive, busy life. Years ago he saw a coffee commercial featuring a beautiful woman, and he immediately fell in love. He was making arrangements to fly to Brazil to try to find her; a friend just happened to come by, and when he heard this plan, he laughed. Said the beautiful woman wasn’t Brazilian, he knew her from the agency that handled her career - she was English and in fact lived just a short distance from MC’s house! :eek: What are the odds??? So a meeting was arranged, they got together, married, had a child, and have been happy and inseparable for many many years. Awww!
His last couple of books (Fool, You Suck) have been…well, not stinkers, really, but certainly not up to the level of Lamb or The Lust Lizard Of Melancholy Cove.
The last really good book I read was Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh. Not so much a novel as collection of sketches linked by common characters - much like John Dos Passos’ U.S.A. It takes a while to adjust to the thick Edinburgh dialect the book is written in, but boy is it worth it.
The standard synopis is “it’s about a bunch of Scottish heroin addicts”, but it is so much more than that. Moving without being sentimental, and darkly funny.
I just finished “The Hunger Games” series. It’s written for a younger audience, teens actually, by my God I couldn’t put it down. I read the three books in as many days.
Sometime in the future a country arises, where the U.S. is now, that has the Capitol and 12 district. Each year the districts have to offer up a boy and a girl to fight to the death for the Capitol’s amusement.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Much better than I thought it would be. Not particularly scary, but thought-provoking.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Set in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960’s, tells the story of the relationship between several black maids and the white women they work for. Funny, heartbreaking, and suspenseful. Can’t recommend it enough.
Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin. A local store I love to shop at had a deal where if you joined their book club, you got a tab good for 20% off future purchases after reading on book and attending one discussion group.
I was so blown away by this book. In telling the tale of an elderly woman who makes cakes for special occasions, the writer gives a history and cultural overview of the country. I was one chapter into the book before I started wishing I could get the film rights and get Whoopi for the lead.
This is not a book I would have pciked up on my own, but I am so glad I read it.
Weedy, the man who allegedly inspired Frankenstein is a key figure in Blood Oath, the vampire book I mentioned.
PeskiPiksi, my wife and another friend both read The Help and really liked it. You may know that it’s now being filmed, with Emma Stone in the leading role.
Zsofia, if you like sea stories I urge you to read Nicholas Monsarrat’s The Cruel Sea, a gripping novel about the officers and crew of a Royal Navy corvette (small warship), HMS Compass Rose, during the Battle of the Atlantic in WWII. Unforgettable.
+1
It’s excellent.
Another odd note - the author’s own story is almost as bizzare as his fiction. During the war, the authour survived internment in a Nazi insane asylum, where he was able to avoid the harhser Nazi “treatments” by pretending to write an anti-Jewish novel on Gobbels’ orders - while really writing (in code!) a novel deeply critical of the Nazis, The Drinker.
The authour dropped dead shorty after publication of Every Man Dies Alone
I’ve been reading the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. (I had heard about it here, and stumbled across a short story that got me hooked.)
Harry Dresden is a wizard, and a hard-boiled detective. The series is a great blend of the dark urban fantasy and noirish mystery genres, with a lot of humour and pop-culture references mixed in.
Start with the first novel, Storm Front.
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Awesome book, about the America’s before the arrival of Columbus. You will learn so much about pre columbian culture in North, South and Central America. The author was inspired to write the book when he discovered his teenage son was being fed the same nonsense story he’d been taught. An archeologist and scholar, the book is heavily footnoted, referencing current research and finds. He does an outstanding job of placing the cultures into relation with each other, in both time and location, a very challenging task, indeed. Great read.
Well, The Sea Wolf went and fell all up on that Victorian novel stumbling block - a woman showed up. It was still good, though.
ETA - Ha! Here’s what Ambrose Bierce said about it: “The great thing—and it is among the greatest of things—is that tremendous creation, Wolf Larsen… the hewing out and setting up of such a figure is enough for a man to do in one lifetime… The love element, with its absurd suppressions, and impossible proprieties, is awful.”
War for the Oaks by Emma Bull. Set in Minneapolis and written in the '80s, it’s a story about pop/rock music and good vs. bad fairies fighting for control of the Twin Cities. Eddi, rock star extraordinaire, gets dragged into the fairy fight by a phouka who becomes her guard/protector.
It’s well written, warm, funny, and exciting. Realistic fantasy. Anyone from Minnesota will love the references to our fantastic urban parks and other locales and to Prince music.
I always feel the need to separate audio books from regular book.
Regular book:
*Farm City *by Novella Carpenter (I was sure this must be a pen name, but no.) The true story of the author’s trials and tribulations trying to grow crops and raise livestock in downtown Oakland. A very fun read that never goes too far into the hippie-dippy stuff.
Audio book:
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. A story of magic, set in England during the Napoleonic wars roughly (The story starts about 1806.) Assumes a rich history of magic in the Isles that has died out and the title characters are reviving the use of magic. Not a lot of excitement but a rich, somewhat dark, intricate story with dozens of smaller stories woven in. This is my second time through the 26 CDs and I may just start over again when I’m done.
Just out of curiousity: how do they handle the lengthy footnotes in an audiobook format?
Good question. They basically read them out as they arise (this is explained at the beginning.) In practice this means that the reader sometimes digresses into a longish side story which is a little hard to follow. But the main story jumps around somewhat anyway and the footnotes contain great little stories of their own so they are sometimes more entertaining than the main thread.
“Wet Desert”: a real page turner about environmental activists trying to restore the Grand Canyon to its “natural state” by blowing up the Glen Canyon Dam.
J.
Just yesterday finished reading “Innocent” by Scott Turow. Sequel to “Presumed Innocent” and very, very good. Also recently read “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” series and could not put it down. Blew through the three books in a week. Last summer I read “The Art of Racing in the Rain”. It’s about a racecar driver and his wife and daughter, told from the POV of the racecar driver’s dog (who eventually becomes the family dog). Sounds silly but it was wonderful. I cried most of the way through it.
I’ll pick it up! Of course, the last WWII sea story I read (In Harm’s Way) left emotional scars, so I may pick it up gingerly.