I’ve read and enjoyed most of Haldeman’s work. This one wasn’t as bad as The Coming, which is my least favorite of his books. I still have The Hemingway Hoax queued up to read, on your recommendation, since you promised me I could enjoy it even without having read any Hemingway. 
Still true! Hope you like it. And yes, The Coming isn’t one of his best. Not by a long shot.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, which is the last in the Girl wth the Dragon Tattoo series. I’m only 7 or 8 chapters in and, like the other 2 books, it starts off a bit slow. It’s a decent little mystery series.
So, finished both *Blackout *and All Clear. I liked both. Now I need to read the thread we had here about them to check out all the spoilers!
While on vacation, I also finished Devil in the White City that sets off the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893 against a serial killer active there at the same time. Really, really fascinating. I need to look up some pictures of the Fair - Larson’s descriptions are phenomenal. It’s really strange to me, reading in the 21st century, that they spent all that energy to create huge buildings that no one seemed to see the need for repurposing later. Apparently it was a given that all that work would just be demolished sometime later. Sure, the buildings might not have been habitable anyway - they were built so quickly - but still. Seems odd, like it’s all rather a waste. But fascinating: did you know that that’s where Pabst Blue Ribbon got it’s name? After the beer won the top prize at the Fair, Pabst changed the name.
Hey Chefguy, I just bought **Unbroken **for my kindle - I saw it recommended by Peter King, of SI, and checked it out. It looked great, so I picked it up. Glad to hear it comes recommended by those on the Boards, too.
In that same column, King recommended Tears in the Darkness, a piece of non-fiction about the Bataan Death March. I know little about this, but the summary and reviews looked good. It’ll be next.
It’s an exhausting book: those guys went through absolute hell.
In my childhood I knew an elderly friend of the family who’d been on the March. He never, ever wanted to talk about it.
A somewhat obscure title … I just finished The Boats of Cherbourg by Abraham Rabinovich.
It’s a truly facinating bit of history, worthy of a Clancy techno-thriller (only it happens to be true) - or rather, three stories in one.
The first is about how the Israelis developed a revolutionary new type of missile boat - only to discover that the Soviets had also developed a missile boat, with missiles that had twice the range. And provided them to their Arab allies.
The second is about how the Israelis had these boats built at Cherbourg in France - only to have the French embargo them for political reasons, after they had been paid for; and how the Israelis managed, through sheer chutzpah, to “steal” the boats from France.
The third and culminating story is how these boats performed in war against the Soviet model - a particularly hair-raising form of combat, as the boats were unarmoured and any hit would utterly destroy them (sort of like eggs dueling with sledgehammers).
Altogether a fine read for those interested in military history and espionage.
I just finished Shattered Dreams, a memoir by a polygamist’s widow. She was a fourth-generation plural wife- it was fascinating to me. Now I’m in the beginning of The Story OF Edgar Sawtelle, which I feel like I’m the last person in the world to read, having seen and heard of it everywhere for a couple of years now.
The Bataan march was bad enough, but what happened to POWs in the camps was a hundred times worse. Thirty-seven percent of American POWs held by the Japanese died in captivity from starvation, murder, disease and being worked to death. 5400 Japanese prison guards, doctors, and camp officials were charged with war crimes that included torture, mistreatment, murder, medical experimentation, etc. The aftermath of the war saw huge numbers of alcoholism, PTSD, early deaths and suicide.
Sorry for the sidetrack.
I just finished reading Nothing to Envy, which is about a few family’s lives in North Korea.
All in all, fuck North Korea, although I do recommend the bok.
Finished Unbroken. Holy shit, what a great story and a great ending. Started Live From New York, the behind the scenes book about Saturday Night Live.
About halfway through West of Here by Jonathan Evison. I think it’s excellent. It moves back and forth from late 1800’s Pacific Northwest to 2006. This is an author who has great respect for his characters, even the unlikable ones. And he’s telling a great story, with just the right amount of action, and imagery that puts you right there in the mud. Awesome.
Still enjoying Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell very much, Gup’s A Secret Gift much less so.
I’ve just read a memoir by Abraham Verghese (the author of the novel Cutting for Stone) called My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story. It’s about his time living in a small town in Tennessee in the late '80s, treating AIDS patients - mostly young gay men who had moved away to live in the big city, and returned home only after they became ill. It was a good read, and very moving, although the narrative wandered a little too much.
Now I’m reading another Flashman novel: Flashman’s Lady. So far it has mostly been Flashy cheating at cricket, or possibly just playing dishonorably - since I don’t understand the game it’s hard to tell which. The book is going to have a lot of his wife Elspeth in it. She’s the only person he’s ever really cared about, so this should be interesting.
I just downloaded it to my Kindle, based on YOUR recommendation. It had better be good. :dubious:
John Grisham wrote a so-so short story, “Funny Boy,” with a similar premise. It’s in his 2009 collection Ford County.
If you don’t like it, I’ll buy your copy. Oh wait. I don’t own a Kindle. 
Seriously, I’ve never been disappointed with a Doper book recommendation.
(The book starts out like it’s gonna be romance-y, but it’s not, so be sure to give it a few chapters.)
February turned out to be Incredibly Heavy Book Month for me.
I finished Gabaldon’s *Outlander *and enjoyed it very much. It’s romance, but it has nice historical fiction and sci-fi flashes too. And the cover is very respectable, which saved me some personal embarrassment while reading it on the subway.
I also read Mark Z. Danielewski’s* House of Leaves*. I describe it as Stephen King meets Infinite Jest. And that’s because describing it as “narrative within a narrative within a narrative, about a guy editing a book written about a documentary filmed about a not-quite-haunted house” was just too silly. I wasn’t particularly creeped out, as many other reviewers claim to be, but it was interesting and offered plenty of food for thought.
I’m now reading Side Jobs by Jim Butcher, which has received much discussion on the boards already. I’ve never read any of the Dresden short stories, so they’re all new to me!
Finished A Madness Of Angels days ago, but have been still trying to decide how I would review it. I started it 3 times, found it difficult to read, but once into it, enjoyed it.
Still, I have to say that it is not an easy read.
Mathew Swift is a sorcerer, murdered and - as the story opens, returned to life. The story revolves around his quest to find out who killed him and who summoned him back. It is a twisty tale of revenge with magic that was fairly original.
Currently: John Dies At The End.
I’ve had a lot of time to read over the weekend, and finished several books which I’d been working on for awhile: Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (which I really enjoyed and would love to see made into a move - I even have a few ideas about casting!), Gup’s A Secret Gift (not as good as it could have been, but not bad) and King’s Firestarter (just about as good as I remembered from when I first read it, almost 30 years ago).