Yours in Truth: A Personal Portrait of Ben Bradlee, by Jeff Himmelman. I’m fascinated by the newspaper business, or at least by my nostalgic view of what it might have been like back in its glory days, so this is right up my alley. Bradlee of course was a longtime employee, and ultimately, executive editor of the Washington Post, best known for his tenure there doing the Watergate scandal. I’ve only just gotten started, but it promises to be a great read.
I would try Dead Man’s Walk and see if you like it. I love it as much as Lonesome Dove. I also thought the others were very good as well.
I’m reading The King’s Speech, nonfiction by Mark Logue, grandson of Lionel Logue, King George VI’s speech therapist, and it’s pretty good. Draws heavily on Logue’s diaries and correspondence with the monarch. If you liked the movie of the same name (even though it took some liberties with the facts and timeline), you’d like this.
I am re-reading Birds of Prey by Wilbur Smith. Yes, I know he has had some crappy books but he has also had some great ones in my opinion. Birds of Prey, and Monsoon stand out as books that you didn’t think that author couldn’t write.
A bit like the Great and Secret Show and…hmm drawing a blank on the sequel to that, From Clive Barker.
Though I guess River god…and another blank on sequels by Wilbur Smith are also pretty good.
Finished Mongoliad by Neal Stephenson et al and have now started Ragnarok by John Meaney which was listed among my ‘amazon recommends’ and I have to say that I’m quite enjoying it - a space opera a la Peter F Hamilton
Reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It’s amusing but the charm is wearing off quickly at the halfway point.
Finshed World Without End on audio, now “reading” Robert Morgan’s Boone, a bio of Daniel Boone.
Also finished the Conan books (and re-reading the old Lancer editions edited by L. Sprague de Camp to see what he changed. “The Black Stranger” did not get any better by being extensively re-written as “The Treasure of Tranicos”, although I thought de Camp did a creditable job finishing “Wolves Beyond the Border”)
Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone is next on my list.
I felt the same way when I read that. Have you read Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter? I liked it much, much better than P&P&Z.
No, but I have it on my Kindle!
I loved it, although I went into it not expecting to at all. The movie, on the other hand, was terrible.
Those are the third and fourth books in one thread of a (so far) 11-book series that began with 1632.
I just finished Liberalism is a Mental Disorder by Michael Savage.
Errrm… my attention span is grasshoppering so:
Shakespeare’s Kings by John Julius Norwich- not bad, a bit plodding in places
Sempster’s Tale by Margaret Frazer - I really don’t like Sister Frevisse so it’s a slow go
Kill Artist - Daniel Da Silva - way too many characters to keep track of
The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter - NO way was this utter crap written by Pratchett
Mask Of Ra by P.C. Doherty - too early to have an opinion yet
I just finished Immortal Lycanthropes, which as a mammal fan, I very much enjoyed. No spoilers, but a neat YA supernatural bildungsroman.
Just bought the new Michael Chabon - btw, everyone, there’s a new Michael Chabon novel out! It’s called Telegraph Avenue. I think it’s about record stores, or something equally historic. I wonder if it will compete with Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity in the small but very amusing category, “Novels About People Who Run Record Stores.”
(I wonder when Nick Hornby will publish another book. It’s been a while since Juliet, Naked.)
I ended up liking The Stress of Her Regard. I spent some time on Wikipedia looking up Byron, Shelley and Keats so that I could better understand this bizarre alternate history. I especially liked the portrayal of Lord Byron towards the end of the book.
I just started Bangkok 8, by John Burdett, and so far it’s really good - I love the writing style. Thanks to Marley & Sam for mentioning it in last month’s thread.
Just finished this (and should’ve credited the coauthor, Peter Conradi). I’d give it a B.
Now I’m mulling over my next book: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (a popular novel about grief and the afterlife), Marina and Lee by Priscilla Johnson McMillan (nonfiction about Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife), or The City’s End by Max Page (an offbeat survey of all the ways NYC has been destroyed in stories, books and movies over the years - since 1824!).
Looks interesting. There’s even a Wiki page for the book (spoilers, for those who haven’t read it yet): The Stress of Her Regard - Wikipedia
Just finished The Alexander Cipher by Will Adams. It’s a “thriller” and appears to be his only book so far. (I hope he writes more, especially a sequel.)
It’s about Egyptian archeology and seems to be pretty precise, and detailed at times. I’d have to also call it an “action” book because it’s written like scenes in a movie that grab you hurtling to the end which, BTW, takes up about the last quarter of the book and is very satisfying in tying up all the loose ends.
Finished Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch, a good solid urban fantasy. Probationary Constable Peter Grant gets intel regarding a murder from a ghost and enters the world of wizardry.
It was fast-paced and overall I enjoyed it, but I thought the ending was a little bit of a let down. I will read more from this author.
Finished, *Cursed *the second Alex Verus novel and enjoyed it. Will continue to read this series.
I liked it too. The style is so breezy. My daughter also liked it a lot, and this isn’t a genre that she reads.
Finished Among Others by Jo Walton (won a Hugo and a Nebula). It was better as a coming-of-age story than as SF/Fantasy. The book is the journal of a year in the life of a 15-year-old Welsh girl in 1979. Her twin died because their mother was practicing dark magic and the girl was badly injured. She runs away from home and ends up in an English boarding school, where she has a hard time making friends until she finds a SF book club. She fears her mother and the book leads to a brief and not very convincing confrontation at the end. The best part of the book was her comments about what she was reading.
Just started *City of Women * by David Gillham. Berlin, 1943, the main character’s husband is at the front and she’s having an affair with a Jewish man. It’s pretty bleak.