I just finished Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts which is a fair study of Americans in Nazi Germany, and The Long Night: William L. Shirer and the Rise & Fall of the Third Reich, but alas, can’t recommend the latter; it’s badly written (lots of cliches) and pretty much stops at the end of 1940 when Shirer left Germany, so it hardly tells you anything about how he wrote The Book. If you’re interested in the topic, his own Berlin Diary is much more readable.

The Magicians and The Magician King were not books that I completely enjoyed. There were aspects of them that were good, but you really can’t like a book when the main character is a total tool. Your mileage may vary.
One book that I can recommend without reservation is Daughter of Smoke and Bone. Tremendously fun and soon to be followed with a sequel.
I’m now reading Altered Carbon. As a chemist, I’m a tad distressed that so far no carbon has been altered. It is my sincere hope that there is going to be some serious isotopic buggerage in the next pages.

Is there some way that one can introduce some sort of paragraph or line break? I attempted to in my text but appear to have failed miserably.

Two-thirds of the way through The Pacific War 1941-1945, although I stopped a while back to watch documentaries (mostly propaganda of the period) of the war, from the library & the Military Channel, in a compare/contrast deal. (Wonder who’ll “win?”)

For sheer escapism, I’m reading an alt-hist sci-fi called In the Courts of The Crimson Kings (Nothing to do w/ Fripp) which I suspect will end up a bit like Prometheus, which I haven’t seen. Interesting world-building, as the geeks say. (Or are they nerds? What. Ever.)

Try Donald Antrim’s “Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World” if you would like to look into our abyss, and laugh, too. Every home a fortress (but with nice landscaping), every pantry an arsenal, back-to-basics charter schools (there being no alternative); one could go on and on. How Antrim saw Stand Your Ground Laws 20 years ago is beyond me. :-)rictus

I’m enjoying “Snuff” by Terry Pratchett. I really enjoyed one of his non-Discworld books, “Nation,” and recommend it highly.

Since I’m working on my applied project for graduate school, there is no time for pleasure reading. Thay said, Neal Stephenson’s baroque series is a great, loooong read.

I highly recommend Madison Smartt Bell’s trilogy – all three novels are powerful and strangely affecting. Hadn’t thought about “Hall of Mirrors” in years, but as you say it may be time for a re-reading.

Finally started reading Pratchett after too many years of ignoring him (contempt prior to investigation…) and look forward to each new one my second hand browsing turns up.

Just finished DRIFT by Rachel Maddow, and REDSHIRTS by John Scalzi. The latter a funny and ripping tale of the ensigns who finally figure out that to go on an away team mission with the bridge crew is a sure fire ticket to death. Next up is THE COLDEST WAR by Ian Tregillis, a follow up to BITTER SEEDS. The first book detailed the little reported battle in World War II in 1939, where the Germans developed a team of super-power X-Men like soldiers which the British countered with Warlocks. The new one takes place 20 years later and details a unique Cold War between the Soviets and the Brits, as the Warlocks start to die out.

Doing some Walter Mosley re-reading and catching up with some of his books I haven’t read yet. “The Man in My Basement” is disturbing in a very understated way. As a bookseller (again) in my dreams, I find I have to be a bookbuyer (now) in my waking hours. Am I “reading” any of the dozen or two dozen books I drag home each week? I’ll grab Chomsky’s “Hegemony or Survival” to read outside while I’m smoking a cig, but the next time it might be Livy or Plutarch. Maybe start that “Lolita: A Screenplay”. Hmmm “City of Thieves” by David Benioff looks interesting…Oh and to make this a Lev Grossman-centric thread – I also have my copy of “The Magician King” staring at me from a shelf, waiting patiently for me to stumble upon a copy of the prior book.

People of all ages stood in line waiting for the opening of their favorite bookstore to get the next release of the next in the Harry Potter series.

I understand. I feel the same way about Robert Caro’s series on Lyndon Johnson. I just yearned for the next in the series that came out in May. His recent “The Passage of Power” is a gem.

For the ‘Boggies (Boggites? Boggheads?) who love this stuff:

Page 268-269; a description of the oil-wealthy Reich-wing conservative Texas wads of ass turning against the LBJ they had supported for so long:

“Haters of Roosevelt, the New Deal, of liberals in general, they had never really forgiven (LBJ) for going on Kennedy’s ticket; they had taken his decision to do so, after they had contributed so generously to his campaign against Kennedy, as an act of betrayal. …(LBJ to them in defense had said) that he would be able to be a force within the administration against the tendencies that mattered most to them: tendencies to regulate, and reduce, their wealth. Business regulation, tax reform, all forms of government intervention in their enterprises – these matters, as Brown & Root lobbyist Frank C. Oltorf was to put it, “transcended ideology…. That’s how they viewed politics. ‘Any son of a bitch who makes me a million dollars can’t be all bad’. As long as you put dollars in their pockets, they’d forgive your ideology.”

Since Jim Kakalios is way too demure to mention it, I’ll recommend his updated version of The Physics of Superheroes: Spectacular Second Edition which I loved, and I see he has a new-ish book out The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics: A Math-Free Exploration of the Science That Made Our World which I haven’t read but that is not going to stop me from recommending it.

I’ll add one more book here that I bought but haven’t read, because every time I picked it up in a bookstore someone standing by would start gushing about it: The Lost City Of Z.

I’m reading a book about food trucks. Apparently, it’s the only book about food trucks, and the author tragically limited herself to recipes and the owners’ stories. What she doesn’t include are the permit battles which I’m finding (on a client’s behalf) to be stifling and wildly arbitrary.

I am slowly and reluctantly coming to the conclusion that yes, this country is wildly over-regulated if you’re a small business, and tragically laissez-faire if you’re a corporate behemoth underpaying its workers.

I read American Prometheus several years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Just found it again as I was repairing a grotesquely overloaded bookshelf that finally caved and thought about reading it again, but it is not a light read, as you say.

Agree with the Pratchett comments and would add the Jasper Fforde Thursday Next series for those who like a light read, nerd humor and alternate universe-type fiction. The first book, The Eyre Affair, was quite good, as were some of the sequels, but the series is a bit hit or miss and, in general, would probably have more appeal to liberal arts grads than to science majors.

Reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life and doing the audio version of The One: The Life and Music of James Brown which is fantastic…

The civil war of 1812.

Upon finally realizing that I was taking the terribly serious people way too seriously,I decided to devote my summer to rereading everything Mark Twain and Terry Prachett ever wrote.

Kevin Bleyer’s Me the People is pretty darn funny so far.

bopping between Patti Smith’s “Just Kids” and a biography of the recording studio wunder-band “The Wrecking Crew” by Kent Hartman. always wondered how Carol Kaye came to pick up a bass, and with his declining health, am a bit nostalgic about the early studio days of Glen Campbell.

Yep, though I think of that book as “the short one”, since I usually read Morison.

I’m reading The Gospel of Judas these days. Interesting stuff, particularly in light of hearing that Vatican schmuck harsh on the nuns this week: “The Catholic Church has an unbroken history of authority going back to Jesus”. Horseshit. That was still being battled out into the third century. If he’d said Constantine he’d have a point, but not the one he wants.

If you like In the Courts of The Crimson Kings try The Sky People; it’s also by S M Stirling. Set on Venus in the style of The Lost World.

Stirling obviously was trying his hand at writing like Edgar Rice Burroughs during this period.

Granulate School is what we called it.

And I’ve secured the full run of Longmire mysteries and am reading them in order. While sitting in the pool.

Also – Richard Benveniste’s _The Emperor’s New Clothes: Exposing the Truth from Watergate to 9/11_

Remember sharing is caring as long as you are not reading 50 Shades of Poorly Written Housewife Bondage Fantasies in which case, we really don’t want to know. I mean seriously, TMI….

A relative dropped off the trilogy with me as a gift. I couldn’t stomach it. It’s Twilight with whips and F-bombs. The only thing that might be worse is The Bridges of Madison County, which reads like Ayn Rand set The Fountainhead in Iowa and turned the architect into a journalist.

Good Omens is a must-read book. That is all.

Just finished “Destiny of the Republic” a book about a person I knew nothing about, and cared nothing about, James Garfield.

It was great. Vivid characters, horrendous medical treatment, an invention by Alexander Graham Bell, and Chester A. Arthur.

“God’s Jury”, by Cullen Murphy describes the rise, and continued existence, of the Inquisition. Yep, the current pope is in it.

And a long time favorite, James Lee Burke’s “Creole Belle”. Gotta like that Clete Purcell.

Have to second the recommendation for Good Omens. I’ve just gotten my copy back from the 3rd person I’ve loaned it out to – it was enjoyed by all.

On my recent list, I just finished Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord by de Bernieres; it was good but it’s part of a series, so read The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts first. Before that I had finished up The Great Mortality by John Kelly, about the black plague, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, and Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Letham and recommend all. Right now I’m re-reading, for the third time, Good Germs, Bad Germs: Health and Survival in a Bacterial World by Jessica Snyder Sachs. I’m on my third re-read because it’s just that good and interesting. In that same vein, several months back I re-read Parasite Rex – it’s currently on loan and I can’t remember the name of the author, but it’s good as well. In between all of those I’ve been picking my way through Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations because…well, just because.

I just finished Paul Krugman’s “End This Depression Now”. I’m certainly no economist but he writes in layman’s terms and does an excellent job of explaining his positions. Bernanke is an anti-deficit guy. Krugman explains his opinion which is that the government must do more (stimulus) to create jobs and get the unemployment rate back down where it should be.

Once you get done reading Wealth of Nations, give Karl Marx’s Capital (the first volume) a whirl (there’s an audio version online if you like). Marx discusses Smith a bit, but prefers Ricardo. I highly recommend reading it in conjunction with these lectures by David Harvey; they will help clarify any questions the reader may have.

For anyone who enjoyed historical novels, and especially the Haiti ones Mrs. T is reading, I have to recommend The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing. It’s a two-parter, set in the American Revolution, told from the POV of a former slave who sides with the British. Just amazing stuff. Very heavy-hitting. I devoured it in audiobook form.

Thanks, read The Sky People a few yrs. ago.

Because I am a total pop culture slut, I just finished reading Stephen King’s 11/22/63, which I thoroughly enjoyed up until the last 20 pages or so. King just can’t seem to stick the landing lately.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. The Wachowskis are attempting a film adaptation.

King never HAS been able to stick the landing. About the only book of his I ever read where the ending lived up to the rest of the book was Pet Sematary. All of the others, the ending just kind of peters out. That’s due to his theory of how a horror story should end, with normalcy returned, but it doesn’t make for much of an ending.

And no apologies required for appreciating King. The guy is a good writer, even if I do think he generally sucks at writing endings.

Stephen King’s 11/22/63

Loved it.

I enjoyed 11/22/63 also. I think he was really going for a love story ala Richard Mathesson’s Bid Time Return

“Demure,” eh? Well, I’ve been called worse things.

Thanks for the kind words. If you liked THE PHYSICS OF SUPERHEROES, you may enjoy a few minute video concerning my science consulting for the Amazing Spider-Man film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjfT6MqTCqQ

Who says this isn’t the Marvel Age of Shameless Plugs? Keep ‘em flyin’ Tbogg!

Yours in Scouting,

Your Friendly Neighborhood Physics Professor,

Jim

Jack Finney, neh?

Well, I’m officially ticked now -
Salon, on the newest fad, 300sf ‘apartments’ -

” Sure, a couple of cab drivers could split one, with one guy working the night shift and sleeping there during the day. But more likely, “These are for someone who goes to Dartmouth and then gets a $100,000 entry-level position at an investment bank,” says Brash. (Or, potentially, at Cornell’s new technology campus near the site.) “These are aimed at people at a certain point in their lives who will eventually phase into larger apartments.” That’s almost a given: 300 square feet isn’t going to be seen by many residents as a permanent home.”

There are no more words.

Exhibit A: Great execution – un-stuck endings: Neal Stephenson

Such variety, such erudition! This is (almost) as good as the thread about what SF the L&T Casey should catch up on, which I saved in some unreadable form or other on my computer.

I read slowly, and my life’s been in a stressy patch these days and months, and so I like to have something nice to sink into for a few paragraphs before I fall asleep every early am. I’m inching my way thru a much-praised book about the Battle of Britain, “The Most Dangerous Enemy” by an English historian/management expert(!) named Stephen Bungay. (He has a very interesting quick analysis of Churchill’s attitude to Hitler and Nazism at the beginning of the book, and how it compared with the thinking of the politicians around him. I was thinking of injecting a quote or two from it into the thread about Churchill, but — no sense in getting in the way of dueling experts.)

Excellent book. Takes everything thoroughly and humanely into account — the technology, the politics, the people on both sides — and the writing is fine. He makes the point that the Air Defense system the Brits evolved in the pre-war period when they became convinced that eventual air attacks from Europe were inevitable, meaning that they were no longer an Island, was “in effect an analogue Internet”.

Also, during his research, he got to fly in a 2-seater Spitfire training aircraft, one of the 50 or so airworthy examples of the fighter that survive, with a professional pilot in the front seat telling him how to handle the controls. The paragraphs devoted to this experience made me wish that I could do it, too, which I wouldn’t have thought possible. Earlier in the book Bungay had compared the Spitfire to Excalibur in the mythic position it holds in British perception of the Battle, and you can see why.

Size matters….

A strong second for the GOOD OMENS recommendation. I have a copy that knows its been read, by myself and family and friends. But I’ll never part with it, as I managed to get it signed by both authors! Gaiman wrote: “The Devil made us write it…” and Pratchett added: “But we keep the royalties!”

It’s not the size – it’s the expectation of privilege.

Still working on Portrait of a Lady, my big important summer classic read. I’m enjoying it, but it takes effort, so I keep breaking away for other things. Like Destiny of the Republic, which I liked. I’ve been wanting to know more about Garfield ever since I read Assassination Vacation.

I also read 11/22/63 and didn’t like it at all. I had high hopes because many friends recommended it, but it had all of the things I dislike about Stephen King in abundance.

Just recently went to a book signing by the British crime writer Sophie Hannah and picked up her first book, Little Face. Looking forward to it when I’m done with Isabel Archer.

At the rate I’m going, I’d call it Gradual School…

I’m with you. A friend gave me the trilogy and I read ten pages of the first one and gave up. Awful. I did like “Bring Up the Bodies,” Hilary Mantel’s sequel to “Wolf Hall” and “American Tapestry,” a look at Michelle Obama’s family history. Am now reading “That Woman,” a new biography of the Duchess of Windsor. The author proposes an interesting twist on the familiar story.

Finished Twilight of the Elites by Chris Hayes.

Shorter: Everything is fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. Which is also a line from a Matt Taibbi column, now that I think of it.

The more they have, the more they want, and the colder they stack the deck to make sure they get it. Information is the only cure.

But, one day, u’ll GRANULATE!

And that will make all teh difference.

Just finished “Wild Thing”, Josh Bazell’s second novel. It’s hilarious, gross, violent, weird, and a lot of bizarre fun. It’s even better than the first novel in the series, “Beat The Reaper”.

I was hoping future Masters of the Universe/Inside Traders Job Creators would find that link not only motivationally challenging but also, too, a handy tool. It’s my small contribution to allow them to concentrate on success without being vexed by minor details like “how big is my place compared to one of Willard’s”….

I highly recommend The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach.

TBogg, both of the recommendations to me of this book came from kids your daughter’s age.

As one of the “recommenders” said, “you are SO lucky to get to read this book.”

It’s a novel. A little love for baseball is not required, but will enhance your enjoyment. The writing is flawless.

They’re still carrying flags of countries at the Olympics. The smart money is on either Master Card or Exxon to win the most gold, with McDonalds garnering the most medals. Huzzah.

It’ll be a great week to catch up on summer reading, except for the Rmoney’s Rafalca. Gold or Glue, just like us drones!!!!1!

Like some others, my reading of late has been more class related. Someday, too, I shall granulate (also a phrase that we use here at New Mexico Tech, a mining and engineering school). To get a leg up on my fellow students in the fall History class Introduction to the Middle East, I have read the two course books:

A Brief History of the Middle East: From Abraham to Arafat by Christopher Catherwood, and;

What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East by Bernard Lewis

Both are good introductory books about the rise of Islam in the Middle East and the overall demise of the Islamic Empire of the Caliphate to where the Middle East is now, a collection of states that are, in general, upper third world states. (Naturally, some of the petrostates such as Saudia Arabia, Qatar, and the like are upper second / lower first world in some respects.) Catherwood’s book is a general history of the region, while Lewis’s book looks at why the Islamic states–for many years culturally, technologically & scientifically, and militarily ahead of Western Europe–faded.

You’re trying to get factual information on the Middle East from Bernard Lewis? Alrighty then.

Tony, as an actual scholar of the region, let me suggest that you replace Lewis with Albert Hourani’s _History of the Arab Peoples_. I’ll never forget AH telling me how, every morning as he shaved, he looked out his bathroom window at the little house TE Lawrence’s parents had built for him to study whilst he attended Jesus College…. It was a very interesting morning ritual for a such as he. A very fine historian.

Also, in terms of Lewis’ thesis, you might rather like to take a look at Daniel Headrick’s _Tools of Empire_, and Roger Adelson’s _London and the Invention of the Middle East (Money, Power, and War, 1902-1922)

Also – I see your instructor has posted the exam questions, viz. -

Identify and explain the meaning of:

Tanzimat Berlin Congress
Armenian genocide Six-Day War
Arab Revolt 1936-1939 Zionism
Balfour Declaration Mustafa Kemal
Sykes-Picot Agreement Mandate System
Shariff Husseyn Reza Pahlevi
War of 1948-1949 White Paper

Feel free to consult http://www.gwpda.org

I’ve recently read a fun piece of “dragon fantasy”, which I enjoyed very much. It’s called Seraphina, and it’s a debut novel by an author named Rachel Hartman. In a world where dragons can take on human forms, a young musician whose mother was a dragon has to reconcile her different heritages. I really can’t wait for the next book in the series. I also enjoyed John Scalzi’s Redshirts, which has a nice healthy dose of meta, but it’s not just an exercise in satirizing Star Trek. As for nonfiction, I haven’t read as much of that, recently, but I recommend Quiet by Susan Cain, which is a book about introversion, and how introverts (like yours truly) can manage a world that doesn’t always favor them.

Oh, and I’d like to put in a good word for Tamora Pierce’s books. She’s a great author, even for someone outside of her target audience (like yours truly).

Since GWPDA played the Lawrence card, I’m going to recommend John E. Mack’s “A Prince of our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence” (1976). The book is a bit heavy on the psychology stuff (Mack was, after all, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard) but chock full of historical information (I will defer to GWPDA in the event of any major or egregious errors in the book).

Mack, who was struck and killed by a drunk driver in the England in 2004, later gained notoriety for his study of people claiming to have been abducted by aliens. This lead to the unprecedented investigation of a tenured professor at Harvard solely on the basis of his field of study (he was exonerated).

Having lived in Arabia as a boy in the 1950s, the story of Lawrence has resonated with me throughout my life. I have a first edition copy of “Revolt in the Desert” and have read “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” about once per decade since my teens. In high school, I suffered one of the greatest insults/compliments of my life when my book report comparing a biography of somebody (in my case Lawrence) with an autobiography of the same person was returned without a grade, just a “SEE ME” written at the end. My English teacher (whom I will refrain from naming as she was so mean, she is probably still alive) told me it was too well written to have been done by a high school student. Suffering as I was from a severe sense of “fear of authority”, I rewrote the book report, intentionally dumbing it down to make her happy. Sigh…

Anyway, I grabbed “A Prince of our Disorder” literally on the run out the door on the way to a week on Sanibel Island. It holds up well and so much of it is very prescient about the current situation on the middle east.

Oh yeah, left at home an as works still in progress, “Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind” by Brian Fagan and the Isaacson book about that Jobs-creator guy (I don’t read much fiction, sorry).

Thanks for some of those recommendations. And thanks especially for the promise in the last line.

Thanks also to the herd for some other interesting-sounding ideas.

Assuming anyone reads down this far … I just finished George Dyson’s Turing’s Cathedral. It missed being a great book due to some strained metaphors which started to bug me as they accumulated, but it’s a good one, of interest to anyone who wants to know more about Johnny von Neumann’s efforts to build upon Alan Turing’s theoretical work. Geeky, but not overly so. It has a stylistic flavor of Richard Rhodes’s books on the history of nuclear weapons, although it is not as elegant. (In fairness, nothing is, IMO.)

Just came across the third book in the Girl with a Dragon Tattoo trilogy, at a used book sale. Looking forward to reading that next, even if the first two did not make me gush as much as the hype would have had it.

I meant to add that I also just started The Information, by James Gleick, which so far is highly enjoyable. There aren’t a whole lot of people who can weave together explanations of Claude Shannon and African talking drums, but Gleick can do it, with beauty.

Mack’s work was (and remains) impeccable. Several others have tried to follow the same path, but Mack’s professional insights, combined with really excellent historiography outrank them by a very wide margin.

I try to re-read 7Pillars every summer – a very good book to read in the pool, in the desert… :-)

The way I see it, Portrait of a Lady is essentially Henry James telling Americans to grow up, realize that Hobson’s Choice is often unavoidable, and can the exceptionalism nonsense. I had a much different take on it when I was in college (and still was into “can do” ism) than I do now.

My sympathies on the dried-up bitter-assed high school English teacher. My own most memorable run-in with academic injustice came when the teacher of one of my college English classes — a teacher who just happened to be the wife of the dean — gave the best paper I ever wrote a “D”. Never found out an official reason why, as she never explained her reasons for anything, but I suspect that the reason was that it dealt with the history of marijuana prohibition, with Larry Sloman’s Reefer Madness and Andrew Weil’s The Natural Mind featured prominently. The one good thing about the whole episode is that once my classmates found out I’d written a paper about dope, I gained immediate and favorable access to the campus’ recreational drug community.

I just finished Richard Ford’s Canada and it is really impressive. Somehow it is quiet and compelling at the same time. A great storyteller voice for a narrator. It’s a wonderful book.

Also just finished Bring Up the Bodies, Mantel’s sequel to Wolf Hall. Highly recommend it.

Have a lot of summer road trips so have queued up Alan Furst’s latest, Mission to Paris. His formula is getting a little old but they are fun beach reads. Light entertainment. You know, like reading a blog.

Whilst reading Craig Johnson’s Longmire, I had this flash of another, other Western guy…. People should read Riders to Cibola.…. Bradford’s Red Sky at Morning first tho. Then Riders to Cibola.

“Albert Norman Zollinger was an award winning Albuquerque novelist whom fellow author Tony Hillerman called a “Renaissance Man.”. To quote Hillermann: “He was a guy that, if you quoted Shakespeare for him, he could give you the whole play, and if you mentioned a poet, he could recite two or three of his poems. He was the most intelligent man I’ve ever known. Norman Zollinger always had a few kind words for me: “God damn it, when are you gonna start writing again?” He was a man who knew one big thing: if you’re a writer, you should write. Nothing else matters. “Unlike some of the rest of us, Norman Zollinger lived this truth. That’s a hell of a good thing to be able to say of a man.” Hillerman also called his long time friend a “warm-hearted man” who was interested in everybody: “Zollinger liked people and he loved helping “wannabe writers” more than anybody else”.

Norman Zollinger was born in Chicago, where his father had built up a plastics business. As a young man he joined the US Air Force, and was an air force pilot in WW II, flying 51 missions as a bombardier on a B 24 in Europe. After the war Zollinger joined his father’s Chicago business, and within a year he was running the company, which engineered plastic components for the telecommunications industry. He started writing his first novel in 1969, and in 1970 he decided to leave his high paying executive job and move his family to Albuquerque. He had become enamored with New Mexico while he was stationed at Roswell AFB during World War II. He decided to follow his writing dream and opened a bookstore, the “Little Professor Book Center” in Albuquerque. His first book, “Riders to Cibola” was published in 1979. Zollinger’s most recent novel was “Meridian” published in 1997, and contract negotiations were under way for his latest book, “Coyote”. His other works included “Corey Lane”, “Passage to Quivira”, “Lantrec” and “Rage in Chupadera”. Two of these books, “Riders” and “Rage” won the Western Writers of America Golden Spur Award.

For seven years, he taught at the Norman Zollinger Taos School of Writing during the summer, as well as teaching a course at the University of New Mexico Honors Program that he and Hillerman had started. Zollinger also offered creative writing workshops for service veterans who were physically challenged, in conjunction with the organization “Very Special Arts New Mexico” and the Veterans Administration. He received the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement from the Western Writers of America in 1998. For him, he said, “It may not be the Pulitzer or some of those other awards, but it’s the highest honor for a man in Western letters.” Norman Zollinger died in Albuquerque on the 5th of March 1999.

currently reading the stephanie plum mystery series for the 2nd time. Work has been stressful & they make me laugh out loud. Quite lightweight which is just what i need after a rough day at work.

Just finished Roadside Geology of Minnesota, which was excellent. Took me several weeks to work through it because i’d have to digest a paragraph or two at a time. I obtained it from the library, now i plan to buy my own copy plus Roadside Geology of Wisconsin. Road trip time!

Also just finished Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi, enjoyed it much more than i expected.

Between other books i’m working my way through Georgette Heyer’s regency romances. Trying to pace myself, unfortunately i’m a fast reader so i try not to read more than one a day. I usually despise romances, but i am loving these. No wonder so many people recommend them. Her evocation of the regency period is as good as science fiction for taking me into a different world.

Thinking about rereading Good Omens, which was a clever book. Maybe i haven’t read the right Pratchett or Gaiman books, the ones they’ve written solo have all been in the “meh” category for me.

Looking forward to Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold. I’ve been exercising great self control by not buying the eArc.

I wonder how much of “all of them” Mamma Grissley is reading this summer. Or is it a season other than summer in Russia’s viewing room?

Such a lovely thread. I’m feeling really bad about spending most of my reading time…online, drat it.
Have a big stack of library books, and own books…resisted buying more today….skimmed through several, thought about the waiting library books and the chores needing to be done…and put ‘em all back.

I have the Oppenheimer bio…started it when I bought it…didn’t finishit, not because of any flaws in the book. I’m bad that way.
Turing’s Cathedral…I had it reserved from the library, but it came at a bad time…so busy since starting an actual full-time job, so only got a coupla chapters read. Not quite as great as I hoped, but will give it another shot when it’s off the reserve list.

Part way into 1494, about the Pope then (a Borgia pope) dividing the western hemisphere between Spain and Portugal. I remember learning this in grade school, and being mildly surprised. Now the outrageousness is almost flabbergasting.

Been slogging through a mystery by an author I used to love, Susanna Gregory. It’s a medieval mystery about a Cambridge physician-scholar. I will finish it, but I keep wondering if these days, she gets paid by the word.

Serious fiction is leaving me cold, so very light reading and non-fiction is what I read, when I actually do it. I’m shocked at how little I read lately, since books have always been my raison d’etre. Think I need new glasses; read too slow, after years of speed-reading; has become difficult somehow.
So much interesting here;authors and books I’ve never heard of, others I love.So many books, so little time! why do I waste it NOT reading?

Don’t know if you do audio books or not. Most larger town libraries have pretty good selections (free with card) that can be “checked out” by downloading and played on most iPod-ish devices and smarter-phones…

So late to this thread.

I’ve been reading comic books/graphic novels this abbreviated summer vacation. And you know what? Most of them are pretty crappy but some are terrific. Watchmen is great, as is 30 Days of Night. Batman: Arkham Asylum was a nightmare and not in a good way. Those are the most famous efforts I found in my library but there are others that I’d recommend to anyone (Superman: Red Son was damn ambitious and worked wonders–imagine if that Kryptonian rocket landed in communist Russia instead of Kansas).

If you want to dive into the Superhero waters, I’d recommend Mark Millar, Ed Brubaker and Judd Winick. This will not be news to fans of the genre. Anybody else got recs? It’s back to literature for me once school starts.

Sbruin: Read anything by Darwyn Cooke. For superheroes – DC’s The New Frontier is a RE-construction of the superhero mythos and is excellent. His Batman related work, particularly Selina’s Big Score (which is solely a Catwoman novel) is also great. For pure crime, he has been adapting the Parker Novels and they are similarly addictive.

Sex and drugs…that’s the ticket. My original Lawrence paper went into his somewhat unconventional sexual life (or lack thereof) and that may have been a bit too much for a 1960′s public high school English teacher to handle. Of course, I left that part out of the re-write.

I always count this as a missed step in my life. Had my teacher been accepting and supportive, I might have been steered in a different direction.

go east, young man–wm. o douglas.
he writes of the right-wing hate machine during his tenure on supreme court.

garden of beasts

just finished bel canto, and state of wonder. amahzing both!

but re: olympics: Megan Rapinoe.

Thanks for the recommendations. I think that I already have Hourani’s History of the Arab Peoples in my library, but I’ll double-check.

And please remember, these are the text books that the professor selected. He is nice in that he does try to keep the textbooks inexpensive for his classes, unlike others. This professor at least realizes that some of us pay out of pocket for his abuse (but we like it).

Libraries are ur friends – even in NM. And interlibrary loan is the best thing ever invented, EVER.

Still, I may be about to take a job that will have me on the road two weeks out of four – I guess I’ll have to Kindle?

If it’s endings we’re talking, then we must consider _Infinite Jest_. I think Wallace hit 1100, or so, pages, not counting the footnoted end-notes, and said, “That’s enough.” Because it just stopped. Ongoing threads be damned. That’s enough. But it felt good to read it anyway.

@tejanarusa – i think janet evanovich succumbed to the same lure as susanna Gregory. The first 10-12 stephanie plum novels are light but funny, after that the series becomes a big cliche with no growth. i recall reading somewhere that evanovich said, if you find a money-maker, milk it! And she is doing so. Some customer reviewers suspect that she jobbed the later novels out to ghost writers.

@sbruin – have you tried the Girl Genius comics? Not everyone’s cuppa tea, but i love ‘em. I love Phil’s drawing style and Kaja’s typography skills, and the coloring of the later books is by the awesomely talented Cheyenne Wright. The comics are also posted online Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I read each panel 3-4 times, first for the story line, second to savor all the little details and jokes hidden in plain sight, and third to study the layout and coloring.

@GWPDA _ yes, libraries are great. That’s how i started on Georgette Heyer. The ones i know i will want to reread through the years i’ll end up buying, but the library will save me lots of $$$ because she wrote over 50 books over the course of her career. And thanks to the library, i discovered Roadside Geology of Minnesota which i will HAVE to buy.

These days i get most of my book recommendations from online sci-fi lists and threads like this. Thank you, everyone!

I just finished Jason Thompson’s A History of Egypt. It goes from prehistory to the mid-2000s. I’ve been reading The Inheritance of Rome by Chris Wickham while watching a Yale recorded class from iTunes U. There’s an amazing amount of stuff on iTunes.

I’m also reading Hey, America, Your Roots Are Showing by genealogist Megan Smolenyak. She’s the one who tracked down Barack Obama’s Irish ancestors. Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments is on the Kindle along with The Wealth of Nations, but it’s slow going.

Guy de Maupassant, “Bel Ami.” So familiar, just a different era. I’ve started researching British mysteries of the 20s and 30s. Apparently, it’s a cult following which I didn’t know about, and I’ve yet to get to the county library; my town doesn’t have the authors whom I seek.

Yes, but mortfrom, that WAS the “infinite jest” referred to in the title, or so I concluded – that you’ve slogged through 1100 pages only to find no resolution to anything, other than the conclusion that PGOAT = the Medusa in “The Medusa and the Odalisk.” So, it was wrapped up in the sense that the joke was revealed, and it was on you, the reader.

That having been said, there was a lot to love about that book, endings be damned. Just the whole notion of subsidized time – “The Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment,” “The Year of the Purdue Wonder Chicken,” and so forth – was worth the price of admission alone. It can’t be too far in the future before that becomes a reality.

It’s good that the L&T Casey is still watching Buffy reruns…we have that in common. I don’t have the DVDs, just NetFlix, which is okay although the quality sucks occasionally. Say Hi to Casey and Mrs TBogg for me! Catch you out in SAN one of these days sooner or later!

Jo

I just finished one I thought really rockin good: Brasyl by Ian McDonald. It’s part historical, part sciencefictional, but all about Sao Paolo and Rio and a reality-show producer who does capoeira and an admonitory to the Iguapa who licks frogs for the visions.

ETA: It’s not a new release (I checked it out from the lieberry) I think it’s a few years old. But I’m gonna see what else he wrote next.

Reading “Redbreast” by Jo Nesbo, Norwegian, featuring the most unintentionally risibly named detective hero possibly ever: Harry Hole.
Just finished “Watergate: A Novel,” which is one of the odder, better political books I’ve read in awhile; and finally got around to “The Broom of the System.”