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Picked up at a thrift store awhile back. Thought it would be too swamped with military minutiae but wasn't. Enjoyed it.

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On 11/28/2020 at 6:55 PM, Gil Bang said:

As a former resident of Dana Point, CA, I approve this post. 

I spent the better part of 6 years afloat, first in the Navy and then as a merchant mariner. Those old accounts of life at sea are riveting. I recently downloaded and listened to a Jack London collection of stories he wrote based on his  experiences in the South Pacific around 1908 or so. It was even then a territory inhabited by unrepentant cannibals. Also this year reread Michener's Tales of the South Pacific (WWII era) and just started Melville's Typee and Omoo (also set at about the same time as the Dana story). The full Melville "trilogy" is 44 hours in length. Pretty sure I'll have my salt water needs met if/when I finish this one. 

Edited by El Diablo

Started Ready Player Two this weekend, good so far but a little heavy on the "technology is evil" theme. 

On 11/30/2020 at 12:36 PM, hornbri said:

Started Ready Player Two this weekend, good so far but a little heavy on the "technology is evil" theme. 

The author was a guest on Coast-to-Coast AM one night a week or so ago. I think their stuff is available on their website if you cared to listen. 

Breath.  I found out I've been doing it wrong for the past 40 years.  

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This was pretty good although the resolution came a bit out of left field.

On 7/21/2020 at 9:50 AM, kevwun said:

Just finished this.  Really, really good.  I'm going to have to watch the movie again.

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Willie's pretty much a dickbag.

On 11/30/2020 at 2:36 PM, hornbri said:

Started Ready Player Two this weekend, good so far but a little heavy on the "technology is evil" theme. 

I mentioned this in the video game sub, but If you have $30 burning a hole in your pocket (if you have less, you can still pick up several books), you can pick up 95 books on the history and development of videogames

http://storybundle.com/games

I'm starting with Designers & Dragons - 1970s, 1980s, 1990s & 2000s, then Commodork - Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie.

Going to relive my younger years.

I finished "Typee" last night. Ending came up out of nowhere, opportunity presented itself and bam! the guy's adventure was suddenly over. It's a good story, just a narrative really without a lot of action moving the story though there is a storyline. Mostly descriptive of the life and ways of the Marquesan's of the mid1800's.  Next up is "Omoo", the tale of the companion who escaped early on in "Typee" and what became of him. 

On 11/30/2020 at 2:36 PM, hornbri said:

Started Ready Player Two this weekend, good so far but a little heavy on the "technology is evil" theme. 

Finished it the other day.  Meh, not nearly as good as the first one.

21 hours ago, WBT said:

Finished it the other day.  Meh, not nearly as good as the first one.

That's discouraging 

1 hour ago, Doc Sam Beckett said:

That's discouraging 

Yeah.... probably still gonna read it though. You know.. because. 

I picked up The Outsider this week. Might wait till after the holidays to start. I love Stephen King books but they often take me awhile to finish. 

3 minutes ago, NorthLoop said:

Yeah.... probably still gonna read it though. You know.. because. 

I picked up The Outsider this week. Might wait till after the holidays to start. I love Stephen King books but they often take me awhile to finish. 

Much better than the series.

Just now, SimonBolivar said:

Much better than the series.

I didn't watch it.

Some recent finishes:

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Meh.  I thought this was going to be focused on the Revolution in the Hudson River Valley.  It was essentially a short retelling of the Revolution that mildly touched upon how the Brits were focused on the Hudson.  The story of that war has been told better.

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This was great.  First hand accounts of vets taken by a pro interviewer.  A little of that stilted English prose that reads a bit like a Ph.D thesis to an American, but the stories.  Wow.

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Hart relies a lot on Liddle's interviews, but does a better job telling the overall story of the Gallipoli campaign.  Well researched and written, it reads much more fluidly than Liddle's book.  It's an academic history, told with a popular history touch.

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The story from the other side of the hill.  Well researched and a bit eye opening being used to hearing the Brit/Anzac view of the battle.  Once again, for the Allied side, he relies on Peter Liddle's interviews.  

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A great in depth telling of the political and diplomatic forces of the early 1900s that culminated in the making of the modern Middle East at the end of WWI.  If you want to know how we got to into the Middle Eastern quagmire without going over the entire history of the Ottoman Empire, this is the place to start. 

Edited by Chad Fuck

On 12/11/2020 at 6:12 PM, NorthLoop said:

I didn't watch it.

Well I don't recommend it after you finish the book. 

  • 2 weeks later...

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Finished this one it's a quick read. Historical fiction. There are a few busty colonial wenches in bursting bodices that caught my attention.  Quick read and learned a few things about Bunker Hill.  I'll dig into that further after i finish this next one.

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It's a story of fathers and sons and world-class bourbon.  I love most anything Wright Thompson pens.  This is no exception.   I read half of it last night and didn't want to put it down.  I teared up a few times and learned quite a bit about whiskey and bourbon.  I finished it and went to my kid's rooms while they slept and cuddled them. 

So far this one has moved me.  I don't hand out many five stars on Goodreads but I'm thinking this one will get one.  

 

1 hour ago, CycleTex87 said:

I’m at 85% complete on this.  Really good.

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Tai Pan might be even better. His whole Asian Saga series is good except for Gai Jin. It didn’t hold my interest. 

I have been reading through the Walt Longmire and Amos Decker series the last month or so. Nice "turn your brain off" and reads.

Just finished The Boy From The Woods by Harlan Coben. Pretty decent little mystery novel and a quick read. The modern day political digs are a little heavy handed but enjoyable nonetheless. I’m gonna read a work book next (by our CEO) and then tackle either Dune or The Stand (I got both for Christmas).

On 1/1/2021 at 7:44 AM, TonyTexas said:

Tai Pan might be even better. His whole Asian Saga series is good except for Gai Jin. It didn’t hold my interest. 

Took your advice and picked up Tai Pan to read next.

Prequel to the Kingsbridge Series. If you liked Pillars of the Earth and the others, you’ll enjoy this. 
 

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Been reading a good bit of Hunter S Thompson lately. Mostly collections of his journalistic efforts with various magazines during/from his campaign trail days. No CR, the things we're seeing today have all been done before. In a way it's sad but comforting. 

Edited by El Diablo

Just read Night by Elie Wiesel. It’s well written and a quick read, a reminder of how horrific the Holocaust was. I’m not really sure what else can be said.

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Also just finished Second Suns by David Oliver Relin. It’s about a Nepalese ophthalmologist and an American ophthalmologist who team up to provide cataract surgery for poor people in Nepal and Africa. I really enjoyed it because it’s in my line of work, but others may enjoy it from a humanitarian standpoint.

Regardless, the main reason I’m sharing is because of this excerpt towards the end of the book:

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These are ophthalmologists hiking in the Himalayas in the mid-2000s when they encountered this guy. I’d be really curious to find someone who knows the Longhorn who got mauled by a bull and had his intestines sewn back in by an ophthalmologist in the Himalayas.

  • 2 weeks later...

Started reading this

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Because I came across this and thought it was really good writing.  So far it is.

 

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One of the creepiest books I’ve read.


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  • 2 weeks later...

Im not sure if I should be thankful or offended that Ready Player Two is in large print. At least the know their demographic.
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"Read" (audio book) Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises". Good enough book I guess, what struck me the most was the memories it brought back of visiting France and Spain as a young man. Made me wish I had gone to a bullfight. 

On 2/8/2021 at 9:51 PM, midtown said:

Im not sure if I should be thankful or offended that Ready Player Two is in large print. At least the know their demographic.
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It's really REALLY bad when you have the LARGE PRINT version of "Where's Waldo".

I just finished Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann. 

While impressively researched, Grann is just not a mystery writer. There are some unnecessary hints to the killer's identity very early in the book. Also the final act is completely unnecessary and anticlimactic. The set up to the final act was written as cliffhanger twist, it is not. 

Scorsese is getting up there in age. He'll turn 79 in the fall. Not sure why this book/screen play jumped out to him. 

On 1/26/2021 at 11:05 AM, TexPx said:

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One of the creepiest books I’ve read.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Yeah, that's a good one

Outward mindset - absolute trash but on list for book club in my company exec team. Debating if I can watch a YouTube summary instead. 

More Hemingway, a collection of his short stories. Some are really short. That's a good thing about Hemingway, if you don't like a particular story it doesn't take long to get thru it. Brevity, he had it. 

These were pretty good.  Nordic noir following homicide detectives in Copenhagen.  

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Close Range:  Wyoming Stories by E. Annie Proulx.

Pretty entertaining, but also pretty dark. A bit of a western, even more bizarro, Flannery O'Connor.

On 2/23/2021 at 6:38 AM, El Diablo said:

More Hemingway, a collection of his short stories. Some are really short. That's a good thing about Hemingway, if you don't like a particular story it doesn't take long to get thru it. Brevity, he had it. 

Supposedly, but I think it's true, he was a Paris/Europe correspondent for a Montreal paper and the cost of his telegrams was deducted from his pay.  Thus, he learned an economy of words.

His and Fitzgerald's short stories are among the best fiction literature ever put to paper, imo.  Another pretty good one, but somewhat undersung, is John O'Hara.

On 2/24/2021 at 5:47 PM, TwiceHorn said:

Supposedly, but I think it's true, he was a Paris/Europe correspondent for a Montreal paper and the cost of his telegrams was deducted from his pay.  Thus, he learned an economy of words.

His and Fitzgerald's short stories are among the best fiction literature ever put to paper, imo.  Another pretty good one, but somewhat undersung, is John O'Hara.

I liked the Nick Adams character, wish that had been fleshed out more in a single novel. Google told me that those stories were compiled into a collection in '72 but I think that most of them were in the collection that I just finished. Some of the stories, due in part to the economy of words, seemed somewhat unfinished but nope, that was the story and more words would not have conveyed anymore than what there already was. Wish I knew French now. 

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I really enjoy deep history and so far this one is good.  I'm about 1/3 of the way through

On 12/26/2020 at 3:44 PM, Post Oak said:

 

9780735221253

It's a story of fathers and sons and world-class bourbon.  I love most anything Wright Thompson pens.  This is no exception.   I read half of it last night and didn't want to put it down.  I teared up a few times and learned quite a bit about whiskey and bourbon.  I finished it and went to my kid's rooms while they slept and cuddled them. 

So far this one has moved me.  I don't hand out many five stars on Goodreads but I'm thinking this one will get one.  

 

Pappyland was moving. I heard Thompson's voice the whole time. Finished it within two sittings this past week.

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This was very good.  It had kind of an Elmore Leonard vibe.

American Pastoral by Philip Roth.

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Terrible I thought.  Would have been better if they just got rid of the plot and just had a bunch of old New Jersey Jews and Catholics arguing about shit.

 

Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother.

Great, except for the fondling.  Sonnenfeld is a complete psycho, but worth it just for the chapters on Blood Simple and his champagne porn shoot.

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Read the first 4 Harry Potters to the (now) 6 and 8 year old. Wanted to change it up a little. Found a copy of the Dark is Rising series (in one book) on eBay for ~$5. They liked Over Sea Under Stone but are really liking DiR, which I remember being my favorite...25 years ago?  Pacing is a little slow for the 6 year old. I’m really enjoying the RE-read myself, maybe almost as much as the 8 year old. 

Edited by UT_OB1

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