What Are You Reading Now?

[happyone]

I guess it is time for one of semi-periodic updates to my “What I’ve read lately list”

Nelson’s Trafalgar

http://www.amazon.com/Nelsons-Trafal...%27s+trafalgar

This is a good general audience look at the iconic naval battle of the Napleonic wars

My thoughts

https://www.goodreads.com/review/sho...w_action=false

Smoke at Dawn

http://www.amazon.com/Smoke-Dawn-Nov...=smoke+at+dawn

Jeff Shaara’s latest Civil War Novel – The tale of the Confederate Siege of Chattanooga in late 1863

My thoughts

https://www.goodreads.com/review/sho...w_action=false

The next three are from Edward Marston’s Railway Detective Series –not great, but enjoyable. The are set 1850’s England

Railway to the Grave

http://www.amazon.com/Railway-Inspec...tective+series

The Silver Locomotive

http://www.amazon.com/Silver-Locomot...tective+series

Blood on the Line

http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Line-8-R...tective+series

I didn't write up my thoughts on these three

The Quite Hero

http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Hero-Unt...the+quiet+hero

The story of a Utah Native who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on Iwo Jima – the VA Hospital in SLC is name for him

My thoughts

https://www.goodreads.com/review/sho...w_action=false

The Straw Men

http://www.amazon.com/Straw-Brother-...=the+straw+men

# 12 in Paul Doherty’s Brother Athelstan medieval mystery series – again I enjoyed it but, I didn’t write anything for Good Reads

The War of 1812

http://www.amazon.com/1812-Chicago-H...rds=1812+Coles

Decent overview of America’s real forgotten war – a little stilted in spots

My thoughts

https://www.goodreads.com/review/sho...w_action=false

The Aviators

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss...ripbooks%2C342

Winton Groom’s latest history – the story of arguably America’s three greatest aviators of the interwar period, Lindberg, Doolittle and Rickenbacker and the contributions each made to the growth of the aviation industry. Groom also covers their WW II experiences

My thoughts

https://www.goodreads.com/review/sho...w_action=false

Lawrence in Arabia

http://www.amazon.com/Lawrence-Arabi...ence+in+arabia

Interesting look at how WW I made the modern middle east and Lawrence’s role in it

My thoughts

https://www.goodreads.com/review/sho...w_action=false

Tudor: The Family Story

http://www.amazon.com/Tudor-Passion-...tudor+de+lisle

Interesting take on perhaps Britain’s greatest dynasty

My Thoughts

https://www.goodreads.com/review/sho...w_action=false

1812

http://www.amazon.com/1812-That-Forg...=1812+borneman

I’m on a War of 1812 kick right now - I’ve two more on the shelf to read  This one is definitely more reader friendly than Coles book

My thoughts

https://www.goodreads.com/review/sho...w_action=false


And finally

The first book in Conn Iggulden’s new series on the War of the Roses

Stormbird

http://www.amazon.com/Wars-Roses-Sto...ords=Stormbird

This really isn’t set in the Wars of the Roses, but 15 yrs earlier in the fall of English Kingdom of France

My thoughts

https://www.goodreads.com/review/sho...w_action=false

[SteelBlue]

I'm devoting September to Haruki Murakami. Just finished my first ever Murakami read; The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. Mind blown.

Next up is Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.

Any of you Japanese speakers ever read him? I'd love to be able to read it in Japanese as I always feel there must be nuances missed with any translation.

[SteelBlue]

The Longlist for the Booker prize was announced today. This is the first year in the prize's history that American's have been eligible and 4 have been nominated. Typically a great list from which to choose a can't miss read. I have already read one from this year's list: Orfeo by Powers. The guy is a genius, but the book was a tough read for me as it required a knowledge of music theory and classical music history to fully understand. Having the gaps in your knowledge exposed for 300+ pages isn't always pleasant. Anyway, here's the longlist.


http://www.themanbookerprize.com/new...2014-announced


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/24/bo...nced.html?_r=0

Shortlist was announced today. Joshua Ferris' To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, and Karen Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves were the two Americans to make the cut. David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks had made the longlist even though it hadn't yet been released. Some had thought this would finally be his year to win, but he didn't make the shortlist today.

http://www.themanbookerprize.com/new...tlist-revealed

[SteelBlue]

National Book Award Longlist for Non-Fiction announced today. FWIW, the NBA lists are probably my favorite for finding great reads. I know a lot of you read only non-fiction, so I thought you might appreciate seeing the list if you haven't already. Fiction gets announced tomorrow.

The 10 books are:

“Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?” (Bloomsbury), by Roz Chast.

“The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic” (Knopf), by John Demos.

“No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes” (Metropolitan), by Anand Gopal.

“The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941-1942″ (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), by Nigel Hamilton.

“The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution” (Simon & Schuster), by Walter Isaacson. (Forthcoming Oct. 7.)

“Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh” (Norton), by John Lahr. (Forthcoming Sept. 22.)

“Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China” (FSG), by Evan Osnos.

“When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944″ (Little, Brown), by Ronald C. Rosbottom.

“Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic” (Norton), by Matthew Stewart.

“The Meaning of Human Existence” (Liveright/Norton), by Edward O. Wilson. (Forthcoming Oct 6.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...al-book-award/

[wuapinmon]

Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian Wars.

[SteelBlue]

National Book Award Fiction longlist released last night. Happy to see All the Light We Cannot See made the list, as well as Marilynne Robinson's not yet released Lila. I've mentioned before that I read Powers' Orfeo but struggled with the classical music history and theory knowledge required to keep up. Wolf in White Van, Redeployment, and Station Eleven all sound very interesting to me.

Rabih Alameddine, ‘An Unnecessary Woman,’ Grove Press

Mr. Alameddine’s fourth novel, “An Unnecessary Woman,” is narrated by Aaliya Saleh, a reclusive 72-year-old woman in Beirut who translates works by Nabokov, Rilke, Donne and others into Arabic and stashes them away in her apartment without showing them to anyone.

Molly Antopol, ‘The UnAmericans,’ W.W. Norton & Company

In her bleak and occasionally comic debut short-story collection, Molly Antopol, who was selected as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” writers in 2013, writes about a diverse cast of characters, including a former dissident from Communist-era Prague who worries that his daughter’s new play will paint a negative portrait of him and a young Israeli journalist who dates a widower still grieving for his wife.

John Darnielle, ‘Wolf in White Van,’ Farrar, Straus and Giroux

In his debut novel, Mr. Darnielle, best known as the lead musician and lyricist for the band the Mountain Goats, writes about a lonely, disfigured man who invented a popular role-playing fantasy game and runs the operation out of his apartment.

Anthony Doerr, ‘All the Light We Cannot See,’ Scribner

Mr. Doerr’s novel unfolds during World War II in France. A blind girl and her father flee Nazi-occupied Paris and move to a seaside town, taking with them a precious jewel from a natural history museum. The father is arrested by the Germans, and a Nazi treasure hunter tries to track down the jewel.

Phil Klay, ‘Redeployment,’ The Penguin Press

Mr. Klay, a former Marine who fought in Iraq, captures the terror, boredom and occasional humor of war in his debut collection of short stories, some set in the Anbar Province of Iraq, and others in America as soldiers struggle to readjust to civilian life after being in combat.

Emily St. John Mandel, ‘Station Eleven,’ Alfred A. Knopf

“Station Eleven,” a quiet dystopian novel, unfolds in North America after a deadly super flu has wiped out most of humanity; a band of Shakespearean actors travels to scattered camps of survivors to perform plays.

Elizabeth McCracken, ‘Thunderstruck & Other Stories,’ The Dial Press

Ms. McCraken, whose novel “The Giant’s House” was a National Book Award finalist, has published her first collection of stories in 20 years. Among the nine stories are a tale about a successful documentary filmmaker who has to face a famous subject he manipulated and betrayed; one about a young scholar who is mourning his wife; and another about a grocery store manager who obsesses about a woman’s disappearance.

Richard Powers, ‘Orfeo,’ W.W. Norton & Company

Mr. Powers’s novels often have a cerebral bent, and in “Orfeo,” he threads together several of his favorite themes: music, patterns and genetics. “Orfeo” follows Peter Els, a 70-year-old avant garde composer who attempts to manipulate the genome of a common bacterium by splicing in a musical pattern. Homeland Security picks up on his plans and pursues him as a bioterrorist.

Marilynne Robinson, ‘Lila,’ Farrar, Straus and Giroux

“Lila” — the final book in Ms. Robinson’s trilogy of novels set in the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa — centers on Lila, the troubled young woman who marries the elderly Reverend Ames, the conflicted Calvinist minister and narrator of “Gilead.”

Jane Smiley, ‘Some Luck,’ Alfred A. Knopf

Jane Smiley’s new novel, due out in October, takes place on an Iowa farm, where Rosanna and Walter Langdon, who have five children, live through wars and social and technological upheavals during the middle decades of the 20th century.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/20...ype=blogs&_r=0

[BigPiney]

My most recent books-

Just finished Shovel Ready by Adam Sternbergh. This was another favorite of this year for me. It's a Cyberpunk novel set in a dystopian NYC after a dirty bomb has driven most everyone away who can afford to leave. The novel follows Spademan, a garbageman turned likeable hitman after the bomb. He states from the get go that he'll kill men and women equally but that he draws the line at children. The novel begins as he takes a contract job on a young woman who has only been an adult a few weeks. He learns something about her that drives the novel (no spoilers here) and around which much of the plot is centered.

Perhaps most interesting is the creation of a better kind of internet (the internet we use now is relegated to the poor) called the limnosphere, used by the wealthy. In the limnosphere actions and reactions feel just as real as they do in the real world. It was reminiscent of Bruce Willis' Surrogate in that users "tap in" via a bed while they are unconscious/asleep, and it spawn an entirely new economy for users who need security and nursing etc... while they are tapped in. As you can guess, users have begun to prefer the limnosphere to the real world and their bodies waste away as they spend all of their time tapped in. The novel is quite interesting and feels new and relevant. It's very violent and dark, but also thought provoking. Shovel Ready feels Hollywood Ready, and I'll be surprised if this isn't a movie within a couple of years. Highly recommended.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4709[/ATTACH]

I really like this book. Can't wait to read the second.

All my young adult relatives are raving about Ready Player One. Not sure how they would get all the pop references for older people. Has anyone read this?

Ready Player One was also a lot of fun, maybe even more so. I really enjoyed it.

I also recently finished Black Like Me. The true story of a guy that takes some medication to darken his skin and then goes through some of the seep south in 1959 to see how it really was for the black man. Crazy how things were 50 years ago.


And now for the Happy One book club.
The Boys in the Boat. Good book. True story of the 8 man crew that went to the Berlin Olympics.



and

A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II This book was great. Much of the story was from the perspective of a German fighter pilot. I highly recommend this one.

[Topper]

Great books, Katy and guys.

I am reading one of those books you read for planes, "Rewinder," by Brett Battles. It is full of time paradoxes and is a lot of fun. If you want something well-written but quick and easy, I suggest looking into that one.

[Topper]

Got Ready Player One, based on recommendations here, and love the dystopic approach.

[Topper]

Ready Player One is lots of guilty stupid fun.

[SteelBlue]

Just finished Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel. It is my new #1 for 2014 (though this may change when Marilynne Robinson's Lila is released next week). Had never heard of it until the NBA longlist came out. It's a post apocalyptic, dystopian novel but unlike most in that genre, this book uses it as a backdrop to tell human stories and so it's more literary fiction than science fiction which I think gives it a much broader appeal. That being said, the chapters describing the flu pandemic that ends up killing 99% of the world's population are really well done (and feel quite timely). The book focuses on a few different characters who briefly shared the same space during a production of King Lear in Toronto on the evening the pandemic begins. In a way the book seems to be an homage to the incredible time in which we live, and a warning about its fragility and vulnerability. I highly recommend it, and am pulling for the novel to gain some traction.


I've read several others since my last post that I'd happily recommend: Anither from the NBA longlist, Redeployment by Phil Klay. This is a collection of short stories that mainly deals with the lives of marine infantry in Iraq. Though fiction, it has a very real feel, (Klay is a veteran). He covers a lot of the things I've wondered about, even down to how some vets feel about the phrase "thank you for your service."


A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki. A young and troubled Japanese teenager keeps a very interesting diary which washes up on Vancouver Island in a barnacle encrusted ziploc bag a couple of years after the Tsunami, and is discovered by Ruth, a Japanese American author. The novel jumps between journal entries and Ruth's reactions and ends up being a pretty profound read, even dipping into quantum mechanics. I think the Japan RMs here would like it a lot.

One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by B.J. Novak. A collection of 64 short stories with an average length of 4 pages each. Ranges from brilliant to raw and incomplete. Had the feel of a creative writing journal. I liked it. Had no idea that B.J. Novak was a writer/actor for The Office until I read his bio at the end.

[SteelBlue]

Finished the new David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks. 3.5 stars from me. Most of the book was excellent, the climactic scene was a bit too Harry Potter for me though. Then he tacks on a fairly preachy, heavy handed 100 pages of story to end the novel that really felt out of place, almost unrelated to the rest of the story. Some cool connections with other books, especially The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, if you're a fan.

[CardiacCoug]

This book was discussed briefly here a few years ago I believe -- I finally got around to reading it and it was well worth the month or so it took me to plow through 700 pages. It's a wide-ranging discussion on violence, touching on history, religion, culture and neurobiology.

It is entertaining and well written -- makes you feel incredibly optimistic about the future and the type of world in which our children and grandchildren will live.

http://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-...dp/0143122010/

[Katy Lied]

I'm devoting September to Haruki Murakami. Just finished my first ever Murakami read; The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. Mind blown.

I adore Kafka on the Shore, but I love love love Norwegian Wood and have read it several times.


How the heck some of you find time to read I'll never figure out.

[woot]

This book was discussed briefly here a few years ago I believe -- I finally got around to reading it and it was well worth the month or so it took me to plow through 700 pages. It's a wide-ranging discussion on violence, touching on history, religion, culture and neurobiology.

It is entertaining and well written -- makes you feel incredibly optimistic about the future and the type of world in which our children and grandchildren will live.

http://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-...dp/0143122010/