Now reading...

[T.D.]

6 minutes ago, kinuta said:

Thank you. I'm partial to anything concerning or set in India so it will make a good addition to my reading list.

I read the whole Raj Quartet some years ago. Pretty good, but it (close to 2,000 pages in 1-book edition) became a labor to finish and more or less permanently put me off super-long novels.

[jlhoots]

19 minutes ago, kinuta said:

Thank you. I'm partial to anything concerning or set in India so it will make a good addition to my reading list.

Suketu Mehta: Maximum City (Bombay Lost & Found) - non-fiction, great book.

Edited February 5, 2019 by jlhoots

[kinuta]

I never managed to finish Raj Quartet.

For a light but enjoyable read, The Widows Of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey is good.

Suketu Mehta: Maximum City is duly noted and added to my list. Thanks.

I visited Bombay in '73, before it became Mumbai.

[ejp626]

4 hours ago, kinuta said:

Thanks for the reassurance.

I'm going to be honest, I didn't think it was worth it.  It isn't particularly challenging, but takes far too long to get where it is going and the payoff is pretty modest.

[kinuta]

2 hours ago, ejp626 said:

I'm going to be honest, I didn't think it was worth it.  It isn't particularly challenging, but takes far too long to get where it is going and the payoff is pretty modest.

I appreciate your comments. It gives me all the more reason to hesitate before commiting 2-3 weeks to something that may not be all that satisfying.

The last Murakami I read was Wind Up Bird Chronicle which I really enjoyed.

[kinuta]

[Brad]

6 minutes ago, kinuta said:

He has a new book coming out later this year about the East India Company in the late 18th Century. 

[ejp626]

Finally finished up The Iliad and The Odyssey.  Taking a bit of a breather before diving into The Aeneid. 

I was about to launch into Hideo Furukawa's Slow Boat, but then he revealed it was a bit of a riff off of a Murakami short story "A Slow Boat to China."  I decided to detour and read The Elephant Vanishes first (it contains that story), then Slow Boat and then The Aeneid.  Maybe by then Atwood's The Penelopiad will be in at the library...

[jlhoots]

Tayari Jones: An American Marriage

[Matthew]

All the Colors We Will See: Reflections on Barriers, Brokenness, and Finding Our Way by Patrice Gopo. 

[T.D.]

[Brad]

On 1/27/2019 at 9:35 AM, Brad said:

Having just finished Howards End, one of the best books I've read in a long time, I'm now starting

 

I finished this just now. A rather shocking book. Won't say anymore for those who might want to read it. 

[Brad]

Having read And Quiet Flows the Don at least a year ago, I'm now ready to read 

[ghost of miles]

Wrapping up Victory City (which has been excellent) and getting ready to start this:

[Matthew]

6 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

Wrapping up Victory City (which has been excellent) and getting ready to start this:

Please let us know what you think of the Bates book, I've been interested in that topic for a long time, I'm just starting this book:

Edited February 11, 2019 by Matthew

[Brad]

18 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

Wrapping up Victory City (which has been excellent) and getting ready to start this:

 

12 hours ago, Matthew said:

Please let us know what you think of the Bates book, I've been interested in that topic for a long time, I'm just starting this book:

This book might interest you. 

UNEXAMPLED COURAGE:The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring by Richard Gergel. 

[Matthew]

 

37 minutes ago, Brad said:

 

This book might interest you. 

UNEXAMPLED COURAGE:The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring by Richard Gergel. 

Thanks for the recommendation! it looks like an interesting read. 

[ghost of miles]

13 hours ago, Matthew said:

Please let us know what you think of the Bates book, I've been interested in that topic for a long time, I'm just starting this book:

That’s the other Pullman-porters book on my to-read list... great Pullman-curious minds think alike, eh?  We’ll have to trade reviews! 

[Brad]

1 hour ago, Matthew said:

 

Thanks for the recommendation! it looks like an interesting read. 

It received a good review from David Blight, the Dean of Civil War historians (along with Eric Foner), which is high praise indeed. Blight was just awarded the Lincoln Prize for his bio on Frederick Douglass, the top honor in civil war history studies. 

[HutchFan]

On 2/9/2019 at 0:55 PM, Brad said:

Having read And Quiet Flows the Don at least a year ago, I'm now ready to read 

I'm a Russian literature and history junkie, but I've never read those Sholokhov books.

I need to fix that, add And Quiet Flows the Don to my reading list. 

 

[ghost of miles]

23 minutes ago, Brad said:

It received a good review from David Blight, the Dean of Civil War historians (along with Eric Foner), which is high praise indeed. Blight was just awarded the Lincoln Prize for his bio on Frederick Douglass, the top honor in civil war history studies. 

Foner's history of the Reconstruction is sitting on the table at which I'm typing--hoping to get to it sometime this year.  (It may become my next "breakfast book," which often tends to be a history volume of some kind.  Current "breakfast book" is Joseph C. Goulden's Korea: The Untold Story Of The War.)

[Brad]

1 hour ago, HutchFan said:

I'm a Russian literature and history junkie, but I've never read those Sholokhov books.

I need to fix that, add And Quiet Flows the Don to my reading list. 

 

I quite liked the first one and it wasn’t hard to find a copy. Finding a copy of the second one was difficult. There seems to be a crying need for a new edition of this series. 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

On 12/11/2010 at 4:56 AM, Dave James said:

Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels For what they are, they're about as good as it gets. Completely and totally mindless and completely and totally entertaining.

I started reading Child's Reacher series and I agree with all points. Reading a Reacher novel is a lot like watching a Rambo movie. The bad guys are sneaky, dirty scumbags that deserve what Reacher dishes out and he will kill or maim them all by the end.

I see that they made 2 movies but... with Tom Cruise as Reacher??? Jack Reacher is 6' 5" 220. Tom Cruise?? Really? No way.

[Larry Kart]

5 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

I started reading Child's Reacher series and I agree with all points. Reading a Reacher novel is a lot like watching a Rambo movie. The bad guys are sneaky, dirty scumbags that deserve what Reacher dishes out and he will kill or maim them all by the end.

I see that they made 2 movies but... with Tom Cruise as Reacher??? Jack Reacher is 6' 5" 220. Tom Cruise?? Really? No way.

A big Lee Child fan here, but I disagree with Dave James' "completely and totally mindless." While Reacher's near implacable, highly honed physical skills are a key given, especially in that few of his antagonists are aware that they're facing in him not just another very big/muscular guy, every Reacher novel I recall turns not only (and not really that much)  on his ability to be effectively violent but also (and I would say primarily) on his ability to think through/figure out what is always a very puzzling/"what the heck is going on here?" initial situation -- and things typically remain quite puzzling for a good while.. Without the "thinking" Reacher, the bashing Reacher would be up a creek. Further, the bashing Reacher is, I would say, quite thoughtful in his bashing. As is emphasized time and again, he knows exactly how to rapidly muster his immense physical skills to fit the given situation, (we're usually told just how he scopes things out along those lines), while his antagonists typically do not know how to effectively muster the force that's available to them. They're out-thought as much as they're out-fought.

[Matthew]

8 hours ago, Brad said:

It received a good review from David Blight, the Dean of Civil War historians (along with Eric Foner), which is high praise indeed. Blight was just awarded the Lincoln Prize for his bio on Frederick Douglass, the top honor in civil war history studies. 

I've been eyeing that Douglas bio also -- so many good books to read, so little time. Though, when I think of that, I always remember the Twilight Zone episode with Burgess Meredith, Ack!!!!