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  • 2 weeks later...

Norco '80.  It's about a bank heist in San Bernardino County back in 1980 that turned into a big running gun battle -- kinda the forerunner of the big North Hollywood shootout that happened 17 years later.  I haven't really gotten started on it, but I'm encouraged by the reviews and the subject matter is of interest.  

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Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses - Roger Corman: The King of the B Movie.  An oral history of Corman and his way of doing things featuring people like Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola, Scorsese, and other big names whose careers he launched with a few essays mixed in.  A light and entertaining read so far.  

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/15/2019 at 11:51 AM, Damor said:

I can't find the post to give rep, but someone recommended Hernan Diaz's In the Distance.

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Just finished it this morning -- that was a fantastic read, one of the best books I've read in a while, and thanks to this thread, I've read a lot of good ones lately.  I really do appreciate all the great recommendations in here.

Up next, going on a WWI tangent with Goodbye to All That, then rereading All Quiet on the Western Front.

Loved this one.  Quick read, knocked out 90% of it in one cross-country flight.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 2/25/2019 at 4:21 PM, SimonBolivar said:

Image result for The count of monte cristo

 

Because I've never read it.

 

Finished it  a few weeks back. Excellent, but lots of names to keep track of.

 

 

 

 

 

On 3/30/2019 at 11:15 PM, MillerEP said:

Book 8 of the Expanse dropped last week. I stopped everything and am about a quarter of the way through it. Great as always so far:

Tiamat's Wrath (The Expanse Book 8) by [Corey, James S. A.]

 

I'm off work for most of Jan, so I'm thinking about starting these. I enjoyed the TV series.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I just finished:

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Weird hybrid of speculative historical fiction with some supernatural stuff thrown in. Starts off really really good, but ending is meh. Much like some other of Simmons work. TV series is based on it, but I haven't watched any of it.

 

Also recently finished

The-Three-Body-Problem-Liu-Cixin.jpg&f=1

 

Good hardcore sci fi, with some Chinese Cultural Revolution history thrown in.

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SIAP somewhere else, but Lee Child is stepping back from the Jack Reacher series and handing it over to his younger brother.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/18/jack-reacher-series-author-lee-child-quits-and-lets-brother-step-in

Quote

The author of the Jack Reacher series of novels is retiring and handing over the writing duties to his brother, according to a report.

Lee Child said he has been searching for a way to kill off the title character, portrayed on film by Tom Cruise, for years but has ultimately decided his fans deserve to see him live on in books which will now be written by Andrew Grant.

But Child, who was born James Grant, has reportedly set out a condition for his brother: he too must change his surname to Child.

“For years I thought about different ways of killing Reacher off. First of all, I thought he would go out in a blaze of bullets, something like the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It would take an army to bring him down [but] Reacher had to have an afterlife after I was done,” Child told the Times.

Grant is an established author in his own right. “It’s not as if I twisted his arm into doing it. And he didn’t twist mine either. It just happened. It feels like a natural development. My brother is a good writer. Now he has a hero,” Child said.

He added: “Readers don’t need to know about me or whoever writes the books. They only really care about Reacher. And I know he’s now in safe hands.”

Child has sold more than 100m books since embarking on a career as a novelist relatively late in life at 40. Jack Reacher has been turned into a film and is also reportedly being made into a series for Amazon’s Prime service.

According to the Times’ report, the cover of the next Reacher novel – in a series which is published by an imprint of Random Penguin House – will read: “Lee Child with Andrew Child”, in what has been interpreted as a possible sign of the publishing company’s nerves.

 

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I just started The Spiral Wars series with this book:

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It's pretty great Sci-Fi. This book alone had more action in it than any 3 books of The Expanse series, with just as much intrigue and character development. The beginning of Renegade seems like it's going to be another one of those standard "We're just introducing the universe in this book" slow starters... and then BAM, all kinds of crazy shit start happening and nobody has a chance to get a break until... well, I'm in Book 4 now, I'll let you know when that breather happens.

Definitely recommended.

(Also, I've been reading The Hobbit on and off to my 6-year-old daughter. She digs it.)

Edited by Rimbo
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SIAP but just got into this and felt compelled to share. 

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if you’re at all interested in the troubles I encourage you to give it a shot, this will hook you big time.  I can’t put it down.  

a review: https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/582811/

 

and some propaganda of the time that inspired the name of the book:

poster61r.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

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Meh.  The governess's reactions were just odd.  Instead of having the reaction of "holy shit, there's ghosts here," she's more obsessed with whether or not the children can see and are talking to them.  And yet she's afraid to ask the children or their uncle about the ghosts.  Just strange.

Edited by WBT
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Dunk and Egg has been sitting on my shelf for like 3 years and I finally picked it up this week. Nearly done. Not sure why I waited this long. It is weird to read a GRRM book that tells 3 stories in 300 pages instead of reading 140 straight pages about boiled leather tunics in a 1000 page monster. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
1 hour ago, Delta Charlie said:

Just started "The Force" by Don Winslow.  I recently completed his cartel triolgy that was incredible.  

it is a very, very, very good book - movie got picked up and is set to be directed by James Mangold (Ford vs Ferrari, Logan, The Wolverine, 3:10 to Yuma) and starring Matt Damon

Fox bought the movie rights for 7 figures before the book was released. 

https://deadline.com/2020/01/matt-damon-james-mangold-don-winslow-the-force-ford-v-ferrari-scott-frank-1202838201/

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417svZJeOHL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
This is a great book covering the entire arc of America's relations with the Middle East.  It's long, but worth it.  Puts the our current post-WWII middle eastern posture in a grander context.

This one is on my list to get to this year but my reading habits have been shit so far, did just finish The Israel Lobby though.
  • Hook 'Em 1
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I also read these two recently.

The Boys in the Boat was a little boring for me. I think it just got repetitive and could've been told in 50% fewer pages. There's only so many ways to write about people paddling a boat, so when that's described over and over for multiple races spanning several pages each, I start to lose interest.

A Long Petal of the Sea was enjoyable. It's an epic novel about people who originate in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and seek exile in Chile. It's historical fiction but it made me curious about certain events and I ended up learning a lot from side reading on those subjects. 

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4 hours ago, wild_turkey said:

I also read these two recently.

The Boys in the Boat was a little boring for me. I think it just got repetitive and could've been told in 50% fewer pages. There's only so many ways to write about people paddling a boat, so when that's described over and over for multiple races spanning several pages each, I start to lose interest.

51UU9frDkHL._SL500_.jpg

 

It took me forever to finish that one. It's a slog. 

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