posted by ptown_trojans_1

Over the weekend I finished John le Carré's Little Drummer Girl. I watched the miniseries last year, loved it, and wanted to read the book. 

The book follows the show closely, which is great. A quick summary: Set in 1982, Israeli Mossad recruits a young English actress to pretend to be the lover of the brother of a Palestinian bomb maker. Over half the novel is setting up the complex play and deception to allow her to infiltrate the terror cell. It is really well done and a good spy novel. 

I'm about to start the original le Carre novel now: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. 

Excellent book. 

 

I'm reading Hidden Valley Road. It's a true story about this family in the 1960s and. 1970s with 12 children, 6 of whom turn out to have schizophrenia. It is not clinical, but very interesting about this family and about the history of how schizophrenia was treated. 

 "Time Is Tight", autobiography of Booker T. Jones.  About two-thirds of the way through.

Interesting structure.  He takes weird jumps forward and backward in time.  Later you see why.   Does a great job explaining his thought processes in how he perceived and related to music from a very young age.  Playing in Memphis clubs at 14, playing sessions while in high school, moving to California and buying Lana Turner's ranch at the age of 25?  Yeah, he lived a life.

My wife and I sat next to him in the green room at a blues concert a few years ago.   We nodded to each other, but I was too intimidated to speak.   I wish I had read this book before that meeting, would have had the nerve to say how much I enjoyed it.

Finished The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. It was great. Classic spy fiction. I finished it in a few days. 

Also finished Patrick Hoffman's Every Man a Menace last night. Interesting novel about the interplay of various people in the trade drug and one drug shipment. Story has some good twists. 

Switching gears now after some fairly light reading and going classical with Hobbes Leviathan. 

Finished Hobbes Leviathan and then moved to another classic Uncle Tom's Cabin. I read a summary in school,  but never read the actual book. Holy shit it is good and you can understand how it fueled the anti-slavery movement in the north. Excellent writing and story telling. 

I'm now finishing my little  le Carré's kick with the Night Manager. 

Finished Morning on Horseback, Inventing Bitcoin, and This Book Will Save You Time (ultimately about bitcoin) in the last week.

After the last week, I read Mitch Landrieu's, the former mayor of New Orleans's book on taking down the Confederate monuments and his own coming to grips with the rewriting of history in the south and in his city. In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History

It was a really good quick read, I finished it in 3 days. 

Now, back to the Night Manager. I am about 20% through it. 

Starting to reread The Outpost.

Saw they are making a movie out of it and I had read it a number of years ago.

Its about a battle on Takur Ghar in Afghanistan.

Started reading 1984 again, for the 4th or 5th time.

posted by justincredible

Started reading 1984 again, for the 4th or 5th time.

It is awesome every time through. 

Been gradually grinding through a re-read of the Robert Jordan (finished by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan's death) Wheel of Time series. About 2/3 of the way through the sixth book. Of 14. Which all range from long to very long. But it's nice to actually read the whole series at once. Since I'd initially started reading it about 7-8 books into it, so it was a "binge on 7-8 books and then read each new one when it came out, using the Internet to fill in memory blanks due to being reintroduced to minor characters I last read about 2 years ago" deal. That way made it easy to miss out on subtle details and foreshadowing that I'm picking up on this time through.

posted by Heretic

Been gradually grinding through a re-read of the Robert Jordan (finished by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan's death) Wheel of Time series. About 2/3 of the way through the sixth book. Of 14. Which all range from long to very long. But it's nice to actually read the whole series at once. Since I'd initially started reading it about 7-8 books into it, so it was a "binge on 7-8 books and then read each new one when it came out, using the Internet to fill in memory blanks due to being reintroduced to minor characters I last read about 2 years ago" deal. That way made it easy to miss out on subtle details and foreshadowing that I'm picking up on this time through.

I'm going to get to this sooner or later.

Have you read much of Sanderson's own stuff? The Stormlight Archives is a great series. I haven't read any Mistborn stuff.

posted by justincredible

I'm going to get to this sooner or later.

Have you read much of Sanderson's own stuff? The Stormlight Archives is a great series. I haven't read any Mistborn stuff.

No, but I'm thinking I'll pick up one of his series after finishing this because I think he did as good a job as possible with finishing this series. In short, Jordan really wanted to close it out in 12 books, saying that it would be 12 even if Tor had to develop a new method for binding books. Then he died with basically some stuff written out and other stuff in notes; his estate (primarily his wife) agreed to have Sanderson finish it; it was determined that only a 12th book would not work, making it turn into 14 when it was all said and done; and so, he essentially co-wrote three books with a dead man to end an epic fantasy series without there being any loss of quality.

posted by justincredible

Started reading 1984 again, for the 4th or 5th time.

I was a senior in high school in 1970 when I read it and I remember thinking how far off the year 1984 actually felt to me!  BTW, I also enjoyed it. 

Started reading a new apocalyptic novel called Winter World by AG Riddle. It was one of the recommendations on my kindle loading screen and sounded interesting. I'm about a third through it and I'm really enjoying it.

Also borrowed my father-in-law's copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. That book is a beast, so it'll take a while to get through.

Finished the Night Manager. It was fine, just pretty dated. I thought the miniseries from a few years ago was actually better.

I am going nerd and started the first book of the Star Wars Legends Thrawn trilogy. Pretty good so far. 

i just finished the Dan Crenshaw book. It was a so-so book but the message is a good one (especially in this odd time we are living in). Before that I read Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink (very good IMO). now i'm wrapping up a harry bosch book and just picked up the Pioneers about the settlement of Marietta and then follows Putnam and Cutler accross the NWT.

Finished Winter World last night. GREAT book if you like sci fi. I'll start the 2nd book in the series tonight.

I'm about to start The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, which will be my 26th book of 2020. I was about 20% through the first book of a trilogy earlier this week but I didn't like it at all so I decided to move on. 

posted by justincredible

LOVE Dark Matter. Read Recursion next.

Just finished "Recursion" by Blake Crouch last night - wow.  

Recursion was Dark Matter squared.  Actually, it was "Dark Matter" meets "Groundhog Day" meets "Next" (Nicholas Cage movie).  This was a bit more difficult to grasp, there are a few websites that do a great job breaking down the plot intricacies.  One guy built a chart with all of the timelines so you could see how they lined up. 

Educational bonus:  I learned about DMT.

Glad you liked it. I plan on re-reading both books this fall. 

I bought Dark Matter some weeks ago and it is in my queue to read. I finished the first of the Star Wars Thrawn trilogy. I liked it as it was a good shot of decent Star Wars story, something we have not seen in a while. 

I'm about to start the Moon is a Harsh Mistress thanks to some recommendations on here. 

posted by ptown_trojans_1

I'm about to start the Moon is a Harsh Mistress thanks to some recommendations on here. 

I think I'm going to re-read this soon, as well. I loved it after my first reading.

Picked up Bleachers by John Grisham today. Read the whole thing. Will probably reread it soon. 

Started Human Action: A Treatise on Economics by Ludwig von Mises.

Finished The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It was good, not as good as Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers, but good. Good sci-fi book and I did like how complex and thought provoking the idea of government and political philosophy was weaved into the book.

I'm now reading a quick book by Robert Simonson on the Martini Cocktail. It goes into the history of the Martini as well as provide old and new recipes. I have his two other cocktail book on the history of the Old Fashioned and recipes for cocktails with just three ingredients. They are great for not just recipes but the history of cocktails. 

After that, I have Dark Matter on deck.