What Books Have You Read Recently

It's a very good book and the movie they made from it is very good too. Read the Border Trilogy; All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing and Cities on the Plains, great writing in all three, though the crossing is the best one.

i'm starting to read A Minute To Midnight by David Baldacci.

Anyone interested in free Raymond Chandler books?

I have Volume One and Volume Three of the Raymond Chandler Collections, totaling 1354 pages. They are free in exchange for a mailing address.

Michael

The Terminal List by Jack Carr is a great read. He is a 20 year veteran and was a sniper in the Navy. His books are very realistic.

Also a big fan of Stephen King.

The “Mitch Rapp” series by Vince Flynn is also very entertaining. CIA espionage stuff.

Well, this week was the first week back for fall semester. Students come back Monday.

Didn't take long to get new reading assignments. I came home with Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi and Melville's Moby Dick.

The lit prof who sent them home with me loves Captains Courageous, by Kipling, and while I love Kipling, I sorta had to slog through that one. I'm worried. He usually steers me into good stuff, but if these two are like Captains Courageous, I'm in trouble.

waco said:

The Terminal List by Jack Carr is a great read. He is a 20 year veteran and was a sniper in the Navy. His books are very realistic.

Also a big fan of Stephen King.

The “Mitch Rapp” series by Vince Flynn is also very entertaining. CIA espionage stuff.

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King is very under-appreciated. The literature professor I mentioned in my last post looked down his nose at King until I introduced him to stories like Blaze and The Body (Stand By Me, in movie form) and now can't get enough. I gave him a collection of short stories last week to start on. I was a closet-King-reader for a long time, but the man isn't just a prolific writer, he's also one hell of a writer. I appreciate his candor with readers in his forwards and after-notes. Strange guy, yes

I need to check out Vince Flynn.

Re Stephen King; I have and like most of his stuff.
The Stand is my favorite.

Right now I am about to finish my second reading of Lucifer's Hammer.
It too is an end of the world yarn.
I first read it back in the late '70's.
It's not in the same league as The Stand, but it's entertaining.

The Stand is great. I did not know it existed until I picked it up the fall of 2020 and wondered how in the world he churned that out in the few months since the whole covid debacle started on our soil. A girl (she's actually in her mid-sixties) at work laughed at me - "he wrote that when we were in HIGH SCHOOL!"

Me: "oh."

My daughter has read Pride and Prejudice more times than I can count. She has so many different copies in hard back that are all different releases that I can't count them either.

I'm not that big of a book reader myself. The last novel I read was "The Horse Whisperer".

The Stand is a classic.
Jeff. You’ll like the Mitch Rapp books I think. I listen to them on audible. Very entertaining.

glassparman said:

My daughter has read Pride and Prejudice more times than I can count. She has so many different copies in hard back that are all different releases that I can't count them either.

I'm not that big of a book reader myself. The last novel I read was "The Horse Whisperer".

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These guys are cheap. Check out the "classics," pick something which sounds interesting and try it. It's weird, but all the corny crap they wanted us to read in school is actually GOOD. I'm not sure when it happened - maybe after I'd live a while and could relate, but Poe, Doyle, Dickens, Whitman (that guy was WEIRD), Frost, ... All of it seemed pretty dorky when I was a kid in school, but enjoy it now.

I'd bet the majority of adults who "don't read" don't read because they were turned off by it in school. It sort of sucks, because I think a lot of people end up missing out on some enjoyment because we're not doing something right when they're kids. I don't fault the English teachers, because I can't solve it myself.

I was horrible to one of my high school English teachers in high school and ran into her at the County library thirty years later. I tried to ditch her, thinking the sight of me woould cause her a stroke or she'd have a flashback and stab me in the throat with a staple remover. Nope. She caught me sneaking away and grabbed me and gave me a huge hug, talked like we were old friends. She cleverly tricked me into reading the Ides of March when I was a sly and savvy sophomore and I didn't pick up on it until THAT day. What an amazing woman. She was committed and she KNEW that I was worth the effort, while other teachers did not. She invested in me and gave me a gift - wanting to read.

If not for her devious deception, I'd have missed it. She wasn't the cute, young, just-out-of-college type the boys would sit and gawk at, but my god, what a precious human being.

waco said:

The Stand is a classic.
Jeff. You’ll like the Mitch Rapp books I think. I listen to them on audible. Very entertaining.

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Thank you!

I've been looking. I'm very cautious about spending (twice the money since 2020) money on contemporary authors and being disappointed, so the recommendation is greatly appreciated.

Stephen King is most definitely an excellent author and The Stand is one of his best. I read it in college 35 years ago, the 900 page original version, it has since been released unedited at something like 1500 pages. The main thing I could fault King for is he is often in bad need of a good editor. Some of his best stuff is when he wrote short stories or novelettes. Salem's Lot may well be his best writing and Misery was certainly up there, both short works. Rita Heyworth and the Shawshank Redemption is another great one as is The Body.

My current reading material is CHAOS--Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties. by Tom O'Neill (2019)

I am about 3/4 finished with the work, and i am not quite sure what to make of the contents. The author spent 20+ years conducting interviews with persons in the orbit of the Manson Family and Vince Bugliosi, and at least some of his thrust is an attempt to discredit Bugliosi's successful prosecution of the Tate/LaBianca homicides as somehow misdirected and incomplete.

Uh, epic fail. Even the author grudgingly admits that LAPD/LASO/Inyo SO got the right perps. Even the perps weren't exactly coy about their culpability back in 1969. The author admits that after about 2005 Bugliosi got tired of his badgering, and quit taking his calls.

O'Neill tries to take Bugliosi to task for not exposing the myriad of hangers-on, road dogs, cheerleaders, and agents/sources for the alphabet soup Federale shops that mingled with the Manson family and their Hollywood connections and contacts. O'Neill's naivete is astounding. ANYONE who grew up within 100 miles of Los Angeles is not surprised to learn most of muck that O'Neill raked up. Planet Hollyweird is an alien world, sports fans.

I would give this one a miss.

One Second After by William R. Forstchen published in 2009. Read it the first time when published, and the next three books as they came out. Story is about an EMP war that none know who the the belligerents are, just the electricity quit. Fun to read end of the world books I'm starting again as I found all four used copies for less than $10 total on the net.

Jeff H said:

Thank you!

I've been looking. I'm very cautious about spending (twice the money since 2020) money on contemporary authors and being disappointed, so the recommendation is greatly appreciated.

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The Stand is one of my favorites. The Shining, Pet Cemetary, Cujo, 11/22/63, Salem's Lot, The Dark Tower series, Carrie and a whole lot more. go to ebay and you will find him and it is cheap to buy.

Trying to get through Morals and Dogma by Albert Pike, also going through some of the Foxfire series.

PGPKY2014 said:

Trying to get through Morals and Dogma by Albert Pike, also going through some of the Foxfire series.

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I had the whole set of Foxfire books, up to seven(?), with five being my favorite, which focused on how to make a fine rifle in the holler.

No idea where they got off to, but I don't have them any more. Captivating reading.

todd said:

The Stand is one of my favorites. The Shining, Pet Cemetary, Cujo, 11/22/63, Salem's Lot, The Dark Tower series, Carrie and a whole lot more. go to ebay and you will find him and it is cheap to buy.

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I think it's between the Shining and Needful Things. With Steven King.
Dark tower was Great to but kinda out of his usual element a bit.Would almost swear it's a Clive Barker Story line, if it didn't have Stephen King written on the cover.

Another author I always liked was Tom Clancy.
The Hunt for Red October was great.