OT: Let's hear your (non-UM) book recommendations for quarntine.
Been blasting through books during this quarantine, and I'm looking for new suggestions. Figured I'd bring it back to the community and see what others are recommending.
As for me, here's my recommendation:
Picked up this book randomly on vacation last year, and then knocked it out in about 3 days. There's a lot of background on how regimes (not just the on in North Korea) plot to hold power, what motivates them to do so, and how the Kim family has managed to hold onto it for so long. It then goes into the history of the regime, which reads like a real life 007 novel, and how acting crazy is very different from being crazy.
Let's hear yours.
B.J. Novak's book "One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories", a collection of short comedy stories, was pretty funny throughout.
A friend recommended The Confessions of St Augustine of Hippo. I haven't gotten to it yet but am concerned about the translation. My friend is fluent in latin but I am not. We will see.
Fluent in Latin seems like a really useful skill, said the man learning Russian for no particular reason.
Started the Broken Earth Trilogy by NK Jemisin. I believe it’s the only series where every book won the Hugo Award. First book is great so far
Read that series last year. So good. Loved the sociopolitical undertones.
Ohio: A Novel by Stephen Markley. I felt like I grew up with the characters, and couldn't put it down.
Skunk Works...it’s about the development of the stealth bomber, SR-71 Blackbird & the U2 spy plane. Awesome read as to how they solved all the engineering problems to build these planes, and for someone who didn’t live through most of it, how terrifying the Cold War really was. Also, my father worked for Eastman Kodak and helped develop the film that let them take pictures of the Soviets from 13 freakin miles up
I find Kodak to be a fascinating company. They invented so many different things in so many different areas and still went bankrupt.
The Plague by Albert Camus
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
and in non-fiction: The Unwinding by George Packer
Hyperion by Dan Simmons is a doozy
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Unfortunate circumstances re the author, but the book is a hoot.
The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore
Historical fiction about the race to electrify America between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse in the late 1800s. This book was educational and a page turner at the same time.
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. Total multiverse mindf*ck.
Underland by Robert Macfarlane. Nonfiction, but one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read.
Seconded on Confederacy of Dunces. Go back to it every few years. Love Erik Larson’s books esp Devil in the White City.
The Stranger. I'm leaning into absurdism.
April 23rd, 2020 at 11:18 AM ^
The Myth of Sisyphus and other essays, gives you a great deal of insight into Camus' thinking at the time he wrote The Stranger (or The Outsider, which I think is a better translation of the title).
Exciting suspense fiction:
Daniel Silva........Gabriel Allon series
Robert B. Parker.........Spenser series
Robert Crais............Elvis Cole series
Alex Berenson......John Wells series
Ken Bruen....Jack Taylor series
Joe Ide....IQ series
Alexander Kent....Bolitho series (British Naval historical fiction)
James Lee Burke....Robicheaux series
Stephen Hunter....Bob Lee Swagger series, also series about his father Earl Swagger
Don Winslow....The Force, and also his border trilogy...Power of the Dog, Cartel, The Border (I think)
Thomas Perry...absolutely anthying by him
CJ Box....Joe Picket series
Alan Furst...pre WWII noir at its best
Joseph Kannon...particularly the WWII stuff
Vince Flynn...Mitch Rapp series
Lee Child...Jack Reacher series...
enough to knock your socks off for the months to come...enjoy and Go Blue!
Blood Feud, about the Redwings and Avalanche rivalry.
My favorite book I have read maybe 7 or 8 times is Enders Game. Great Sci-Fi book that still holds up. I read Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide (sp?) when I was in middle school/ high school and they are cool for more philisophical stuff, but Ender's Game is such a great book. Ender's Shadow is another great book that is a different character's view and has it's own series afterwards.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:14 PM ^
The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story by Douglas Preston << lost civilization with background discussion of western hemisphere population being crushed by eastern hemisphere disease.
A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II by Adam Makos - << Excellent story of German air ace sparing an American plane. The American and the German go fishing together some 50 years later.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:27 PM ^
OP: you would love Nothing to Envy
John M. Barry, The Great Influenza.
April 22nd, 2020 at 10:51 AM ^
Several years ago I read and enjoyed the Langdon series by Dan Brown. That led me on a search for more fast paced books packed with action and including real-world places.
In my search I found Steve Berry's Cotton Malone series which I have both read and listened to on Audible. Once I finished that I listened to the Penderghast series by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs. Also fast paced, but a bit more fanciful containing somewhat unrealistic scenarios. (Drugs that expand life and stop the aging process, drugs that change people into monsters, etc.) The protagonist is so eccentric that he keeps it interesting.
Now I am looking for a new series that fits into the spy-nerd genre like these books do.
Rene Auberjonois read the Pendergrast books so well (Child and Preston), his passing leaves a real void.
Know my Name by Chanel Miller. Very moving, enraging, and heartening. Yet, don't read it, listen to it. She does the audiobook reading herself; it makes the experience all the more engrossing and enriching.