New! Reading Anything Thread 2.0

[indianasmith]

I just finished reading VALLEY FORGE, a wonderful narrative of the Continental Army's darkest winter.  Here is the review I just left for it on Amazon.  Definitely worth adding to the library of any American Revolution historian:

"For those of us who grew up in the 70's, Valley Forge was synonymous with the suffering and dedication of the Continental Army during the darkest days of the Revolution - the images of barefoot, barely clad soldiers huddling in the snow, wasting away on a diet of firecake and water, as George Washington rode alone to a clearing and bowed before the Almighty, pleading with God to deliver his troops from the privations they were enduring - it was powerful stuff!  But how much of it was true?
   VALLEY FORGE is a powerful narrative, as well researched as a scholarly dissertation but as smoothly narrated as a brilliant novel, which shows that the truth about this dark winter of the Revolution not only encompassed but surpassed the clichés.  I have read many books about the American Revolution, but this was one of my favorites.  The familiar characters from our textbooks - the passionate, determined, dominating figure of George Washington, the young, idealistic aristocrat John Laurens, the ambitious and always competent Alexander Hamilton, the arrogant, scheming Horatio Gates, and the fiery Frenchman with an American soul, Marquis de Lafayette, all spring from the pages and into our minds in full glory.
   This is a must for anyone who collects stories of the Revolutionary War, and will take its place alongside such classics as 1776 and FOUNDING BROTHERS in the histories of this era.  Well done, sirs!

Lewis Ben Smith, author of PRESIDENT HAMILTON: A NOVEL OF ALTERNATIVE HISTORY"

[Trevor]

I bought Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Book 1: a color combined edition of several TMNT comics. Not bad as I've never read any of the comics, ever until now.  

https://www.amazon.com/Teenage-Mutant-Ninja-Turtles-I/dp/0915419092

[jimpickens]

Atrocity Week by Andrew McCoy not for the easily offended.

[Rev. Powell]

[ER]

When I was with my friend the other day she gave me a novel called Daisy Jones and the Six about a fictional 1970s band, and said she'd just finished it, it was awesome and they were going to make a movie out of it, that it was Reese Witherspoon's absolutely favorite book of the century. She said I'd love it because it's set in the recent past and has a modern music/faux oral history vibe to it, and I do like reading oral histories.

I haven't finished it, maybe it picks up, but so far at the mid-point I gotta say this is one of the driest, flattest most uninspiring, most predictable, story-by-the-numbers books I've read in a while. It is like the author had a checklist she ticked off. Drugs, check, rehab, check, groupies, check, a Rolling Stone reporter following the group around, check, paternal manager who takes care of everyone, check, jealous wife, check, denim clothes, check, affairs within the band, check, ego-clashes between the singer and the band, check, angst about rock versus pop/rock versus disco, check. And somewhere in there there's no room left for any semblance of plot.

It's been a disappointment because it did sound promising.

[Rev. Powell]

[Neville]

I picked "Indian Creek Chronicles: A Winter Alone in the Wilderness" by Pete Fromm in my local library. I've found travel books are a good break between my usual binges of crime novels.

The book is an account of a winter the author spent living in a tent in Idaho, while supervising a federal progream to reintroduce salmons into the wild. It's what you may expect of it, a light but insightful narration of his day to day and how he dealt with the problems he faced because of his own inexperience living in the wilderness.

[Rev. Powell]

[FatFreddysCat]

Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business, by Fredric Dannen

The New Teen Titans Vol. 1 by Marv Wolfman, George Perez, and Romeo Tanghal

[indianasmith]

GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL: THE FATES OF HUMAN SOCIETIES by Jared Diamond

Why did Europeans develop firearms, trans-Atlantic sailing vessels, and immunity (or at least healthy resistance) to deadly pandemic diseases like smallpox?
Why did the Chinese, who led the world in dozens of technologies between 1000-1400 AD, abandon many of those technologies in the next two centuries?
Why didn't native Americans develop simple technologies, like the wheel, or writing?
Why do some societies nurture invention and science, while others do not?

For centuries, the temptation has been to answer these questions by asserting that one race/tribe/nation is genetically or morally or intellectually superior to another. Jared Diamond argues that the real answer is determined by environmental issues, including the fertility of the soil, the presence of crops that can be cultivated and harvested to provide a constant, abundant supply of food, and the presence of large, domesticable animals that can supply both nutrition and "horse-power" to increase and multiply food production.

A bit dry in places, but impeccably well-researched, Diamond's book explores the reasons why some cultures flourish and develop, while others stagnate.  It provides a great deal of food for thought throughout, and I highly recommend it to any student of history!

[Rev. Powell]

[ER]

I've read scores of books about Medieval history, maybe even hundreds of books, it is the one period in human history that interests me above all others, but the most detestable, the most biased, the most agenda-driven book on the subject I've ever been exposed to is one that came out late last year called The Bright Ages, by David M. Perry.

It was bad history, bad reading, bad scholarship, and bad use of paper, ink, bandwidth, and time. Not only that but the writer is p***y-whipped by the university industrial complex's feminist mafia like no author I've ever read.

I think this is the worst book I have ever hated this much and still finished out of dogged masochistic loathing, and if I died tomorrow I would skip past Purgatory and ascend straight to Heaven, as all my sins are surely atoned for through the suffering that entered my assaulted eyes.

If ever there is a Geneva Convention for readers' rights, this book will be classified alongside mustard gas.

I'm going to start sniffing modeling glue to destroy the brain cells that remember encountering this loathsome war crime of a book.

Frances Farmer, save me a bunk in the mad house.

[indianasmith]

I've read scores of books about Medieval history, maybe even hundreds of books, it is the one period in human history that interests me above all others, but the most detestable, the most biased, the most agenda-driven book on the subject I've ever been exposed to is one that came out late last year called The Bright Ages, by David M. Perry.

It was bad history, bad reading, bad scholarship, and bad use of paper, ink, bandwidth, and time. Not only that but the writer is p***y-whipped by the university industrial complex's feminist mafia like no author I've ever read.

I think this is the worst book I have ever hated this much and still finished out of dogged masochistic loathing, and if I died tomorrow I would skip past Purgatory and ascend straight to Heaven, as all my sins are surely atoned for through the suffering that entered my assaulted eyes.

If ever there is a Geneva Convention for readers' rights, this book will be classified alongside mustard gas.

I'm going to start sniffing modeling glue to destroy the brain cells that remember encountering this loathsome war crime of a book.

Frances Farmer, save me a bunk in the mad house.

Quit being so ambiguous and tell us what you really think!!!

My favorite books on the Middle Ages are A DISTANT MIRROR by Barbara Tuchman, and another one called RICHARD AND JOHN: KINGS AT WAR.  I don't remember the author and I'm too lazy to go look it up right now.
But either of those might purge this horror from your brain.

[ER]

I've read scores of books about Medieval history, maybe even hundreds of books, it is the one period in human history that interests me above all others, but the most detestable, the most biased, the most agenda-driven book on the subject I've ever been exposed to is one that came out late last year called The Bright Ages, by David M. Perry.

It was bad history, bad reading, bad scholarship, and bad use of paper, ink, bandwidth, and time. Not only that but the writer is p***y-whipped by the university industrial complex's feminist mafia like no author I've ever read.

I think this is the worst book I have ever hated this much and still finished out of dogged masochistic loathing, and if I died tomorrow I would skip past Purgatory and ascend straight to Heaven, as all my sins are surely atoned for through the suffering that entered my assaulted eyes.

If ever there is a Geneva Convention for readers' rights, this book will be classified alongside mustard gas.

I'm going to start sniffing modeling glue to destroy the brain cells that remember encountering this loathsome war crime of a book.

Frances Farmer, save me a bunk in the mad house.

Quit being so ambiguous and tell us what you really think!!!

My favorite books on the Middle Ages are A DISTANT MIRROR by Barbara Tuchman, and another one called RICHARD AND JOHN: KINGS AT WAR.  I don't remember the author and I'm too lazy to go look it up right now.
But either of those might purge this horror from your brain.

I've read one of those; guess which?

[indianasmith]

I'll say A DISTANT MIRROR.