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New! Reading Anything Thread 2.0

Started by ER, March 10, 2020, 02:14:15 PM

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ER

Quote from: Rev. Powell on February 21, 2022, 10:42:20 AM


I've read The Gashlycrumb Tinies to my son as a bedtime story. He loves it.
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

ER

What does not kill me makes me stranger.

Alex

Mysteries of Candlekeep.

D-Day Through German Eyes: How the Wehrmacht Lost France.
Hail to thyself
For I am my own master
I am my own god
I require no shepherd
For I am no sheep.

FatFreddysCat

The Devil's Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock N Roll by Randall J. Stephens
Hey, HEY, kids! Check out my way-cool Music and Movie Review blog on HubPages!
http://hubpages.com/@fatfreddyscat

Rev. Powell

I'll take you places the hand of man has not yet set foot...

indianasmith

My April list has included:

1491 - NEW VISIONS OF THE AMERICAS BEFORE COLUMBUS, which was an interesting look at Native cultures in North and South America in the years before the contact era.  I do think that some of the author's conclusions were pretty subjective, and much information it still unknown, but nonetheless this was a fascinating read.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE FIGHT FOR PEACE was an in-depth look at how Lincoln planned to put the country back together after the Civil War, with an analysis of what went wrong after his death, and a look at how some of his ideas were employed in the occupation of Germany and Japan after WW2.  A very well-researched and interesting book that was a great aid as I prepare to write my new alternative history about Lincoln.
FIRST MAN IN ROME - A repeat read of one of my favorite works of historical fiction, tracing the unlikely rise of Gaius Marius, the only man elected as Consul of Rome seven times (during the Republic), and his defeat of the German invaders and the demagogue Saturninus.  I think McCullough, more than any author I have ever read, gives us a real picture of what Rome was like in the final century of the Republic.
ISAAC'S STORM is a stirring account of the Galveston hurricane of 1900, well-written, stirring, and tragic.
"I shall smite you in the nostrils with a rod of iron, and wax your spleen with Efferdent!!"

lester1/2jr

Apostle - the author travels to all the sites of the alleged tombs of the apostles. https://www.amazon.com/Apostle-Travels-Among-Tombs-Twelve/dp/030727845X


Some of these guys are easy to write about: Judas, Paul, John, etc others he has to dig a bit. Barnabus, for example, has 2 things known about him: one that he had the worst death of anyone: he was skinned alive, then also beheaded. There was a later "forbidden books" book where his physical description was described but it's probably not authentic. Basically the guy spends a lot of time in Greece and places like that talking to eastern Orthodox priests and/ or tour guides. A worthy project for sure!

pennywise37

yep i am  Cross Alex Cross #12 (2006) by James Patterson

Jim H

I'm now listening to the second Jack Reacher book, Die Trying.  It seems like a pretty serious step down from the first one, which I read maybe 15 years ago.  Looking it up, many fans seem to consider the second the worst in the entire series.  Oh well, it's still passably entertaining. 

pennywise37

i''m now reading  The Last Precinct (2000) Kay Scerpetta #11  By Patricia Cornwell  honestly it's a decent book thus far but it's  Not going to be among my favorites as i'm on Page #281  which is nearly halfway done with it.  but who knows maybe that will Change

Rev. Powell

Looking for some bathroom reading, picked up the "Encyclopedia of Psychotronic Film." It'll be interesting to see how many of the movies I've seen since I last read it decades ago.
I'll take you places the hand of man has not yet set foot...

Sitting Duck

If you're talking about The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film by Michael Weldon, it's notable for being virtually the only resource from before MST3K to have mostly accurate information on Manos: The Hands of Fate.

Rev. Powell

Quote from: Sitting Duck on June 04, 2022, 06:29:55 AM
If you're talking about The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film by Michael Weldon, it's notable for being virtually the only resource from before MST3K to have mostly accurate information on Manos: The Hands of Fate.

The same. Before the internet you had to own multiple movie encyclopedias to read about movies you never thought you would ever get to see.
I'll take you places the hand of man has not yet set foot...

ER

#133
Thunderstruck by Erik Larson, a writer I respect, and a man I cannot like.

I'll just proceed with the assumption anyone reading this either knows what the book is about or will satisfy his curiosity by looking it up, and say that I found the chapters on Marconi and his experiments grew tedious, but the parts set in Edwardian England concerning the soon-to-be convicted wife-killer Dr. Crippen, American ex-pat and man of poor judgment, got more fascinating as they went on. (As I often thought about Michael Jackson and his conduct around young boys, Crippen left me wondering how anyone, guilty or otherwise, could be so dumb!)

There are also asides in this book about late-Victorian spiritualism, the deadly smogs of London, the cut-throat state of science at the time, and some nice descriptions that compel you to realize how utterly isolated those aboard ships were for most of history.

Like all of Larson's books, there's a lot of good information here amid the main plot and his many digressions and semi-parenthetical asides, and while at times your attention may seek to wander, or at least mine did, the trip to the end is worth it.

What has emerged since the 2006 publication of this book is that modern DNA evidence may suggest the infamous Dr. Crippen, long seen as one of criminal science's more intriguing and studied murderers, may have either have been innocent of his bullying wife's slaying and methodical dismemberment, or at least wrongly convicted based on the evidence that was presented in the Old Bailey, since in 2010, a century after the meek and soft-spoken Crippen was hanged after proclaiming his innocence to the end, tests conducted on stored tissues from the human remains found in Crippen's London cellar show no genetic match to his wife's living descendants, and in an even bigger bombshell, that the remains were those of a male!

Just who was it then buried under those bricks beneath the basement floor? Had Crippen killed previously? Did Scotland Yard plant evidence to assure a conviction in the face of public outcry? Was the previous owner of the house a killer, or perhaps a medical student who'd concealed the results of dissections? And how did anyone manage to remove every single bone from a dead human, leaving nothing but tissues behind, and yet present not a speck of blood anywhere in the premises?

And would someone capable of such precision really be so foolish as to put a body under his own floor and then repeatedly invite police in to search?

So did the mousy, hen-pecked physician do-in an overbearing wife who, it has to be said, repeatedly threatened to leave him and vanish back to America? Possibly, but if so he was condemned on bad Edwardian science and faulty evidence, poor man.

As to whether these modern discoveries are enough to merit the posthumous pardon Crippen's descendants seek, time will tell, but as for me I am left with a reasonable doubt about his guilt, though could go either way.

Anyway, Thunderstruck is slow in some parts as Larson's books tend to be, but all in all a good read for the history-minded.
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

indianasmith

I'm going to have to order that one!

I'm currently re-reading Colleen McCullough's THE OCTOBER HORSE, the next to last volume in her MASTERS OF ROME series, which accounts the last years of Julius Caesar's life, and the joint war of Octavian and Antony against Brutus, Cassius, Trebonius, and the other conspirators who murdered Caesar.
Like all of McCullough's Roman works, this book is meticulously researched and brilliantly written.
And, for the record, Cato was a total jerk, and Cicero a sanctimonious coward.  Just sayin'!

"I shall smite you in the nostrils with a rod of iron, and wax your spleen with Efferdent!!"