What Books Are You Reading Right Now?

Monster_Enters.jpg
The Monster Enters, published this year, is a sequel to The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu, published in 2005. If you find the older book in a public library, it is worth reading but the newer book is better. Mike continually improved as a writer until he died this year.
 
Just about to finish "Life on the Mississippi" by Rinker Buck. I loved his "Oregon Trail", a terrific account of crossing the US with a mule drawn wagon. In "Life" he takes a wooden flatboat down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, tells a lot of history along the way. I'm totally enjoying the book, highly recommend for anyone interested in rare look at how life was in the early to mid 1800s.
 
Ego and Archetype by Carl Jung. Interesting study of connections and drivers to conscious and unconscious thought and perspectives.
 
Finished two books this week. First was "Desert Star" by Michael Connelly. This was the latest in the Bosch/Ballard series, totally enjoyable. I follow several series and this was the last one come out in 2022, already waiting for 2023 releases to start.

Second was "The Last Hill" by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin. This was a terrific read, the story of the Army Rangers in WWII, from their beginning to their taking of Hill 400 in Germany. Getting to The Hill includes their landing on Omaha Beach, D-Day. I'm not a history buff on WWII but have read a few books recently that told some little known stories. Drury and Clavin are really enjoyable to read, their history books are becoming my favorites.
 
Re-reading some of the old Conan shorts by Robert Howard and Sprague DeCamp. Used to have a very complete old set of paperbacks with cover art by Frank Frazetta. No idea where they wound up so I’m just reading digital copies. I read these more than thirty years ago but it feels like yesterday. They’re so familiar.

 
"Too Big for a Single Mind: How the Greatest Generation of Physicists Uncovered the Quantum World," by Tobias Hürter. Outstanding. Just outstanding.
 
I'm trying to read "Ulysses" by James Joyce. However . . . either I'm not smart enough or high enough to understand it, or Joyce was a clown who wrote a book that only a few inside baseball folks could ever understand.
 
"Stella Maris," by Cormac McCarthy. Grim coda to his equally grim, "The Passenger." (Why the hell I'm reading this stuff at the start of a new year is a mystery to me.)

On a lighter note (haha), just finished Michael Connelly's "Desert Star." Detectives Ballard and Bosch at their best. Just started Connelly's "Dark Sacred Night," which promises more police procedural perfection. Grisly stuff, but at least it's entertaining.











sa
 
Finished a book about the settling of Chicago, a good book with a lot of history I didn't know. "Rising Up From Indian country" by Ann Keating. A little too much of a liberals take on things but I liked it.

"Once a Soldier" by Tom McCourt. McCourt is local to Utah and I don't think his books get wide distribution, in fact no website. This is about his being drafted and sent to Viet Nam, his experiences. I was drafted same time period, was artillery but went to Korea. I really enjoyed his take on his training, the war, his return to the US.
 
Finishing "Predictably Irrational" and fully recommend it.
 
Another Shepherd said:
I thought it was one of the better popular books on that subject.

With any luck, you should be able to read this review without a subscription:
www.nytimes.com

Emonomics (Published 2008)

Market theory says cold logic dictates our choices in life. Dan Ariely disagrees.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
Click to expand...
Nice review! It describes the book very well, no doubt.
I ust finished it by the way and now Ill be back to "Guns, Germs and Steel" that I had set aside for a while.
 
Ivan Campos said:
... now Ill be back to "Guns, Germs and Steel" that I had set aside for a while.
Click to expand...
"Guns, Germs and Steel" is also a very interesting book. It has provoked protests from cultural anthropologists.

For a broader view of why some societies are more successful than others, I suggest "How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth" by Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin.

Also, "Why Did Europe Conquer the World?" by Philip T. Hoffman, which explores a simple but surprisingly fruitful mathematical model of warfare in history.
 
Another Shepherd said:
"Guns, Germs and Steel" is also a very interesting book. It has provoked protests from cultural anthropologists.

For a broader view of why some societies are more successful than others, I suggest "How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth" by Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin.

Also, "Why Did Europe Conquer the World?" by Philip T. Hoffman, which explores a simple but surprisingly fruitful mathematical model of warfare in history.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the heads up! They are on my list now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top