Official Book Thread - What You're Reading & Everything Book Related (merged)

#1,551
#1,551
Also, I highly recommend the following by Peter Kemp: "Mine Were of Trouble" (author's firsthand account of the Spanish Civil War), "No Colours or Crest" (author's firsthand account of intelligence/partisan work in WWII Albania), and then "Alms for Oblivion" (author's firsthand account of clandestine intelligence work in SE Asia)*.

* I've not read the third in the trilogy yet, but based on the first two it should be good.
 
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#1,552
#1,552
Pray for Darkness by James Michael Rice
A very entertaining horror book set in the Amazon Jungle. The protagonists are realistic characters including reacting terrified since they’ll have to kill the adversaries to survive.

What exactly are the adversaries, and why the adversaries are stalking the protagonists with the intent to kill the protagonists gets revealed after more than 50 pages much like you see the Predator fully visible after more than 60 minutes in the terrific science fiction horror movie (1987) Predator.

The real life Indiana Jones that is Percy Fawcett explored the Amazon Jungle so it’s not unbelievable that for adventure a group of friends decide to explore the Amazon Jungle instead of go to Universal Studios, Disney World, Hawaii, or any other inside the box locations for a vacation.
 
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#1,553
#1,553
I'm reading Shantaram. Good so far. About a criminal that escapes from an Australian prison and goes to Bombay in the 1980s.
 
#1,555
#1,555
Finished Jailbird by Vonnegut. Not bad but far from his best.
I picked up Killers of the Flower Moon a while back, probably start that next.
 
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#1,563
#1,563
Find Your People--Jennie Allen

A book that could transform the struggles we face, seemingly daily, in this world to triumphs
 
#1,567
#1,567
bignewt said:
The Passenger, Cormac McCarthy
Click to expand...

I didn't know this, but McCarthy grew up mostly in Knoxville. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island but his parents moved to Knoxville
at some point in his youth when his Dad, I believe a Yale-educated lawyer, took a job with the Tennessee Valley Authority. He enrolled at UT
in 1951, then maybe after a couple of years dropped out to join the Air Force. He was in the Air Force for about 3 years, then returned to Knoxville
and resumed his education at Tennessee. I read that he pursued--or was interested in--engineering and physics (impressive for a guy who once claimed that he hated school)--but dropped out again, at some point, and never got his degree. His novel "Suttree"--which I haven't read--is apparently set in Knoxville, but mostly limns some aspects of the city's underbelly. His first four or five novels hardly sold at all, but he was championed by an influential book editor in New York and other literary poo-bahs who liked his singular, Faulkner-like writing style.
 
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#1,568
#1,568
I just read "April in Spain," the latest novel by the great John Banville, an Irish prose master. He won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2005
for his novel "The Sea." April in Spain is a mystery of sorts and somewhat more conventional and accessible than The Sea and a couple of other of his more literary books that I've read. I've a couple of quibbles with it, but it's excellent.

I've also just read three novels by English author Graham Swift, including his Booker-prize winning "Last Orders." I highly recommend Last Orders--and generally, If you like literary fiction, you can't often go wrong picking up books that have won the Booker Prize.

Also now reading a collection of early 20th-century pieces by the sharp-eyed journalistic stylist and critic H.L.Mencken.
 
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#1,569
#1,569
turbovol said:
I didn't know this, but McCarthy grew up mostly in Knoxville. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island but his parents moved to Knoxville
at some point in his youth when his Dad, I believe a Yale-educated lawyer, took a job with the Tennessee Valley Authority. He enrolled at UT
in 1951, then maybe after a couple of years dropped out to join the Air Force. He was in the Air Force for about 3 years, then returned to Knoxville
and resumed his education at Tennessee. I read that he pursued--or was interested in--engineering and physics (impressive for a guy who once claimed that he hated school)--but dropped out again, at some point, and never got his degree. His novel "Suttree"--which I haven't read--is apparently set in Knoxville, but mostly limns some aspects of the city's underbelly. His first four or five novels hardly sold at all, but he was championed by an influential book editor in New York and other literary poo-bahs who liked his singular, Faulkner-like writing style.
Click to expand...

Suttree is a great book, one of his best. Blood Meridian is his epic tale and the Border Trilogy is also amazing.
 
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