What are you reading at the moment?

[voluptuary_manque]

The Suit, Nicolai Antongianni (pseud.)

 

[Instant_Star]

Don Quixote (a translation)

Cervantes

 

[JayinCA]

Feast Day of Fools, by James Lee Burke--an American master.

 

[annanova]

The last of the Harry Potter books, in French.
The Silmarillion
An anthology of erotica (imagine that!)
A new play.

 

[sr71plt]

I'm reading Five Sisters: The Langhornes of Virginia, by James Fox, the story of the Gibson Girls, who set the style for the early nineteenth century, and who were raised at Mirador, a couple of miles from where I live. One of the sisters became Lady Astor, the first woman in the British parliament.

I'm also reading Ken Follett's World Without End, which is endless in its own right.

 

[DehviantGirl]

Learning to Drown - Sommer Marsden

 

[trysail]

...On Sunday, January 29, 1939, Luis W. Alvarez— a promising young physicist who worked closely with Ernest Lawrence— was sitting in a barber's chair, reading The San Francisco Chronicle. Suddenly, he read a wire service story reporting that two German chemists, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, had successfully demonstrated that the uranium nucleus could be split into two or more parts. They had achieved fission by bombarding uranium, one of the heaviest of the elements, with neutrons. Stunned by this development, Alvarez "stopped the barber in mid-snip, and ran all the way to the Radiation Laboratory to spread the word." When he told Oppenheimer the news, his reply was, "That's impossible." Oppenheimer then went to the blackboard and proceeded to prove mathematically that fission couldn't happen. Someone must have made a mistake...


...Los Alamos had an unusually high percentage of single men and women, and naturally, the Army had little success in keeping the sexes apart. Robert Wilson, the youngest of the lab's group leaders, was chairman of the Town Council when the military police ordered the closing of one of the women's dormitories and the dismissal of its female residents. A tearful group of young women, supported by a determined group of bachelors, appeared before the Council to appeal the decision. Wilson later recalled what happened: "It seems that the girls had been doing a flourishing business of requiting the basic needs of our young men, and at a price. All understandable to the Army until disease reared its ugly head, hence their interference." In the event, the Town Council decided that the number of girls plying their trade was few; health measures were taken and the dormitory was kept open...


...Truman's interactions with scientists were never elevated. The president struck many of them as a small-minded man who was in way over his head. "He was not a man of imagination," said Isidor Rabi. And scientists were hardly alone in this view. Even a seasoned Wall Street lawyer like John J. McCloy, who served Truman briefly as assistant secretary of war, wrote in his diary that the president was "a simple man, prone to make up his mind quickly and decisively, perhaps too quickly— a thorough American." This was not a great president, "not distinguished at all... not Lincolnesque, but an instinctive, common, hearty-natured man." Men as different as McCloy, Rabi and Oppenheimer all thought Truman's instincts, particularly in the field of atomic diplomacy, were neither measured nor sound— and sadly, certainly were not up to the challenge the country and the world now faced...


...Oppenheimer's larger plans for the Institute often met with resistance— particularly from the mathematicians, who had initially thought he would favor them with appointments and an ever-larger share of the Institute's budget. The arguments could become extraordinarily petty. "The Institute is an interesting Paradise," observed his perceptive secretary, Verna Hobson. "But in an ideal society, when you remove all the everyday frictions, the frictions that are created to take their place are so much more cruel."...


...For years, [ Lewis ] Strauss served as president of Manhattan's Temple Emanu-El— ironically the same Reform synagogue Felix Adler abandoned in 1876 to form the Ethical Culture Society. Proud of both his Jewish and his Southern heritage, Strauss pointedly insisted on pronouncing his last name as "Straws." Self-righteous to a fault, he remembered every slight— and meticulously recoreded them in an endless stream, each entitled "memorandum to the file." He was, as the Alsop brothers wrote, a man with "a desperate need to condescend."...


​

-Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
New York, N.Y. 2005.




I read a review and recommendation of this biography when it was initially published. It took some time for the book to bubble up on a shelf at the local library where, upon catching sight of it, I grabbed it.


Aside from the fact that this biography is well worth reading, Bird and Sherwin seem intent on making a low key social comment using Oppenheimer's life as the excuse. There's no denying that the actors in the "Red-baiting, Commie-under-every-bed" McCarthy era went waaaaaay too far and fear was used to advantage by some opportunistic, ethically-challenged martinets. That's really not an insight that's subject to much disputed these days; thus that undercurrent rings a bit hollow. Otherwise, the book is enjoyable.


Much to the evident delight of the authors, the question of whether it was necessary to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki troubled Oppenheimer subsequent to the war's end. They needn't have wrung their hands so needlessly; all that was necessary was to ask any American serviceman faced with the prospect of an invasion of Japan.

 

[ILmonamour]

Head First by Gia Claire

I just met her the other day and she is absolutely lovely. She wrote a memoir about the ups and downs of life, and how to re-start and rebuild when everything has fallen apart. How to rebuild head first into life.

 

[DaddyValin]

Feast Day of Fools, by James Lee Burke--an American master.

One of the great modern writers, indeed. I've read most of his Dave R novels.

Recently, I read his Civil War novel, White Doves at Morning. Excellent novel--and inspired by Burke's family history.

 

[JayinCA]

One of the great modern writers, indeed. I've read most of his Dave R novels.

Recently, I read his Civil War novel, White Doves at Morning. Excellent novel--and inspired by Burke's family history.

Robicheaux remains my favorite, but Hackberry Holland is coming up fast. Feast Day of Fools is a sequel to The Rain Gods, and it's coming out next month. It's terrific--his biggest novel yet, full of his brilliant insight and vivid characters. I'm digging it. Highly recommended.

 

[DaddyValin]

I haven't read any of the Holland books; I'll have to pick them up eventually.

What I really like about Burke is that he is one of the few writers that really melds style and substance in his works.

 

[trysail]

...At an early age, I had turned to reading as a way for the world to explain itself to me. Here, at last, I had stumbled into the store that would open up a hundred universities for my inspection. I had dropped out of nowhere and found myself at the gates of my my own personal Magdalen College in Oxford. Here I could punt down the Cam through the hallowed grounds of Cambridge University, take notes on Balzac at the Sorbonne, rush to my morning class on Dante in Bolongna, or sprint toward an honors class in Harvard Yard. The great writers of the world sang out in darkness and greeted me with the pleasure of my arrival...

...There have been hundreds of novels about the Civil War, but Gone With The Wind stands like an obelisk in the dead center of American letters casting its uneasy shadow over all of us. It hooked into the sweet-smelling attar that romance always lends to the cause of a shamed and defeated people. Millions of Southerners lamented the crushing defeat of the Southern armies, but only one had the talent to place that elegaic sense of dissolution on the white shoulders of the most irresistable, spiderous, seditious, and wonderful of American heroines, Scarlett O'Hara...


​

-Pat Conroy
My Reading Life
New York, N.Y. 2010.




I first sampled Conroy by reading The Prince of Tides. I was previously aware of his literary success and the sudden appearance of that volume in my favorite used book store gave me all the excuse I needed to give him a try. It's unusual for me to read fiction: Barth, Tyler, le Carré, Twain, (John) Irving and Mencken make up the vast majority of my forays into the genre. Nevertheless, Conroy struck a chord, most likely due to some geographic and cultural familiarities. We are, after all, spawn of tidewater. It can't be denied that Conroy has penned some memorable lines.

My Reading Life is a series of autobiographical essays and vignettes about his formative literary influences. It's not an unpleasant way to spend parts of evenings. Written in fifteen chapters, the book lends itself to being picked up and put aside as necessity dictates.

 

[beatrice_dreams]

THE HONORABLE SCHOOL BOY by John Le Carre.

JBJ - I know you posted this ages ago, but I've just started this book myself. I wanted a lesson in descriptive writing and I sure got it!

Though like Graham Greene, these books tend to end badly...maybe I could just stop reading before the last chapter? (No spoilers, mind.)

 

[sr71plt]

To hell with happy endings. John LeCarre and Graham Greene head my list of favorite authors. There's no one writing the spy genre as authentically as they do.

At the moment in my reading, my fiction is Ken Follett's World Without End, and my nonfictions are Lynne Joinner's Honorable Survivor: Mao's China, McCarthy's America, and the Persecutionof John S. Service and Milorad Pavic's Dictionary of the Khazars (the latter of which I've been slugging through for sixteen years with scarcely an idea of what's going on between the covers).

 

[beatrice_dreams]

Interrupted

Two books I was trying to read before having them rudely removed from my possession: (i.e. the fact that they were removed was the impolite bit...not removed in a rude manner. Just thought I'd clarify that.)

The Visitor by Lee Child - got two thirds of the way through it while in Paris last week and then had to leave it behind as it belonged to the hotel owners and can't find a copy in the local library to save my life!

Death in Holy Orders - P D James - okay, so I was taking ages to read the book, but she does write really long books with really long plot lines. I was half-way through reading it and went to renew it at the library (as you do). But the librarian said no, there is a reservation, you can't take it out again. But I'm only half-done! I protested. Tug of war ensued (not really) and I left empty-handed.

So now I'm beginning to forget both plotlines and have resorted instead to the fluffy (yet thoroughly researched) forensics of Kathy Reichs. Grave Secrets. Or something like that. Her titles are all startlingly similar.

 

[beatrice_dreams]

To hell with happy endings. John LeCarre and Graham Greene head my list of favorite authors. There's no one writing the spy genre as authentically as they do.

And that authenticity is probably exactly why they all end badly! And why I find them so addictive.

I thoroughly recommend a few short Father Brown stories by Chesterton as an antidote between harsh realities...tends to restore my faith in humanity.

 

[sr71plt]

I thoroughly recommend a few short Father Brown stories by Chesterton as an antidote between harsh realities...tends to restore my faith in humanity.

When I'm looking for this, I pick up a book by Anne Tyler.

 

[oggbashan]

The Haunted Monastery by Robert Van Gulik, part of his Judge Dee series.

 

[sr71plt]

Two books I was trying to read before having them rudely removed from my possession: (i.e. the fact that they were removed was the impolite bit...not removed in a rude manner. Just thought I'd clarify that.)

The Visitor by Lee Child - got two thirds of the way through it while in Paris last week and then had to leave it behind as it belonged to the hotel owners and can't find a copy in the local library to save my life!

Death in Holy Orders - P D James - okay, so I was taking ages to read the book, but she does write really long books with really long plot lines. I was half-way through reading it and went to renew it at the library (as you do). But the librarian said no, there is a reservation, you can't take it out again. But I'm only half-done! I protested. Tug of war ensued (not really) and I left empty-handed.

So now I'm beginning to forget both plotlines and have resorted instead to the fluffy (yet thoroughly researched) forensics of Kathy Reichs. Grave Secrets. Or something like that. Her titles are all startlingly similar.

I like Lee Childs and Kathy Reichs a whole lot better in person than in their books. Kathy Reichs's books, in particular, seem so Patricia Cornwalish to me--dreary and morose--to the point of "who cares? Just get it over with." (And I didn't like Patricia Cornwal in person, although she caused a whole bunch of fun scandals in Virginia, including a governor's wife, a female FBI agent, and a gun battle in a Fairfax church).

P.D. James is a favorite author of mine, though. One of the only authors I'll go looking for to buy the book on the first day of release.

I know what you mean about library books and being a slow reader. That's why I don't even attempt to use libraries. I'd never finish the books in time.

 

[sr71plt]

The Haunted Monastery by Robert Van Gulik, part of his Judge Dee series.

Yep the Jude Dee series was terrific. I've kept them on my bookshelves and slapped anyone's hand who wanted to borrow them.

 

[oggbashan]

Yep the Judge Dee series was terrific. I've kept them on my bookshelves and slapped anyone's hand who wanted to borrow them.

I also like Ernest Bramah's Kai Lung stories. They are some of the few books that make me laugh out loud when reading.

"The whole narrative is permeated with the odour of joss-sticks and honourable high-mindedness."

 

[sr71plt]

I also like Ernest Bramah's Kai Lung stories. They are some of the few books that make me laugh out loud when reading.

"The whole narrative is permeated with the odour of joss-sticks and honourable high-mindedness."

Hmmm. Another author to add to the "must get" list.

 

[beatrice_dreams]

When I'm looking for this, I pick up a book by Anne Tyler.

Sounds like I'll have to add her to my 'to-read' list...

 

[cfuhrer]

How did I miss this thread?

Well let's see. I don't read fiction, or rather can't, so I stick to "how to's" and business and finance.

I'm half way through Financial Peasce Revisited by Dave Ramsey. Some solid ideas but I think there are places his philosophy could use some sophistication and informing.

I'm also halfway through Made To Stick by the Heath Brothers. Its about how to make sure you ideas don't get lost in the din.

I just finished Fleet Academy by one of our own (and yes, it is fiction but I edited it, so there.)

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

JBJ - I know you posted this ages ago, but I've just started this book myself. I wanted a lesson in descriptive writing and I sure got it!

Though like Graham Greene, these books tend to end badly...maybe I could just stop reading before the last chapter? (No spoilers, mind.)

THE PERFECT SPY by LeCarre is anuther good read. CALL FOR THE DEAD is LeCarre's 1st book, and excellent.

The very best book of all for descriptive writing is LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN by James Agee. Agee only published two books, A DEATH IN THE FAMILY won a Pulitzer, and LUNPFM is maybe the definitive monument to the Great Depression. Its a schizophrenic read cuz Agee is like a busy bee visiting all the flowers but plenty of it is sublime description. He obsesses about everything, and touches everything.