Book(s) you are currently reading.

[bbrown]

Stephen King's Never Flinch.
I really like the character he's created going all the way back to the Mr. Mercedes trilogy.

 

[Pennstatel0]

That’s a pretty standard list, it seems. If you ask me, Catch-22 belongs up there. Blood Meridian is a difficult, nightmarish read, a much more accessible read by McCarthy is All the Pretty Horses.

I’ve never read Morrison or Franzen. The book I gift is Straight Man by Richard Russo.

Fun fact: in every parallel universe to this one I’m a literature professor. Dang, I am rotten glad I dodged that bullet. (Rotten glad, that’s from Huck Finn.) I’m one of those who can really find bliss in mathematics. That’s my biggest regret now as a 69-yo, all the time I spent as a kid reading Solzhenitsyn I wish I’d spent on calculus. Well, off to the gym!

Anything by Richard Russo is terrific.

For history, Rick Atkinson WW2 trilogy is also excellent.

To learn about molecular biology and personalities invilved, try “The eighth day of creation”.

Also “”The emperor of all maladies”

 

[MacNit]

You should also read Shirer's "Berlin Diary".....dude was front & center for all of the significant **** that went down in 1930's Europe

I did read his book on how France was beaten so easily im WW2…but will check this one out! Thx!!

 

[MacNit]

I did read his book on how France was beaten so easily im WW2…but will check this one out! Thx!!

Erik Larson’s “In the Garden of Beasts” is fantastic too. Prewar (WW2) Germany.

 

[LionJim]

Anything by Richard Russo is terrific.

For history, Rick Atkinson WW2 trilogy is also excellent.

To learn about molecular biology and personalities invilved, try “The eighth day of creation”.

Also “”The emperor of all maladies”

The novel I regularly gift is Richard Russo’s “Straight Man,” that’s a can’t miss. I have every novel by both McCarthy and Russo, just those two.

 

[manatree]

The novel I regularly gift is Richard Russo’s “Straight Man,” that’s a can’t miss. I have every novel by both McCarthy and Russo, just those two.

Guessing it hits close to home for you. How many times have you been smacked in the face with a spiral bound notebook in a department meeting?

 

[LionJim]

Guessing it hits close to home for you. How many times have you been smacked in the face with a spiral bound notebook in a department meeting in such a way that the spirals catch your nose and nearly tear it off?

Fixed.

 

[LionJim]

Guessing it hits close to home for you. How many times have you been smacked in the face with a spiral bound notebook in a department meeting?

Does it hit close to home for me? Not really but it does for my wife, she was an English professor. Believe me, the characters in the English department in Straight Man are totally on brand, close to toxic. (NOT my wife.)

 

[LionJim]

The novel I regularly gift is Richard Russo’s “Straight Man,” that’s a can’t miss. I have every novel by both McCarthy and Russo, just those two.

Russo is not a great stylist (he doesn’t know how to place commas, drives me crazy), but he creates his characters with such care and affection, that’s his brand. Every one of his books is character driven, and it works for me. Again, I got every one of his novels, have read each multiple times. Now, off to the gym, ffs!

 

[m.knox]

David Baldacci's To Die For featuring Travis Devine....

This guy is a f'ing machine. That book is sitting on top of two others from Baldacci.

 

[olelion]

Ten Caesers:Roman History from Augustus to Constantine. It is written in a narrative tone and easy to read and quite informative

 

[LionJim]

Me, preparing for a trip to Greece: Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History. A great leap forward for Hellenistic society was the development of their phonetic alphabet, around 800 BC. It was easy to learn (especially compared to Egyptian hieroglyphics) and directly lead to Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid. (No direct writings from Socrates survive; what we know of Socrates we get from Plato, is my understanding.)