Books you couldn't put down

[JeffB]

Shameless promotion of my own book....

It is a biography of my father who was a career diplomat involved in most of the major events of the Cold War and a history of that period. He grew up in wild west of the early 20th century, along the Santa Fe Trail in southern Colorado and New Mexico, and ended up in the halls of the White House and behind the walls of the Kremlin.

He served six US presidents of both parties, was Ambassador at Large and Special Advisor to the President on Soviet Affairs under both Kennedy and Johnson, was an important voice on the Ex-Comm of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and was instrumental in beginning the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) process, among other things.



The Kremlinologist:
Llewellyn E Thompson, America’s Man in Cold War Moscow

Facebook & Twitter
Johns Hopkins University Press
Wall Street Journal Review

I read the WSJ review when it was published earlier this month and put it on my list of books to read. I will get it now for sure. Good work!

I went to the website. One pleasant surprise that I didn't expect from a University Press was all the formats that are available... hardback, paperback, and three varieties of e-book.

I'm on the fence. I like history, but usually find biography a little too detailed.

I try to read a few biographies every year. About halfway through Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy re Hemingway. It’s quite good and I recommend it.

In the fiction category, I finished I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes last month and can’t recommend it enough. If anyone is a fan of crime and spy novels, it should be high on the list.

 

[Sibhusky]

I'm always leery about university-published books. Have gotten too many that were intended to be theses and someone shoved a wrapper on them. I must have read several back to back and swore I'd never buy another.

 

[Plai]

Any Jim Butcher's Dresden Files book (premise made into short lived TV series). Always waiting for the next one. Tried his other worlds/series, but they don't hold up to Dresden.

Patrick Rossfuss's Name of the Wind and sequel Wiseman's Fear (would love to see the movie(s)). Eagerly waiting for final in the trilogy.

Already mentioned
+1 Tolkien
+1 Princess Bride (anything William Goldberg)

Enjoyed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Most of Clancy's work - - notably the Jack Ryan ones.... Couldn't stomach the more recent collaborations.

All these read a while ago and can't seem to find anything that really intrigues me these days. I'm more active, rather than passive.

 

[cantunamunch]

All these read a while ago and can't seem to find anything that really intrigues me these days. I'm more active, rather than passive.

Charles Stross' Laundry Files ought tick most of the boxes you've got there.

 

[Jerez]

I read the WSJ review when it was published earlier this month and put it on my list of books to read. I will get it now for sure. Good work!

Thanks Jeff!!

PS: I promise it's not a wrapped Thesis. We are not academics by training. And there's even a ski photo inside.

 

[Jerez]

I read the WSJ review when it was published earlier this month and put it on my list of books to read. I will get it now for sure. Good work!

Thanks Jeff!!

PS: I promise it's not a wrapped Thesis. We are not academics by training. And there's even a ski photo inside.

 

[wallyk]

Means of Ascent by Robert Caro........about how LBJ, President Johnson, rose to power and stole the 1948 US Senate election in Teas from then governor Cooke Stevens. I swear that this book reads like a movie. Good biographical read, not terribly dry and really get to understand how devious LBJ was.

 

[François Pugh]

Lord of the Rings (All three books). Once I got through the first two chapters I had to keep reading. It was hard not to put it down in the first chapter or two, but my friends kept telling me it got better so I persevered. I'm very glad I did read the first bit, and didn't skip through it. It's knowing the first chapters that makes you care about the rest of the story.

 

[albertanskigirl]

I just finished Naomi Alderman's The Power - and I couldn't put it down. It's a speculative fiction book - women develop basically a super power, and women's and men's positions in society become flipped. Highly recommend it!

I'm also rereading one of my favourites right now: Mordecai Richler's Solomon Gursky Was Here - it's awesome if you are into multi-generational family sagas, some mystery surrounding characters, and also if you know anything at all about Montreal, or Montreal's Jewish community.

 

[focker]

I really liked Steven Kings The Dark Tower series, although it is VERY long so you better strap in.

 

[Marty McSly]

I really liked Steven Kings The Dark Tower series, although it is VERY long so you better strap in.

Pet Sematery, IT and Christine for me, from King's lexicon.

John Irving's The Cider House Rules and especially A Prayer for Owen Meany. The latter is the only work of fiction that I can recall moving me to tears.

Any one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.

Philip José Farmer's Riverworld series.

 

[Posaune]

The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalance by Gary Krist

You have to give it to an author who can tell you exactly how it ends at the very beginning and then keep you on the edge of your seat for the whole time. This is a book that would appeal to anyone, but especially those of us who ski at Stevens Pass since the whole thing happened within spitting distance of the ski area. It's also a sobering study of how everyone did everything right, and it didn''t matter.

 

[BC.]

A Civil War: Army vs. Navy
by John Feinstein

 

[Tominator]

I've always got a book in play. A lot of stuff comes to mind (Ken Follett, Dan Brown, Greg Isles, Stieg Larsson, et al) but the most memorable book I've read recently was, "A Gentleman in Moscow," by Amor Towles. "Gone Girl," by Gillian Flynn (read before the movie came out) was pretty riveting, too. That said, I read Krakauer's, "Into Thin Air," quite some time ago; I think I finished it in 2 days!

 

[Dakine]

"Endurance" by Scott Kelly
The story of how an ADHD kid became the astronaut that spent a year on the ISS.

 

[cantunamunch]

Lord of the Rings (All three books). Once I got through the first two chapters I had to keep reading. It was hard not to put it down in the first chapter or two, but my friends kept telling me it got better so I persevered. I'm very glad I did read the first bit, and didn't skip through it. It's knowing the first chapters that makes you care about the rest of the story.

Are you going to splurge on the Fall of Gondolin when it comes out?

 

[François Pugh]

Are you going to splurge on the Fall of Gondolin when it comes out?

Yes, even though it's been too long since I read the The Silmarillion and my memory is not as good as I remember it once was. My memory of The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit were refreshed by me reading the books to my kids as bedtime stories and more recently by the movies (New Line Cinema, directed by Peter Jackson). BTW the movies did an excellent job of recalling the books, while not ruining them for anyone who saw the movie; the books have a lot not in the movies.

 

[mdf]

Are you going to splurge on the Fall of Gondolin when it comes out?

So this isn't it? Watch out for the Ballhog of Villanova!

 

[cantunamunch]

[QUOTE="mdf, post: 238087, member: 141]

Ballhog of Villanova![/QUOTE]

 

[Sibhusky]

I actually read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings three times, widely spaced apart - high school, post college and post marriage - and liked the movies (the initial Trilogy) better. Loved the books, but really loved the movies. (Okay, not the Hobbit movies).

Normally I don't repeat books, but am also on my third go through of the Master and Commander series. Mostly because for the past two years anything that takes me out of the present and into a different age is what I'm looking for. So I've hit the Lymond Chronicles and House of Niccolo, the Worrall sailing series, Bolitho, some Sharpe's Rifles (ended up being more expensive than I wanted at the time, but may return).

Normally I was into mysteries and spy novels but they've become too similar to reality lately. Plus we're following any number of British mysteries on Roku. (Half the time I can't keep the plots straight.)