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Gene
climber
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The War Below by James M. Scott.
Great book about the Silversides, Drum, and Tang in WWII. I'm biased since Dad provided much of the source material for the Silversides' part of the book.
A picture from the book of the Old Man as a Young Man sailing into harm's way.
g
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Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
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Now I'm into Beyond the 100th Meridian, by Wallace Stegner.
great book!
I'm enjoying it, Roxy. J.W. Powell was a serious bad-ass, and it's a fascinating portrait of the West in the late 1860s, `70s, and 1880s.
I've also just posted my review of Frozen in Time, another World War II rescue story from Lost in Shangri-La author Mitchell Zuckoff.
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Roxy
Trad climber
CA Central Coast
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Another nice review Greg.
I started reading Davis' 'Learning to Fly', it arrived in the mail this weekend. Nice to come home to a new book.
Powell was a badass indeed.
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McCfly
climber
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The Four Foundations Of Mindfulness
By: Bhante Gunaratana
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nutjob
Sport climber
Almost to Hollywood, Baby!
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This caught my eye in a library sale. Exploring it a few pages at a time:
I started to say "savouring" it a few pages at a time, but that doesn't quite fit. Savour implies a sort of basic pleasure, and I can't say this book is always pleasurable. Insightful. Compelling. But not always pleasurable. It just feels real and honest, and gives me access to a set of experiences that divine grace spared me from directly acquiring.
There is an especially poignant and insightful story about his experience before shipping off to Viet Nam, a crisis of conscience while standing at a fork in the road of life. He sums up:
"I was a coward. I went to the war."
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Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
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Nutjub, that's one of the great modern American books.
I'm going to out myself as the outrageous tool & dork that I am, but last night I just finished my 400th book since I began writing Enduring Patagonia in January of 2000. I know this because I've been keeping a list. Forgive me, but here's the damn list.
I wish it were longer. ;-)
[And thanks, Roxy. Hope you enjoy Learning to Fly!]
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Nutjub, that's one of the great modern American books.
I'm going to out myself as the outrageous tool & dork that I am, but last night I just finished my 400th book since I began writing Enduring Patagonia in January of 2000. I know this because I've been keeping a list. Forgive me, but here's the damn list.
I wish it were longer. ;-)
Welcome to dorkland Greg. I keep the same sort of list of books I've read (as did my Dad before me). And I think my list since 2000 is longer than yours, so I'm an even bigger nerd. Though we have a fair amount of duplicates.
On the Vietnam front, the one book I've found comparable to Things They Carried is Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes.
And agree with you on Altered Carbon. If you like that, try to track down the Carlucci books by Richard Paul Russo.
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Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
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Welcome to dorkland Greg. I keep the same sort of list of books I've read (as did my Dad before me). And I think my list since 2000 is longer than yours, so I'm an even bigger nerd. Though we have a fair amount of duplicates.
Writing those two cost me SO MANY books... maybe I'd compete better if I hadn't sumped so much reading time into them. :-)
In Sci-Fi, I can't recommend Iain M. Banks strongly enough. His Culture novels. Start with Consider Phlebas and move on from there. His ship names alone make the books worth reading.
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Several of Banks books were already on my Amazon wish list. Maybe I'll have to bump them a little higher.
And China's Wings is sitting on my book shelf in the To Be Read stack, so it will count for me, where it counted against you :-)
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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The problem with keeping a real list is you miss the opportunity to reread a book you already read because you see it on your list.
How many times have you begun a book and realized you had already read it? Numerous times for me and the funny part is how new it is the second time around. Amazing what we retain and what we forget.
Then again, what is really weird is to buy back one of your own books at an used bookstore!
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Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
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True story: A friend of mine recently bought a used copy of Enduring Patagonia from Amazon, and tucked inside the book was a very risque note from girlfriend to boyfriend describing in exquisite and superb detail what she was going to do to him when he got back from the long expedition on which he was about to embark. Apparently the book was a gift to help him while away stormy days.
No names were included, but it suddenly occurs to me that the author or recipient of that note could be among us here on Supertopo...
If you're the author and you've ditched the guy, PM me... :-)
Addendum: if she were a better friend, she'd have bought the eBook.
Hope you enjoy China's Wings, Stevep. God knows I need readers.
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nutjob
Sport climber
Almost to Hollywood, Baby!
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GC, I thought stuff like that only happened in male-written porn fantasies.
Sully, yeah that Marianne Bell story stuck with me. I can't say I was horrified by it, or totally creeped out, but it definitely left a disquieting feeling, and I was pondering it for a while afterward. How many people have morality dictated by fear and lack of opportunity vs. some inner notion of what they really think is right?
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little Z
Trad climber
un cafetal en Naranjo
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Guido,
in memory of the 150th anniversary, just plucked "Lincoln at Gettysburg" off the shelf, a book I inherited from my Dad. It'll be a reread. Last read was maybe 10 years ago.
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Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
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I'm sorry, Nutjob...
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LuckyPink
climber
the last bivy
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a friend recommended to me "House of Rain" by Greg Childs and I'm damn glad he did , I can't put it down. A narrative on the Anasazi of the southwest, he describes the current research and investigation of the vanished neolithic civilization. Fascinating, to say the least, in a ooncrete "go there, see for yourself" kind of way.
http://www.houseofrain.com/bookdetail.cfm?id=1183863026528
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Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
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At my son's insistence, I read Max Brooks' World War Z yesterday evening and last night.
A guilty pleasure, but a good one.
Ryan has been running around the house singing the following:
"It's a zooombieee apocalypse...
it's a zooombieee apocalypse...
it's a zooombieee apocalypse....
it's World War Z!!!!"
There are associated hand movements, but they're indescribable. And indescribably hilarious. He's 12.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I've been reading Thomas McEvilley's Art & Discontent; Theory at the Milleninium and found this interesting bit in one of the essays:
"In antiquity, people did not read silently to themselves, but aloud to one another. Cicero had a reader who followed him around all day with the book in hand; at any idle moment--in the street, in the bath, at table--he would recommence the reading. Those who were not, like Cicero, professional readers and writers, read aloud to one another or to themselves. Literature did not yet seem separate from the voice, from the body, from the living breath (spirit); it did not yet seem a silent world of abstraction into which one might wander away from the world of sense and relationship. The first person on record as having read silently to himself is Augustine of Hippo's teacher Saint Ambrose. Here is Augustine's description of it: 'When he read, his eyes scanned the page and his heart explored the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still... Often, when we came to see him, we found him reading like this in silence... We would sit there quietly, for no one have the heart to disturb him when he was so engrossed... After a time we went away..." So Ambrose sat silent with his book, lacking apparent speech or locomotion..." [Saint Augustine, Confessions]
Interesting thought that "Books on Tape" is a regression to the past...
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weezy
climber
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cat's cradle
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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Mila 18. Great read by Leon Uris. The near ending of which, looked like this.
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