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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Nov 23, 2017 - 03:02pm PT
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Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better by Pema Chodron.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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My second reading of this fine little book on the life of this most extraordinary humanitarian
I have this same edition printed in 1954.Notice the price.
Farrow ( father of Mia and husband to Maureen O'Sullivan) copyrighted the original in 1937.
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Lennox
climber
in the land of the blind
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Currently reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons and re-reading The Red and the Black by Stendhal.
I really like this description of Mathilda from The Red and the Black:
“When anyone offended Mlle. de La Mole, she knew how to punish him with a witticism so calculated, so well chosen, so proper in appearance, so timely launched, that the wound kept growing by the minute, the more one thought about it.”
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Mark Sensenbach
climber
CA
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Think I found a goldmine. Googled National Outdoor Book Award after seeing that 'the last season' had won it - not knowing what it was and found a site w years of great outdoor books. -Check it;
http://www.noba-web.org/PastWins.htm
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Currently reading Hyperion
Excellent SF novel. Very imaginative.
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Dec 19, 2017 - 05:11pm PT
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Just finished An American Tragedy by Dreiser. It's a very disturbing piece of writing. Might take a while to digest this one. Clyde is such a shallow boy it's hard to know which way to think about him. Pity?
Is it comparable to Crime and Punishment? Raskolnikov is an intellectual, Griffiths is a cipher. Rasklonikov gets 7 years in Siberia, Clyde gets fried. Raskolnikov get spiritual redemption in prison, Clyde thinks maybe he does, but he's not sure.
Is there something American about Clyde's moral cowardice?
Alice Adams is next on the list. And at some point I need to get to Angle of Repose. And there's all that Faulkner...
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Dec 19, 2017 - 05:28pm PT
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In A Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson. Might be the funniest book
I've ever read. It is also chock full of great facts and stories about
Australia. The trouble is I keep reading the horror show bits to The Wife
and the more I do so the more my chances of going there disintegrate. :-(
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couchmaster
climber
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Dec 19, 2017 - 06:05pm PT
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"Der Fuehrer", by Konrad Heiden. About Adolph Hitler, of course. The crux of reading this work, published in english in 1944, is keeping the old tome with it's yelling pages - together. Unfortunately, the author only goes until @ 1934 and the shocking execution of Heydreich who was caught in bed naked after having sex with an underage boy by Adolph himself (that chapter is appropriately called, "The Blood Purge". He wrote it while Hitler and the war were still a thing, and he had personally witnessed or seriously investigated and researched what he wrote about. Holy crap it's a very different view than I've read before. At times it drones on in minutia and details, and of course Hitler is still a total shithead, but the depths of his shitheadedness goes beyond any previously written view I've seen.
For a historical tome, it took a lot longer to read than say, a Greg Couch book, or John Toland (The Rising Sun) or Tuchmans "The Guns of August" all of which seem to be gripping historical novels you can't put down, but it's equally powerful.
My neighbor is a retired judge, a jew, who I'm considering gifting it to when I finish it the 2nd time. We talk books a lot and I suspect she'll enjoy it....I hope. Still thinking on that.....having worked side by side with holocaust survivors way back when (my boss at the time had been arrested, beaten, then escaped the Gestapo and swam across a river into Switzerland with his brother while being shot at, he'd hire any survivor anytime for any length of time no question s asked, and I didn't feel I should have been intrusive- AT ALL- to these shattered souls). Anyway, I'll reflect, I don't want to cause anyone any more needless pain.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Jan 22, 2018 - 08:51pm PT
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Ward , my reading of Fr. Damien's life nearly caused me to become a Maryknoll missionary.
Instead I took Damien for a confirmation name.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Jan 22, 2018 - 09:06pm PT
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Someone just gave me a little book of Tennyson. Been a while. Guy still has magic for me. "The Ancient Sage" covers some ground.
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Bluelens
Social climber
Pasadena and Ojai, CA
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Jan 23, 2018 - 08:07pm PT
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This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm Ted Genoways (2017)
Great story about community and family in the heartland. The incredibly complex skills of the modern farmer: arbitrage and market timing, plant genetics and soil chemistry...Nebraska water rights management (a national model of good stewardship) and Keystone pipeline politics...all told by following one family of farmers for a year. Really great journalism.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Jan 23, 2018 - 11:15pm PT
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Well, Bruce, Bill Bryson just took me through Oxford and the Ashmolean in his most
excellent The Road to Little Dribbling. A real page turner if yer at all partial to
walking about in Britain.
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Adventurer
Mountain climber
Virginia
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Jan 28, 2018 - 08:05am PT
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Reading two novels at the moment; "The Rooster Bar" by John Grisham and "Origin" by Dan Brown. Both excellent.
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Mike Honcho
Trad climber
Glenwood Springs, CO
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Jan 28, 2018 - 01:06pm PT
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"The Life & Times of Pancho Villa" by Friedrich Katz
Next is "The Last Lion" trilogy (Winston Churchill, 3 HUGE books) by William Manchester
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Bruce Morris
Trad climber
Soulsbyville, California
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Jan 28, 2018 - 01:22pm PT
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Yes, Reilly, a walking tour of literary sites in the UK sounds like a great thing to do. Go to Canterbury with Chaucer's pilgrims. Visit Stratford on Avon and watch a Shakespeare play. Visit the Lake Country and see it like Wordsworth and Coleridge did. English isn't the dominant language in the world for nothin'! During the Elizabethan age it started to conquer the world.
Luckily for the Brits, they did have a licentious Restoration after Oliver Cromwell turned the Interregnum into a bloodbath. Unfortunately for us Americans, the Puritans all moved over here!
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Jan 28, 2018 - 01:50pm PT
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Yo! Ye olde crankloon got ‘imself sum culture in June, ‘e did!
A modern take on “Twelfth Night” which the blighters brought off most admirably! 👏
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Jan 31, 2018 - 06:53pm PT
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Photo cred to Roger Breedlove.
Glad to be here, even though all the parts are not functioning as well as I would like.
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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^^ Nice.
Just finished The Magnificent Ambersons. It deserves its spot as one of the Great American Novels. Tarkington is said to have been nostalgic for a time that never really existed, and this might be proof. The characters are really well done and ring true to life. Worth a read.
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sempervirens
climber
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Also by Booth Tarkington, Seventeen. It's hilarious, IMO, especially if read aloud by one who can do the voices. If it's not a movie yet it ought to be.
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