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dee ee
Mountain climber
citizen of planet Earth
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Jun 18, 2014 - 01:52pm PT
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I just finished a biography of Jim Thorpe, "America's greatest athlete," (not the books title).
Very interesting, not all happy times though. Still tough to be an American Indian in the early 20th century.
I just started "The Monuments Men." It's about the small posse of Americans and Brits saving art of all types at the end of WWII. Saw the movie of the same name a few weeks ago.
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Dickbob
climber
Westminster Colorado
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Jun 18, 2014 - 06:34pm PT
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Just finished Stephen Kings Mr. Mercedes. Give it a chance. The characters are palpable. King is the master of character development, dialogue and syntax.
A psycho serial killer steals a Mercedes and plows into a group of desperate people lined up for a job fare killing eight and injuring many. That is how it opens. It is vague in classic King style then it flips back can forth for awhile between the retired detective who never captured him and Mr Mercedes who taunts the old school dude on the internet via an invitation chat room. The detective has a best and only friend who is an African American senior who takes care of his lawn and is computer literate and is key to helps pull the whole thing off. Enter the daughter of the woman who owns the Mercedes. Detective falls in love. Gets a renewed psych and goes after the Mercedes killer without letting his pre retirement partner know. It’s all cool until the sh!t hits the fan when Ret Detective ignores the internet taunts and the Mercedes Killer feels he is closing in. Fricken Classic King for sure.
King. Love him or hate him… he can tell a story.
http://stephenking.com/images/books/mr_mercedes/mr_mecedes_full.jpg
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Jun 18, 2014 - 07:13pm PT
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Maybe you people are obscure literary aficionados I would gather. Do you really think you people think you're smarter with listing these books?
For fiction I dig old-school sci-fi. Bradbury, Heinlein, and Asimov. Also Hemingway and Steinbeck. I guess I'm a classicist.
Non-fiction i read now is conservative Constitutionalism.
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Jun 18, 2014 - 07:38pm PT
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Mr. Mercedes is on my bookshelf waiting.
Sandstone, if you're interested in scary smallpox non-fiction, try The Demon in the Freezer.
Bluey, any kind of reading is good. I try to mix it up. Currently it's Cubed (a history of the workplace) and Judas Unchained by Peter Hamilton, which is a big space opera along the lines of the Foundation Trilogy. Thanks to Greg Crouch for that recommendation.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Jun 18, 2014 - 07:59pm PT
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Yer right, SteveP. I just find some of the modern classics to be contrived.
It's all good though. Literature is an art, and people will always have different tastes. i get all that.
EDIT: Bluey, damn straight I'm a book snob. I did my senior thesis on Hemingway and Sartre in college. Neener neener.
I know ALL about you, Sully. You're a huge fan of Hemingway, if I remember correctly. But I also like your ability to be rational and use reason.
EDIT: If I recall, you thought Hemingway to be quite the misogynist. I thought different. He was macho, from a different era.
Whether you like that now or not, is a different issue from Hem., it was a different time.
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drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
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Jun 18, 2014 - 08:39pm PT
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Rick A recommended it earlier,
Welcome To Paradise, Now Go Home by Chas Smith.
A fun and funny read about localism on the North Shore of Oahu.
Reading it aloud, only on weekends, with Leggs.
Otherwise I'd probably finish it off in a day. Good stuff!
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jun 18, 2014 - 09:32pm PT
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Sartre
That explains a lot..
All we need is yet another Simone de Beauvoir around here.
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jbaker
Trad climber
Redwood City, CA
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Jun 18, 2014 - 09:45pm PT
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Just finished "Blood Will Out" by Walter Kirn. Very interesting, if a bit unsatisfying at the end.
Michael Lewis' "Flash Boys" was excellent.
I'm working on Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow." Depressing as hell, but required reading. It is hard to read more than a chapter at a time. It will ring true to anyone who has spent time around the American criminal justice system.
I'm been dipping back into Kevin Starr's "America and the California Dream." Some of it hasn't aged well, but there is a lot of truth in the book.
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Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
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Jun 19, 2014 - 07:58am PT
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Hope you're enjoying Pandora's Star & Judas Unchained, Stevep! True credit for the reccy comes from our own Tom Lambert. He's the guy who turned my son and I onto that duet.
I reviewed Andy Hall's Denali's Howl for The WSJ this past weekend. Good book about the 1967 Wilcox Expedition disaster on Denali.
Here's the review, linked through a google search, which I think allows us to get past their paywall.
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rockermike
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jun 19, 2014 - 10:15am PT
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Chris Hedges; 'I Don't Believe in Atheists'.
Hedges takes on both the neo-darwinian militant atheist movement (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris et al) and fundamentalist as the same time (though he gives the fundamentalists a bit of a pass due to economic pressures). His basic line is the new atheists don't understand sh#t about religion and only take cheap shots at some simplistic caricature of religion, using mostly radical Islamists or medieval Catholics as a stand in for any and all religion. Meanwhile the atheists, out of unbridled pride, call for mass murder of Muslims (Harris in particular). Overall I agree with Hedges analysis, but it gets a bit strident after a while. 4 out of 5 starts.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jun 19, 2014 - 12:09pm PT
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Yes, Ward , look into Hemingway's Nick Adams stories to find an existential bonanza. Same with The Snows of Kilimanjaro.
An " existential bonanza" ? You know I've never considered Hemingway as an existential philosopher in the guise of a writer. My summation of Hemingway was that he somehow managed one brilliant thing in his career: he transferred what was essentially a journalistic style of writing over to the format of a narrative novel. And then for the next thirty years he drank himself into a stupor , only emerging long enough to write The Old Man And The Sea before sticking a shotgun in his mouth.
Still, he was a great writer when compared to the likes of Sartre---who was way, way overblown as both a philosopher and a writer. Better known and celebrated today as preeminent Benzedrine fanatic.
Of all the putatively "existential" writers during that period Albert Camus was perhaps the only one really worth a damn.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
I grew up in the sea and poverty was sumptuous, then I lost the sea and found all luxuries grey and poverty unbearable. Since then, I have been waiting. I wait for the homebound ships, the house of the waters, the limpidity of day. I wait patiently, am polite with all my strength. Men see me walk by in fine and learned streets. I admire landscapes, applaud like everyone else, shake hands, but it is not me speaking. Men praise me, I dream a little, they insult me, I scarcely show surprise. Then I forget, and smile at the man who insulted me, or am too courteous in greeting the person I love. What can I do if all I can remember is one image? Finally they call upon me to tell them who I am, ‘Nothing yet, nothing yet…’
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Chief
climber
The NW edge of The Hudson Bay
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Jun 19, 2014 - 01:59pm PT
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Back and forth between "Marine" The Life of Chesty Puller and "Zen Guitar".
Is that eclectic, disparate or just weird?
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jun 19, 2014 - 03:58pm PT
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But seeing No Exit was one of them.
My own similar bonding experience with my dad consisted of the odd episode or two of Gunsmoke or perhaps Green Acres when I got to secondhand inhale a full pack of his Winstons.
BTW I've somehow earned a life-long appreciation of Festus Hagen and that talking pig "Arnold" not to mention knowing the Green Acres theme song by heart:
Green acres is the place to be.
Farm livin' is the life for me.
Land spreadin' out so far and wide.
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside.
New York is where I'd rather stay.
I get allergic smelling hay.
I just adore a penthouse view.
Dah-ling I love you but give me Park Avenue.
. .The chores.
. .The stores.
. .Fresh air.
. .Times Square.
You are my wife.
Good bye, city life.
Green Acres we are there.
Anyway, just by looking at him you'd never know he could talk:
I once read No Exit ,Nausea ,and struggled part way through Being and Nothingness---the worlds least engaging work of philosophy, and the hastily-scribbled product of at least two pounds of Benzedrine .
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Jun 19, 2014 - 04:17pm PT
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I don't read too much fiction but I did read, "The Tenth", a few weeks ago.
Very good read, IMO.
And the author was very kind when I chatted with her.
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MisterE
climber
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Jun 25, 2014 - 07:53am PT
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micronut
Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
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Jun 25, 2014 - 09:02am PT
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I just finished The Maze Runner. I have a sixteen year old daughter and I like reading her teeny bopper novels with her. It reads like it was written by a tenth grader, but man it sure is fun. A fun plot and will make for a very fun movie this summer.
Last summer I was dragged kicking and screaming into these......
And loved every minute of them.
I'm usually into heavy stuff. Just finishing Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond and thoroughly lost myself in Cormack McCarthy's Blood Meridian. I'm in the middle of studying 2nd Timothy in The Bible and A History of The World by Andrew Marr. But right now I can't put down the second of The Maze Runner series, The Scorch Trials.
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