Book(s) you are currently reading.
- Thread starter LionJim
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I saw the movie Three Days of the Condor. Loved it. Never realized the book is called Six Days of the Condor.
@trautrus Looks interesting. Your thoughts? Is it more of a historical perspective of the man vs what you read in the Gospel?
Not so much on golf instruction. All 3 books are more on courses the author played over a short period of time and the people he played with. A Course Called America gave me some ideas as for courses my wife and I should try and others we should probably avoid. Since our retirements, we decided to try to play golf in all 50 states plus the DC ... so far we have 40 ... only 11 more to go ... so this book gave us a couple of courses we should look into.
The interesting thing I learned in A Course Called Scotland is that there are a very few "private" courses in Scotland. Private clubs yes, but the courses they call home usually are public courses that anyone can play. Example The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews is a private club, but their home courses St Andrews (Old, New, Jubilee, etc) are all accessible to the public.
The book raises a number of questions concerning who actually wrote some of the passages for which Paul was ”credited”. Adds to the many questions surrounding some writings of Luke and the veracity of Acts of the Apostles.
This doesn't exactly count as reading, but... listening to Malcolm Gladwell's podcast series "Revisionist History" on my commute to/from work. The content (so far, still in Season 1) is great, very similar style to his books Blink, Outliers, Tipping Point, etc.
I read "The Count of Monte Christo" a couple of years ago. It was a brick of a book but I enjoyed it.
I’ve read all of Cormac McCarthy’s stuff and he’s just released two novels, his first in something like sixteen years. “The Passenger,” and “Stella Maris.” The protagonists of both books are brother and sister, and, guess what, they are mathematicians.
I am reading Confidence Man by Maggie Haberman of the New York Times. Well-researched, well-written, footnoted, source list, etc., etc.
It is not a political attack as some may think but rather a well-documented account of Trump’s life. It doesn’t take too many chapters to be able to put one and one together. Head shaking is part of the read.
It is not a political attack as some may think but rather a well-documented account of Trump’s life. It doesn’t take too many chapters to be able to put one and one together. Head shaking is part of the read.
I recently finished the Count of Monte Cristo.
I wanted to commemorate yesterday’s 155th anniversary of the birth of Constance Markiewicz. Jane and I were in Dublin last fall and there visited Kilmainham Jail, where we saw her cell. (She was sentenced to death for her role in the 1916 Easter Rising and was bitterly disappointed when her sentence was commuted.) Yeats had known her for thirty years and watched this daughter of privilege become a committed revolutionary, “All that delirium of the brave.”
The first stanza is a great example of Yeats’s extraordinary technical virtuosity.
The first stanza is a great example of Yeats’s extraordinary technical virtuosity.
Not sure if it was brought up, but I read "killers of the flower moon" a few years ago and it was fascinating. I bring it up now because they are making a movie based on the book directed by Scorcese and starring di caprio, deniro, Brendan Frasier, and Jesse plemons.
True story about murders of Indians in the 20s involving big oil money. It also details the development of the FBI which was greatly impacted by this case. As soon as I read it I thought, how is this not a movie already?
True story about murders of Indians in the 20s involving big oil money. It also details the development of the FBI which was greatly impacted by this case. As soon as I read it I thought, how is this not a movie already?
Good luck. If this is your first McCarthy, I’d suggest reading “All the Pretty Horses” instead. Not saying that AtPH is an easier read, but it does have the benefit of being about young dreams and passion. The bleakness of “The Road” can be overwhelming.
If you want hardcore McCarthy, “Blood Meridian” fits the bill very well. “Child of God” is a bridge too far for me to recommend. (Necrophiliac hillbilly serial killer.)
When reading McCarthy, always have your phone handy for looking up words in the thesaurus. Take the time, you’ll thank me.
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What's another word for thesaurus?
I liken McCarthy to Bukowski and Poe. They write about misery in a way that makes it seam beautiful. I have to take their work in small doses for fear that I‘ll find myself living in a tent down by the river addicted to heroin.
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I'm in a "Rocky Acres" mood. Robert Graves. I won't provide a link because I can't find one version without numerous typos.
With harsh craggy mountain, moor ample and bare.
Seldom in these acres is heard any voice
But voice of cold water that runs here and there
Through rocks and lank heather growing without care.
No mice in the heath run, no song-birds fly
For fear of the buzzard that floats in the sky.
He soars and he hovers, rocking on his wings,
He scans his wide parish with a sharp eye,
He catches the trembling of small hidden things,
He tears them in pieces, dropping from the sky:
Tenderness and pity the heart will deny,
Where life is but nourished by water and rock-
A hardy adventure, full of fear and shock.
Time has never journeyed to this lost land,
Crakeberries and heather bloom out of date,
The rocks jut, the streams flow singing on either hand,
Careless if the season be early or late,
The skies wander overhead, now blue now slate:
Winter would be known by his cold cutting snow
If June did not borrow his armour also.
Yet this is my country, beloved by me best,
The first land that rose from Chaos and the Flood,
Nursing no valleys for comfort or rest,
Trampled by no hard hooves, bought with no blood.
Sempiternal country whose barrows have stood
Strongholds for demigods when on earth they go,
Terror for fat burghers on far plains below.
Rocky Acres
This is a wild land, country of my choice,With harsh craggy mountain, moor ample and bare.
Seldom in these acres is heard any voice
But voice of cold water that runs here and there
Through rocks and lank heather growing without care.
No mice in the heath run, no song-birds fly
For fear of the buzzard that floats in the sky.
He soars and he hovers, rocking on his wings,
He scans his wide parish with a sharp eye,
He catches the trembling of small hidden things,
He tears them in pieces, dropping from the sky:
Tenderness and pity the heart will deny,
Where life is but nourished by water and rock-
A hardy adventure, full of fear and shock.
Time has never journeyed to this lost land,
Crakeberries and heather bloom out of date,
The rocks jut, the streams flow singing on either hand,
Careless if the season be early or late,
The skies wander overhead, now blue now slate:
Winter would be known by his cold cutting snow
If June did not borrow his armour also.
Yet this is my country, beloved by me best,
The first land that rose from Chaos and the Flood,
Nursing no valleys for comfort or rest,
Trampled by no hard hooves, bought with no blood.
Sempiternal country whose barrows have stood
Strongholds for demigods when on earth they go,
Terror for fat burghers on far plains below.
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Have you read the new books? I have them in my que but haven't got around to them. Cormac is an American treasure.
Thoughts? This was one of the better books I've read but not everyone's cup of tea.
@WillyMO I have each of his novels in my library and, yes, I’ve read “The Passenger” and “Stella Maris.” They’re both about mathematicians, brother and sister, but that part doesn’t quite work. (I myself have a doctorate in mathematics.) You can find classic McCarthy in a few isolated passages, where he simply blows you away, and these make the books worth the read. But nobody would claim that these two books are among his best.
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The Last Stand by Nathaniel Philbrick. About Little Big Horn, of course. I don’t know how definite this account of the battle is (I’ve read Son of the Morning Star, but too long ago), but wow, Philbrick has read everything about everything. My own two big takeaways: 1) had Reno been more aggressive and run through the village things might have been different, 2) an integral part of Custer’s strategy was to take hostages, as he had done at the Battle of the Washita, 1868. Philbrick points out that if Custer had moved away from the river and joined Keough on Calhoun Hill, then taking hostages would no longer have been an opinion. @Tom McAndrew you’d like this, I found the end notes to be as fascinating as the book itself.
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