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Recently Finished

Been reading books by Thomas W. Young.
In the middle of The Mullah's Storm.
Finished: Silent Enemy :star4:
Also reading The Renegades.
So far, I like this guy.
 
One Child's War by Hugh Hanafi Hayes :star3: Fictional story of how one family copes during the Blitz in London and as child evacuees.
 
A First-Rate Madness by Nassir Ghaemi :star5:

An interesting, and new to me take on the link between mental illnesses and leadership. Ghaemi explores many of the great leaders of out times explaining why he thinks they did or did not succeed in their endeavors.
Fascinating.

It's led me to a great bio of William Tecumseh Sherman (General) for the American Civil War. Butcher that he was, there were reasons. gak.
 
I am afraid to say anything about Sherman, down here in the South.

/looking both ways/ :whistling:
 
Peder said:
I am afraid to say anything about Sherman, down here in the South.

/looking both ways/ :whistling:
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Funny you should say......his name is synonymous (down here in the South) with, er a certain word that is the same as human (or animal come to think of it) excrement. :D

However. After reading Ghaemi's take on Sherman and his bi-polar disease, it made me want to look at Sherman in a rather different light. He was still a cold and calculating SOB. But. There were reasons. Makes fascinating reading.
 
Blood and thunder

The title of the book is the moniker used to describe the ' dime novels ' written about Kit Carson's adventures during the turbulent Indian Wars of the 1850's through the 1860's. Hampton Sides writes an epic account of what really happened in the Southwest. This non-fiction work is more than a story about Carson's life, it's also about America's first imperialistic strike westward led by our 11th President, James K. Polk. We kicked- out Mexico and settled California during his four year term. The guts of the book deals with what happened next... What to do about the colliding worlds of the indians and the white settlers moving west to occupy the new territories won from Mexico, especially the nomadic and fearsome Navajo tribe.:star5:
Book Reviews And Comments By Rick O
 
I recently finished these audiobooks:

Divergent by Veronica Roth :star3:

Blood of the Prodigal by P. L. Gaus :star4:

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston :star4:

Zero Regrets by Apolo Ono :star4:

Heft by Liz Moore :star4:
 
Karen Russell's Swamplandia! sputtered to life just as I was about to toss it aside permanently. It's still a poorly paced novel, occasionally overwritten, which doesn't quite manage to balance its two main storylines and could probably have used a last retrofit to set up some of the ideas it introduces at the end. But that said, when it does pick up the pace and heads out into the ancient swamps and minimum wage jobs of post-American dream Florida, there's something to it, and the Eugenides Light picks up a little King and Twain along the way. There are moments of absolute beauty and horror, the usual story of wise-beyond-their-years-or-so-they-think teenagers trying to keep their family together after an unthinkable tragedy veers effectfully back and forth between fairytale logic and brutal loss of innocence (including a really harrowing literal one). With alligators.

So yeah, one of those novels that suffer more from wanting to do what it doesn't quite manage than from settling for what it's able to do. Which I'll always admire, even if the end result is just OK.

:star3:
 
Ghost In The Wires by Kevin Mitnick was one of the best Autobiography's I have ever read it's a bit techie but if the shoe fits wear it.
 
helix2301 said:
Ghost In The Wires by Kevin Mitnick was one of the best Autobiography's I have ever read it's a bit techie but if the shoe fits wear it.
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I had the impression from the opening pages that the self-bragging was spread on rather thick, so the book is now on my shelf waiting for another day when my stomach can stand it. Did it come down more to earth later on, or was it still about Kevin the Brilliant versus the dummies all the way through?
 
just finished All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, not something I would have picked up, but it was for a book club. would give it about a 3.... rather sad, depressing, at times hard to follow, and at the end you think, "what was the point?" guess the author would say if I didn't get it, shows he wasn't talking to me. but, sometimes the descriptions were haunting and you never forgot the characters, two of the reasons I still rate it a 3. I know some people devour anything by this author.
 
Peder said:
I had the impression from the opening pages that the self-bragging was spread on rather thick, so the book is now on my shelf waiting for another day when my stomach can stand it. Did it come down more to earth later on, or was it still about Kevin the Brilliant versus the dummies all the way through?
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I guess I did not see it that way. The one issue I had with the book is I tried to read both of his other books Art Of Deception and Art of Intrusion. Both I ended up doing the same thing you did and making them book shelf ornaments. They were basically the same stories rewritten. I can understand thy people would consider it self-bragging. I am reading Steve Jobs book right now and I am getting the same impression I have put it down twice.
 
Peder said:
I had the impression from the opening pages that the self-bragging was spread on rather thick, so the book is now on my shelf waiting for another day when my stomach can stand it. Did it come down more to earth later on, or was it still about Kevin the Brilliant versus the dummies all the way through?
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To be honest, that is pretty much how it was and is for the most part.

I enjoyed it.
 
sparkchaser said:
To be honest, that is pretty much how it was and is for the most part.

I enjoyed it.
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Thanks, Sparky,

It sounds like I really would learn a lot about safe security practices from the book. And now, forewarned and forearmed, I will approach cautiously. :lol:
 
MaryJo Dawson said:
just finished All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, not something I would have picked up, but it was for a book club. would give it about a 3.... rather sad, depressing, at times hard to follow, and at the end you think, "what was the point?" guess the author would say if I didn't get it, shows he wasn't talking to me. but, sometimes the descriptions were haunting and you never forgot the characters, two of the reasons I still rate it a 3. I know some people devour anything by this author.
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The only McCarthy I've read so far is The Road, and I have to say I devoured it, and certainly enjoyed it. If "enjoyment" is the right term. :)
I've not tried the trilogy yet, of which All the Pretty Horses is a part, but have tried at least twice to read Blood Meridian without success. Just too.....I don't know, intense is what comes to mind, but that isn't all of it. I found it unrelentingly brutal is the best way I can put it.

I have to start the trilogy one of these days, the books are staring at me reproachfully as I type. heh
 
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