What Are You Reading During Your Staying-at-Home?????

[+ Lucky]

Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln by Edward Achorn

 

What It's Like to Be a Bird: From Flying to Nesting, Eating to Singing--What Birds Are Doing, and Why (Sibley Guides) by David Allen Sibley

 

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World by Tim Marshall

 

Kim by Rudyard Kipling. I was made to read this short novel in 5th grade but had no clue what it was all about. Recently I bought the Modern Library edition on Ebay and, with the help of the Internet (and Alexa), I was able to get through it, fulfilling a promise to myself 60 years ago that some day I would reread it and figure out what the hell it was all about.

So what's it about? I am giving Dick and Jane another read as well.

[JayCeeKy]

So what's it about? I am giving Dick and Jane another read as well.

It's about an Asian dictator who falls in love with an ignorant foreigner, writes him love letters, but ultimately decides to follow his dream of becoming a rocket scientist.

[JustScott]

 

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World by Tim Marshall

 

 

I’ve been very curious about Prisoners of Geography. How’d you like it?

[+ Charlie]

I finally started on President McKinley by Robert Merry, an excellent biography. I realized I knew very little about McKinley, who turns out to be a much more interesting character than I was aware. He was about as different a personality from Donald Trump as any Republican President could be.

Edited June 27, 2020 by Charlie

[BgMstr4u]

I just finished the new biography: Chaucer: A European Life by Marion Turner. She approaches the Canterbury Tales and other things he wrote using what is known about Chaucer's life (c. 1340-1400) -- quite a lot, since he was a fairly important and successful administrator/bureaucrat, mostly in the reign of Richard II. Her method is to expand every possible contact the records provide (and I mean every last one!) and then fill in the background. I started it some weeks ago, got weary in the middle, then picked it up again and finished it. If you have an interest in medieval England and its culture and literature (admittedly a somewhat specialized interest), a wonderful book.

 

One thing I knew but whose importance had not been sufficiently impressed on me - was that his son, Thomas Chaucer, was perhaps the leading politician of the Commons in the first third of the fifteenth century: three times Speaker, a much more important office then than now, sort of a Prime Minister avant la lettre. Geoffrey built a solid platform.

Edited June 21, 2020 by BgMstr4u

[JayCeeKy]

I’ve been very curious about Prisoners of Geography. How’d you like it?

I recommend - written in simple language and easy to get through. Describes how geography often determines the history of countries. Some of his arguments seem a bit oversimplified, and the maps could be more detailed, but an interesting book nonetheless.

[+ g56whiz]

I just finished the new biography: Chaucer: A European Life by Marion Turner. She approaches the Canterbury Tales and other things he wrote using what is known about Chaucer's life (c. 1340-1400) -- quite a lot, since he was a fairly important and successful administrator/bureaucrat, mostly in the reign of Richard II. Her method is to expand every possible contact the records provide (and I mean every last one!) and then fill in the background. I started it some weeks ago, got weary in the middle, then picked it up again and finished it. If you have an interest in medieval England and its culture and literature (admittedly a somewhat specialized interest), a wonderful book.

 

One thing I knew but whose importance had not been sufficiently impressed on me - was that his son, Thomas Chaucer, was perhaps the leading politician of the Commons, three times Speaker, a much more important office then than now, sort of a Prime Minister avant la lettre, in the first third of the fifteenth century. Geoffrey built a solid platform.

Alison Weir has a wonderful biography out on Katherine Swynford, mistress then third wife of John of Gaunt. Mistress of Monarchy. She was also Phillipa Chaucer’s sister and the connection through which Chaucer’s prominence rose. I commend it to you. Meanwhile I’ll be looking for Turner’s bio of Chaucer. Thnx @BgMstr4u .

[BgMstr4u]

Katherine Swynford bore children to John of Gaunt (son of Edward III and uncle to Richard II) before they were married, who were later legitimized by Richard II. It was through Katharine and Gaunt's descendant, Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother, that he claimed right of inheritance to the throne. So the Chaucer connection lived on in Tudor times. It was in the reign of Mary I, a Tudor, that Chaucer's tomb in Westminster Abbey was built.

[+ poolboy48220]

Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln by Edward Achorn

 

What It's Like to Be a Bird: From Flying to Nesting, Eating to Singing--What Birds Are Doing, and Why (Sibley Guides) by David Allen Sibley

The first one made me think of "Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer", we read it for book club. I had no idea that John Wilkes Booth wasn't captured immediately. Very good book. https://www.amazon.com/Manhunt-12-Day-Chase-Lincolns-Killer/dp/0060518502

 

The second made me laugh, there's a bit at the end of one of the Hitchhiker's Guide books, after Arthur Dent has learned to fly. He learned to understand what birds were saying and found it pretty boring.

He learnt to communicate with birds and discovered that their conversation was fantastically boring. It was all to do with wind speed, wing spans, power-to-weight ratios and a fair bit about berries. Unfortunately, he discovered, once you have learnt birdspeak you quickly come to realize that the air is full of it the whole time, just inane bird chatter. There is no getting away from it.

[JayCeeKy]

He learned to understand what birds were saying and found it pretty boring.

Bird brains?

[+ Just Sayin]

Swimming in the Dark by the Polish author Tomasz Jedrowski

 

The Eternal Party by Kristina Hagman

 

She is Larry Hagman:s. daughter. Her mom outlived Larry, but was disabled with Alzheimer's, which had a major impact on their family. Of course.

 

I read "Swimming in the Dark" this weekend; I cannot remember when I have been so moved by an author's writing; Jedrowski's Ludwik writes a letter to his former lover Janusz; politics does go to the heart, and the political differences between the lovers spells doom for the relationship.

[+ E.T.Bass]

Flower of Iowa is now in print. Has been a top ranked ebook gaining praise from Stephen Fry on Twitter. I ordered a copy and it has arrived! So reading it again.

 

https://www.companyofmen.org/threads/why-no-literature-section-of-comedy-tragedy.147346/post-1731579

In Flanders fields the poppies blow...

 

Edited June 27, 2020 by E.T.Bass

[jayjaycali]

Lovecraft Country. Fun read.

[curiousbynature12]

Wild Seed by Octavia Butler

 

The Rook by Daniel O'Malley

 

Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine by Gary Paul Nabhan

 

Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching by Paula J. Giddings

[SirBillybob]

Reading @David-SF book &

Margaret Atwood’s sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale” called “The Testaments”

Just finished The Testaments. I was born a few miles from Cobalt, Ontario where Atwood’s fictional symposium moderator is situated as a university professor.

 

Season 4 of THT had to close up shop early in production (Toronto?). There had been tentative plans to develop The Testaments.

[James Hoode]

Holly shit this is good, and relevant, and so pornyyyy

Typhoid Mary, Poz McBeefy

[The_Impeccable_G]

I am reading Sapiens-A Brief History of Humankind.

[handiacefailure]

Is anyone reading Mary Trumps book?

[thickornotatall]

Is anyone reading Mary Trumps book?

I have it...next in line to read...after The Plot Against America...

[Rodrigo Suarez]

My cat recommends the Bible to all of you. ?

 

[MEDIA=imgur]TOT0Byh[/MEDIA]

[BSR]

Conde Nast, The Man & His Empire.

 

Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?

 

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote (reread)

 

Steve Jobs, A Biography (reread)

I've read In Cold Blood twice, once in my teens and again ~15 years ago. I'm sure I'll re-read it at least one more time.

 

I just finished Espía de Dios (God's Spy) by Juan Gómez Jurado, the pulpiest pulp fiction I've ever read. It's about a serial killer within the Vatican who is killing off cardinals who are possible papal successors to Pope John Paul II. Wow, what a damn page-turner! I have to applaud the author for his research. While the story is fiction, the author definitely has a lot of details down pat about the Catholic Church and the Vatican in particular. And the fictitious elements are so much damn fun, like the Holy Alliance (basically a secret Vatican version of the CIA, covertly shaping religion & politics since the 1500s) and the Hand of St. Michael (an elite corp of Jason Bournes within the Holly Alliance).

 

I just started La Peregrina (The Pilgrim), a story (fiction) about the trials & adventures that established the origins of the Catholic pilgrimage, el Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James). Even though I am about as lapsed a Catholic as you'll ever meet, I do plan on making my own pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela one day. As a Filipino, I acknowledge that our lives & culture would be very different if Spain and by extension the Philippines had not been catholicized.

[Bargara Leatherboy]

My cat recommends the Bible to all of you. ?

 

[MEDIA=imgur]TOT0Byh[/MEDIA]

My cat ripped up the Bible and used it to lee on.

I wasN’t one bit distressed

[+ g56whiz]

Conde Nast, The Man & His Empire.

 

Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?

 

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote (reread)

 

Steve Jobs, A Biography (reread)

I first read In Cold Blood serialized in The New Yorker in the fall of 1965. Couldn’t wait for the next episode. One summer Saturday morning almost 20 years later I boarded a commuter train to Stamford CT on the way to a weekend in Roxbury CT. While waiting for the train to depart Grand Central, detected a unique voice in the front of the car, vaguely familiar, amid a gaggle of apparent fans. Sure enough: it was Truman Capote.

[+ Just Sayin]

I just finished reading "Tail in Two Cities" by David Gilmore: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08CWKKDXP/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

 

David is a friend of mine who writes about his life as a young gay man in the 80s New York and then in San Francisco in the 90s; David's humanity is evident in his writing; it's a good read.

[sydneyboy]

I have just ordered online Oscar A Life by Matthew Sturgiss. It has received excellent reviews. Many of the reviewers have started their reviews with is there anything new to say about Oscar Wilde? The answer their own question is yes and regard this as the best so far. I choose my words carefully because despite having his life being racked over he never fails to surprise scholars and no doubt there will be a future biography with new surprises. This latest biography will occupy me for a few days on arrival.

Edited October 20, 2020 by sydneyboy