Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Just a few bad apples.

This is all too absurd to be reality, right?

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

This fight is for everything.

‘Forty-two’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

I really should read my own blog.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

We still have time to mess this up!

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

I can’t take this shit today. I just can’t.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Good luck with your asparagus.

The willow is too close to the house.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Book Recommendations (and Open Thread)

Book Recommendations (and Open Thread)

by | 155 Comments

This post is in: ,

First, here’s another little video from my cousin in Australia.

We had a request last night for a Book Recommendations post, so have at it.

Open Thread also, since it’s been hours.

Update:  It occurs to me that it might be helpful if you include the genre of the books you are recommending in the comments.

Update #2:  Suggestions brought up from the comments

On-line bookstores to support with book purchases, if you plan to be making any:

Just a reminder that Amazon has more than enough money, but the continued existence of Portland’s beloved Powell’s Books is threatened, and you can help save them by ordering through their excellent web site.

https://www.powells.com/

Or if you’re in the SF Bay area, you can help save Menlo Park’s superb Kepler’s Books

https://www.keplers.com/

A reminder that Bookshop.org might be a place to spend a dollar or two.

My neighborhood Bookstore will ship books.

Added on 4/17:

Giving you three bookshops, while noting there’s lots more in greater Boston area. These are just my 3 picks.

Papercuts in JP just moved before C-19 so if you’re in the Boston area they could use the help. Their shop website is https://bookshop.org/shop/papercuts

Also, Brookline Booksmith https://www.brooklinebooksmith.com/ is a great independent bookstore with a great bargain section & used book basement . (They do a lot of programming, signings etc, including using the Coolidge Corner Theater across the street). FYI They’re also doing virtual events now!

Harvard Bookstore In Cambridge has a similar setup with regular events & bargains & used & they’re also doing virtual events now too http://www.harvard.com/

Please do add Mysterious Galaxy to your Indie bookstore list. They’re doing a lot of virtual events it seems too, and as with their in RL events, they feature a lot of new cool authors in both mysteries and sf/f. And yeah, of course, they’ve fairly recently moved from their longtime location.

Updated on 4/18:

Two more bookstores

Still North https://www.stillnorthbooks.com in Hanover, NH

Book Passage https://www.bookpassage.com in San Francisco

wordbookstores.com – in Jersey City (also Brooklyn)

http://www.wordsbookstore.com/ – In Maplewood

https://www.montclairbookcenter.com/ – If you miss Leary’s, and the Strand is too crowded…

Still more independent bookstore recommendations:

Bookstores:

I see that Harvard Books in Cambridge has been mentioned. Not to be confused with the ‘official’ university bookstore, the Harvard Cooperative, now run by Barnes & Noble. A moment of silence, please, for the independent Coop (rhymes with loop) of my childhood, as well as the late and very lamented brick & mortar Schoenhof’s Foreign Books (web presence just isn’t the same…), along with the 24 hour Brattle Books, long gone except for fond memories of being judged old enough to tag along with my parents after my younger brother went to bed.

Other good options, all doing phone/mail orders as far as I know:

The Tribune, Norway, Maine

Left Bank Books, Belfast, Maine

Both of these are small town [Norway pop. 4500, Belfast 6600] book stores that ~ in addition to being great indie book shops ~ provide excellent support to the local libraries and other cultural institutions [The Tribune, for example, sells tickets for local theater companies and events at the historical society with no service fee].

Longfellow Books, Portland ME

Talking Leaves, Buffalo NY

And, finally (yeah, librarian me has opinions on good bookstores…. ), in Chicago, 57th Street Books/Seminary Co-op Bookstore.

 

Reader Interactions

155Comments

  2. 2.

    BGinCHI

    I was gonna do a Sunday thread on Native American writers (recent stuff), and may do, but I’ll just drop a novel here that I taught in February that’s absolutely fabulous, and moving, and smart:

    There There, by Tommy Orange.

    I can’t say enough good things about this book.

  4. 4.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    open thread?

    Laura Ingraha @IngrahamAngle · 11h
    At some point, the president is going to have to look at Drs. Fauci and Birx and say, we’re opening on May 1. Give me your best guidance on protocols, but we cannot deny our people their basic freedoms any longer.

    Ben Smith @benyt 1h
    Some of Ingraham’s New York team are now being quarantined for #COVID19 , two sources tell me. Latest instance of Fox and Murdochs saying one thing, doing another.

  6. 6.

    Tim

    If you want a twisty mystery-thriller with bonus class commentary, I highly recommend ”Gentlemen and Players” by Joanne Harris, who also wrote the VERY different Chocolat.

    If you want a good autobiography, which is also an examination of human rights cases involving governments, check out ‘The Justice Game’ by Geoffrey Robertson.

    If you want something Lovecraftian, and enjoy terrifying graphic novels, check out Providence by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows

  7. 7.

    Dog Dawg Damn

    Love this thread Idea.

    My recommendation is Days Without End, one of the best westerns ever written and an amazing queer love story.

    Also, and update.  Asked you all a few weeks ago about bugging out.

    Given that my work doesn’t expect this to end until September at earliest (and they did the epidemiological modeling for city of LA), we decided to leave California.  We bought a travel trailer and truck and packed up and are renting a very nice pad on the back of some property in Taos NM.  We did the entire move with very little (near zero) contact and most people were willing to work with us given that restriction.  Moving it across the country without access to RV parks or Rest stops was a challenge and we slept one night in a busy Walmart parking lot in Arizona, but it’s been 9 days since we left, and feel much better.

    Much closer to my family in Texas too, so that’s a plus.

  8. 8.

    chris

    I may have put this in an earlier book thread but I’m still thinking about Tropic of Kansas by Christopher Brown. Timely near-future American SF.

  9. 9.

    rivers

    Kavalier and Clay – by Michael Chabon (  incredibly rich, entertaining and moving.)

    Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens (one of my favorite Dickens’ novels – contains a very bleak picture of the U.S. which Dickens visited)

  11. 11.

    Dog Dawg Damn

    @BGinCHI: I would love a thread on this.  I’ve read There, There and enjoyed it a lot.  I devoured “Empire Of the Summer Moon”, a nonfiction work about Quanah Parker and the Comanche.  Was outstanding.

  12. 12.

    WaterGirl

    @chris: This thread is part of No Cabin Fever For Us! so it will be accessible in the sidebar as a resource, long after it disappears from the front page.

    So even if you’ve suggested it before in some other book thread, it’s great to have all those suggestions here, as well.

  13. 13.

    CaseyL

    Happy to participate!

    First a grateful shoutout to Seattle’s Public Libraries, for putting the new stuff on line as well as the old stuff.

    Thanks to that, I have just finished LeCarre’s latest, “Running Agents in the Field.”  Crackling, precise, vintage LeCarre, with a black comedy undercurrent similar to “A Perfect Spy.”

  14. 14.

    Ken

    Does working my way through various authors on Wikisource count? (O. Henry, Robert E. Howard, M.R. James, Seabury Quinn, ….)

  16. 16.

    WaterGirl

    It occurs to me that it might be helpful if you include the genre of the books you are recommending.  I’ll add that suggestion up top, as well.

  17. 17.

    zhena gogolia

    Well, this is no hot-off-the-presses tip, but we just read Brideshead Revisited together (and watched the miniseries too), and it is really great.

  18. 18.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @CaseyL:  LeCarre’s recent The Pigeon Tunnel (autobiographical essays) and A Legacy of Spies (featuring an elderly Peter Guillam) are good as well.

  20. 20.

    Luciamia

    In that video,  love that grizzled old dude, on the right of the porch, starting to get into it.😄

  21. 21.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @zhena gogolia: I still find it amusing that the actress who played Cordelia (who I did not like) ended up playing Rose’s mother in Downton Abbey (who I also didn’t like).

  23. 23.

    WaterGirl

    @Luciamia: I watched the video a few days ago and enjoyed it, but now I will watch again to see the grizzled old dude

    edit: that part is fun!

    Watching this video reminds me of how light on his feet John Belushi was, in spite of his girth.  Same with James Cordon.  I love watching people who have that ease and looseness.

  25. 25.

    Luciamia

    BBC4 radio has been running AS Byatt’s The Frederica Quartet. Wish my online library caried it.

  27. 27.

    BGinCHI

    @danielx: I read the first part of this and holy shit.

    Talk about stuff most people aren’t aware of in terms of the macabre, brutal history of the 20th C.

  31. 31.

    dexwood

    @CaseyL: Add my voice to the shout out for all libraries, librarians, and online services from them. I can’t say this is a recommendation, but I’ll begin Jenny Offill’s Weather later tonight on a tablet. Thanks, local library, but, man, how I miss my weekly visits.

  34. 34.

    Habeas Corpus

    A really good reflection on a life lived, and fishing, I highly recommend “The Longest Silence” by Thomas McGuane.

  36. 36.

    zhena gogolia

    I really enjoyed Tessa Hadley, Late in the Day.

    Now I’m reading Sense and Sensibility before bed because it helps me sleep. I’m going to do all the Jane Austens and then start on Charlotte Bronte and hope the pandemic ends before I get to the end of Bronte. If not I’ll start on G. Eliot.

  37. 37.

    Luciamia

    E.F. Bensons Mapp & Lucia books.

    Jerome K. Jerome’s ”Three Men in a Boat.’

    Endless delight.

  38. 38.

    Rand Careaga

    I’m presently reading The Mirror and the Light, the concluding volume of Hillary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy (preceded by Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies). It is, like the first two books, dazzlingly well-written, but the pace is statelier and the prose denser, so at the rate I’m going, this will be the undertaking of, I imagine, a week or ten days. But I recommend the trilogy unreservedly.

  39. 39.

    CaseyL

    More recs:  Mary Kowal Robinette’s alt.history “Lady Astronaut” science fiction series:  “Prequel” novelette, We Interrupt This Broadcast, first book The Calculating Stars, then another novelette Articulated Restraint, then (novel) The Fated Sky.  Two more are projected in the series, The Relentless Moon (2020) and The Derivative Base (2022).

    Basic background:  Earth is hit by a massive asteroid in 1952, and to escape the environmental consequences or else become extinct, humanity has to get off the planet as fast as it can.

    PS: The prequel novelette actually reads better if you don’t read it first; it’s actually set long after the events in the books and contains many spoilers.

  41. 41.

    p.a.

    Trouble Boys.  The true story of The Replacements.

    With Bold Knife and Fork.  I don’t consider this (merely) a cookbook

    Virtue Under Fire.  a history of sex and sex roles in WW2

  45. 45.

    Bruuuuce

    An older book, but one I never tire of rereading: Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart. Accurately bills itself as a (fantasy) novel of a China that never was, but should have been. The first sequel, The Story of the Stone, is good, but not transcendent. The second sequel, Eight Skilled Gentlemen, is decent, but not a reread.

  51. 51.

    mrmoshpotato

    Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow by Dee Brown

    A LOT of fuckery went into building the transcontinental railroad.

  52. 52.

    joel hanes

    Fifth Business, Davies
    The Dispossessed, LeGuin
    A Journal Of The Plague Year, DeFoe
    We Die Alone, Howarth
    Canoeing With The Cree, Sevareid
    A Sand County Almanac, Leopold
    Earth Abides, Stewart
    A Canticle For Liebowitz, Miller
    Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, Brown
    The Control Of Nature or Conversations With The Archdruid, McPhee
    The Telling, LeGuin
    Angle Of Repose, Stegner
    Roughing It, Twain
    Leaf By Niggle and Farmer Giles Of Ham, Tolkein
    Murder Must Advertise, Sayers
    I Capture The Castle, Smith
    We Have Always Lived In The Castle, Jackson
    One Man’s Meat and First Tree From The Corner, E.B. White
    The Sword In The Stone, T.H. White
    Looking Back, Russell Baker
    Gain, Richard Powers
    Never Cry Wolf, Mowatt
    The Long Walk, Rawicz (some confabulation, I think)
    My Antonia, Cather

    If you like Jane Austen: Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell

    If you like O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin books, but haven’t yet read this: Two Years Before The Mast, Dana

    To read to kids elementary school kids: The Wheel On The School, DeJong

  56. 56.

    joel hanes

     

    Just a reminder that Amazon has more than enough money, but the continued existence of Portland’s beloved Powell’s Books is threatened, and you can help save them by ordering through their excellent web site.

    https://www.powells.com/

     

    Or if you’re in the SF Bay area, you can help save Menlo Park’s superb Kepler’s Books

    https://www.keplers.com/

  57. 57.

    chris

    @WaterGirl: Great, thanks. I’ll add William Gibson’s Agency to the list. He’s a very slow writer, he’s 70, and I’m praying to… something that he can finish the next book.

  59. 59.

    Gin & Tonic

    I thoroughly enjoyed, and have recommended, Laurent Binet’s The Seventh Function of Language. Fiction, maybe described as a screwball thriller about semiotics. Last non-fiction I read was Monk, a biography by Robin Kelley. Exhaustively researched, if maybe a bit too encyclopedic, but if you’re interested in the history of be-bop, it’s all there. Now reading David Farrier’s Footprints, a thoughtful and thought-provoking book about what traces our current civilization will leave a million or more years from now.

  60. 60.

    CaseyL

    Open thread/OT:  I am a non-religious Jew.  Emphasis on the “non-religious” part.  I mean, I didn’t even realize tonight was Passover.

    But for some reason, reading all the lovely Passover greetings on Twitter about how this night really is different this year, with families of necessity “Seder-ing” remotely, is making me choke up.

    Chag sameach, everyone!

  61. 61.

    Sab

    So my computer was a laptop I never updated from windows 7. Now I need one with Windows 10 that I will only use to read my e-mail and contact government agencies. Keeping everything else offline on the old computer. Also needs to print occassionally. Any suggestions as to what i should be looking at or for?

  62. 62.

    joel hanes

    @WaterGirl:

    Habit from the ASCII-only days of Usenet, when that was the only available way to do underlining.

    It was the standard on rec.arts.books.

    Also, as a programmer, I was used to things like

    #define  _SONA_CACHE_NUMBER_OF_DEPENDENCIES_  4

    so typing and reading underbars seems very easy to me.

    I don’t really understand the objection, but change them if you like.  If I had been willing to make the effort to do HTML, I’d have put all the titles in italics.

  64. 64.

    Scout211

    The Book a Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

    The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

  65. 65.

    joel hanes

    @CaseyL:

    A night to spend sheltering in place from a pandemic, on which one relates ancient tales of sheltering in place from a pandemic.

    To life!

  67. 67.

    CaseyL

    @Sab: Wasn’t there a thread recently where people were singing the praises of Chromebooks?  They’re apparently very cheap and very good, as long as you don’t need to load any software onto the device itself (ie, do everything online).

  68. 68.

    WaterGirl

    @joel hanes:

    I don’t really understand the objection, but change them if you like.  If I had been willing to make the effort to do HTML, I’d have put all the titles in italics.

    It’s not that I objected to them, but it definitely made my eyes go wonky. Thanks for being a good sport.  It just took me a minute with search/replace in Word.

  70. 70.

    Cheryl Rofer

    When The Doves Disappeared, by Sofi Oksanen

    Novel about the German takeover of Estonia in World War II. Many of the characters will be familiar from today’s news.

  72. 72.

    Auntie Anne

    I’ve been in the mood for some mysteries, especially those that take me into another place and time.
    Tessa Arlen wrote a series set in Edwardian England that’s good.  Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman is the first of the series of four books about a Lady and her housekeeper who sleuth together.  There’s an interesting progression in the books about how life and classes change pre- to post- WWI.

    I.J. Parker has a great series set in 14th century Japan.  Sugawara Akitada is a government official who gets caught up in mysteries.  There’s an emotional depth to him that isn’t always present in historical mysteries.  

    And in the light, non-mystery vein, my Book Club read Elizabeth Berg’s The Story of Arthur Truluv.  Charming and light.  

    We also read Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Figures.  I saw the movie when it was first released, and Katherine Johnson’s death made me determined to read the book. 

    Also, because Kindle books can be expensive, I signed up for emails from The Fussy Librarian and get daily offers based on my reading preferences.  Bookbub does the same.  And of course, my library offers free ebooks as well.

  73. 73.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Sab: [on the assumption that you don’t need portability, which  I infer from your use-description] might be worth looking into these cheap Intel NUC machines.  I don’t know if you can buy windows license to go with, but I’d guess you can.  I got a core i5 box, added some memory and SSD I had lying around (60G, old) and was up-and-running.   There are some models that are pricey, but the low-end models are cheeeep.

    I’ve read good tihngs about Lenovo ThinkStation, which I’m guessing will come with Windows.  Again, cheeep.

  75. 75.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @BGinCHI: My recommendation of When the Doves Disappeared ties in with this.

    A few years before Snyder wrote Bloodlands, I learned about that history from the Estonians I was working with to clean up a former Soviet uranium-processing site. Having been brought up on histories of the Western Front in WWII, I was horrified. Even now brings tears to my eyes to think about it and how I felt my ignorance at what had been all too terribly real for my friends.

    I didn’t read Bloodlands. Figured I didn’t need to and wouldn’t be able to bear it.

  76. 76.

    Jeffro

    Last nice escapist fun fiction I read was How To Stop Time, by Matt Haig.  I have his The Humans in my to-read pile, too.

    More importantly, even with all this time on our hands and so many good books around, why can’t I get my 14- and 18-year-olds to take a gander at Dune, Raise the Titanic, or the Sandman series?  Is it just that it’s ‘Dad’ pushing these awesomely cool reads?

    I think my daughter might – MIGHT – pick up The Shining if I shut up long enough.  Maybe.

  77. 77.

    Sab

    @CaseyL: Chrome doesn’t work for Social Security contacts. They kind of want Internet Explorer for security reasons. Something about encryption.

    Otherwise that’s what I want: don’t load anything. Just read and talk.

    I am two months behind in paying taxes because these brilliant minds keep making us make permanent elections in December when we are doing other stuff.

  87. 87.

    Sab

    @Chetan Murthy: I am a luddite. I have heard it’s updates can phuck up all my passwords etc. I don’t have the energy for that right now. So I want to protect the old computer and get something simple for the online stuff I have to do that I used to be able to do with paper forms.

  91. 91.

    Tehanu

    @Bruuuuce:  Bridge of Birds is terrific. You should try Michael Swanwick’s Chasing the Phoenix, another fantasy China.  Me, I’m starting another re-read of Daniel Abraham’s great Long Price Quartet:  A Shadow in Summer, A Betrayal in Winter, An Autumn War, and The Price of Spring.

  92. 92.

    Ken

    @Luciamia: Jerome K. Jerome’s ”Three Men in a Boat.’

    And its sequel (in spirit), Connie Willis’ To Say Nothing of the Dog.

    (Which I’ve described to people as a science-fiction Victorian romantic comedy-of-manners mystery novel with strong religious overtones.)

  93. 93.

    Lyrebird

    @joel hanes: Haven’t read The Long Walk, but loved Never Cry Wolf as a kid and was quite sad to hear that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farley_Mowat#Criticism

    …some people suggest plenty of fiction mixed in with Mowat’s writing.

    Also, shout out from another underscore user, at least when stuck with ASCII, but I’ll leave them off for our OP.

    Susan Cooper’s Dawn of Fear (kid’s book about WWII in the UK) might be a relevant read these days, even if it’s not my favorite book of hers.

    Mistress Masham’s Repose by TH White is fantastic, especially if you liked The Wolves of Willoughby Chase when you were younger.

    I am most of the way through Tui Sutherland’s dragon series, I like some better than others… the first book is a bit gory, but it did get me to read the second.

  94. 94.

    Tim Wayne

    I just finished J. Michael Straczynski’s autobiography, Becoming Superman. It was a lot better than I expected. He has a gripping life story. If you’re a fan of Babylon 5 or his other work, it’s worth a read.

    I did the Audible version, narrated by Peter Jurasik, who played Londo Mollari on B5. He’s great.

  95. 95.

    ziggy

    If you just can’t get enough of disease, I just finished The Pandemic Century by Honigsbaum, which was a well written round-up. Read The Great Influenza by Barry not too long ago and that is also quite good. I”d like to read it again with the new perspective.

    Because of recommendations after BGinCHI’s movie The King, I read The Plantagenets by Dan Jones, very good but a long book.

    If anyone has recommendations for good non-fiction, without a lot of warry stuff, I’m all eyes (I’m a voracious reader), but it is frustrating that the local library system is closed.

  97. 97.

    Lyrebird

    @Ken: And its sequel (in spirit), Connie Willis’ To Say Nothing of the Dog.

    Cool, a Connie Willis book I haven’t read yet!  Her Doomsday Book is on my GOAT list.

  98. 98.

    patroclus

    Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne.  It’s about the rise and fall of the Comanche empire and the story of Quanah Parker, whose mother, Cynthia Anne, was taken by the Comanche (and was essentially the inspiration for the movie The Searchers).  It’s completely non-fiction but is as riveting as any novel and tells the story of an empire in America that virtually no one knows about.  Highly recommended – you won’t regret it!

    (Meanwhile I’m ordering When the Doves Disappeared).

  101. 101.

    jackmac

    Really, really need light, entertaining reading during these awful days so I’m alternating this month by revisiting Carl Hiaasen and Terry Pratchett books. Recently finished Hiaasen’s  Razor Girl. Now reading Pratchett’s Carpe Jugulum. Next up: Hiaasen’s Star Island and then a Pratchett to be named.  There’s also an unread Phillip Kerr book  currently on my nightstand (Prussian Blue, the adventures of PI Bernie Gunther, set in 1956) and Sara Paretsky’s Shell Game (from 2018). Being a Chicagoan, I’m a big fan of Paretsky’s series (but always cringe when her character, V.I. Warshawski, gets beaten up).  Then it might be time to dip back into the classic Dortmunder comic crime novels by the late Donald Westlake. The White Sox fan in me always admired two-time owner Bill Veeck, but never read his autobiography. Absent a baseball season, Veeck and in Wreck (from 1962) will have to suffice.

  102. 102.

    CaseyL

    Here is an absolutely madcap science fiction time travel book that I adored with all of my heart.  It’s a wild roller coaster of a read, jumping forwards and backwards and sideways in time:  The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland.

  103. 103.

    NotMax

    All categories of books? Mind’s imaginary radiator boils over. Norman, coordinate.

    Could probably continue for days with titles and authors (but shan’t). Knowing it’s leaving out too may which deserve prominent mention, a truncated and quickly cobbled together list weighted to tomes from (chosen arbitrarily) pre-2000, covering multiple genres, with tone and topic running the gamut from serious to speculative to humorous, in no particular order.

    “Undaunted Courage” by Stephen Ambrose
    “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe
    “Cane” by Jean Toomer
    “Blue Highways” by William Least Heat-Moon
    “Montcalm and Wolfe” by Francis Parkman
    “An American Tragedy” by Theodore Dreiser
    “The Glass Bead Game” by Herman Hesse
    “A Hazard of New Fortunes” by William Dean Howells
    “Dance of the Tiger” by Bjorn Kurtén
    “El Señor Presidente” by Miguel Asturias
    “Star Maker” by Olaf Stapledon
    “Sarum” by Ernest Rutherford
    “Arundel” by Kenneth Roberts
    “The Fatal Shore” by Robert Hughes
    “Baghdad Without a Map” by Tony Horwitz
    “Dhalgren” by Samuel Delany
    “One-Upmanship” by Stephen Potter
    “A Distant Mirror” by Barbara Tuchman
    “City” by Clifford Simak
    “All the Colors of Darkness” by Lloyd Biggle Jr.
    “The Death Ship” by B. Traven
    Ben Franklin’s autobiography, Ulysses Grant’s autobiography and the rarely mentioned autobiography of Andrew Johnson
    “The Sea Runners” by Ivan Doig
    “Titan” by John Varley
    “Tea With the Black Dragon” by R.A. MacAvoy
    “Peter the Great” by Robert Massie
    “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction ” by J.D. Salinger
    “Shadow of the Torturer” by Gene Wolfe
    “Kindred” by Octavia Butler

  104. 104.

    Sab

    @Sab: Most of what I do online is payroll for my dad’s private duty nurses in his nursong home. Three people. It is beyond simple. I have been doing payroll for forty years. But with payroll taxes in Ohio, everytime we get a new ( Republican) administration they reward their people by bringing in a new bunch of consultants to rework the website so stuff that used to take me fifteen minutes a quarter to prepare now takes me at least an hour to learn new software.

    I will be damned if I am going to pay some accounting firm or payroll firm $150+ to learn the new system on my dime. This stuff isn’t hard. The underlying accounting doesn’t change. It’s just the goddamned software that is new, doing the old stuff with (needlessly) new software.

  105. 105.

    Tim Wayne

    My favorite read of last year was Theory of Bastards by Audrey Schulman. To draw a several-circle Venn diagram, this book stands in the overlap of primatology, ethology, psychology, and sociology, has some mystery, some drama, some suspense, and takes place in a slipping-into-a-dystopian near-future.

  107. 107.

    CarolPW

    @NotMax: I’ve only read about a third of those, and of the ones I’ve read I heartily approve. And Tea With the Black Dragon is a lovely book.

  108. 108.

    Tom Levenson

    I just finished Underland by Robert MacFarlane, and it’s extraordinary, to the point that I’m probably going to do a weekend post on reading surprises centered on my experience of realizing I’d stumbled on what was—to me—a genuinely remarkable work.

    Also, if I may self-indulge: I’ve been told that my Hunt for Vulcan satisfies.

  109. 109.

    joel hanes

    @NotMax:

    Nice to see a mention of Clifford Simak, one of the most humane sf authors of his time.   I loved many of his books, particularly Way Station.

    In that same vein, the books by Edgar Pangborn, particularly Davy

    The Barbara Tuchman is particularly apt to this period in our history.   Unfortunately.

    I’ll add

    The Doomsday Book,  Willis

    Cordelia’s Honor and The Vor Game, Bujold

     

    Everyone should read

    “One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts”,  by Shirley Jackson, and here it is:

    https://www.northernhighlands.org/cms/lib/NJ01000179/Centricity/Domain/106/english9/One%20Ordinary%20Day%20with%20Peanuts.pdf

  110. 110.

    CCL

    @Tehanu:

    Another yes on Bridge of Birds.  One of my all time favorite books.  And also a second ditto on Cavalier and Clay.  I think it’s the best so far of Chabon’s works.

    Another

  111. 111.

    ziggy

    @NotMax: Can you please denote those which are fiction (or non-fiction)? I recognize some good ones, would like to check out the others.

  113. 113.

    frosty

    I’ve read a lot of books about codebreaking in WWII and just ran across one that went back to WWI and the start of cryptanalysis: “The Woman Who Smashed Codes”

    I’d never seen the story before because she was sworn to secrecy about her WWII work. She broke the rumrunners codes during Prohibition. The story touches on Enigma, Bletchly Park, Purple, etc. Really good. 

  114. 114.

    Tom Levenson

    @Tom Levenson: Another new to me writer: Charley Jane Anders. I flat out loved her All the Birds in the Sky and am now stuck in to The City in the Middle of the Night. Smart, beautifully imagined stuff that straddles science fiction and fantasy and that really works as literature of ideas.  The kick ass current occupant of that turf is, of course, N.K. Jemison. Begin with The Fifth Season. 

  115. 115.

    stinger

    @Auntie Anne:

    There’s an interesting progression in the books about how life and classes change pre- to post- WWI.

    Not a mystery, but the novel Flambards by KM Peyton covers the same period and centers on the clash between two brothers, one devoted to horses and the other to aeroplanes.

  117. 117.

    ThresherK

    Before my library closed for the duration I grabbed 1973 Rock at the Crossroads and have found it very good.

    Spousal Ms ThresherK, who was music-sentient then (I was not) also likes it.

  118. 118.

    frosty

    For fans of Alan Furst: other authors: Philip Kerr, John Lawton, David Dowling

    also, Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein, with a sequel, and The Huntress by Kate Quinn

  120. 120.

    HumboldtBlue

    Here’s the written word spoken.

    EyezenMedia, a dear friend with whom I have shared a lot of words.

    NEW AGE PROBLEMS — This may have been recorded last year but it was written back at the turn of the century.

    I know, I provided feedback for early versions.

    We once drove into the Malibu hills to attend a New Age crystal-chakra-moon-rock gathering. We had met folks online (AOL) and decided why the fuck not?

    They brought sage and rocks and lots of bracelets an’ shit.

    I brought beer.

  121. 121.

    frosty

    @Sab: I like my HP Pavilion x360. My second HP, I like the 11” size and it flips to resemble a tablet.

    I use it for email, MS Office, financial stuff, and reading ebooks.

  123. 123.

    Hungry Joe

    Third (fourth?) rec for “Empire of the Summer Moon,” “Three Men in a Boat,” and “To Say Nothing of the Dog.”

    A few of my GOAT: “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” (Shirley Jackson); “The Caine Mutiny” (Herman Wouk; yes, it holds up); “Catch-22” (Joseph Heller — I heard a rumor that not every human has read it, which is inexcusable); “Pride of Chanur” and its sequels (C.J. Cherryh — complex interlacing/overlapping ethnographies masquerading as razzle-dazzle, gung-ho, down-to-Tau-Ceti-IV science fiction); “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (Gabriel Garcia Marquez).

  124. 124.

    hitchhiker

    A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles. It’s literary fiction set in post-revolution Moscow as experienced by a count who spent decades under house arrest at a beautiful, prominent hotel. It’s just a delight to spend all those pages with this “former person,” and watch the world change from his narrow vantage point.

  125. 125.

    oatler.

    Project Gutenberg has a treasure of books that can be read for free, such as Dickens,Thomas Boswell, Max Beerbohm and George Meredith.

  126. 126.

    Anya

    I am currently reading The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson. I highly recommend it.

  128. 128.

    lgerard

    For history buffs Joseph Crespino’s Strom Thurmond’s America

    And the literati, anything by sadly forgotten Newburyport MA author JP Marquand, particularly The Late George Apley, Point of No Return, or HM Pulman Esq

  129. 129.

    debbie

    I’m not one for vampires or werewolves, but Glen Duncan wrote a trilogy (The Last Werewolf, Talulla Rising, and By Blood We Live) that I really enjoyed. I first heard about him on NPR when he was interviewed for the first book’s publication. He’s a Brit (Anglo-Indian), and he came across like a louche Tim Curry in the interview, so I had to read the book. All three books are really well written, the first being my favorite, and he’s written other supernatural-type books as well as a couple of thrillers under a pen name of Saul Black. I’m not a fan of thrillers, but they seemed pretty accessible.

  130. 130.

    cain

    Let’s see:

    Richie Ritch

    The Archie comcis

    Batman: Arkham Asylum

    Batman: Killing Joke

    Batman: Death of in the Family

    Batman: KnightFall

    Tad Williams: Otherlands

    Tad Williams: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn

  131. 131.

    frosty

    @Hungry Joe: My all-time favorite Cherryh is Merchanter’s Luck. A down at his heels star freighter owner cobbling together a living on both sides of the law. Also a love story!

  132. 132.

    Amir Khalid

    @cain:

    So Fox’s thing is not news but news entertainment. (ETA: Like WWE is not actual sports but sports entertainment.) Interesting, then, that when Fox sold the entertainment entertainment side to Mnemosyne’s Giant Evil employer, they kept the news entertainment bit.

  133. 133.

    NotMax

    @joel hanes

    Funny you should mention Davy. One of the titles I removed when the list as it was being composed grew too ponderous.

    @ziggy

    Gonna cop out and suggest Google be your friend in this instance. Sorry about that. No need to peek at all the titles that way today, the thread will remain available. Maybe two or three at a time as your schedule permits?

  138. 138.

    CaseyL

    @Tom Levenson: I loved it!  A very interesting example of people seeing what logical deducation insisted had to be there.  No one is “too smart” to be fooled by their own expectations.

    Also loved Newton and the Counterfeiter. I didn’t realize Newton formulated his theory of gravity while in plague lockdown.  It’s been amusing seeing that part of his life invoked so many times nowadays. (Have you read any of Stephenson Baroque Cycle?  Newton plays a fairly significant part in it.)

  140. 140.

    NotMax

    @ziggy

    Feel a little guilty about copping out as mentioned above and hope you understand. It’s one of those days I cannot quite seem to come awake. Not the least bit ill, just feel like a limp dishrag today and concentrating on putting that list together (which involved looking up a lot of author names I couldn’t readily come up with) took the bulk of the energy I could muster.

    Nap is in order, except not sleepy type tired, just lethargic and drained.

  141. 141.

    NotMax

    Always a straggler, ain’t there? Late to come to mind yet feel must mention “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” by Richard Feynman.

  142. 142.

    Chetan Murthy

    Pandemic nonfiction: _The Coming Plague_ by Laurie Garrett.  Old book (90s) but wow, prescient.

    And of course, gotta give a shout-out to _The Way We Live Now_ by Anthony Trollope.  Amazing, just amazing. He wrote a history of the runup to the Financial Crisis of 2008, except he wrote it in the 19th century.

  143. 143.

    lgerard

    @Anya:

     

    Excellent book

    Some chilling escape stories there

     

    Other recommendation

    Hellhound on His Trail, about the hunt for James Earl Ray after Martin Luther Kings assassination

  144. 144.

    ziggy

    @NotMax: No problem, I was hoping you could just beat the edit window and put an asterisk by them or something quite easily. I’ll have lots of time to look up titles! Get some rest.

  145. 145.

    syphonblue

    Oh hey I just did this for someone else, so I’ll just paste it here:

    Fantasy:
    Pretty much anything from Brandon Sanderson, especially the Mistborn series.
    The Broken Earth series by NK Jemisin

    Historical Fiction Fantasy:
    The Winternight Series by Katherine Arden
    The Daevabad Trilogy by SA Chakraborty
    Circe and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

    Sci-fi:
    Anything from Pierce Brown, John Scalzi
    Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
    The Ancillary series by Ann Leckie

    Anything by Neil Gaiman, most notably The Ocean at the End of the Lane, American Gods, and Anansi Boys

    Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

  146. 146.

    Rand Careaga

    @joel hanes:

    One Hundred Years of Solitude

    One of the best first sentences

    A few chums have been playing a game in which they recast famous first lines of literature in pandemic-appropriate terms. I contributed “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad from an appropriate distance of six feet away, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

     

    Also: second the Max Beerbohm recommendation. The essay to which you link is included in the NYRB edition of his selected  work, The Prince of Minor Writers.

  147. 147.

    Sally

    For light, quick and easy reading I’m going through the seven book Jackson Lamb thrillers by Mick Herron. I’m enjoying them.

    Another lighter read but also based in fact and so a bit more worrisome is The Spy and the Traitor by Ben MacIntyre. I happened to have Polish / English friends staying at the time I was reading this. It turned out they knew some of the real people and events in the book. Spooky!

    A “heavier” read but fascinating is The Sleepwalkers by Chris Hill.

    I’m planning to read the Wolf Hall trilogy  too.

    I haven’t read this thread so I hope I’m not repeating others’ recommendations.

  148. 148.

    James E Powell

    @Hungry Joe:

    One Hundred Years of Solitude – My favorite novel of all time.

    Catch-22 – My favorite novel by an American.

    I’ve read each one at least a dozen times, maybe more.

  149. 149.

    randal m sexton

    YAYYYY !! Keplers, been going there since the 70’s.   Also my friends bookstore –  https://bookshopbenicia.indielite.org/

    Buy books, so when I come over to your house, I can spy on what your read, and make ill-educated guesses about what kind of person you are.

  150. 150.

    Marcopolo

    Late to the thread but lots of stuff by Italo Calvino:  Cosmicomics; Invisible Cities; Adam, One Afternoon (a collection of three long stories: The Baron in the Trees, The Cloven Viscount, and the Non-Existent Knight); If on a winter’s night a traveler; Mr. Palomar.

    Short description of his work: Italian themed magical realism

    Also in the vein of magical realism, the granddaddy of the genre Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo.

  151. 151.

    Geminid

    Ken Follett wrote a sequel to Pillars of the Earth called World Without End. It takes place in 14th century England, and one of the plot lines is the struggle of the protagonists against the Black Death and it’s human and societal damage. When the plague comes around a second time they do better. Follett can write a good story.

  152. 152.

    Captain C

    I’m currently reading Big Hair and Plastic Grass:  a Funny Ride through Baseball and America in the ’70s by Dan Epstein.  Exactly what it says on the tin, with a chapter about each season in the decade and several on various topics (new uniform styles, hairdos, promotions–including the infamous 10-cent beer night and Disco Demolition) interspersed throughout.  I first got into baseball in the mid-70s as a kid–my first Mets game was in 1976 with Seaver pitching (and Kranepool and Kingman hitting homers) and that’s when I started to get into the game, so it’s fun reading about some things I remember happening way back when.

    Before that, I read 1177 B.C.: the Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline, about the first real international system which existed in the eastern Mediterranean and West Asia, and how it all fell apart over about a generation around the aforementioned year.  Very interesting, and hopefully not too timely.

    A couple others I’ve finished over the last few weeks at home are The Routes Not Taken:  a Trip through New York City’s Unbuilt Subway System by Joseph P. Raskin and Chronin Vol. 1: The Knife at Your Back by Alison Wilgus, a graphic novel about time traveling students in 1860s Japan.  Both very enjoyable.

  153. 153.

    joel hanes

    @WaterGirl:

    Word

    You use Microsoft Word as an editor?

    Gah.   I’d rather use a line-editor such as ed.

    WYSIWYG is the invention of the devil.

  154. 154.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us

    This thread is probably dead but I just finished Madame Fourcade’s Secret War by Lynne Olson. It’s the true story of a French woman who ran the largest French Resistance intelligence network during WW II. I’ve read several books about WW II but never one on the French Resistance before and it was very enlightening and definitely capable of distracting from current events.

  155. 155.

    Spanish Moss

    I am reading “The Cobra Effect” by Richard Preston (bioterror thriller with strong foundation on fact). Talking Points Memo had an article on the origin of the National Strategic Stockpile. Apparently we created it during the Clinton administration because he read this book and asked the FBI if it could really happen. It is fascinating, and hard to put down.

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