ADVERTISEMENT

OT: Anyone reading something good?

Citizen Soldiers by Stephen Ambrose is a good read. Gives the soldiers' perspective from both sides.

Yep, I’ve read that one but it’s been a while since I read it. Good pick! Ambrose is great. If you want a really good history book, check out his book about the Panama Canal, it’s called The Path Between the Seas. It sounds random, but it’s one of my favorite history books of all time.
 
  • Like
Reactions: USN_Panther
Just finished The Battle of the beams by Tom Whipple. Interesting book on the race to develop radar for air defence and aerial targeting for bombing raids in early WW2. It focuses on Britain and Germany.

I enjoy reading history and science non-fiction. I've read so many fishing and gardening books that I am completely burned out on them.

So throw out some book recommendations! We can hold Pantherlair Book Club right after Pantherlair Fight Club.
"On the Rocks", is an account of Joe Costanza, owner of the Primadonna restaurant in the Rocks, his meteoric rise and stunning crash. No one will confuse this book as great literature, but I know the guy and it is a fun read. I also know some of the characters within.
 
"A World Lit Only By Fire" by William Manchester. Written in 1992 and its about the years of the dark ages. absolutely nothing advanced in what we call Europe. Not easy to read but really depicts how dark it really was for 600 years or so.
 
I'll always stan for 1491, which is a history of the pre-Columbian Americas. The native Americans are so fascinating in how they tailored the land to meet their needs. And these efforts were remarkably successful, with the earliest settlers to Massachusetts Bay all remarking about how physically fit and, frankly, sexually attractive the natives were due to their varied diet of fish, fruit, game, and corn, as well as lack of smallpox scars (which would become a double-edged sword). The selective breeding of vines and grasses across centuries to create modern tomatoes and corn is also one of the gifts that they bestowed upon the modern world.

If you're looking for Civil War stuff I like Master of War, which is about George Henry Thomas, "the Rock of Chicamauga," and the only Southern Colonel to remain loyal to the US after secession.
 
  • Like
Reactions: bayardstreet
I am reading The Cloudbuster Nine . It describes the training and baseball playing of WW2 pilots like Ted Williams, Johnny Peske, Johnny Sain and others. A great combination of American history and sports.
 
Picked up Game of Thrones for 3rd read. Finished first book and realized how good it was and why it started the whole sensation and then the series. Decided to watch a few key episodes of the series from the first book. Although I enjoyed them the first time I watched it, I simply found some of it just ludicrous on this watch. If D&D followed the book the scenes were very good, but when they went on their own they were horrid. Ironically the scenes also lasted tens of minutes. Frankly the two show runners probably have done more to ruin the view of the series than anyone else. Well, it hasn’t hurt that George just cannot finish the next book after a decade.
 
Yes! The return of the Panther Lair Book Club!

Currently wrapping up Colson Whitehead's Crook's Manifesto. Excellent book. Also just starting Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead. Good so far.
Demon Copperhead is excellent. Crushed it in some time off during the holidays. I'd describe it as a spiritual cousin of Dopesick, the Hulu show, which I'd also recommend.
 
Finally got around to starting The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. I can't say that I know what is going on to give a synopsis, but I'm enjoying it so far.
 
Here's another non fiction, I thought was interesting.

Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters.

Some great examples in history.

Just finished The Battle of the beams by Tom Whipple. Interesting book on the race to develop radar for air defence and aerial targeting for bombing raids in early WW2. It focuses on Britain and Germany.

I enjoy reading history and science non-fiction. I've read so many fishing and gardening books that I am completely burned out on them.

So throw out some book recommendations! We can hold Pantherlair Book Club right after Pantherlair Fight Club.
 
  • Like
Reactions: USN_Panther
Just finished Autobiography of Malcolm X. Learned a ton. Read Invisible Man a great book by Ralph Ellison on racism. Listening to It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis now. Starting Catch 22 tomorrow. Started it a bunch of times but never finished it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: USN_Panther
Just finished Autobiography of Malcolm X. Learned a ton. Read Invisible Man a great book by Ralph Ellison on racism. Listening to It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis now. Starting Catch 22 tomorrow. Started it a bunch of times but never finished it.
I've read all but It Can't Happen Here and I would recommend them all. Invisible Man is one of the best books I've ever read.
 
  • Like
Reactions: rockypanther
I've mentioned this one before here. The Mosquito Bowl by Buzz Bissinger. Great story about college football star soldiers during WW2.

I just got "In the Pines" by Grace Hale. Looked interesting. Hope it is good.
 
Not a book, but I subscribe to a bi-monthly "newspaper" - in reality more like a magazine - called County Highway that takes me a month to read. Lots of folks here would hate it but it is a really good read for me.
 
I'm an action fiction reader. I'm just finishing Warlord by Ted Bell. I've read 6 of his books in the past. Now I'll rotate through David Baldacci (21 read), Andrew Britton (3 read), Lee Child (23 read), Harlan Coben (21 read), Brad Meltzer (8 read), Christopher Reich (6 read), John Sandford (37 read), and Daniel Silva (14 read).
Lars Kepler & Dean Koontz Jane Hawk series
 
Not a book, but I subscribe to a bi-monthly "newspaper" - in reality more like a magazine - called County Highway that takes me a month to read. Lots of folks here would hate it but it is a really good read for me.
What type of topics?
 
What type of topics?
Eclectic. Here's a list of article in the most recent edition:

The Hemingway Lecture
Nabokov's Butterflies
Keturah Lamb Doesn't Exist
Lithium
Giants in the Earth
Metamorphosis
The Cracker Smacker
The Last Cigarette
Cribbage is a Family Game
The Cleopatra of the Racetrack
America's Founding Document Debunked
The Fugitive Road
Pickers
A Paiute Meeting in Big Pine
The Long Song
Death of a Ladies' Man

These are generally long and complex articles/essays that can't easily be summarized. The publication is print only in the form of a newspaper. None of the content is available on-line. They do have a website where they describe themselves as:

County Highway is a 20-page broadsheet produced by actual human beings, containing the best new writing you will encounter about America. It features reports on the political and spiritual crises that are gripping our country and their deeper cultural and historical sources; regular columns about agriculture, civil liberties, animals, herbal medicine, and living off the grid, mentally and physically; essays about literature and art, and an entire section devoted to music.

County Highway

I submitted an essay a couple of weeks. My expectations are low about acceptance, though.
 
  • Like
Reactions: USN_Panther
Just read the book Hidden Figures. Saw movie again recently on Disney+.

Man oh live did the they dumb down the movie to make it seem more of an uphill climb for these women. These women had been rock stars at Langley well before NASA took over.
 
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest posts

ADVERTISEMENT