Now: “The Mexican War Correspondence of Richard Smith Elliott”
Next: “The Mexican War”, “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder”.
Couldn’t finish: “The Fourth Turning”. Accurately predicted (1997) that something big would pop in 2005 but got too arcane for this reader. Predicts something REALLY BIG (on a historical scale) before 2025.
After America by Steyn
The Federalist
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays
I am reading “The Poisoners Handbook.”
It is really a history of forensic medicine. Quite good.
Also reading a funny novel called “The Deductions” about some Florida retirees who form a Senior Citizen “boy band.”
My Nook is never far away and fully charged.
I’ve been wearing out my library card on audio books for my 45 minute commute. Right now I’m listening to “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell.
My recent listens have been:
Feakonomics
Outliers
Mere Christianity
Debt Free Living
Mayflower
Found a new mystery series featuring a Jewish lawyer, Steve Solomon and his shiksa partner/girlfriend who practice in Miami and the Keys. A truly hilarious compound of Carl Hiassen and Grisham where the attorney is always one step ahead of the State Bar disbarment committee and the girlfriend has her doubts as well..
Some of Solomon’s Laws:
A client who lies to his lawyer is like a husband who cheats on his wife—it seldom happens just once.
Always assume your client is guilty. It saves time.
When meeting a girlfriend you dumpe, always assume she is armed.
If the facts don’t fit the law...bend the facts.
If someone whos smart, handsome and rich invites you and your girlfriend to a nudist club, chances are he’s got a giant schmeckel.
Other books I read this week: The Venetian Betrayal by Steve Berry. A thriller that proves a clever novelist can spin a readable tale about how the lost tomb of Alexander the Great hides a cure for Aids that almost starts WWIII. Don’t ask, just go with the flow.
Stone Angel by Carol O’Connell. First time I read anything by her but won’t be the last. A convoluted mystery about a small town in Louisiana full of weird and creepy characters, some of whom know about a death by stoning of a doctor 20 years before. The doctor’s revengeful daughter, a NY detective, returns to find and punish her mother’s killers. Gothic Mystery/Horror is something I don’t usually read but picked it up cheap and got hooked.
Still reading/re-reading Perry’s “Fed Up”.
Fiction: Reading through P.C. Cast’s vampire novels, currently on “Burned”. This has a high liberal bias, and isn’t written all that well, but it is passable and entertaining, and I like to read through series once I start; I read while standing in line at theme parks so I need something only mildly engaging.
Also Fiction: Butcher’s Dresden File series: currently on the newest book, “Ghost Story”. Butcher writes very well, and I listen to his books on CD. James Marsters was the reader for the first few of his books on CD, but a new guy is reading this book.
I just finished reading/listening to a rather oddly interesting book “The White Darkness” by Geraldine McCaughrean. It’s a fictional book, but within the book tells a lot of the true-life story of Lawrence Oate’s fatally doomed attempt to reach the South Pole. So I learned while I was entertained.
The Creature from Jekyll Island
Re-reading “The First Chronicles of Amber” and “The Second Chronicles of Amber” by Roger Zelazny.
Atlas Shrugged.
Recently read the Hunger Games trilogy and One Second After.
Dean Koontz’s “From the Corner of His Eye.”
If you’d asked me last week I could have said, “In My Time,” by Dick Cheney. It’s an excellent book, by the way, HIGHLY recommended. You’ll learn some super interesting stuff. I took a lot of time and wrote a review and posted it at Amazon. They rejected it! I cannot for the life of me figure out why since they let obvious idiots who haven’t read the book post reviews. But as someone who has actually read the book and can speak about what’s in it..... go figure. I’d post it here but it’s on my other computer.
The Founding Foodies: How Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin Revolutionized American Cuisine by Dave Dewitt
The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life’s Work at 72 by Molly Peacock
Psalms from the Orthodox Study Bible
The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 by William Shirer. The fellow who wrote Rise and Fall of the Third Reich examines what happened in France to make the fall of that country to the Wehrmacht so different from the heroism of Verdun. I'm finding it rather disturbing, actually.
Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 and Legends of the Mouse Guard - cute stuff, very lightweight but well-drawn. Anthropomorphic mice with tiny swords and derring-do. Just enough tongue-in-cheek to avoid a sugary overdose.
I just advance-ordered Paul Johnson's Socrates - kind of excited about that one. Can't wait.
“Hitler’s Generals”, a compendium edited by Corelli Barnett.
I’m 91% done with Anna Karenina. It has taken me forever to read this book. I read and enjoyed “A Canticle for Leibowitz” this Summer.
Just finished “Unbroken”, Hillenbrand.
Starting “The Fifth Woman”, Mankell
Recommend: Benedict Arnold’s Navy - if you want a look at what our forefathers went through to secure this great nation.
Just finished Jon Krakauer’s Where Men Win Glory: The Pat Tillman Story, a rather uninteresting telling of a terribly interesting story that should embarrass the military brass involved to no end. Just started Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. No one can write a sentence like Mr. Hardycould write them. Next up is The Bible Jesus Knew by Phillip Yancey.