Posted on 06/27/2014 8:33:15 AM PDT by Tax-chick
Which bio of Vanderbilt? I remember visiting his small house in Newport that his family.only used for about a month a year. The Breakers is amazing. So is the Marble House. I’d like to visit some of the other of the family homes like Biltmore.
My family lived in Newport for a year, 1977-78, and went to all the Historical Society houses. They had a deal for military families that made it very inexpensive. I have not been to Biltmore, although we live only a couple of hours away, but I’ve been to some of the Phillips oil brothers’ properties in Oklahoma.
Re the bio, one of these two. They’re both fairly recent (less than 10 years) and in my library catalog:
Commodore : the life of Cornelius Vanderbilt / Edward J. Renehan Jr.
The first tycoon : the epic life of Cornelius Vanderbilt / T.J. Stiles.
If you like mythology, it’s so fun to see the tongue-in-cheek modern correlations Riorden does. The entrance to Hades being in L.A. is just funny.
I just love all those updates - Poseidon wears tropical shirts and thongs, Amazon actually being run by Amazon women - Apollo drives a Lamborghini, the wild centaurs party in Fl in a trailer park with horse trailers!- I think that’s my favorite aspect of the books. But do try the Kanes. The Bes parts are really quite funny.
If you like Cornwell, you will like these books-this one is the latest-and 7th-book in the series, and a new one comes out every 2 years or so. The first book introduces the narrator-the Earl Uhtred-as a child in Northumbria, and the story-both his and that of Alfred’s wars and family-take off from there. Uther is written with a cynical and very British sense of humor from the time he is about 14 that makes you laugh at just about everything...
Thanks. I’ll give one a try when a historical-fiction mood strikes me. I have five children (so far) who aspire to cynical British humor. Some of them actually get it right occasionally.
“Uhtred”, not “Uther”-although the book by that name by Canadian author Jack Whyte is a good swashbuckler, too...
Noted.
Living on Fire - The Life of L. Brent Bozell Jr.
I saw the review!
Just an aside, the books in that series-as well as Whyte’s book-are written for older teens and adults-violence, language, sex, etc-my neighbor that I loan them to when I’m done will only let the two of her four over 15 read them...
Thank you-I just ordered Bozell’s book from B&N online Wednesday, along with that new one about Jackie Kennedy-haven’t gotten them yet...
As is mine! It was the first book of his that I read, and I had no idea it was a love story until I was two-thirds of the way through it! LOL!
Thank you. My 17-year-old is on his own, pretty much, but I flip through at least one-in-a-series of what the younger ones are reading.
I took a look at the “Game of Thrones” books, whatever they’re called, when Tom checked the first one out, to make sure it didn’t even approximate the tv program. We requested the first disc from Netflix and gave it about 15 minutes before saying, “Forget it.”
OK. I am reading the Disappearing Spoon - an interesting non fiction about the elements - you know, mercury, silver, etc - lots of little interesting tidbits.
I also just finished a young adult book called the Rithmatist which is sort of a fantasy steampunk mystery. The author (Brandon Sanderson) usually writes adult fantasy stuff and is considered quite good but I do like stuff to be clean, so I like YA.
I also recently read Look to the Lady by Margery Allingham as I like older British whodunit.
And I intend to listen to this on audible:
http://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/Free-The-Secret-Life-of-Walter-Mitty-Audiobook/B00GNGL8CE
I liked all those updates, too, but the stories would not be as effective if they didn’t have a modern twist to them.
I’m not into Game of Thrones either-I don’t like historical fantasy that broad-it needs to have at least some basis in “real” history or I’m not interested...
I haven’t read much of the Percy Jackson books - only snippets when my kids left the books around - but the cute touches with the mythology are a big part of the appeal, just as the playfulness in the setting of Harry Potter makes it much more worthwhile.
I like to get Young Adult or even children’s fantasy. A good writer can tell a complex and psychologically sophisticated story within the parameters of those library-classifications.
If I get in the mood for this kind of thing - people behaving badly, death and torture, feuding families - there’s real history, Shakespeare, or the Greek classics.
I'm not a real fan of Murrow. The author is but he is a good writer and seems balanced so far. It's not just the info about Murrow which is interesting; there's a lot about the characters of the times and how events unfolded.
The author is Joseph Persico.
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