I’m sure most here read high brow stuff, but that is boring to me. If you like a stand alone Sci-Fi story, I suggest Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
early 1960s, a Social Security Administration economist named Mollie Orshansky, concerned about the “dollar gap” between rich and poor, set out to create a statistic to quantify poverty nationwide. Such work was then a novel endeavor, and for good reason: most Americans did not see poverty as a permanent state. Looking at prices for the year 1959, Orshansky identified an income threshold below which a family would struggle to feed itself even a basic diet. That threshold, Orshansky reckoned, was around $3,000. By this measure, about 39 million Americans, or 24 percent of the population at the time, were poor.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, though, the rate of poverty was in fact steadily dropping. By 1966—in another reckoning, with a slightly different data set—Orshansky put poverty at 17.7 percent. Growth was vanquishing poverty, largely without redistribution. This accorded with the general assumption that poverty could be temporary.
No matter. “Whenever one speaks about the distribution of wealth, politics is never very far behind,” one of Orshansky’s successors, the French economist Thomas Piketty, would say many years later. Armed with this new data point, swiftly elevated to an official product of the Census Bureau, President Lyndon Johnson declared “unconditional war on poverty.”
The Farhud, by Edwin Black. If you want to understand the roots of the Nazi connection to Arabs, and the model that is used by them for the extermination of Jews during the Third Reich and today, you will see why Nazism has explored, again, and is coming to this country.
Do not do much long reading but one from the past was
A Walk Across America
A Walk Across America is a nonfiction travel book first published in 1979. It was the first book written by travel author Peter Jenkins, with support from the National Geographic Society [some in which tried to edit out his evangelical conversion]. The book depicts his journey from Alfred, New York, to New Orleans, Louisiana. While on his journey of self-discovery, he engaged himself in others’ lives, lost his best friend, experienced a religious conversion, and courted a new wife. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Walk_Across_America#Synopsis
If you like computer games, adventure, comedy then this will not disappoint. Not for the squeamish. Going to start the next in the series soon. Read they get better but the first is very good.
Two series are worth every minute of reading.
1) “Space opera”—Sci-fi version of soap opera/warfare, but that trite description doesn’t do the series justice. The Honor Harrington series by David Weber. Futuristic star kingdoms battle for control and freedom amidst never-to-be-adequately-dammed political and human manipulations. From wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse :
“The Honorverse is a military science fiction book series, its two subseries, two prequel series, and anthologies created by David Weber and published by Baen Books. They are centered on the space navy career of the principal protagonist Honor Harrington. The books have made The New York Times Best Seller list.”
The main characters, Honor Harrington, a wonderful female officer which the series takes from midshipman up to captain and beyond, and her companion Nimitz (aka “Stinker”), a telepathic/empathic alien “Treecat” resembling a large earth cat but with 6 limbs and a penchant for celery (nearly-intoxicating to treecats and which produces noxious farts), are unbelievably enjoyable and memorable. Truth, honor, duty, sacrifice—all key themes. And the prequels and spin-off series are all excellent. And if you like the writing style, you’ll like other David Weber series (too many to describe).
2) Historical warfare, focusing on the view from the common soldier and the affected populace. The Richard Sharpe peninsular war series, by Bernard Cornwell (Europe, Napoleonic+, ca. 1800). From wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpe_(novel_series) :
“Sharpe is a series of historical fiction stories by Bernard Cornwell centred on the character of British soldier Richard Sharpe. The stories formed the basis for an ITV television series featuring Sean Bean in the title role.
“Cornwell’s series is composed of many novels and several short stories, and charts Sharpe’s progress in the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars, though the novels were published in non-chronological order. He begins in Sharpe’s Tiger as a private in the 33rd Regiment of Foot who is continually promoted, finally rising to lieutenant colonel in Sharpe’s Waterloo. His military career ends with the final defeat of Napoleon, but he has more adventures as a civilian.”
Excellent depiction of duty and honor, and of the horrors of humankind and war, and wonderful recurring main characters, especially Sharpe. The battles and campaigns are well researched by the author, who usually personally visited the battle sites and some of the cities to better understand them.
I started reading the Alex McKnight detective novels by Steve Hamilton. The main character is a former cop making his living renting out cabins in the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. But also does private detective work. Decent light reading.
The Autobiography of St Teresa of Avila. It was on my Christmas list and one of the kids got it for me after complaining that my list was boring!
John Ringo’s Black Tide Rising series, Larry Correia’s Forgotten Warrior Saga, ReRead Lloyd Alexanders Chronicles of Prydain, and Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. Also read a few anthologies of short stories from Baen Publishing.
Reading “Trust And Treachery” by Kraeger & Barnhart.
It’s about Roger Williams. Biographical, but written in the style of a novel.
My first time reading Leo Tolstoy - what a delightful author, not gloomy like Dostoyevsky.
Also cracking open Amity Schlae's biography of Calvin Coolidge.
Has anyone WRITTEN any good books that the rest of us should check out?
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Best writers in the English language:
Lawrence Durrell - “The Alexandria Quartet”; all his other books
Nikos Kazantzakis - “The Odyssey, a Modern Sequel”
Gene Wolfe - “The Book of the New Sun”; “The Book of the Long Sun”; “The Book of the Short Sun”
Joyce Carry - “The Horse’s Mouth”; “Herself Surprised”
Egyptology:
Robert Temple - “Egyptian Dawn”; “The Sphinx Mystery”
SyFy:
Cixin Liu - “Three Body Problem” trilogy (the TV series comes in March)
Stephen Baxter - “Xeelee”
Extended SyFy reading:
Gregory Benford - “Into the Ocean of Night” series.
James SA Corey - “The Expanse” - all 9 volumes.
Currently rereading King David’s Spaceship by Jerry Pournelle.
Books I’d recommend, in no particular order of preference:
Any historical fiction by Kenneth Roberts.
Anything by George MacDonald Fraser, but especially the Flashman books.
Anything by John Ringo.
Adam Hall’s Quiller spy fiction.
Anything by P. G. Wodehouse, not just the Jeeves stories.
I could go on and on. My wife and I love to read, but it’s hard keeping the thousands of books shelved and organized.
Freda Utley, an Englishwoman who is a Marxist and is married to a Russian, moves with him to the Soviet Union during the 1930's and finds out what life is really like in Stalin's worker's paradise. After her husband is arrested and disappears, never to be heard from again, she is able to get out with her children.
Althouogh disillusioned by by Stalin's regime and the harsh life and daily terror that it has imposed on the Soviet people, she still hasn't abandoned all of her Marxist beliefs, although she would later do so and become a regular columnist for the conservative newsletter Human Events.
Vorkuta by Joseph Scholmer, trans. by Robert Kee (New York: Holt, 1955)
Joseph Scholmer, the author, was a member of Germany's Communist underground resistance movement during WWII. Liveing in East Berlin after the war, he was arrested by the East German secret police on trumped-up charges. Despite being a hero to the Communist cause during the war, he was tortured into confessing his "crime" and is shipped off to the Soviet Gulag. He winds up in Vorkuta, a Gulag camp in the arctic and remains there until 1953, when he takes part in a revolt by the prisoners.
Scholmer remarked that when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, had he chosen to announce that he was coming to liberate the Soviet people from Communism instead of to enslave them, four million Soviet citizens would have joined his army.
Total Terror: An Expose of Genocide in the Baltics by Albert Kalme (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951)
I read this in high school and re-read it more recently. This is a graphic account of the atrocities perpetrated in the Baltic states by the Soviets,
I’m on my 6th rereading of Elizabeth Peter’s Amelia Peabody Egypt series. Currently reading The Mummy’s Case. Loving it! It takes their six year old son Ramses, baby genius, to Egypt for the first time.
https://www.amazon.com/Mummy-Case-Amelia-Peabody/dp/0061999202
Also Wilbur Smith, The Triumph of the Sun, mostly set in Khartoum and vicinity at the time of the siege by the Mahdi. Published about 2005 but made 10/7 seem like "business as usual."
One of the most frightening books I’ve read lately was Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning.
