Posted on 01/23/2024 5:03:13 AM PST by Tanniker Smith
A long time ago, there was a Free Republic Book Club ... mostly because I opened my mouth and a bunch of people told me to organize one. I haven't pinged it in a long time. (Actually, another book club started, so I stopped.)
Any way, has anyone read any good books lately. Fiction, non-fiction, genre, mainstream. Anything you want to share?
Has anyone WRITTEN any good books that the rest of us should check out?
I thought Dune was the best by far. IMO, Frank Herbert should have stopped right there, but you might like the various sequels better than I did.
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,
My favorite theologian wrote a good book on the philosopher I hope to better understand:
Thomas C. Oden, “The Parables of Kirkegaard.”
Others that I have recently read include the first couple of books in a Dean Koontz series “The Silent Corner” (Jane Hawk Series.)
I just started Tom Holland’s “Pax” about the time of Rome after the four emperors period — I read all the Tom Holland I can find.
The third book in a Dave Weber / Chris Kennedy saga, “To Challenge Heaven”.
D’Ambrosio wrote a good book, “When The Church was Young, Voices of the Early Fathers.” This is a “don’t miss.”
I have started, Wilson’s “The Thirty Years War”
I have muddled through “ Horus Rising. book One of the Horus Heresy although I doubt I will do the next fifty in that series.
I have in the “on deck circle” Brunt’s “The Mysterious Case of Rudolph Diesel, Genius, Power and Deception on the Eve of World War I”
Likewise the first two books in The Tyrant Philosophers series by Adrian Tchaikovsky who is probably one of the best new SF writers out there.
Di Spigna has out “Founding Martyr, The Life and Death of Dr. Joseph Warren” and I have about a hundred pages read.
I have started Dixon’s “Who the Hell if Frederick Nietzsche”
I finished all the Martha Wells, “Murderbot” series which is pretty good if SF is a thing you like.
Likewise for SF bubble gum for the eyes reading I have done about 30 in the Michael Anderle, Kurtherian universe series — senseless drivel but I liked some of it.
There is couple of dozen more I could list but that’s a good start. When you’re retired you have a lot of time between yard work and house maintenance.
—> My wife and I love to read, but it’s hard keeping the thousands of books shelved and organized.
Every year I go through our books and select out ones I don’t see myself rereading, then donate them.
Boxes and boxes and boxes.
I don’t expect them to be as good as Dune, but likely better than most SciFi novels.
The original set a ridiculous bar.
I loved his books. My mom gave me “All Creatures Great and Small” in the 80s. I read that and a couple of other books by James Herriot. I’m glad to see those books are still being read.
I think the new one is far better, but...I get the distinct impression that they are compositing separate incidents from the book into individual episodes...not a fan of that.
Those atrocities are why in both the Baltics and Ukraine those native SS units are viewed as heros. In the Baltics the Soviets maintained KGB internal security divisions up until the USSR broke up. Ukraine kept a resistance going up into the 1950s. Balts and Ukrainians had to make a deal with the devil to kill Russian communists; in their minds a greater devil. The West was in no position to help and at the time - WWII allied with the greater devil. In the warmth and comfort of our living rooms we should be thankfull we were never faced with such a Faustian bargain and let’s hope we never will be
My favorite sci fi book was Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. Then I read so much Stephen King and Dean Koontz I got tired of all that and moved to serial killers and that SEAL Team 6 series.
I jump around from one thing to another. No rhyme or reason. I just read one called Spotless where the assassin is a neat freak and the girl is messy so he does the dishes and cleans up her apartment while he’s waiting to kill her. Of course he changes his mind and hires a cleaning service to come to her apt every week. Its on and on like like that. 😆
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
We cull some from time to time, but it’s hard. That I don’t want to reread a book now doesn’t mean that I never will. At 68, though, I probably won’t live long enough to reread everything I might want to, let alone reading new books. Oh, well.
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."
True, Dune was an amazing book, which I reread just a few years ago. I hope you do enjoy the others; many people have.
Which is why I broke down, first with Nook and then Kindle and Audible, and reduced the hardback and paperback purchases by 70%. I love the real book, book stores are like cocaine to my wife and I, but I had to start using electronic versions due to the physical volume.
RAH is good stuff. I really enjoyed Michael Crichton’s books as well.
It’s good to jump around styles and topics.
As RAH stated, “Specialization is for insects.”
At least you read. It’s amazing how many people haven’t read a book in over a decade.
They can recite Quantavious Jenkins receiving yards for the last 3 seasons though…
—> That I don’t want to reread a book now doesn’t mean that I never will.
I separate out excellent books I reread every year or so. These I treasure.
Not all books are good, so
…if I give away 200 books and decide I now want to reread 3 of them, they are readily accessible… and better than heating and cooling all 200 books for life… and leaving a mess for my family when I’m gone.
I’m down from three rooms to one room of books!
“It’s nonfiction...”
Actually it is semi-fiction. James Herriot wasn’t his name, Siegfried and Tristan weren’t real, the era is incorrect for when he was a vet, location names are changed, etc. He said that the incidents actually happened to him or others, so that’s the semi part.
Still a very good series of books, I’ve read them all.
The actual place was a village near Thirsk in N. Yorkshire. Beautiful countryside. I lived up the road a piece back in the 80s, and have been through there but never never met him.
I made a similar decision…
Fiction on kindle, non-fiction as RPN (real physical books).
I highlight those for when I reread.
One of the most frightening books I’ve read lately was Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning.
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