A book thread for you snobby intellectual types

[Boston Frog]

I've been trying to replace social media with reading lately, with some success. I haven't been diving into super heavy stuff, but I did enjoy 100 Things We've Lost with the Internet by Pamela Paul. It's a series of brief essays that speaks directly to me as a maturing (not aging) Gen-Xer.

What have you read lately that you've enjoyed?

[Friskyfrog]

Our book club book this month was Project Hail Mary. I don’t normally have any interest in science fiction, but I was really sucked into this book. The book club was pretty divided, though, some loved and some hated.

I love most everything by Lianne Moriarty or Fredrick Bachmann.

[Boston Frog]

So no Roger Staubach, then? What about Drew Pearson? Doug Flutie, at least???

[RSK]

BF - I just got finished reading The Barcelona Complex by Simon Kuper. You might appreciate the subject.

[Boston Frog]

He is a fantastic writer

[Lyle Lanley III]

Two fairly quick, easy reads I enjoyed recently:



Carlisle vs. Army centers around the showdown between Carlisle & West Point in 1912. It serves as a mini-biography of the three featured personalities - Jim Thorpe, Dwight Eisenhower & Pop Warner - but also provides a really interesting glimpse at the purpose of schools like Carlisle (especially in contrast to the more established East Coast institutions like West Point and the Ivys) and what college football was like in those days.


The Desert Rose is far from being considered one of McMurtry's masterpieces, but the context around its development got me interested in it. In the early '80s, he found that his progress was slowing down on the novel he was working on at the time. You may have heard of it, Lonesome Dove. Anyway, he decided to take a break and entertained an offer to write a screenplay about showgirls in Vegas. After spending some time out there researching for the project, he started to notice some similarities between cowboys and showgirls - especially how the individuals well ingrained in those professions seemed to become vestiges in their own time while the Old West/Old Vegas faded away. He turned down the screenplay offer, opting instead to churn out a relatively short novel of his own - which he later credited as providing inspiration and renewed enthusiasm for finishing Lonesome Dove.

[Boston Frog]

Carlisle book looks fantastic. I almost never read fiction, for some reason. Almost never have.

[weklfrog]

I don't read many books but the last one was Echo in Ramadi: The Firsthand Story of US Marines in Iraq's Deadliest City
by Scott Huesing. Echo refers to 2/4 Echo Company and is the story of the company's role in the second battle of Ramadi, capital of the Anbar province in western Iraq, as part of the surge in late 2006 thru the first half of 2007. Scott was the company commander. My son was in 2/4 Echo company and this was his first deployment as a 19 year old Marine. The book is not political or big picture but more of a day-to-day recounting of their time in Ramadi, from their successes to their frictions. Although Alan is not mentioned in the book, it gave me a nice insight into his time there and their mission of clearing out insurgents.

[Boston Frog]

American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears by Farah Stockman. Superb book. I highly recommend it. She follows three steelworkers in Indiana through the election of Trump, their plant shutting down and moving to Mexico and the 2020 election. Brilliant storytelling and excellent journalism. Opened my eyes to a lot of things I'd never realized nor understood as a college-educated American. Sobering.

[Boston Frog]

The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman. After the first couple of really mediocre chapters, it's an excellent book. A clear-eyed view of a decade we've managed to re-imagine and re-contextualize more than we realize.

[NFFrog]

Let me make a prediction: The 2020s: A Book if and when it is written will be a horror novel.

[MercenaryLibrarian]

I literally cataloged that at work on Wednesday.

[NFFrog]

All right...here is a collaboration and a thriller I never saw coming (or ever even remotely imagined):

From America’s most beloved superstar Dolly Parton and its greatest storyteller
James Patterson—a thriller about a young singer-songwriter on the rise and
on the run, and determined to do whatever it takes to survive.






special offer
Run, Rose, Run: A Novel


by James Patterson

Hardcover
|This title releases March 7, 2022

$25.00 online
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[Boston Frog]

Have you read it?

[NFFrog]

No...did hear an interview with the 2 of them on a CBC radio show, though. https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio...on-malia-baker

[Friskyfrog]

This month’s book club book was “Into Thin Air”. It did not make me want to climb Mount Everest.

[RSK]

I thought about re-reading Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising, but decided against it because we might be living it eventually...

[Boston Frog]

Eventually ... that's an optimistic word. Could be more like very soon

[MercenaryLibrarian]

I'm stoked. Stephan Pastis is coming to Fort Worth on the 14th for an in-store appearance and signing. He does the comic strip "Pearls Before Swine" and the Timmy Failure series.

[Lyle Lanley III]

After hearing that the second book is planned to be adapted into the 3rd film, I decided to pick it up. Definitely a quicker read - and while I didn't enjoy it nearly as thoroughly as the original, I do think I'll eventually get around to reading the six entries in the series that were written by Frank Herbert himself. Probably won't circle back to them for a while, though.

[NFFrog]

It goes downhill as they were written to a schedule, mostly, I think. He spent like decades on Dune, but the others took much less time.

[NFFrog]

Here's a book review for a new sci-fi series that I simply don't understand. Is it "damning with faint praise" or is it actual praise? I simply am not sure.

“The Last Watch is a bravura debut that blends great action with compelling characters, lighting up this new series like a dark matter generator.” ―Booklist

[Boston Frog]

Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture by Alice Echols

Yeah, I know. But this is really an academic study of the roots and impact of disco regarding three groups primarily: black men, women (mostly black women) and gay men. It starts kind of slowly but actually turns out to be a pretty interesting look at the role disco played in a lot of important cultural events, including feminism, the gay-rights movement, the AIDS epidemic, the conservative shift of 1980 and the evolution of popular music. It's not for everybody (it's probably not for anybody here), but I ended up learning a lot from it.

[Boston Frog]

Hahaha, I knew you wouldn't be able to resist.

The book didn't exactly make me like disco more than I used to. I might like it a little less now.

[NFFrog]

John Travolta was neither black, nor outwardly gay, or a woman. So why did they pick HIM to star in Saturday Night Fever?

Or does that explain that hideous young JT in his cute black undies sequence? Certainly some homoerotic elements there, Ricky Martin would say...actually did say, rather.
http://greginhollywood.com/wordpress...ads/200_s1.gif

[Boston Frog]

The author believed the homoeroticism of that scene to be absolutely intentional