Good Reads for the Season

[PedalUma]

Hi everybody,
This is the place to discuss books. Some books seem more like beach bag reads, other's better for long winter nights. What are you reading? Any recommendations? I am reading a fun one now that is a good fireplace read.

Kirsten McDougall- She’s A Killer- @CursesMcD @GallicBooks

ALICE: 30-something, IQ of 159 (almost a genius), only communicates with her mother in Morse code. Her imaginary friend is back. ERIKA: 15, daughter of hot ‘wealthugee’ who loves Russian literature…

ravencrimereads.wordpress.com

 

[PedalUma]

@kevinmccune,
Based on what you like, you will love 'Ghost Hunters'. The opening story of a drowning is amazing. A. C. Doyle is involved. With the beginnings of radio it was realized that unseen communications from other realms were real. What about faith and sprit can be investigated with science? Does myopic left brained science close the door to seeing the greater truths provided by spiritual intuition? It is also dark, scary, yet uplifting.

Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scienti…

What if a world-renowned professor of psychology at Har…

www.goodreads.com

 

[harryS]

Have read all of Jo Nesbo's novels, most of then about the Norwegian detective Harry Hole, usually strung out on Jim Beam or heroin. In about a dozen stories, the author has killed off most of the hero's friends, including his wife. On a less dark note, there's John Sanford's cop series,, usually quite funny.

Lee Child's Jack Reacher books are for one long evening.They had gotten stretched because Reacher was born in the early 40's. so he should be 80 by now, too old to be slamming four people at once with his fists, so the latest iteration goes back to when he was in the army. More believeable.

I laugh every week when a new Jimmy Patterson book comes out. Sometimes I'll read one if the ;library has it on Kindle.

Adrian McKinty's books about his catholic inspector cop in Belfast are fun. CJ Box book's about game warden Joe Picket in Wyoming. Craig Johnson's Longmire books. The latest was epic, Mick Herron's SLow House series about failed spies. I guess the last three authors have made it to series on streaming TV, which I've never watched. Incluses the Harry Bosch novels by Michael Connelly., For creepiness, read the John Connolly's series about Charlie Parker, another detective.

Finally, I liked Shantaram, a crazy book about a Western convict in India which apparently half based on real life of the author. Straming on Apple TV, but I'm not signing up to watch,








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[PedalUma]

@kevinmccune,
I do not claim to understand these things. When I was a little kid I would go to my great grandfather's tool chest and pick up a tool. I would then feel a large warm hand guiding me on how to use it.

 

[ChezCheese:)]

If you like audio books, I am listening to Lauren Grodstein's We Must Not Think of Ourselves, about life in the Warsaw ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Excellent book, superbly read/performed.

 

[PedalUma]

I recently read 'California a History'. It starts at the end of the last Ice Age and fully gives Native, Feminist, African American, Asian, and Workers perspectives. Very well done and the stories are so rich that it is a page turner. It also gives context. There is none of that pre-destination of progress BS. It gives wonderful back stories to the real characters.

 

[PedalUma]

Something I learned in that history book was that 2500 years ago the bow, as in bow and arrow, was introduced to the West Coast. The result was several generations of wars between people speaking about 65 languages in California; many of the languages were unrelated. It then settled into a truce because everyone was sick of war. Part of the general understanding is that people should stay in their own areas and only trade with neighbors, respecting the territory of others.

 

[watsonwallace]

@kevinmccune,
Based on what you like, you will love 'Ghost Hunters'. The opening story of a drowning is amazing. A. C. Doyle is involved. With the beginnings of radio it was realized that unseen communications from other realms were real. What about faith and sprit can be investigated with science? Does myopic left brained science close the door to seeing the greater truths provided by spiritual intuition? It is also dark, scary, yet uplifting.

Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scienti…

What if a world-renowned professor of psychology at Har…

www.goodreads.com

View attachment 167870 Thank you for your advice. I regularly have to deal with many forms of writing. And I came across a letter of recommendation, which was absolutely new to me. I hired writer and got everything done as a consequence. And can you buy a letter of recommendation if you have similar problems.

Simply amazing reading

 

[sc00ter]

I mostly read music related books, and my wife loves murder mystery type stuff. Right now I'm reading this book...

 

[PedalUma]

I just read a book that is half wonder of creation and half science about animal perception. Fascinating. A bug that can detect a forest fire 80 miles away? Yes. An animal that can tell apart two similar pieces of sand paper from 50 yards at night? Yes. An animal who can tell if a human is newly pregnant at 90 feet? Yes. We see color as a one dimensional triangle with the points representing three colors and the middle area the blends. But some animals can see colors in four dimensions, like a pyramid and all the space within that pyramid. And some humans can too. There is a guy who is blind and can ride a mountain bike on a trail he has never ridden by using echolocation.

The book I am reading now is what I will call Mythological Fan Fiction. It is telling the back story of Achilles. It is very good. The only problem I had was at about 1/4 of the way through I realized that it is homo-erotic. But that is part of ancient Grease. And I overcame that because it is so well written and compelling.

 

[PedalUma]

Simply amazing reading

I had just finished Ghost Hunters when a friend's wife died after a long illness and hospice. I was going to leave it in a book exchange bin at a fruit stand but I saw him first and just handed it to him. It turns out he loved it. And then handed copies out to others.

In late October I read Creative Act then handed it to my much younger friend Bella. She makes lots of crafts, drawings, works with leather and is an amazing cook. She read it and made notes on every page. She promised to give it to a friend when she was done, but couldn't give up her notes, so she had to give him his own copy and now he gave away another new copy. Now she is reading it again. It covers everything from the Stones to Monet. By the way Monet could see in UV in one eye and that is why his water Lilly's glow blue.

 

[PedalUma]

The UV spectrum of color blends may have the most shades. Most birds can see it and probably dinosaurs did. Many birds and butterflies are colored in ways that we cannot see. Males and females can look the same to us but are distinct to them. Some flowers have big glowing targets that we can't see. This is all in 'An Immense World'. I wish that religious fundamentalists world wide would read it to gain a deeper appreciation of the wonders of all creation and how very narrow our own perceptions are.

 

[scrambler]

Here is one for you, Lost in Time by AG Riddle

Amazon.com

 

[PedalUma]

Here is one for you, Lost in Time by AG Riddle

Amazon.com

Just read a review. It has been awhile since I have read SiFi. I like how it can explore ideas by contrasting our world with a slightly alternate universe.

 

[PatriciaK]

I just read a book that is half wonder of creation and half science about animal perception. Fascinating. A bug that can detect a forest fire 80 miles away? Yes. An animal that can tell apart two similar pieces of sand paper from 50 yards at night? Yes. An animal who can tell if a human is newly pregnant at 90 feet? Yes. We see color as a one dimensional triangle with the points representing three colors and the middle area the blends. But some animals can see colors in four dimensions, like a pyramid and all the space within that pyramid. And some humans can too. There is a guy who is blind and can ride a mountain bike on a trail he has never ridden by using echolocation.

The book I am reading now is what I will call Mythological Fan Fiction. It is telling the back story of Achilles. It is very good. The only problem I had was at about 1/4 of the way through I realized that it is homo-erotic. But that is part of ancient Grease. And I overcame that because it is so well written and compelling.

View attachment 169789 View attachment 169790

Madeline Miller fan here - "Circe" and "Galatea" were also excellent!

 

[PedalUma]

"Galatea"

She is brilliant. I liked 'Circe' but have not heard of 'Galatea,' "A fresh, feminist take on Pygmalion." Besides being a genius she is also super beautiful. The new Miss America is too. She is an Air Force Officer, Fighter Pilot - think Top Gun, and Harvard Medical Researcher, plus she is a super successful Fundraiser for a non-profit she started. She will be a rising star to watch in coming decades. If there were a novel sold a Target check-outs about a character like her, no on would think that it is credible.

 

[Mulezen]

The Third Policeman…If there are any bicycle riders reading…the great Flann O’Brien, a contemporary of Joyce, wrote a great novel with the bicycle as a central character. The book, now an acknowledged masterpiece, was unpublished in the author’s lifetime finally seeing print in the late 1960s. The action is in the rural Irish countryside of the early 1900s. The rural constabulary seems more at home arguing about cycle components than investigating a murder. Hilarious, even just to open casually with the footnotes equally funny. It is, however, one of the earliest examples of modernist fiction so don’t expect easy navigation.
I recently enjoyed Charles Mann’s 1493 which takes a dive into how the world was changed by Columbus and friends. Most are aware of the devastating effect on the Americas via disease and conquest…yet the exchange (called Colombian Exchange) influenced the whole world in ways we see everyday. Europeans brought measles…And the Andes (Bolivia) sent back a mountain of silver (Potosi) which killed its own share in Europe and China. Extremely engaging writing style with things you never knew on each page.

 

[PedalUma]

I really enjoyed the laugh a page high-tech dystopian novel by Dave Eggers, called 'The Every'. It is very scary. It is set in a San Francisco that begins one minute from right now. There is a field trip scene that is hilarious that takes place in my town and a nearby beach. It is thick and a super smart page turner. It also has a bike ridding female lead that shares elements of Winston in '1984' but has so much more depth to her character.

Dave Eggers’ Dystopian Novel ‘The Every’ In The Works At HBO From ‘Veep’s Rachel Axler

Dave Eggers’ book The Every – a dystopian story about an Amazon-esque company – is set for a TV adaptation with HBO.

deadline.com

 

[PedalUma]

some flowers seem to glow in the evening,a strange thing IR radiation seems to penetrate most solids

Yes, exactly. The longer wavelengths have lower attenuation and penetrate further. In that animal perception book, I learned that sperm whales can make tones that are louder by far than any other animal and far lower, or with longer wavelengths. These songs can carry from one pole to the other, and can be focused in a 4M wide beam. IR can pernitrate skin generating deep new cell growth, removing wrinkles. UV is damaging but only at the surface level. One wavelength of a sperm whale's song can be 75 yards long. Imagine if a ukulele were the size and density of a sperm whale's head.

 

[PedalUma]

Madeline Miller fan here - "Circe" and "Galatea" were also excellent!

I found it odd and disconcerting that the narrator of 'Song of Achilles' continues to narrate post mortem. Wait, this guy is dead and still talking? But that is me getting in the way with my own cultural assumptions and world views on how things work. The ancient Greeks are not playing by my rules, the are playing by theirs. To them a person in an unmarked grave will remain there and haunt. That is part of the value in reading such books, when we gain perspectives on our own views and assumptions, allowing then for our own expansion.