What Non-Baseball Books Are You Reading?

Just finished Jack Blank: The Secret War. It’s the second piece in a trilogy. The first book was great and the second one was just as good. I’m not too into the Harry Potter thing, but this is a little like that. I highly recommend both books.

I just finished reading Denis Johnson’s ‘Train Dreams,’ which is a beautiful, slim, quietly visionary novella set in the early 20th century Pacific Northwest. Also reading Grant Morrison’s Supergods, which is a terrific guided tour through the history of comic book superheroes and their place in the modern psyche. Also, a series of interviews b/w Clint Eastwood and Rolling Stone journalist Paul Nelson from ’79 to ’83 that were recently discovered and published by Continuum Books.

I’m about halfway through “A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent”. Honestly, it’s just okay so far. The book takes its time getting going, and it is exceedingly obvious that who the author REALLY wants to talk about is Andrew Jackson. I don’t mind reading about Jackson, but he’s been covered pretty extensively, and the constant invoking of his name dilutes the focus of the text. I’m hoping it’ll pick up a bit as it gets into really talking about the various intrigues leading up to the Mexican War . . .especially now that Jackson is dead. :)

Previously I read Adrian Goldsworthy’s “How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower”. Goldsworthy is kind of the rock star of classical history these days, and this is a book that I’d gladly recommend to anybody who has an interest. I don’t totally agree with his thesis, but he makes a compelling argument. In the course of doing so, he gives an easy to read history of 180-476. Goldworthy’s very well-received history of Caesar also looks very accessible, although I’ve only leafed through it.

Next on the list, I haven’t decided yet. If I go fiction, I’ll be deferring to my queue and reading David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” or Thomas Pynchon’s “Against The Day”. If I go with non-fiction, it’ll probably be David McCullough’s “Truman”.

Crime and Punishment (hope to finish today); Mayor of Casterbridge; am a canto or three into the Divine Comedy—a long-term read that I’ll dip into bit by bit over many months, probably.

Not sure if my boy Ignatius would have despised message boards or spent all day posting on them. Probably both.

Also reading De Re Publica by Cicero for class

The Late Shift by Bill Carter about the Letterman/Leno battle for the Tonight Show.

Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut

More than Just a Game by Charles P. Korr about the soccer league founded by the prisoners of Apartheid on Robben Island

Currently reading The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman about the build up to and the first month of WWI.

I just read the Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright, which chronicles the rise of Al-Qaeda and the mistakes that allowed 9/11 to happen. Very good book. I’m currently reading The Big Short by Michael Lewis, which is scaring me even more than the Looming Tower did.

I have 3-4 books going at once and I tend to just alternate -
on the soccer end I’m reading Blizzard volume 2 (soccer essays)
Bloody Confused

Obamanos - H Hertzberg
Mobsters In the Midst -local KC Mafia history
and for work I am reading a couple of Autism Books relevent to a case
The Miller Method and Mind Blindness

Just started Art of Fielding on baseball side and that’s got me zoned in quickly

by Thomas Friedman & Michael Mandelbaum. Friedman authored “The World Is Flat” several years ago about globalization.

I’ve been meaning to give a chance to some newer SF and Fantasy authors, and just recently finished the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. Terrific books. Now I am in Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I’m about 2/3 of the way through, and so far it is really excellent.

I just finished:

Dean Baker, False Profits.

I am now reading:

Paul Seabright, The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life, rev. ed.

Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — And Turned its Back on the Middle Class.

And I’ll now start:

L. Randall Wray, Understanding Modern Money: The Key to Full Employment and Price Stability.

Just finished Ketcham’s biography of James Madison. Now reading Ira Stoll’s “Samuel Adams”, Mack Maloney’s “Wingman” series (which I started back in my college days), and “The Lord of the Rings” (for the umpteenth time). Coming up, I might open up Fleming’s “Duel” (the Hamilton / Burr duel).

Regards,
Joel

Kite Runner

Finished “The Hard Goodbye” and in the middle of “A Dame To Kill For”

I recently read Philip Schultz’s My Dyslexia in which the Pulitzer winner describes both the mechanics and psychological effects of his dyslexia. A quick but stirring read. I’ve just finished Kurt Beyer’s Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age for a grad school class. It compares popular myth vs. reality in Hopper’s role in the evolution of computer programming

The Life of Pi
Legends of King Arthur & his Warriors (about the origin of the tales)
Better, by Atul Gawande

I see a ton of very deep novels on this list.

I just finished Mario Puzo’s The Fortunate Pilgrim. It read a little slow to start but you get wrapped up into the characters in the family very easily.

Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac

I saw it in a back to school display at a local brick-n-mortar and couldn’t resist the chance to re-read it after 20 odd years since high school.

I just finished the essential Spiderman collection #7 and One Hundred Years of Solitude (English—I did read it in Spanish a decade ago, but I dubbed that experience “One Hundred Years of Reading”).

A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar, never seen the movie but the book has been great so far, really captivating story.

Next book I’m gonna read is Liar’s Poker, excited to get started on that one.

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

The Road - Cormac McCarthy

Under the Banner of Heaven - John Krakauer

The Sex Lives of Cannibals - J. Martin Troost

I’m currently reading:
American Conspiracies by Jesse Ventura
&
The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost

Some recent things that I’ve read:
Bozo Sapiens: Why to Err is Human - Michael & Ellen Kaplan
Freefall - Joseph Stiglitz
The Big Short - Michael Lewis
The 10,000 Year Explosion - Gregory Cochran & Henry Harpending
I also read all the Malcolm Barber books this year

I’ve been on a tear this year:
All the Devils Are Here by Bethany McLean & Joe Nocera - great novel about the financial crisis
Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris - 3rd and final book about Roosevelt in this series
Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis
The Big Short by Michael Lewis
Candide by Voltaire
1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obrecht
DiMaggio - The Hero’s Life by Richard Ben Kramer
Nemesis by Phillip Roth
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
The Extra 2% by Jonah Keri
Slaugtherhouse Five by Vonnegut
Sun-Tzu At Gettysburg by Bevin Alexander
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson
Savage City and Havana Nocturne by TJ English
Portnoy’s Complaint by Phillip Roth
Watchmen by Alan Moore

Currently reading The War for Late Night by Bill Carter and have Catch-22 by Joseph Heller on deck.

Thank God for the public library. Great thread. Gives me some good ideas for what to read next.

Good insight into a man and his thoughts/feelings/despairs of WWII in the Pacific with most major field actions accounted for in his times with the Marines

Just finished:

Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada…a remarkable semi-fictional story of German resistance during the Nazi years

AND

The Case Against the Nazi War Criminals by Justice Robert H Jackson, primarily of value because it includes the author’s magisterial opening statement, now probably considered ‘quaint’ by those who also despise the Geneva Convention and other examples of international law.

Just started: Hitler’s Empire by Mark Mazower, a hefty but fascinating administrative history of the Third Reich.

No, I’m not some WWII obsessive…it’s just the theme of the moment!

Just started Ted Sorensen’s Kennedy; Sorensen’s own memoirs, Counselor, impressed me a few years ago and this had been on my list for a while. Just finished R.W. Southern’s The Making of the Middle Ages.

Philosophy I’ve read for pleasure lately (as opposed to read for the thesis): Edmund Burke’s Enquiry Into the Sublime and the Beautiful, Kant’s Religion Within the Limits of Pure Reason, Seneca’s “On Providence”.

I don’t usually have the time or stomach to read anything too heady in my spare time. The last book i finished for pleasure was “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” by Michael Chabon, which was terrific.

The Damned Utd., by Brian Peace, admittedly I saw the movie first (cause I love Michael Sheen), but its a fantastic read, and you don’t have to be a soccer fan to get it (Im not).

Also rereading Shaara’s “Glorious Clause” books about the revolution, I seem to tackle one of them every couple years

Just started George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series. Purely based on the series

The last book I finished was The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron, which was quite excellent.

Second to last was An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin which had less depth, but was surprisingly very engaging, well written and researched (I didn’t expect high quality writing out of an actor…more the fool me).

The Three Musketeers. Just finished the Gotrek and Felix anthology (high fantasy), and before that I read Jane Eyre.

Loved Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets, so followed it up with The Corner.
Both are incredible - well written, giving a great insight into the people’s lives and creating thoughtful debate on whether you can ever win a war on drugs and the effects of crime and punishment.
Just about to start Keith Richards’ Life - after I finish a book by Bob Gibson.

Nonfiction wise reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks which is a fantastic work on just how strange the human mind is.

Fiction wise I’ve been on a Ray Bradbury kick the past few months. Really don’t have much time for anything but short stories (and haven’t for the past couple of years or so) but he was a true master in that domain.

I’m currently about 3/4ths of the way through Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Really enjoying it so far, even though I usually stick to non-fiction. Judging by the things people are reading currently, would anyone be interested in doing some sort of book list?

I read mainly non-fiction, too:

Highly recommend Lords of Finance. Like others at the top of the thread, it is economic history, but important stuff. it’s about post-WWI economics in the top 4 western economies (Great Britain, France, Germany, and US), the devotion of the top central bank officials to the idea of the gold standard, and how monetary policy plunged the world back into economic crisis (pivotally alterting world history with the rise of fascism, great depression, et al.). In the current policy debate of national debt and some advocating for firm anti-debt measures…. it’s crucial read, really presenting why a Gold Standard was so financially crippling to the world and sparked the run on banks.

Charles Mann’s 1491 and 1493 are awfully impressive presentations upon native american life before and then immediately after the arrival of the Europeans. Really eye-opening archealogical evidence for massive populations/advanced societies before disease wiped out 80%+ of populations.

I also read Six Frigates, which is about the birth of the U.S. navy and the founding six frigates which were comissioned and built following the revolutionary war and their usage in the next few decades up to the War of 1812. Great descriptions of early naval battles, piracy, and the culture of early naval americans.

by Sara Marcus. It’s the story of the riot grrrl movement, focusing (so far) on Olympia, WA and D.C. scenes. My love of Sleater-Kinney drew me to learn more about their members’ influences and origins, which led me to this book.

Reckless Endangerment by Gretchen Morgenson. Gets less attention than The Big Short and Too Big to Fail, but might be the best reading on the financial crisis.

Waiting to download the new Lee Child to my Kindle once I get the next chapter of my a paper done.

almost anything by these guys

Also, Anne Tyler, who’s totally different from the other two. Very gentle, senstitive, humorous, and extremely insightful. Closest thing we have to our own Jane Austin

A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness by Ramachandran
North to the Night by Alvah Simon
Habibi by Craig Thompsom