What are you reading now?

Just finished Douglas Preston's Extinction and liked it.  I like some his books (and some of the ones the ones co-written with Childs) but not all. Don't much care for his Pendergast books. Extinction: think Jurassic Park with mammals.  An older book of his (theirs?  Can't remember) that I liked was Riptide, loosely based on the now well known Oak Island story, but written long before the TV series.  Yeah, I follow the series because I read the same Readers' Digest story that the brothers did, way back when I was in college, which dates me pretty well.

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

Reading Till we are lost, one of the Bobiverse series by Dennis Taylor. Good fun, and it got me thinking of what a good fundamental scenario the series presents. If you've got an endearing protagonist, why not have a handful of replicants just like him, but diverging according to their experiences? It's perfect for maintaining multiple storylines. 

I was enjoying these, but the one before this one (Heaven's river?) got really long.  I made it through, but kinda lost interest.  Does this one get back to what 1-3 felt like?

In reply to TravisTheHuman :

Funny you should say that. I had the exact same experience. Finished Heavens River and walked away for a couple of years. This one starts a little slow, but warms up nicely. 

All the Light We Cannot See.

Highly recommended.

I'm just finishing "A City on Mars" which is an exhaustive exploration of both the feasibility and wisdom of space exploration.   It does not lack detail.

48, the Proxima trilogy. 

Sharpes Tiger

Duke said:

Duke said:

I picked up a general history of the Vietnam conflict...

The book is Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975 by Max Hastings. 

Nine or ten weeks later I am finally finished with this.  It was well worth reading, but quite long - it had to be.  But it filled a big gap in my knowledge of history, at the appropriate level of detail, which is what I wanted it for.

Just started The Rise And Fall Of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. Hopefully it moves quickly. I wasn't exactly up for another long book immediately, but it was what the library had among my usual sections.

Duke said:

In reply to Mustang50 :

I don't think you need to regret anything.

Starting whenever the French first set foot in-country, the entire situation was completely mishandled by everyone at the highest levels, including the Vietnamese themselves when they had a chance.

I'm not playing the old "just following orders" platitude here, but policy directs action, and politicians set the policies.

 

 

Amen, brother!

Followed up reading my friend's account of his time in Vietnam with an unapologetic autobiography by a veteran who is tired of vets being portrayed as traumatized victims.  He asserts that his best moments were while he was deployed in Iran and Afghanistan, and thoroughly enjoyed the excitement and camaraderie that came with being at war.  He credits those experiences with shaping him, helping him grow, and putting him among a fraternity of like-minded veterans.

Anybody else on Goodreads?

If you search users for "Duke W" you should be able to find me.

"Carburetors & Carburetion" by Walter B. Larew.

An old book, published in 1967, but a solid explanation of Otto engine physics and carburetion.

William L Shirer's "Berlin Diary."

James Blish The Seedling Stars.

I read the short story version called Surface Tension many years ago, apparently this is the fleshed out version.

If you haven't read Surface Tension, run and find it. I'm hoping the full book is just as good ( just started it)

LFA: The Roar of an Angel

All about the development and release of the LFA written by the chief engineer, Tanahashi Haruhiko.

I haven't made it far into the deep dive of the car, but skipped to the last chapters where the author writes his career auto-biography. Interestingly, he's not really a track rat or involved with racing, but rather keenly focused on chassis and suspension. The sportiest models he worked on were the 4th gen (FWD) Celica and the Lexus GS. He also writes a lot about the bureaucracy at Toyota, without then-CEO Akio Toyoda will it definitely would not have been made.

i just finished "The answer is no" by Fredik Bakman and enjoyed it very much.  Short story about a loner who is happy with a good glass of wine, a video game, and Pad Thai with peanuts until his neighbors ask him about an abandoned frying pan.... 

https://www.amazon.com/Answer-No-Short-Story-ebook/dp/B0D5JLH3RJ  

I started the book "12 Second Culture" by Mike Metcalf and Shaun Peet on the way back from PRI and let me just say...I'm hooked.

The book looks at being the best and how it effects daily life from a general perspective but uses the authors experience in NASCAR pit crews to show the effects in a performance-driven profession where leadership is often done poorly. The book translates into every work environment, with the main idea being that speed might be the currency of business, but diversity, efficiency, culture, and kindness are the pathway to a competitive advantage.

Jungle by Yossi Ghinsberg.  I picked this up at random from a neighborhood Little Library on one of our daily walks.  Written in 1993 about an event that happened in the early '80s, where the author was lost in the Bolivian jungle for a few weeks.  The version I'm reading was re-released in 2015 or so to coincide with a movie adaptation starring Daniel Radcliffe in 2017.

I haven't finished it yet, but clearly he survived to write the book...

...which is surprising, because Ghinsberg was a complete idiot and never should have been where he was in the first place.  I get that he was a young adventurer, full of wanderlust.  But he took off into the wilderness following another idiot (who he had just met) who clearly didn't know what he was doing either, with a couple other idiots.  They were woefully under-equipped and underprepared.

To his credit, he did apparently manage to tough it out and find his way back to civilization, but in my mind the whole point is that he never should have had to in the first place.

Duke said:

Jungle by Yossi Ghinsberg.  I picked this up at random from a neighborhood Little Library on one of our daily walks.  Written in 1993 about an event that happened in the early '80s, where the author was lost in the Bolivian jungle for a few weeks.  The version I'm reading was re-released in 2015 or so to coincide with a movie adaptation starring Daniel Radcliffe in 2017.

I haven't finished it yet, but clearly he survived to write the book...

...which is surprising, because Ghinsberg was a complete idiot and never should have been where he was in the first place.  I get that he was a young adventurer, full of wanderlust.  But he took off into the wilderness following another idiot (who he had just met) who clearly didn't know what he was doing either, with a couple other idiots.  They were woefully under-equipped and underprepared.

To his credit, he did apparently manage to tough it out and find his way back to civilization, but in my mind the whole point is that he never should have had to in the first place.

 

into the wild (book and movie) glamorized the idea and even though Chris McCandless died, it was so bad they had to move the bus from the Alaskan wilderness to a museum.  

Recently picked this up and am looking forward to reading it. When I saw the “Cool Town” title, I just knew it was about Athens. :)

50, Helium 3 books one and two. 

Guess I'll be a bit short of my unofficial unstated goal of 1 book a week this year. 

At the same time, there were weeks I did 5 plus books and months I didn't finish one. So I guess it evens out. Kinda wish I had a page count. 

Just started William Gibson's Idoru; second part of the Bridge trilogy.  Shouldn't take long.

After that it will be Persepolis Rising from Expanse.