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My son clips his to the bed and I clip mine to my books ... micro usb chargable ... It is my first so can’t compare but I really like it

just got the right stuff on audible narrated by dennis quaid.
I love the movie and loved reading the book but man am I excited for this as dennis is awesome and his performance got rave reviews.

One of the alltime GOAT american novels.


re-read Smiley's People, still great.

Highest recommendation for John Gregory Dunne's True Confessions, a fictionalized version of the Black Dahlia murder written in the late 70s and an inspiration to Pelecanos and other famous crime writers.
Incredibly un-PC language, hilariously so [and was in the late 70s as well]

Disappearance of Adele Bedeau by Burnet, a very interesting mystery all around they made a movie about it but I think in Europe. Would recommend, Not a typical police procedural.

2/3s done with Dog Soldiers by Stone, not sure what I think yet. Some parts are great others are ehhhhhhhh.

Started The Fixer.

Reading George Taber's Judgment of Paris which covers a wine tasting in 1976 that helped bring acclaim to California wines.

I'm 100 pages in and so far he has covered many of the seminal people and vineyards in the California wine industry. It covers the Spanish missions, and their Mission grapes, prohibition and it's effects, Inglenook, Gallo, Mondavi, Mike Grgich, Tchelistcheff of Beaulieau and the impact of UC Davis. So far he has gone into a cursory approach as to the winemaking process and a fair bit about the varietals and what does and doesn't do well in given climates.

The book has a very Michael Lewis feel to the prose. Taber was working as a correspondent for Time magazine in the 70's stumbled upon this tasting, which has grown legendary with the retelling.

There's a present at the creation motif to this book like you'd find with the beginnings of any industry. It is not unlike Robert Cringely's Accidental Empires. It tells how immigrants, farmers, geniuses and general social misfits put California, and by extension, Australian, South American, South African and other wine on the map.

Stone is tops with me...read DS numerous times...the texture, the feel of the sentences grows with time...not having read it for some years off the top of my head “He was a museum of yardbird reflexes”...the menace and aggression in the dialogue. Though I recommend most his Prime Green memoir primarily chronicling 60’s early 70s his awakening as was America’s...Unsparing keen eye

I've bought Epictetus' "discourses" and Zenons "letters from a stoic" to get more into stoicism. I read Meditations a year or two ago and I found it very interesting and good for my mental sanity to read.

It sorta has the effect of motivational quotes only it isn't grossly overenthusiastic and positive but more down to earth. It gives a lot of perspective and thoughts to contemplate while remaining very grounded.

I think philosophy in general can be key to keeping a healthy perspective on life and such, and stoicism is especially just about life and basics without getting handwave-y and without trying (and failing) to transcend ordinary life and living, like so many others (whom I've still appreciated, but in a different way.)

Dog Soliders I remember being weird in that I'd read it and read it and think "this is pretty good ... " in a blasé way and then all at once when it was done it really felt like an amazing novel and a great piece of storytelling

Just plowed through all 7 books in a few weeks. Not usually a scifi guy, the way I wasn’t a fantasy guy before ASOIAF. Now can’t wait for book 8.

About six months ago I read a bunch of Olen Steinhauer’s books after the kindle store recommended his latest to me, The Middlemant. He is the creator of the tv series Berlin Station and his books fall in two main series:

The Yalta Boulevard sequence - 5 books starting with Bridge of Sighs - a series of thrillers set in a fictional Eastern European country, set about ten years apart beginning post WW2. Pretty interesting subject matter loosely based upon Romania, I think.

The Milo Weaver trilogy - starting with the Tourist. Good spy fiction. Weaver shows up in the Middleman, so may want to read these first before that one.

Dog soldiers is a kickass book. Solidly in my 2nd tier of good not elite

Yeah, just not that impressed with DS, particuarly the ending felt totally staged and I saw the denoument coming a mile away - all 3 'parts'.

Good dialogue. Certainly not a bad book.

The movie isn’t bad either

I gave up after the second one I was turned off by the dialogue and everyone just being so nice to each other. It was all a bit corny imo

DS grows directly out of Graham Greene and Conrad. The epigraph is from Heart of Darkness. Way way back when the questions Stone is exploring were relevant to the times I read The Quiet American and realized immediately its connection to DS, it was like the same tone struck on a xylophone. I could go on in great length but the important thing I mean to say is DS (and others) strikes the chord, the hypocrisy’s; finishing off his plots is not a strong suit of his.
His children of Light is a favorite of mine though minor in his oeuvre. This book is his get back at Hollywood for perceived wrongs. Some venom flows...The characters are often thinly veiled versions of say The Huston’s...great vignettes underlining his bleak vision. I get worked up over Stone

Just finished Becoming from Michelle Obama and thought it was a very solid read. Would def recommend it.

I remember liking Children of Light when it came out, late 80s I think. Meant to read more Stone but never got around to it. Did like the Dog Soldiers movie.

I'm about a third of the way thru a rereading of Bellow's Henderson the Rain King. Love me some Bellow. His sentences always reminds me of music somehow, the way they bounce around in my brain.

Loved Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift

That's my favourite Bellow, followed by The Adventures of Augie March. I think those two novels changed American fiction.

What first fascinated me about Henderson the Rain King was the way it was a comic retelling of Heart of Darkness. It wasn't until the third time I read it that I realized Bellow was also doing a very funny send-up of Hemingway.

I hadn't thought of that Hemingway thing before, that makes sense!

Note that Eugene Henderson's initials match up, as do the syllables of his name.

Just finished Stephen King's The Long Walk. It was...OK. I quite liked parts of it, but I think the most annoying thing is not that it's bad or anything, just that this book could have been amazing. It's the first book he ever wrote, so cut the guy some slack, I guess.

Pros: Great concept. The weird sex stuff worked surprisingly well.
Cons:

I'd never heard that The Long Walk was the first book he ever wrote ... source?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_King_bibliography

It's been forever since I read it so the details might be foggy but only later in life did I realize something insane about the book ... not really spoilerish but:

Think there was a discussion about the lack of world-building in a Stpehen King thread a year back or so. I like it: sure he could flesh-out the world further, but the story just works lean - allowing the reader to fill in the blanks.

In regards to walker's observations:


It's got to be a good storyk: it's been at least a decade or two since I read it and it's stuck with me.

Wikipedia for the book says this:

"While not the first of King's novels to be published, The Long Walk was the first novel he wrote, having begun it in 1966–67 during his freshman year at the University of Maine some eight years before his first published novel Carrie was released in 1974."

sourced from the Afterword to Full Dark, No Stars.