The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel


A Cro-Magnon is adopted by a clan of Neanderthals. Really well done story, and seems like it was well researched.

i've been meaning to read that for ages as i heard it's great and feels right up my alley

I think there is a whole series of these. One reviewer called them "Club Med of the Neolithic." I'm interested in what you think after reading.

Yeah, it's a series of four or five novels, IIRC. I think they were published starting in the 80s (?)

I found them quite entertaining. Well-written, stretched believability a bit, but not too bad.

FWIW, Daryl Hannah was a much better actress in the book.

I remember liking them back in the 80s, but I don't think I ever finished the series. May have to revisit them.

I read a brief snyposis for each one before I started and decided that at most I would read the first two.

Something about the third being focused on a caveman love triangle.


I enjoyed the first enough to try rhe second, but it will probably be awhile.

The audiobook is great. It's read by him.

Cool. I might listen to that in a few years, when I forget enough of the book.

I should have mentioned that the book has quite a lot of gambling content, and a bit of poker content. I think Norm actually was a degen IRL, and he is a massive degen in the book. A lot of it is about his trips to Vegas, then AC, where he decides to either make enough to retire or kill himself. He enlists the aid of a Sklansky-like limit hold 'em pro to keep his degeneracy in check.

He has some pretty interesting thoughts about gambling and gambling addiction.

Prophet Song won the Booker.

Just finished The Girls by Emma Cline, which was fine, much better than her recent novel which stunk, and The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng, about Maugham's visit to Malaysia and the couple he stayed with, it's fiction. 3/4* for that one.

Over to the library for my annual donation. In the used book sale, I found Brazil by Michael Palin, and Brazil customs & culture by Culture Smart.

Always enjoyed Palin's BBC wandering. Recommend either the TV or book versions of any of them to people who like travel docs.

As I'm going to Brazil in January, these were nice surprise findings.

I'm halfway thru Nathan Hill's Wellness and it's fantastic, maybe even as good as his previous novel The Nix. He might be becoming my favorite living novelist, since I haven't been too crazy about Jonathan Franzen's last 2 books.

Never heard of the Nix somehow, it's on the list, thanks.

Rules of Civility was excellent. It somehow felt longer and a richer story than The Lincoln Highway even though it was much shorter (at least the audiobook was).

Thanks for the rec. Have re-requested AGiM and hopefully spend some time with it over the holidays. Btw it was mentioned in Rules of Civility so I picked up To Have and Have Not. I’ve loved all the Hemingway I’ve ever read, and this didn’t disappoint at all.

I ended up being disappointed by this book, didn't finish strong at all imo. Both the Kansas backstory and the rich people backstory were just terrible. Man, in The Nix the mother's backstory was one of the best parts of the book.

That said, he is definitely a very talented writer and I look forward to seeing what he tackles next. Hope it won't be a 7 year wait this time!

Yeah, we had to wait ~25 years for the next Salter novel, you just never know.

I haven't had much inclination to read fiction lately. I don't know why. But tonight I started Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai, and if the first chapter is any indication, I'm going to speed through this.

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looks interesting.

The Ridiculous Race by Steve Hely and Vali Chandrasekaran.

The story of two friends who challenge each other to a race around the world, without the use of planes, one going in each direction. I thought this sounded interesting and fun, like chopstick's old thread on the same topic.

Turns out, these guys are TV writers, and decided, just barely not on the spur of the moment, to do this in their time off between seasons. Also, they came off pretty douchey--in nearly every moment of introspection, it ended with some lame-ass joke that put the focus back on them, instead of the awe-inspiring thing they were experiencing.

While it should've been really interesting, it wasn't. chopstick's a much better, and more interesting, writer. If you like travel reading, go here instead.

I liked Michael Lewis's Going Infinite, about the crypto guy Sam Bankman-Fried. Helluva story, to say the least. SBF appears to have been the logical extension of a certain type of weirdo whipsmart gameplayer that 2p2ers might be able to identify with. And it all happened so fast, first the rise to king-of-the-world billionaire, then reviled convict, all in nothing flat! The book does feel a little rushed but Lewis is just so good with the words that it's still great. As I often say, he's the only legitimate heir to Tom Wolfe and David Halberstam, the King of Non-Fiction.

Unruly. Comedian David Mitchell going though all the British monarchs giving some interesting fact and knowledge. Decent enough if you're into that kinda thing, and pretty funny at times. Mitchell's got a great voice for audiobooks like this imo.

is he historically accurate or more diving into whatever makes for a laugh and thus going more into stuff that may or may not be factual but makes for a good story?

i'm a huge sucker for historical non-fiction but nothing makes my blood boil more than nonsense fake history of stuff where they repeat things that clearly never happened because contemporary accounts treat it like a normal battle but then one guy who wrote about it 5 centuries later and from another part of the globe said that they were throwing cats at each other during the battle so thus it's now all about this cat throwing battle which most assuredly never happened but some jackass tabloid writer of the bronze age wanted some juicy gossip

Can’t say if it’s historically accurate, but he seemed to take it seriously, and he studied History at Cambridge. It’s not a comedy book, light reading though. Lots of British kings to get through!

thanks will definitely check it out

Gentleman in Moscow - this guy is kept under house arrest in a hotel for decades, utterly unable to leave, yet never expresses boredom, frustration, bitterness, isolation or anything negative. In fact he seems to have more adventures than most of us in the real world. It's not credible, and prevents the book from rising above a fun story with some good (if overly florid) writing.

Reading a collection of Krugman essays: Arguing With Zombies

It’s an interesting retrospective - to think about the ACA and the financial crisis, for example, from writings that occurred at the time. I was younger and less politically engaged, so it’s fun(and infuriating?) to draw parallels to current events.