to hellholes and back by Chuck Thompson.

In this book, he writes of trips to places he thought would be hellholes: The Congo, India, Mexico City and.....

I find him a good read. First person, unvarnished stories of his experiences. Witty with some cynicism thrown in. Good, entertaining reading.

Read The deluge by Stephen Markley. A truly terrifying & awesome read. Highly recommend, especially if you enjoyed The Stand.

The Longest Walk by George Meegan. The story of his walk from Ushuaia, Argentina, to Deadhorse, Alaska from June 1977 to September 1983. Not straight through, of course. He had to hole up during winters and take time to rest here and there.

At first, I was kind of frustrated by the story. Seemed like he was pretty unprepared and made some bad decisions. However, I got past that pretty quickly.

He's not a professional writer. It's a first-person retelling of his experiences over that time. Some typos and so on, but still overall enjoyed it. He seems like an affable sort who had this odd drive to do this trip.

Turns out, he went through my hometown not long before I graduated from high school. He didn't mention it specifically, but wrote about walking along the south shore of Lake Superior. through Wisconsin IIRC, to get through to Minnesota, he would've had to take a route which went about 2.5 blocks from the house I grew up in. Too bad I didn't know about it at the time.

A few other spots during his journey were familiar to me, so those were nice to read about too.

Still haven’t gotten seriously into the Lewis book but Number Go Up felt like just a ton of “how could people be such idiots? These are obvious ponzis” with a sprinkling of human trafficking, which was compelling. If it’s that much better I’ll be seriously disappointed by the ML book.

Reading Madness, Rack, and Honey by poet Mary Ruefle. It's a collection of various lectures she has given. She's an exceptional poet and a thoughtful essayist. Highly recommended.

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...so when they asked me whether I had anything else to say I told them that in the beginning you understand the world but not yourself, and when you finally understand yourself you no longer understand the world. They seemed satisfied with that. Cops, they're all so young.

Recommending a book by Aaron Lansky, Outwitting History. It's a fascinating account of Lansky's quest to rescue books in Yiddish, most of which were headed for extinction. Lansky rescued over a million books.

I thought of this book when I saw an article about his retiring as the director of The Yiddish Book Center.

I also recommend Richard Atlick's The Scholar Adventurers, another book about scholarly detective work.

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Just finished The Bad Weather Friend by Dean Koontz. A lot of what I read these days are the monthly "free reads" I get on my Kindle from Amazon. This was one of those. And wow! It was tremendous. Koontz is a well known author of a zillion books but I have never read any of them before this one. This guy can really write. I could tell in the first few pages he has mastered his craft. It was a quick easy read with a strange science fictionish plot. But the plot didn't really matter as it was just super well written. And the plot itself was merely a vehicle for very strong social and moral commentary which really clicked with me. Anyhoo I expect I will try a few more of his books which I guess is the whole point of free reads to introduce authors to readers (and get them to buy more books!). There were a few other of these free reads that prompted me to read more of a few of the authors presented. This one gets my highest recommendation.

Mission to Mars by Michael Collins.

Collins, the Apollo 11 CMP, gives his ideas about what a manned mission to Mars would look like.

Written 1990, so things are dated (he talks about a joint Soviet-American venture, for example). He's pretty in-depth about the differing possibilities and needs for such a trip, and gives a recommendation for the solution he thinks will be the best of the options.

Some things, he admits, don't exist yet (like a truly closed-loop system for recycling waste, so we'd have to bring less water), but it's a very detailed analysis of the problem.

The last several chapters are a fictional account of the first manned mission. That's pretty interesting too, how they overcame problems (and, indeed, what problems came up).

Worth a read for space/tech nerds, I'd say.

Sounds very similar to a book I wrote about a while back, which I really loved - Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

She goes quite a bit into the history of the space programs (not just NASA's) as well.

Yeah, I'd read that last year, it was pretty good, I think.

I have put this in the queue.

Agree that this was good.


Anybody have any comments on Ned Beauman's Madness is Better Than Defeat?

Long time John Grisham fan here — great for escaping. Anyhow, I see someone posted abt this book 13+ years ago but I really enjoyed Ford County, which is a collection of short stories. Similar but different from his usual. I found most of the stories pretty compelling, and in any case they’re short.

any recs either historical fiction or non-fiction about the french revolution?
also wouldn't mind a good book about the insane debauchery that was life in the royal family around that time.

I might not have been in the right frame of mind, but I found Paul Beatty's The Sellout too rambling to be serious or funny. My mind kept wandering because the protagonist's own thoughts consistently seemed to go all over the place. May have to give it another try at some point.

I also found that I grew bored—it seemed a repetitious one-trick pony of a novel—and had to push myself to finish it (though I thought it ended strongly). I was struck by how many good readers have judged highly of the book, but later I found that three of the judges for that year's Tournament of Books expressed reservations similar to my own.

"it’s relentlessly, exhaustingly, exaggeratedly sardonic. It just hammers away: HELLO I AM BITING SATIRE. BITE BITE. There are funny lines galore—I bet Paul Beatty is great at Twitter. But I also bet I would mute him after a few weeks because Jesus Christ, dude, enough."

"A book can be an Objectively Good Book, winning all sorts of awards and getting every accolade, and you could still be like: Why am I finding this to be such a slog? Yes, that’s right: I found The Sellout to be a kind of “drink this, it’s good for you” book that I wanted so badly to like but [whispers] it just left me cold."

“unlike many readers, or at least many reviewers, I rarely found The Sellout funny. I found it sad, angry, and, until the last 50 or so pages, incredibly difficult to read—so arduous that I was shocked to find myself won over at the end.”

I've almost finished director Ed Zwick's memoir Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions. I like it, was a huge fan of thirtysomething back in the day and always felt like I was rooting for him over the years. Seems like a good guy for a Hollywood director and has zillions of insider stories. Although geez, his mancrush on Denzel Washington doesn't sit very well. He's a little sweet on Tom Cruise too, heh.

Paul W. Klipsch collection of vintage newsletters and audio philosophies.

E=mc2: A biography of the world's most famous equation by David Bodanis.

An interesting kind of approach: one section is dedicated to the symbols themselves: why two parallel lines to describe equality? How did our understanding of energy come to be? Pretty interesting part.

The rest is how Einstein came up with the equation, and the use and understanding of its implications, mostly around developed nuclear weaponry.

I wouldn't put it in the compelling tier, but it was interesting enough to give it a spin for science-y folks.

I found The Sellout to just be amazingly hilarious and well-written, altho a few parts it dragged -- sure -- but the ending rocked and the legitimate laugh out loud parts still bring a smile to my face when I think of them. The scenes with the dominatrix alone were worth the price of admission.

Someone who didn't even find it funny at all? I'd have some doubts about them as a person and a reader.

[I honestly think there's a cadre of humans that just don't 'get' satire, except on a theoretical basis. Perhaps it makes them too uncomfortable when done really well, I dunno. Diff strokes, for sure.]

Probably time for me to re-read it.

"Someone who didn't even find it funny at all? I'd have some doubts about them as a person and a reader."

Well, that certainly raises the stakes ...

Our faculty union has been encouraging everyone to wear red shirts to protest our lack of a contract.

I am reminded of Redshirts, John Scalzi's Hugo award winning sci-fi novel. Highly recommended.

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Yup great fun, and that's coming from someone with zero interest in Star Trek.

Reading Very Important People by a model-turned-academic. It is a study of the club scene, promoters, the models/girls, etc. I’m still early in the book but it’s compelling so far. Author’s name is Mears.

Beneath the Underdog by Charles Mingus. Sort of a memoir. Some good jazz stories interleaved with pages of fantasies about his sexual prowess. More bizarre than I hoped it would be.