OT: Camden Chat Off-Season Reading Suggestions

Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger (liked Franny, didn’t care for Zooey) and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (loved it, highly recommend). I’ve got upcoming: a biography of Kurt Vonnegut (featuring my friend’s dad, who was one of Vonnegut’s students), The Honourable Schoolboy, The Long Goodbye, and maybe The Art of Fielding that everyone’s raving about (also The Hunger Games, if only because I’m just too curious).

On another note, I can’t recommend Michael Ruhlman’s Twenty too highly for the learning at-home cooks around here. I really cannot. It’s utterly, utterly fantastic.

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes – best war fiction you will ever read (set in Vietnam)

11/22/63 by Stephen King – What would YOU do if someone told you that you could go back in time and stop JFK’s assassination?

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene – God’s been outlawed in 1930s Mexico. One last priest is still on the run.

For those among us given to the occasional (or frequent) bout of nerdiness…

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline – Geek nostalgia and 1980s nostalgia rolled all into one peculiar coming-of-age story.

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie – First of a trilogy. To start you might think you’ve read this book 50 times with different titles, but it goes very interesting places instead.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch – One part heist movie, one part revenge movie, one part medieval fantasy.

so it gave me an opportunity to read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People. I had never read le Carre before, and it is certainly way different than your typical James Bond, Jack Ryan style spy novels. Much more left to the imagination. Probably not for everybody, but I enjoyed them. If you read Tinker, Tailor, and it doesn’t grab you, stop there.

For baseball books, I enjoyed The Bullpen Gospels by Dirk Hayhurst. Nothing really new or revealing about life as a ballplayer, but it was entertaining.

I also re-read The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell. It’s a different spin on the Arthurian legend. I happen to like Cornwell’s historical fiction style.

For something a little different, try The Postmortal: A Novel by Drew Magary. It’s about the social effects of a drug that prevents aging and it’s written in a first-person blog-type style that works for this type of book.

Finally, for another historical fiction recommendation, I have always enjoyed The Killer Angels by Micael Shaara, about the Battle of Gettysburg.

Watership Down is my favorite book of all time.

Awake in the Dark and Scorsese by Roger Ebert if you want to mix some film with your reading.

Heart of Darkness haha, that is your favorite book of all time though right? It’s one of the few books I took with me to carwage.

Here Comes Trouble The Micheal Moore book, should be great for a young liberal like yourself, I enjoyed it a lot.

The Dark Arena It’s Mario Puzo, the author of the Godfather (which was not a very good book), it’s not a great book, but it is very entertaining and a fairly quick read with some good post-WWII drama in Germany.

The Corner Very good book, heavy, but good.

I also recently read a really good Le Carre novel recently, but for the life of me I can’t recall the title.
I haven’t taken many reading heavy classes so this thread is nice to have, I need to get more reading in.

Both are alternate histories based on the premise that the Axis won WWII.

The Man in the High Castle is by Philip K. Dick who is probably best known for Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep? which is the basis for Bladerunner. The takes place in a US that has been split up into three parts with the East Coast controlled by Nazi Germany and Japan controlling the West Coast. Also Dick is an amazing science fiction writer so if you just want to check out some great science fiction read the aforementioned Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep? or Ubik as they are masterpieces of the genre.

Fatherland is by Robert Harris and takes place in Germany 20 years after the end of World War II and involves a detective in the police stumbling upon the Holocaust after the Nazi government had successfully hidden it from the world at the end of WWII.

Additionally, in contemporary authors I love all three novels written by Gary Shteyngart so far but either Absurdistan or Super Sad True Love Story are my favorite.

and it is just sitting on my bookshelf, staring at me. Its massive size terrifies me.

I just picked up Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime. The Palin chapters are pretty interesting. As originally reported at the time, McCain’s spent an exorbitant amount of time into making Lieberman a viable VP choice. Ultimately, his pollster said the gain in independent votes wouldn’t outweigh the loss of Republican votes so he axed LIeberman and turned to Palin. She was vetted in 40 hours but McCain’s team managed to pick up all of the major dirt. They knew about Trooper-Gate, her unwed pregnant daughter, and even news reports from the Anchorage Daily News which she often seemed “unprepared or over her head” while running for governor. McCain’s adviser concluded, “She’s a high risk, high reward,” candidate which, of course, appealed to McCain who wanted a game changer. His recklessness is fascinating. His VP pick was strictly about his position in the election with little forethought to whether Palin could actually govern (not that this is terribly surprising). The best Palin moment is that during the debate preps, Palin kept mispronouncing Biden’s name as O’Biden so her advisers simply instructed her to call him by Joe. Palin responded she couldn’t do that because she barely knew him.

though i’m about done w/ cod by mark kurlansky and in the midst of the magnificent ambersons by booth tarkington.

Oryx and Crake and its parallel The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. A futuristic world divided between the common “pleeblands” and the compounds of scientists and their families creating things such as meat on a plant, combo animals, rejuvenating facial products, and all sorts of other atrocities. Also a post-apoc story.

The Man in the High Castle by PKD. Already mentioned, by I just finished it. An alternate world where Germany and Japan won World War 2, and a book is sweeping the world in which they did not, in fact, win the war. Interesting turns in this book.

City & the City by China Mieville. Two cities, two cultures, one geographical plane. One force to keep the two sides separate. One crime forcing them together. Both entertaining, and makes you think.

The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Dark, gritty, atmospheric, and very hard to break away from. Also recommend Shadow of the Wind by Zafon.

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. An aunt dies, leaves her London flat to the twin daughters of her estranged American sister, and then proceeds to haunt her flat unwillingly. Lots of character development early, gets stranger toward the end.

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. Lighthearted fantasy, very well done. A plain girl gets turned into an old woman by a witch, runs away, and winds up caretaker of the notorious wizard Howl’s castle.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michaek Chabon
The word may be overused now but this book is an epic in my eyes.

after that, I have the first volume of a graphic novel titled ‘Scapled’, by Jason Aaron in the pipeline
and then two histories of alcohol use during the late 19th/early 20th centuries: Faces along the Bar, by Madelon Powers and Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, by Daniel Okrent

I found/stole it from a bar (it was sitting there and I was really really drunk and it was with me when I woke up the next day lol) and absolutely loved it. I know a lot of people don’t like him though.

For baseball books I’d really recommend Stepping Up about Curt Flood – great read.

I also recently enjoyed Endurance by Alfred Lansing about Shackleton’s polar exploration.

Then I know you’re into politics, so I always recommend Sleepwalking Through History. Especially great for those with a liberal bias since it destroys the ridiculous myth of Reagan.

Even if you’re not a Mac person, this is a fantastic read. It revealed so much about this innovator, and although it doesn’t always paint him a positive light, one gets a much more detailed picture of the man behind Apple. I highly recommend it.