Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl
I'm in it.
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Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl
I'm in it.
The Men Who United the States by Simon Winchester. Kind of a counter pointish book to all the founding father books that have been coming our. Brings the uniting of the US through technology.
Fantastic read. Highly recommend Atlantic also by him, a history of the Atlantic Ocean.
http://www.amazon.com/We-Die-Alone-E.../dp/1599210630
We Die Alone.
A Norwegian resistance fighter is running from the Nazi's after being shot out of a boat in the frozen north of the Norwegian Fjords. The locals try and hide him from the Germans. Amazing true story of survival from the elements. He survives in a snow bank alone for weeks, too weak to move and cuts his own toes off do to frostbite.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Labcabin
x2. Amazing tale.
Any of you armchair mountaineers want to win Climbing Fitz Roy, 1968? Patagonia books is letting us give a copy away. Beautiful book. Details Here.
Days of war, nights of love published by CrimethINC.
Bump because I'm reading this now. I'm just past the halfway point and I've got to say it is excellent so far.Quote:
Originally Posted by jerr
anyone else reading Furious Cool?
wow!
http://img2.imagesbn.com/p/978161620...2_s260x420.JPG
Nothing to Envy- North Korea Non-Fiction.
It follows the life of 6 different N Korean. I need to stop reading about N Korea.
Anyone have any good books to recommend on Japan. I just ordered Haikkado Blues Hwy, Im going there is a few weeks and want to have some knowledge.
"Shogun" by James Clavell was awesome, but it probably won't give you much useful knowledge for your trip.
Recently read and recommended: American Rust by Philipp Meyer (fiction), and Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan (non-fiction about photographer Edward Curtis).
Bump. What's everyone been reading lately?
Just finished "The Boys in the Boat" by Daniel James Brown and it blew my socks off. Story of the '36 Olympics Crew Team from the University of Washington and their quest for gold in Nazi Germany. The story starts when the boys are freshmen at UW and concludes at the Olympics. I've never rowed crew, but I've always appreciated it: this book only added to that appreciation (and respect). I don't think my heart rate has ever gotten that high while reading (about their races, except maybe for Seabiscuit). Check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Boys-Boat-Amer...ys+in+the+boat
Also just finished "The Perfect Mile" about trying to beat the four minute mile in '50s. If you're a runner, you definitely have to check it out. http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Mile-A...ur+minute+mile
What's everyone reading this Spring?
Hugh Howey, "Dust". If you are planning on reading the Silo trilogy, I recommend reading "Shift", then "Wool", then "Dust". He wrote "Wool" first, but the wrote the prequel, "Shift". There is a little overlap and "Wool" is better.
Agreed, on the order, and also highly recommend.Quote:
Originally Posted by boarddad
Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev
"Pomerantsev, born in the UK to Russian émigré parents, spent almost a decade in Moscow working as a TV producer, making documentaries and reality shows for Russian audiences. He arrived in the early 2000s, in the midst of an oil boom that brought a measure of prosperity to many and huge wealth to a select few, creating a tidal wave of glitz and extravagance, especially in the capital. Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible is an entertaining if at times bleak chronicle of these years, depicting a world “where gangsters become artists, gold‑diggers quote Pushkin, Hells Angels hallucinate themselves as saints”. The cast of characters is so bizarre they must be real, from bearded nationalist bikers to self-help cultists and their supermodel victims. (Pomerantsev tells us that while only 15% of the world’s oil comes from the former USSR, it accounts for half the catwalk models in Paris and Milan.) We also meet Vitali Dyomochka, a Siberian hoodlum turned cineaste. Dissatisfied with the quality of crime dramas on Russian TV – “it was all fake” – he took to making his own series"
Pretty good read.
"The Winter of Our Discontent" by Steinbeck. Something about the title attracted me lol. In addition to pretty crappy snow conditions we've had injuries, illnesses, all kinds of weird crap happening in our tribe this winter.
Odd book but I like it. One thing about Steinbeck, he wasn't afraid to take chances.
Alan Furst "Spies of the Balkans". Fiction, set in WW2 Greece. Detectives, port sleaze, sex, guns, hashish, British intel. It's all there for this genre.
"Scar Tissue" - memoir of Anthony Keidis (singer from red hot chili peppers) about his ridiculous youth. He kinda writes like a pompous douche, but it's worth enduring for the stories.
Hell Or High Water: Surviving Tibet's Tsangpo River - Peter Heller.
I recently read Cadillac Desert which is a history of the water development in California/ the West- it was really interesting and in light of the situation in CA it's kind of nice to understand the back story too. And it's no boring history- they called it water wars. that 70's Jack Nicholson movie Chinatown was based around the california water wars too. anyhow- highly recommend.
I've also gotten some good recs in the summer reading thread
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/s...Reading-Thread
If you are into religion, try reading the works of Philip Yancy. It does not depict a certain religion really but of someone's faith. Nothing specific but really well written.
Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel. It is a novel of the near future, after a flu pandemic ravaged North America. I am usually a non-fiction reader, but this is really good.
I second Station Eleven just read it this weekend. And thanks Baby Bear for the Boys In The Boat recommend, best book I have read in a LONG time . If you want a thought provoking, mostly dark but fantastically written semi love story check out Preparation For The Next Life by Atticus Lish
Look Who's Back - Timur Vermes
"Summer 2011. Berlin. Adolf Hitler wakes up on a patch of ground, alive and well. Things have changed – no Eva Braun, no Nazi party, no war. Hitler barely recognises his beloved Fatherland, filled with immigrants and run by a woman. People certainly recognise him, though – as a brilliant, satirical impersonator who refuses to break character. The unthinkable, the inevitable, happens, and the ranting Hitler takes off, goes viral, becomes a YouTube star, gets his own TV show, becomes someone who people listen to. All while he’s still trying to convince people that yes, it really is him, and yes, he really means it."
I've been on a Mark Kurlansky kick lately- Read Salt, The Big Oyster and now am reading his '1968' and all have been great. particularly enjoyed the Big Oyster (a lot of good stuff on the history of NYC)
holy shit PNW your rec sounds crazy but intriguing!
I just finished - "Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammers, and the Untold Story of the Marijuana Trade". It was a interesting historical look at what was going on in late 60's into the 70's and how things became uglier thru the 80's as blow became involved.
that just reminded me of something funny that we had a dog named Thai stick when I was a kid ...and I only just figured it all out a couple yrs ago.
"All the Light We Cannot See," was a good read.
Thanks for all the recs for boys in the boat. Great read -
"The Colony of Unrequited Dreams" - Historical fiction built around the incorporation of Newfoundland into Canada. Some scathingly sarcastic vignettes and a storyline that is as Canadian as Robertson Davies works.
"Inside The Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel" - A Very Cool Read that weaves together French architectural philosophy, a building rising out of a swindlers arrest and prosecution, the depression, history of art and counterculture in NYC, immigrants, the Ginsberg/Burroughs/Snyder Beat generation and the birth of hippies, Thomas Wolfe, Warhol/Sedgewick/Dylan, Hendrix, Joplin, Bill Graham. Grandiloquence in sufficient wads to bring the blood of most redumblicans to a boil.
There's a film out now in Germany...Quote:
Originally Posted by PNWbrit
Just finished Saturn Run by John Sanford.
Publisher description:
The year is 2066. A Caltech intern inadvertently notices an anomaly from a space telescope—something is approaching Saturn, and decelerating. Space objects don’t decelerate. Spaceships do.
A flurry of top-level government meetings produces the inescapable conclusion: Whatever built that ship is at least one hundred years ahead in hard and soft technology, and whoever can get their hands on it exclusively and bring it back will have an advantage so large, no other nation can compete. A conclusion the Chinese definitely agree with when they find out.
The race is on, and an remarkable adventure begins—an epic tale of courage, treachery, resourcefulness, secrets, surprises, and astonishing human and technological discovery, as the members of a hastily thrown-together crew find their strength and wits tested against adversaries both of this earth and beyond. What happens is nothing like you expect—and everything you could want from one of the world’s greatest masters of suspense.
So .... what did you think of it? The reviews are a little mixed .....
I'm reading it right now and although it's interesting the writing style annoys me a little. The author never met an adjective he didn't like.Quote:
Originally Posted by NoPostholio
Possible iteration:
"The Speckled Monster" - Story of smallpox and how inoculation was first accepted into western society. A surprisingly interesting read.
"The Invention of Air" - Story of Joseph Preistley, a little known historical figure who not only discovered that plants make oxygen but also had the most correspondence with any of the founding fathers than anyone else, was a protégé of Ben Franklin and whose discoveries concerning gunpowder were likely crucial in America's win of the Revolutionary War.
"Amsterdam - The World Most LIberal City". While the title will put off the Fox news feeders, it's a history of how the lowlands without nobility were the groundspring for private property, small businesses, guilds and tolerance.
Hated it. Quit at 70% after being bored out of my skull for too long.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry
Also the fact that many years after the pandemic people hadn't gotten even small segments of society working again was ridiculous.
Living at a gas station when there would have presumably been a lot of empty houses.
So many plot holes.
Don't get the good reviews.
"12" by Platt and Truant.
Amazing look into the minds of 12 fictional characters involved in a mass shooting.
I read mostly non-fiction, one of my recent favorites is "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" by Edmund Morris. Its pretty long but well written and very interesting. It covers his life up to the point of his Presidency.
My other favorite is "The Great Bridge" by DavidMcCullough. Its about the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Roeblings, who designed, built and provided the steel wire for the bridge.
I'm finishing "The Swerve: How the World Became Modern " by Stephen Greenblatt which describes the search by a medieval social miscreant scholar Poggio Bracciolini for ancient classical texts in the 15th century. In the course of the search he finds a copy of a poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius called "De rerum natura" which could be said to be the foundation of modern thought in terms of rejecting religion and positing the first well defined humanist point of view.
The time during which Lucretius wrote was an interval between the demise of the old Roman gods and the start of the fall of Rome but before Christianity was sufficiently well established to complete the collapse. The work defines a perspective in which religion is a lie, there is no soul, everything is comprised of atoms (drawn from the Greek notion) that constantly mutate forms and that the point of life is to seek pleasure and avoid pain, but not in the shallow sense. Lucretius is more or less an devotee of Epicureanism, where the way to attain such pleasure is to live modestly and to gain knowledge of the workings of the world and the limits of one's desires.
Bracciolini was the chief secretary to a number of Popes and details how corrupt the entire enterprise of Christianity was and in copying Lucretius' work bravely exposes himself to claims of heresy.
Awesome and uplifting stuff for the humanists out there.
It's kind of thickly written, but interesting to read the history of oppression of thought by the various forms of Christianity throughout history and what a marvel that what could be considered a cornerstone in the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment was not lost.