Books you read in 2018

Discussion in 'TMB Book Club' started by TC, Jan 7, 2018.

  1. mp_22

    mp_22 Well-Known Member
    Duke Blue DevilsPhiladelphia PhilliesLos Angeles RamsPhiladelphia FlyersSouthern California Trojans

  2. Tangman

    Tangman Well-Known Member
    Donor
    North Carolina State WolfpackCharlotte HornetsWashington Football TeamEvertonBook Club

    As a Duke fan, you might like John Feinstein's A March To Madness
     
  3. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
    Staff Donor TMB OG
    Alabama Crimson TideIndianapolis ColtsBook Club

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  4. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
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    I too would enjoy a sports books discussion; haven’t read that many. A random one I liked was “The Way We Played The Game” about a HS football team in Michigan back in the earliest days of the sport. Got it for a Christmas gift and really enjoyed reading about the days where any lineman could carry the ball, plays mostly involved pushing or pulling someone, passing was illegal etc
     
  5. triceratops

    triceratops Tribe Of Dan
    Staff Donor TMB OG
    Clemson TigersCarolina Panthers

    1. Hold Tight - Harlan Coben
    2. The City of Mirrors - Passage Trilogy #2 - Justin Cronin
    3. Home - Harlan Coben
    4. The Racketeer - John Grisham
    5. Red Notice - Bill Browder
    6. Rogue Lawyer - John Grisham
    7. Gray Mountain - John Grisham
    8. Killers of the Flower Moon - David Grann
    9. Shoe Dog - Phil Knight
    10. The Book of Speculation - Erika Swyler
    11. The Women in Cabin 10 - Ruth Ware
    12. The Boys in the Boat - Daniel James Brown
    13. Plum Island - Nelson Demille
    14. American Fire - Monica Hesse
    15. Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie
    16. Bluebird, Bluebird - Attica Locke
    17. Gods & Generals - Jeff Shaara
    18. I'll Be Gone in the Dark - Michelle McNamara
    19. Mrs Sherlock Holmes - Brad Ricca
    20. Before The Fall - Noah Hawley
    21. The Killer Angels - Michael Shaara
    22. The Midnight Line - Lee Child
    23. Don't Let Go - Harlan Coben
     
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  6. One Knight

    One Knight https://www.twitch.tv/thatrescueguy
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    UCF KnightsTampa Bay LightningBig 12 Conference

    Depending on how you feel about Bill Simmons and the Red Sox, I really enjoyed "Now I can Die in Peace".
    "A Good Walk Spoiled" is dated now but its a good look at life on the PGA Tour.
    And depending on how you feel about poker, "The Professor, the Banker and the Suicide King" is a great story.
     
  7. billdozer

    billdozer Well-Known Member
    Donor
    Clemson TigersCarolina Panthers

    1. Last Argument of Kings - Joe Abercrombie (8/10)
    2. Best Served Cold - Joe Abercrombie (7/10)
    3. Red Country - Joe Abercrombie (7/10)
    4. The Way of Kings (reread) - Brandon Sanderson
    5. Words of Radiance (reread) - Brandon Sanderson
    6. Edgedancer - Brandon Sanderson (9/10)
    7. Oathbringer - Brandon Sanderson (10/10)
    8. Scorched Shadows (Hellequin #7) - Steve McHugh (8/10)
    9. Snapshot - Brandon Sanderson (8/10)
    10. Elantris - Brandon Sanderson (9/10)
    11. Arcanum Unbounded - Brandon Sanderson (8/10) - Enjoyed all of the short stories
    12. Furies of Calderon (Codex Alera #1) - Jim Butcher (8.5/10)
    13. Academ's Fury (Codex Alera #2) - Jim Butcher (9/10)
    14. Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3) - Jim Butcher (9.5/10)
    15. Captain's Fury (Codex Alera #4) - Jim Butcher (9.5/10)
    16. Princeps' Fury (Codex Alera #5) - Jim Butcher (9/10)
    17. First Lord's Fury (Codex Alera #6) - Jim Butcher (9/10)
    18. The Princess Bride - William Goldman (9/10)
    19. Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (9/10)
    20. Dune - Frank Herbert (7.5/10)
    21. Dancer's Lament (Path to Ascendancy #1) (reread) - Ian Esselmont (8.5/10)
    22. Deadhouse Landing (Path to Ascendancy #2) - Ian Esselmont (9.5/10)
    23. The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth #1) - N.K. Jemisin (8/10)
    24. The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth #2) - N.K. Jemisin (8/10)
    25. The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3) - N.K. Jemisin (8/10)
    26. The Black Prism (Lightbringer #1) - Brent Weeks (9/10)
    27. The Blinding Knife (Lightbringer #2) - Brent Weeks (9.5/10)
    28. The Broken Eye (Lightbringer #3) - Brent Weeks (9.5/10)
    29. The Blood Mirror (Lightbringer #4) - Brent Weeks (8.5/10)
    30. Promise of Blood (Powder Mage #1) - Brian McClellan (9/10)
    31. Forsworn/Servant of the Crown (Powder Mage shorts) - Brian McClellan (9/10)
    32. The Crimson Campaign (Powder Mage #2) - Brian McClellan (9.5/10)
    33. The Autumn Republic (Powder Mage #3) - Brian McClellan (9.5/10)
    34. Sins of Empire (Gods of Blood and Powder #1, Powder Mage sequel) - Brian McClellan (8.5/10), plus various shorts
    35. Wrath of Empire (Gods of Blood and Powder #2, Powder Mage sequel) - Brian McClellan (9/10)
    36. The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentlemen Bastards #1) - Scott Lynch (9.5/10)
     
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  8. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Oklahoma SoonersMetal

    oh hell yeah
     
  9. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
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    South Carolina GamecocksCarolina PanthersCarolina Hurricanes

    1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams (8/10)
    2. Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter -- Steven Johnson (6/10)
    3. Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious -- Timothy Wilson (9/10)
    4. Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley (8/10) *reread*
    5. The Horse and His Boy (Chronicles of Narnia #5) -- CS Lewis (10/10) *reread*
    6. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism -- Edward E. Baptist (8/10)
    7. The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently And Why -- Richard Nisbett (8/10)
    8. Mind Sculpture: Unlocking Your Brain's Untapped Potential -- Ian Roberson (8/10)
    9. The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape -- James Howard Kunstler (10/10)
    10. Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World -- Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden (9/10)
    11. The Silver Chair (Chronicles of Narnia #4) -- CS Lewis (10/10) *reread*
    12. Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency -- David Greenberg (6/10)
    13. The Death and Life of Great American Cities -- Jane Jacobs (7/10)
    14. The Story of Art -- E.H. Gombrich (8/10)
    15. The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone -- Brian Merchant (9/10)
    16. 2001: A Space Odyssey -- Arthur C. Clarke (7/10)
    17. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living -- Mark Manson (9/10)
    18. The Dharma Bums -- Jack Kerouac (10/10)
    19. On Looking: Eleven Walks With Expert Eyes -- Alexandra Horowitz (8.5/10)
    20. Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, And What The Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are -- Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (8.5/10)
    21. The Confidence Game: Why We Fall For It, Every Time -- Maria Konnikova (8.5/10)
    22. Fourth of July Creek -- Smith Henderson (8/10)
    23. The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom -- Don Miguel Ruiz (6/10)
    24. Your Brain At Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus and Working Smarter All Day Long -- David Rock (8/10)
    25. A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas (6/10)
    26. The Devil in the White City -- Erik Larson (10/10)

    27. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind -- Yuval Noah Harari (10/10)

    This book is extremely good; one of the best I have ever read. I considered rating it 11/10 but one flaw I can say is the pics could be better -- they're kind of just randomly thrown in like a separate person did the pics and just found stuff like hmmm stick this in. Overall this is something every human should read. Some of the ideas I saw were new to me; some I had seen in other books -- but I've rarely seen all this info together in one place and explained so clearly. If you liked "Guns Germs and Steel" you will love this book and it's honestly even easier to read; I remember GGS kinda belaboring some points and repeating itself more than this book.

    28. The Prince and the Pauper -- Mark Twain (7/10)
    I never read anything by Twain except Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, which I loved growing up so I wanted to try something else. The book was pretty good -- one thing I didn't realize going in is it's based on actual historical figures in certain parts so it's kind of cool that you can learn some about English history and aristocratic life while reading the story. Overall a fun story for "younger readers" that comes to a nice ending, although I doubt today's younger readers could make heads or tails out of some of the vocab and dialect. Twain isn't quite as good at writing British talk as he is southern talk but it's still fun to read his dialogue and how he spells things so you can hear the pronunciation.
     
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  10. Tangman

    Tangman Well-Known Member
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    North Carolina State WolfpackCharlotte HornetsWashington Football TeamEvertonBook Club

    1. We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families (Phillip Gourevitch) - 9/10
    2. A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hosseini) - 8.5/10
    3. The Warmth Of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (Isabel Wilkerson) - 8/10
    4. The Road To Jonestown: Jim Jones and The Peoples Temple (Jeff Guinn) - 9/10
    5. All The King's Men (Robert Penn Warren) - 9.5/10
    6. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Matthew Desmond) - 9.5/10
    7. Columbine (Dave Cullen) - 8/10
    8. Freakonomics: A Rouge Economist Explores The Hidden Side Of Everything (Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner) - 7/10
    9. Animal Farm (George Orwell) - 8/10
    10. Lincoln In The Bardo (George Saunders) - 8.5/10
    11. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir Of A Family And Culture In Crisis (J.D. Vance) - 5/10
    12. Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are (Seth Stephens-Davidowitz) - 8/10
    13. Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry) - 9/10
    14. Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind (Yuval Noah Harari) - 9/10
    15. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (David Grann) - 8.5/10
    16. Ready Player One (Ernest Cline) - 6.5/10
    17. Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman) - 9.5/10
    18. American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (Colin Woodard) - 9/10
    19. All The Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr) - 8.5/10
    20. Rules Of Civility (Amor Towles) - 6/10
    21. Little Fires Everywhere (Celeste Ng) - 6.5/10
    22. I'll Be Gone In The Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search For The Golden State Killer (Michelle McNamara) - 7/10
    23. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World (Stephen Brusatte) - 9/10
    24. Iron Curtain: The Crushing Of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 (Anne Applebaum) - 7/10
    25. Propaganda (Edward L. Bernays) - 8/10
    26. A Gentleman In Moscow (Amor Towles) - 8.5/10
    27. Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (Sam Quinones) - 9.5/10
    28. Magpie Murders (Anthony Horowitz) - 8/10 -
    Discussed it a bit more in the dedicated thread for this book but despite not really being a murder mystery guy, I enjoyed this a good deal. Features a well- developed plot that moved at a good pace. I don't imagine the "book within the book" usually works as well as it does here. I'd probably have more nits to pick if I read more of these whodunit type books but there isn't a lot for me to complain about. I guess that none of the characters were very memorable but it was a large cast so that seems unavoidable. Would recommend to the general reader.
    29. All The Pieces Matter: The Inside Story Of The Wire (Jonathan Abrams) - 8/10 - I didn't know that this was an oral history. The Wire is a 1A/1B show for me depending on my mood so I just picked it up without reading about it. Fun read for fans of the show. My favorite parts were the descriptions of set atmosphere during the Wallace scene and Ed Burns' general bluntness when discussing story arcs/plot and his thoughts on season 5; he's not slow to say when he disagreed with Simon or that he didn't like season 5. I could have done with a bit more on The Wire's societal impact but I don't know if the oral history format really allowed for that.
     
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  11. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    Missouri TigersSt. Louis CardinalsChicago BullsSt. Louis BluesEvertonBook Club

    Oh man I havent updated in a while...

    1. Persepolis Rising (Expanse #7), by James S.A. Corey (10/10)
    2. Moscow Rules (Gabriel Allon #8) by Daniel Silva (8/10)
    3. Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, by Gordon S Wood (8/10)
    4. The Defector (Gabriel Allon #9) by Daniel Silva (6.5/10)
    5. Star Wars: Colbalt Squadron, by Elizabeth Wein (6/10)
    6. Iron Gold (Red Rising #4) by Pierce Brown (7/10)
    7. Thinking the Twentieth Century, by Tony Judt (6.5/10)
    8. Paradox Bound, by Peter Clines (7/10)
    9. American Radical: Inside the World of an Undercover Muslim FBI Agent, by Tamer Elnoury (9/10)
    10. The Rembrandt Affair (Gabriel Allon #10) by Daniel Silva (6.5/10)
    11. Portrait of a Spy (Gabriel Allon #11) by Daniel Silva (4/10)
    12. The Kremlin's Candidate (Red Sparrow #3) by Jason Matthews (9.5/10)
    13. Genghis Kahn and the Making of the Modern Worldby Jack Weatherford (9/10)
    14. Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs #1) by Richard K Morgan (7/10)
    15. Sometimes I Lie, by Alice Feeney (6/10)
    16. The Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi (7.5/10)
    17. Lonesome Dove (Lonesome Dove #), by Larry McMurtry (9/10)
    18. The Phenomenon, by Rick Ankiel (7/10)
    19. We Are Legion (Bobiverse #1), by Dennis E Taylor (7.5)
    20. For We Are Many (Bobiverse #2), by Dennis E Taylor (7/10)
    21. All These Worlds (Bobiverse #3), by Dennis E Taylor (6.5/10)
    22. The Feed, by Nick Clark Windo (5.5/10)
    23. Streets of Laredo (Lonesome Dove #2) by Larry McMurtry (8/10)
    24. Dead Man's Walk (Lonesome Dove #3) by Larry McMurtry (7/10)
    25. Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove #4) by Larry McMurtry (7.5/10)
    26. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (6.5/10)
    27. Between The World and Me by Ta-Neshi Coates (8/10)
    28. The Outsider by Stephen King (6.5/10)
    29. Star Wars: Most Wanted by Rae Carson (6.5/10)
    30. Factfulness - Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World and Why Things are Better than you Think by Hans Rosling (9.5/10)
    31. Into the Drowning Deep, by Mira Grant (7/10)
    32. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C Mann. (8/10)
    33. The English Girl (Gabriel Allon #13) by Daniel Silva (5/10)
    34. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Hurari (8/10)
    35. Homo Deus, by Yuval Noah Hurari (7/10)
    36. Cabin at the End of the World, by Paul Tremblay (7/10)
    37. Unsub (Unsub #1) by Meg Gardiner (9/10)
    38. Into the Black Nowhere (Unsub #2) by Meg Gardiner (9/10)
    39. Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, by S.C. Gwynne (9.5/10)
    40. Spinning Silver, by Noami Novik (8/10)
    41. The English Spy (Gabriel Allon #15) by Daniel Silva (8/10)
    42. Star Wars: Thrawn Alliances by Timothy Zahn (8/10)
    43. Into the Lion's Mouth: The True Story of Dusko Popov; WWII Spy, and the Real-Life Inspiration for James Bond, by Larry Leptis (9.5/10)
    44. The Black Widow (Gabriel Allon #16) , by Daniel Silva (9/10)
    45. Magpie Murders , by Anthony Horowitz (8/10)
    46. The Fifth to Die (4MK #2), by JD Barker (7/10)
    47. Relic, by Alan Dean Foster (4/10)
    45. Warcross (Warcross #1) by Marie Lu

    Black Widow -
    One of the best in the series. Was on the 'edge of my seat' Love this series. Sad Im runnign out of books in it

    Magpie Murders - Great suggestion for the book club that more of you twats should be participating in. As for my book thoughts - they're in the thread

    Fifth to Die - Liked this much better than the first book, which I liked but didnt love. Good police series about a cop who is tracking down his serial killer nemesis.

    Relic -
    Fuck this book. Premise sounded cool. Execution sucked. Book was boring AF but had a feeling the end would be cool. That feeling was wrong. Im pissed I wasted time reading this, when I could have read anything else. Might be one of the worst books Ive finished and not given up on


    Warcross -
    This book was great. Definitely inspired by Ready Player One. Not the nostalgia, but the video game setting. Cool twist that sets up the rest of the series. Bummed the next book isnt out yet.


     
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  12. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Oklahoma SoonersMetal

    1. Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive #2) - Brandon Sanderson **Re-read**
    2. Edgedancer (The Stormlight Archive #2.5) - Brandon Sanderson **Re-read**
    3. Persepolis Rising (The Expanse #7) - James S.A. Corey (8.5/10)
    4. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (The Chronicles of Narnia #1) - C.S. Lewis **Re-read**
    5. Prince Caspian (The Chronicles of Narnia #2) - C.S. Lewis (6/10)
    6. The Horse and His Boy (The Chronicles of Narnia #5) - C.S. Lewis (6.5/10)
    7. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (The Chronicles of Narnia #3) - C.S. Lewis (7/10)
    8. The Silver Chair (The Chronicles of Narnia #4) - C.S. Lewis (6.5/10)
    9. Furies of Calderon (Codex Alera #1) - Jim Butcher (7/10)
    10. The Magician's Nephew (The Chronicles of Narnia #6) - C.S. Lewis (6.5/10)
    11. The Last Battle (The Chronicles of Narnia #7) - C.S. Lewis (6/10)
    12. Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive #3) - Brandon Sanderson (9.5/10)
    13. The Alienist - Caleb Carr (9/10)
    14. Consider the Lobster and Other Essays - David Foster Wallace (8/10)
    15. Old Man's War (Old Man's War #1) - John Scalzi (7.5/10)
    16. Fall of Light (The Kharkanas Trilogy #2) - Steven Erikson (8/10)
    17. Carrie - Stephen King (7/10)
    18. Academ's Fury (Codex Alera #2) - Jim Butcher (7.5/10)
    19. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI - David Grann (7/10)
    20. Turtles All the Way Down - John Green (7/10)
    21. Lonesome Dove (Lonesome Dove #1) - Larry McMurtry (9/10)
    22. Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3) - Jim Butcher (7.5/10)
    23. I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer - Michelle McNamara (7.5/10)
    24. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West - Dee Brown (8/10)
    25. Captain's Fury (Codex Alera #4) - Jim Butcher (8/10)
    26. One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khruschev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War - Michael Dobbs (9/10)
    27. Brief Cases (The Dresden Files #15.1) - Jim Butcher (8/10)
    28. Dancer's Lament (Path to Ascendancy #1) - Ian C. Esslemont (8.5/10)
    29. Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain (9/10)
    30. Princep's Fury (Codex Alera #5) - Jim Butcher (7.5/10)
    31. The Cabin at the End of the World - Paul Tremblay (6.5/10)
    32. Deadhouse Landing (Path to Ascendancy #2) - Ian C. Esslemont (8/10)
    33. The Fiends of Nightmaria (The Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach #6) - Steven Erikson (6.5/10)
    34. 11/22/63 - Stephen King (9.5/10)
    35. First Lord's Fury (Codex Alera #6) - Jim Butcher (8/10)
    36. Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos #1) - Dan Simmons (8.5/10)
    37. Magpie Murders - Anthony Horowitz (8/10)
    38. The Princess Bride - William Goldman (7.5/10)
    39. Coraline - Neil Gaiman (6.5/10)
    40. As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride - Cary Elwes (9/10)
     
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  13. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
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    RegimentML assuning you are a big Princess Bride fan. Book only got a 7.5?
     
  14. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    I liked it, didn't love it. The set up for the book within a book fell a bit flat for me. Story wise and dialogue wise, Goldman's adaptation to the screenplay is very close
     
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  15. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    Any cool tidbits from the Cary Elwes book?
     
  16. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Oklahoma SoonersMetal

    A few things off the top of my head:
    • Andre the Giant had to rent an ATV to get to some locations since he couldn't fit on the buses they were using. He had one on his farm in France growing up, and he liked zipping around on it around set. He convinced Elwes to try it out, and Elwes promptly lost his footing on the clutch and got his toe wedged between the clutch and a rock, breaking a toe on his left foot. This was mid-shoot of the movie and prior to them filming the sword-fight scene. The scene where Westley says "Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something" is pretty much right after that happened. You can tell he's limping when they run into the Fire Swamp and when he sits down awkwardly next to a log.
    • Wallace Shawn spent most of the movie paranoid that he was going to get fired, and part of his creative process for his scenes was thinking about how Danny DeVito would have done the scene, since he had heard DeVito was the first choice.
    • Elwes and Patinkin did the whole sword fight themselves, and studied with two fencing masters for several months each to make it look legitimate to people who would actually know what they were watching. Even between takes, the sword teacher guys would hover behind camera and then as soon as Elwes or Patinkin weren't needed they would force them to train.
    • Rob Reiner had to leave the set when they were shooting Billy Crystal's Miracle Max scenes because he couldn't stop laughing. He would yell action then leave the stage.
     
  17. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
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    1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams (8/10)
    2. Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter -- Steven Johnson (6/10)
    3. Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious -- Timothy Wilson (9/10)
    4. Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley (8/10) *reread*
    5. The Horse and His Boy (Chronicles of Narnia #5) -- CS Lewis (10/10) *reread*
    6. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism -- Edward E. Baptist (8/10)
    7. The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently And Why -- Richard Nisbett (8/10)
    8. Mind Sculpture: Unlocking Your Brain's Untapped Potential -- Ian Roberson (8/10)
    9. The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape -- James Howard Kunstler (10/10)
    10. Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World -- Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden (9/10)
    11. The Silver Chair (Chronicles of Narnia #4) -- CS Lewis (10/10) *reread*
    12. Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency -- David Greenberg (6/10)
    13. The Death and Life of Great American Cities -- Jane Jacobs (7/10)
    14. The Story of Art -- E.H. Gombrich (8/10)
    15. The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone -- Brian Merchant (9/10)
    16. 2001: A Space Odyssey -- Arthur C. Clarke (7/10)
    17. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living -- Mark Manson (9/10)
    18. The Dharma Bums -- Jack Kerouac (10/10)
    19. On Looking: Eleven Walks With Expert Eyes -- Alexandra Horowitz (8.5/10)
    20. Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, And What The Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are -- Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (8.5/10)
    21. The Confidence Game: Why We Fall For It, Every Time -- Maria Konnikova (8.5/10)
    22. Fourth of July Creek -- Smith Henderson (8/10)
    23. The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom -- Don Miguel Ruiz (6/10)
    24. Your Brain At Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus and Working Smarter All Day Long -- David Rock (8/10)
    25. A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas (6/10)
    26. The Devil in the White City -- Erik Larson (10/10)
    27. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind -- Yuval Noah Harari (10/10)
    28. The Prince and the Pauper -- Mark Twain (7/10)

    29. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Won't Stop Talking -- Susan Cain (7.5/10)
    I got a little bored with the last two chapters...relationships and parenting? Come on, I'm an alpha male over here. Interesting read overall though. The thesis is that the world (modern America anyway) has come to prize extroverts over all else which marginalizes a lot of people that actually have a lot to offer. This happened with the rise of salesmanship culture, "How To Win Friends And Influence People", Hollywood/celebrities, etc. It made me feel better about being on the introverted side of things. One interesting idea it pointed out -- many introverts have their bad years in school, then magically "blossom" later in life. Could that be just because schools are set up for extroverted people?
     
    Tangman likes this.
  18. Blackterno

    Blackterno Well-Known Member
    TMB OG
    Penn State Nittany LionsPhiladelphia Phillies

    1) The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive # 1) by Brandon Sanderson 9/10
    2) Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive # 2) by Brandon Sanderson 10/10
    3) Edgedancer (The Stormlight Archive # 2.5) by Brandon Sanderson 10/10
    4) Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson 9/10
    5) Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson 10/10
    6) Thunderhead (Arc of the Scythe #2) by Neal Shusterman 6/10
    7) The Midnight Line (Jack Reacher #22) by Lee Child 7.5/10
    8) The Boy on the Bridge by M.R. Carey 7/10
    9) The Kremlins Candidate (Red Sparrow #3) 9.5/10
    10) Agent in Place (Gray Man #7) by Mark Greaney 7/10
    11) End Game (Will Robie # 5) by David Baldacci 3/10
    12) Ready Player One by Ernest Cline -Reread - 10/10
    13) Iron Gold (Red Rising # 4) by Pierce Brown 7/10
    14) Operator Down (Pike Logan # 12) by Brad Taylor 7/10
    15) The Deceivers (John Wells #12) by Alex Berenson 7.5/10
    16) Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor #2) by Mark Lawrence 8.5/10
    17) The Terminal List by Jack Carr 6.5/10
    18) The Fallen (Amos Decker #4) by David Baldacci 6/10
    19) Overkill (Alexander Hawke #10) by Ted Bell 1/10
    20) Furies of Calderon ((Codex Alera #1) by Jim Butcher by Jim Butcher 7.5/10
    21) Academ’s Fury (Codex Alera #2)by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    22) Rules of Prey by John Sandford 6.5/10
    23) Cursors Fury (Codex Alera #3) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    24) Captains Fury (Codex Alera #4) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    25) Princep’s Fury (Codex Alera #5) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    26) The First Lord’s Fury (Codex Alera #6) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    27) Hunt the Viper(SEAL Team 6 #7) by Don Mann 4/10
    28) Power and Empire (Jack Ryan universe #25) by Marc Cameron 6.5/10
    29) The Other Woman (Gabriel Allon #18) by Daniel Silva 9.5/10
    30) The Outsider by Stephen King 5/10
    31) The Black Prism (Lightbringer #1) by Brent Weeks 8/10
    32) The Blinding Knife (Lightbringer #2) by Brent Weeks 9.5/10
    33) The Broken Eye (Lightbringer #3) by Brent Weeks 9.5/10
     
    billdozer likes this.
  19. Gomez35

    Gomez35 Walker of the world’s weird wall

    1. Devil's Bargain: Joshua Green
    2. Long Way Down: Jason Reynolds
    3. Benediction: Kent Haruf
    4. The Hate U Give: Angie Thomas
    5. Velocity: Chris Wooding
    6. Our Souls at Night: Kent Haruf
    7. Through the Woods: Emily Carroll (graphic novel)
    8. Poppies of Iraq: Brigitte Findakly and Lewis Trondheim (graphic novel)
    9. The Blade Itself: Joe Abercrombie
    10. My Friend Dahmer: Derf Backderf (graphic novel)
    11. Trashed: Derf Backderf (graphic novel)
    12. The Graveyard Book: Neil Gaiman - reread
    13. The Cay: Theodore Taylor (audio) - reread
    14. Feed: MT Anderson (audio) - reread
    15. Before They Are Hanged: Joe Abercrombie
    16. The Skeleton Tree: Iain Lawrence
    17. Blacksad: Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido (graphic novel)
    18. Turtles All the Way Down: John Green
    19. Fools Crow: James Welch - reread
    20. Spill Zone: Scott Westerfeld and Alex Puvilland (graphic novel)
    21. Stephen Florida: Gabe Habash
    22. The Fourth Monkey: JD Barker
    23. Templar: Jordan Mechner, LeUyen Pham, Alex Puvilland (graphic novel)
    24. American Radical: Tamer Elnoury
    25. Dark Matter: Blake Crouch
    26. All Our Wrong Todays: Elan Mastai
    27. NOFX: The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories: NOFX and Jess Alulis
    28. Portugal: Cyril Pedrosa (graphic novel)
    29. Sapiens: Yuval Noah Harari
    30. Y: The Last Man (Book 1): Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra (graphic novel)
    31. The Ocean at the End of the Lane: Neil Gaiman (audio) - reread
    32. The Body: Stephen King

    Ocean is quintessential Gaiman. I absolutely love the way his stories seem to breathe with magic, like there's something otherworldly behind everything. This one also really breezes along IMO - some of that might be due to Gaiman's capacity as a narrator, but it still made for a short "read" (incidentally, I might just opt to listen to his books from here on, due entirely to how entertainingly he narrates his own work - this is the third one I've listened to after originally reading them, and he brings a truly astounding level of skill to the performance that makes the characters jump off the page). I had forgotten how well done the intricacies of the maiden/mother/crone elements are.

    I didn't love The Body like I thought I would. Stand By Me is one of my favorite films so naturally I assumed I'd be all in on this one, but I found King's use of slang in conversation to be totally distracting (to put it mildly). It almost seemed like he was working too hard to cram in pieces of the language he used with his childhood buddies, when that sort of stuff is like an inside joke: you need to explain it for it to make sense, and explaining it murders anything interesting about it. That said, some of the imagery is just lights out good: notably the dream of drowning friends clutching at Gordie's ankles, and the details of Ray Brower's body when the boys find it.

    Next on my list: Ancestor's Tale (grabbed this one due to a mention somewhere around here and you fuckers haven't steered me wrong yet in the non-fiction department), Babylon's Ashes (need to get this one finished before Persepolis Rising comes out in paperback next month), and 11/22/63 (which I've started but only dipped into as yet).
     
    TC likes this.
  20. CBH

    CBH Well-Known Member
    Donor
    Michigan WolverinesDetroit Red WingsEastern Michigan EaglesUnited States Men's National Soccer TeamBook Club

    1. Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter #5) by J.K. Rowling 8/10
    2. Ring of Fire by Brad Taylor (Pike Logan Series #11) 7/10
    3. Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson by S.C. Gwynne 10/10
    4. 1984 by George Orwell 8/10
    5. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter #6) by J.K. Rowling 8/10
    6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter #7) by J.K. Rowling 9/10
    7. Pegasus Bridge by Stephen Ambrose 7/10
    8. Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot #10) by Agatha Christie 7/10
    9. Red Sparrow (Red Sparrow Trilogy 1) by Jason Matthews 8/10
    10. Germany in the Modern World: A New History by Sam Mustafa 7/10
    11. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins 6/10
    12. Animal Farm 9/10
    13. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry 8/10
    14. Charlie Mike by Leonard B. Scott 7/10
    15. Red Blood, Black Sand: Fighting Alongside John Basilone from Boot Camp to Iwo Jima by Chuck Tatum 8.5/10
    16. Catching Fire (The Hunger Games #2) by Suzanne Collins 8/10
    17. George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring that Saved the American Revolution by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger 7/10
    18. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch 8/10
    19. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson 10/10
    20. Use of Force (Scot Harvath #16) by Brad Thor 7/10
    21. Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King 8/10
    22. Black Site (Kolt Raynor #1) by Dalton Fury 8/10
    23. Where Ghosts Walked: Munich's Road to the Third Reich by David Clay Large 9/10
    24. Shattered Spaces: Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland by Michael Meng 7/10
    25. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 9/10

    26. Point of Impact (Bob Lee Swagger #1) by Stephen Hunter 8/10 This was a nice first novel in a series that was interesting but with having seen the movie and parts of the TV show it felt very familiar and might not have been as enjoyable as it would have been without knowing all the basics of the story.

    27. Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz 8/10 This was an interesting book, it might be the first time I've read a book inside of a book? I'm not sure I couldn't recall any other books like that, I enjoy a good detective novel even if its not my most commonly read book and the ending was decent though it seemed like it wasn't that surprising to me either.
     
    Tangman likes this.
  21. Upton^2

    Upton^2 blocked just a park away, but I can't really say
    Donor
    Clemson TigersAtlanta BravesCharlotte HornetsCarolina PanthersArsenal

    1. The Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu. (8/10)
    2. Fire and Fury - Michael Wolff (4/10)
    3. To The Back of Beyond - Peter Stamm (7/10)
    4. Love in the Ruins - Walker Percy (9/10)
    5. 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (10/10)
    6. Dark Matter - Blake Crouch (7.5/10)
    7. Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari (8/10)
    8. Empire of Cotton: A Global History - Sven Beckert (8.5/10)
    9. Why Does the World Exist - Jim Holt (7.5/10)
    10. Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe (8.5/10)
    11. Eviction - Matthew Desmond (9/10)
    12. Tribe - Sebastian Junger (7.5/10) - Good read, incredibly short (like 130 pages). Makes a lot of generalizations on stuff like PTSD, depression, suicide, etc based on some anecdotal evidence. Best section was on soldiers returning home, and how the US fails them
     
    Tangman and TC like this.
  22. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
    Donor
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    Reading this now...this book is lit fam
     
    Upton^2 likes this.
  23. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
    Donor
    South Carolina GamecocksCarolina PanthersCarolina Hurricanes

    I am LMAO at the description of this book...someone should read this

    A Man in Full
    Karl Ove Knausgaard concludes his autofiction epic
    JAMES CAMP

    [​IMG]
    IT IS ONE THING to write down the shameful truth of what you really think about someone else; another to publish that shameful truth inside a novel. It is, perhaps, a third thing to use, within your novel’s pages, that person’s actual name, and a fourth to render it all in prose whose rawness will flatter no one. It is something else, however, if that person is your wife.

    “Oh, I was so completely in the shit,” thinks Karl Ove Knausgaard in My Struggle: Book Six. This thought, which occurs on page 43, captures much of the spirit of the pages that follow, of which there are eleven hundred.

    Book Six brings My Struggle, after 3,600 pages, to an end. And so it has been subtitled, ominously—“The End.” Here, the writer who writes (and writes) about himself must write about that experience, too, and we duly find out what dinner-table conversation was like at the home of that very determined Norwegian who, between 2007 and 2011, got up at 4:30 am every weekday, sat down to his desktop computer in Malmö, Sweden, and for a few hours did his best to mention in print all that was unmentionable about his life, stopping only when his three small children woke up and demanded he make them breakfast. Book Six tells this story: the struggle behind the Struggle. No one will be shocked to discover that all the prizes and praise have only brought Karl Ove more pain. There’s also the small problem of having linked his name for all time with you-know-who. “Turns out he’s read Mein Kampf,” as his then-wife, Linda Boström, tells him of a new friend. “Hitler’s, that is.” She met her friend at the Malmö mental hospital. She went there voluntarily not long after reading Book Two, among whose radical aesthetic moves was a scene recalling the time Karl Ove got drunk and tried to cheat on her. “It’s always struck me that I was a sailor’s wife,” she tells him. “But now it’s the other way around. Now I’m the sailor.”



    [​IMG]
    Karl Ove Knausgaard, 2017.



    There’s more than one way to escape the burdens of being middle-class. An experimental autobiographical novel singularly immersed in its author’s psyche, in which all elegance is abandoned, tedious experiences are embraced, and the act of shitting is evoked, at one point, as “AAAAAAGGGHHH!!,” My Struggle was an instant surprise hit when its first installment appeared in Norway in 2009 (and where Book Six appeared in 2011); an estimated one in nine adults in that country now owns a copy. The success made Knausgaard famous, and in so doing rejuvenated “autofiction” as a form. It’s a form that can look a little formless, as Knausgaard’s fame can seem closer to infamy. In turning his life into literature, he landed himself in the tabloids. For this he may thank, in particular, his “Uncle Gunnar,” one of My Struggle’s few pseudonymous characters, who took exception to certain aspects of Book One. For instance, the part where Dad’s lying on the floor over at Grandma’s drunk and shitting himself: According to Gunnar, his nephew made up this incident, and many others. Can Karl Ove trust his memory of “the most important story in my life”? In Book Six, Gunnar’s emails start coming in at around the hundred-page mark. It turns out that Uncle Gunnar is a writer too. “The subject line said ‘Verbal rape.’ Opening it was out of the question.” Perhaps it isn’t autofiction until a family member threatens to sue you.

    Book Six opens in 2009, with Book One in the final stages of prepublication. Its first scene is a literal nonstarter: Karl Ove, who has rented an Audi, can’t figure out how to switch on the ignition. It would be unlike him to just walk back inside and ask how: What if “they took the vehicle away from me once I had revealed such towering ignorance?” Much, much more like him to sit in the darkness of the garage contemplating his own futility, as he does. The failure to function in modern life is nothing new to these books, nor the yearning for machines that were simpler, or maybe not machines at all, and soon Karl Ove will be looking at a cruise ship in the Öresund strait and attempting to pretend it isn’t there, to imagine his way back in time: “No, the seventeenth century wasn’t that long ago.” Alas, for the next four hundred pages Karl Ove will disappear all too often down that most modern of abysses—email.

    It’s a technology that, in its mixture of the addictive (the new message) and the monotonous (the months, the years of new messages), mirrors something essential about My Struggleitself: so interesting to me as I read it, page by page, so not-that-interesting (I have been reminded) to other people as I talk about it. (Some Norwegian workplaces have supposedly instituted “Knausgaard-free days.”) Knausgaard has a knack for locating the drama that lurks within tedium, and it’s a tribute to his facility with the most recalcitrant of materials that these parts are never dull. There are even moments, metaphysically weird, where you wish Karl Ove would interrupt his own story and go check what’s in his inbox. The lawyers are emailing the publishers; the publishers are emailing him; and he must email all these characters from his past with his strange request: May I use your life for my art? There’s a message from his brother, Yngve, who’s just read the manuscript. The subject line is “Your fucking struggle.” “Just wanted to scare the hell out of you,” the message starts.

    One surprise of Book Six is how accommodating just about everybody was of Karl Ove. It’s moving to read (the wholly unliterary) Jan Vidar, his sidekick from Book One, express his support for his old friend’s journey to the limits of self-exposure: “I must say the book knocked me out.” Jan Vidar read Book One in a peat hut in Finnmark. “The number of people we come close to during our lives is small,” Knausgaard reflects,

    and we fail to realize how infinitely important each and every one of them is to us until we grow older and can see things from afar. When I was sixteen, I thought life was without end, the number of people in it inexhaustible. . . . But what I didn’t know, or rather had absolutely no conception of, was that every step I took was defining me, every person I encountered leaving their mark on me, and that the life I was living at that particular time, boundlessly arbitrary as it seemed, was in fact my life. That one day I would look back on my life, and this would be what I looked back on. What then had been insignificant, as weightless as air, a series of events dissolving in exactly the same way as the darkness dissolved in the mornings, would twenty years on seem laden with destiny and fate.

    The transformation of the arbitrary into the inevitable, of the insignificant into fate: There is no more beautiful statement in all of My Struggle of its great theme. In its long, wandering sentences, in which so much that is unalike is swept up and suspended, the grammar seems to stretch to accommodate this contradiction: that details mean both nothing and everything. Geir Angell, Knausgaard’s best friend, comes to visit, and their conversations, rendered over pages, go everywhere: marriage, fascism, children, masculinity. It is less a meeting of minds than an emptying out of them. Or a dumping out of them. Karl Ove: “I’m an engineer of the soul.” Geir: “I’d say garbage man of the soul would be more accurate.”

    Knausgaard has a winning way, in My Struggle, of making himself out to be the stupidest guy in every room. It helps explain why most people seem to have a soft spot for Karl Ove, in spite of his many issues, which he so lavishly documents: his laughter problem (he can’t laugh), his crying problem (he cries a lot), the fact that “my eyes made me look like I was glaring even when I felt most at ease.” (Neutral observers have summarized the Knausgaard face more simply as “so good-looking.”) In these little discrepancies between self and self-image Karl Ove can seem less like a conduit for Knausgaard’s thoughts than a character he’s made up, slightly ironized. It’s an impression that gains strength as Book Six picks up speed. The closer Book One gets to the printers, the more Karl Ove seems to shrink from its consequences. He can’t bear to look the people he’s written about in the eye, as he can’t bring himself to read Gunnar’s emails. “What other letters are there,” as he puts it, “but letters from reality?”

    To shield yourself from an email in which you are rebuked for exposing a secret is, of course, not consistent behavior. And yet it is typical of Karl Ove as a character, whose intense shame at what he cannot help from blurting out (as he puts it to Gunnar) “torments me severely”: “Why couldn’t I keep all the badness to myself like other people did?” In this novel—in all of My Struggle—that is the million-dollar question. Indeed, it’s the question raised by all autofiction, this version of fiction without the fake parts, the made-up names and stories. It’s still a fake space that’s left at the end but now the people in it are real, and to have shattering insights into them and their lives is a little dangerous. When you look up from the page, they’re still there. Why name names and denigrate the dead and lay waste to your marriage and scar your children when, with just a little artifice, no one has to get hurt? Why dispense, as Knausgaard puts it, with “the ‘as if’ of art”?

    MY STRUGGLE IS A midlife-crisis story: Having seen the death of his father, a man realizes his life has no meaning. So he decides he will match this meaninglessness in his prose. It’s an aesthetic decision, but it’s also a tantrum. The result is a book full of sentences like this:

    I drained my drink and poured myself a fresh one, took out a Rizla, laid a line of tobacco, spread it evenly to get the best possible draw, rolled the paper a few times, pressed down the end and closed it, licked the glue, removed any shreds of tobacco, dropped them in the pouch, put the somewhat deformed roll-up in my mouth.

    Zadie Smith has suggested that the attention to the small stuff of the Knausgaardian style (perhaps the word is fixation) is in fact the expression of a kind of “mindfulness.” Which, no doubt, it is. Say what will you about My Struggle’s lack of polish, Knausgaard writes prose you look up from and start to notice things about the world. And yet you could equally argue, as Knausgaard often seems to imply, that what is really going on is mindlessness. In Book Two he confesses that it is the visual arts, and not books, that above all inspire him. Particularly, the relief they provide from words: “There was something stupid in this . . . which perhaps was the most important single element of what I wanted to do.” Can stupidity be a literary strategy?

    If you use a Nazi title for your autobiographical novel, as Chekhov might have put it, you incur certain dramatic obligations. Thus, in the center of Book Six, comes the 440-page book-within-a-book called “The Name and the Number.” It contains close readings of texts by such figures as Paul Celan, Giorgio Agamben, Martin Heidegger, René Girard, and Emmanuel Levinas. Also Mein Kampf, “literature’s only unmentionable work,” which Knausgaard analyzes in a quasi-academic attempt to make sense of why Hitler, in the 1930s, was so incredibly appealing to the German people. He sees parallels in his own popularity. “The notion of life as a struggle was by no means confined to Hitler,” he writes. No quarrel there.

    That a Norwegian hyperrealist would compare himself to the Nazi dictator, who ordered the extermination of six million Jews and started a war in which fifty million people died, is, on the one hand, arbitrary. It is almost funny. To go by the textual evidence—of which there exists, indeed, a superabundance—politics aren’t really his thing. While some Norwegians, presumably, must reckon existentially with an earlier generation’s Nazi past, Knausgaard’s grandparents did not serve in Norway’s collaborationist Quisling regime. He has even admitted, somewhat disappointingly (Knausgaard is the patron saint of the disappointing admission), that writing about Hitler wasn’t originally the plan. He was led there by his title. Which, he might as well further admit, wasn’t actually his idea. It was Geir’s. Knausgaard had been calling his work in progress Argentina.

    In an alternate universe, do 440 pages exist comparing a tanner, mellower Karl Ove to Juan Perón? Jorge Luis Borges? Diego Maradona? I would doubt so. Because while the Hitler stuff is, on the one hand, totally arbitrary, it is, on the other hand, inevitable. It is inevitable in the sense that Godwin’s pseudoscientific law (“As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches one”) says that it is. It is inevitable because to try to be serious is, in some way, to demonstrate that you don’t know what seriousness is. To write about the most evil man in history in the middle of the last book of the epic story of your life is indeed to suggest such a thing.

    This uncertainty as to seriousness, of not knowing what the weight of experience is—the literary term is bathos—is My Struggle’s pervasive feeling. It’s the feeling, both thrilling and confusing, of encountering somebody who doesn’t know the unwritten rules. They are unwritten because they are deep inside us; they are the rules of society, which are part of our identity. On every page of My Struggle we are reminded of these rules, which human beings follow instinctively and as a matter of self-preservation, because Knausgaard disregards them. We feel viscerally that he shouldn’t be telling us what we nonetheless can’t stop reading because we know exactly what he means. It might be that this information is obscene, as in the shitting scenes of Book Three. It might be that it is embarrassing, as in the premature-ejaculation saga of Books Four and Five. Or it might be nearly criminal; you aren’t supposed to admit to your (unacted-on) sexual attraction to a thirteen-year-old girl, as Knausgaard does in Book Four. It might even be that it is unspeakably trivial. We aren’t supposed to talk about that either.

    It comes down to a kind of manners, which society requires from us, and which Knausgaard the writer is unconstrained by. He isn’t rude or mean; he’s weirdly free. He is looking at humanity from a place most people haven’t been and probably can’t get to. “Only someone who stands outside the social world,” Knausgaard observes, “knows what the social world is.” Notably, he’s writing about Hitler here. He, too, said the unsayable.

    Of course, literature also has manners. They go by the name of style. But Knausgaard spurns that as well. This aspect of the Knausgaard experience has been much commented on: his reliance on clichés, his redundancies (“What a stupid idiot I was”), the metaphors that instead of bringing phenomena closer seem to widen the distance between them (“the sunshine . . . which hung like a veil of light over everything”). Ben Lerner, a writer with a lovely style, has wondered, semi-seriously, if Knausgaard in fact has no style. And in Book Six, Knausgaard sheds some light on this very point. For he writes that “style is little more than self-awareness.” Is it possible to write 3,600 pages about yourself without self-awareness?

    Perhaps a lack of self-awareness is precisely what makes writing such a book possible. It requires a style cramped by nothing, not even literature itself, and a freedom that only cutting ties with others can truly bring. It’s well known that, not long after he finished My Struggle, Knausgaard and Linda, its dedicatee, divorced. “This novel has hurt everyone around me,” Knausgaard writes in Book Six. “It has hurt me, and in a few years, when they are old enough to read it, it will hurt my children. If I had made it more painful, it would have been truer.”

    That the true is also the painful is a problem for which Knausgaard doesn’t offer a solution. He started writing My Struggle when he was enraged and in despair and by the end of it he felt bad in a new way. “Unfortunately it was me who had to go up,” he notes of winning the Brage Prize for Book One. “The statuette was as heavy as a murder weapon.” In Book Six, he quotes Henry James: “In art, the emotions are the meaning.” In Knausgaard, the meaning is volatile; these emotions will never rest. The exhilaration of confession becomes the angst of remorse, the drunkenness of setting it all down in print becomes the hangover of seeing the book in stores. My Struggle is a monument to candor with few precedents in human history, but then so is Keeping Up with the Kardashians. What makes My Struggle so compelling is that Karl Ove will never forgive himself for it. Is it the unforgivability of these books that makes them great art?

    https://bookforum.com/inprint/025_03/20134
     
    Tangman likes this.
  24. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    Are we taking September off?
     
  25. prerecordedlive

    prerecordedlive Sworn Enemy of Standard Time
    Donor TMB OG
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    You guys are machines. I go through phases for enjoying reading.

    1. A Clash of Kings - GRRM (8/10)
    2. Artemis - Andy Weir (7/10)
    3. 11/22/63 - Stephen King (9/10)
     
    RegimentML, Truman and billdozer like this.
  26. Upton^2

    Upton^2 blocked just a park away, but I can't really say
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  27. CBH

    CBH Well-Known Member
    Donor
    Michigan WolverinesDetroit Red WingsEastern Michigan EaglesUnited States Men's National Soccer TeamBook Club

    1. Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter #5) by J.K. Rowling 8/10
    2. Ring of Fire by Brad Taylor (Pike Logan Series #11) 7/10
    3. Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson by S.C. Gwynne 10/10
    4. 1984 by George Orwell 8/10
    5. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter #6) by J.K. Rowling 8/10
    6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter #7) by J.K. Rowling 9/10
    7. Pegasus Bridge by Stephen Ambrose 7/10
    8. Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot #10) by Agatha Christie 7/10
    9. Red Sparrow (Red Sparrow Trilogy 1) by Jason Matthews 8/10
    10. Germany in the Modern World: A New History by Sam Mustafa 7/10
    11. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins 6/10
    12. Animal Farm 9/10
    13. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry 8/10
    14. Charlie Mike by Leonard B. Scott 7/10
    15. Red Blood, Black Sand: Fighting Alongside John Basilone from Boot Camp to Iwo Jima by Chuck Tatum 8.5/10
    16. Catching Fire (The Hunger Games #2) by Suzanne Collins 8/10
    17. George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring that Saved the American Revolution by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger 7/10
    18. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch 8/10
    19. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson 10/10
    20. Use of Force (Scot Harvath #16) by Brad Thor 7/10
    21. Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King 8/10
    22. Black Site (Kolt Raynor #1) by Dalton Fury 8/10
    23. Where Ghosts Walked: Munich's Road to the Third Reich by David Clay Large 9/10
    24. Shattered Spaces: Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland by Michael Meng 7/10
    25. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 9/10
    26. Point of Impact (Bob Lee Swagger #1) by Stephen Hunter 8/10
    27. Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz 8/10

    28. Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr 7/10 I really enjoyed this short book about the year that Doerr spent in Rome while trying to write the beginnings of All The Light We Cannot See. I was interested in the book because I visited Rome earlier this year and would love to go back or be able to live in a foreign city for awhile and it was an enjoyable but mostly pointless book about this time.

    29. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Wen to War In 1914 by Christopher Clark 7/10 Very informative book about the origins of the First World War and painstakingly research work by Clark. It reads a little slowly but the history that is written in it is very good even if it is slow throughout because of the detail. I haven't read a better book on all of the myriad of reasons and causes of the First World War.
     
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  28. CBH

    CBH Well-Known Member
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    Seems like it. Did you start An Army at Dawn?
     
  29. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    Finished it. It was great. I never Really considered how unready our military was for WW2. Went from simply avoiding shitting down your pants being considered a big victory to a dominating force in a hurry. All the in fighting between the allied leaders was interesting too.

    Gonna read the other two in the trilogy at some point. They’re long books
     
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  30. CBH

    CBH Well-Known Member
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    Awesome, I have to read it for an independent study this fall but am putting it off until the second half of the semester to read the shorter book first. I definitely want to read the entire trilogy as well and let my professor choose between studying the war in North Africa or the fighting in Italy for my independent study. Figured I would get one of the trilogy either way.
     
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  31. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
    Staff Donor TMB OG
    Alabama Crimson TideIndianapolis ColtsBook Club

    1. The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes #9) - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (6/10)
    2. Persepolis Rising (The Expanse #7) - James S.A. Corey (8.5/10)
    3. Strange Dogs (The Expanse #6.5) - James S.A. Corey (7/10)
    4. Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy #1) - Steven Erikson (9.5/10)
    5. Fall of Light (Kharkanas Trilogy #2) - Steven Erikson (9/10)
    6. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry (9/10)
    7. Dancer's Lament (Path to Ascendancy #1) - Ian Esselmont (8/10)
    8. Deadhouse Landing (Path to Ascendancy #2) - Ian Esselmont (9/10)
    9. Scourged (Iron Druid #9) - Kevin Hearne (7.5/10)
    10. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (9/10)
    11. I'll Be Gone in the Dark - Michelle McNamara (7/10)
    12. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain (8/10)
    13. Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist - Roger Lowenstein (9/10)
    14. Equal Rites (Discworld #3) - Terry Pratchett (8/10)
    15. The Outsider - Stephen King (8/10)
    16. Factfulness - Hans Rosling (8.5/10)
    17. The Little Book of Common Sense Investing - John Bogle (9.5/10)
    18. Mort (Discworld #4) - Terry Pratchett (8.5/10)
    19. Furies of Calderon (Codex Alera #1) - Jim Butcher (7/10)
    20. The Cabin at the End of the World - Paul Tremblay (6.5/10)
    21. If You Can: How Millennials Can Get Rich Slowly - William Bernstein (9/10)
    22. The Boglehead's Guide to Investing - Taylor Larimore (9.5/10)
    23. Academ's Fury (Codex Alera #2) - Jim Butcher (7.5/10)
    24. Bogle on Mutual Funds - John Bogle (10/10)
    25. The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham (10/10)
    26. A Random Walk Down Wall Street - Burton Malkiel (9/10)
    27. Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3) - Jim Butcher (8.5/10)
    28. Captain's Fury (Codex Alera #4) - Jim Butcher (9/10)
    29. Your Money and Your Brain - Jason Zweig (7.5/10)
    30. Magpie Murders - Anthony Horowitz (7.5/10)
    31. Princeps' Fury (Codex Alera #5) - Jim Butcher (8/10)
    Intelligent Investor is a classic that is a must read for anyone who invests. A Random Walk Down Wall Street I also really enjoyed, it shared a lot of the same facts and stories with Your Money and Your Brain which I think drove down the rating of that book, probably because I read it second and so close to Random Walk. Also w.r.t Your Money and Your Brain, I personally didn't care as much about specifically which section of your brain reacted to stimuli caused by investing, but I'm sure some do, and they would probably give the book a higher rating. For me just understanding how your brain reacts was enough without learning that the amygdala doesn't like to lose money.

    Codex Alera series is quick, fun and complete. Books continue to get better as they go, although I enjoyed #5 a little less than 3 and 4, but reading reviews a lot of people disagree with me. I didn't enjoy the two plot lines being so distant in this book :idk:

    Magpie Murders, thanks to Arkie Proud (RIP) for recommending this one for the book club. Great choice, I flew through it once I started. Fresh take on the classic whodunnit with lots of homages to classics like Agatha Christie novels (may have to reread some Agatha Christie now, its been like 15 years for me.) Also as other have mentioned Horowitz did a pretty good job with the book within a book premise.
     
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  32. Upton^2

    Upton^2 blocked just a park away, but I can't really say
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    1. The Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu. (8/10)
    2. Fire and Fury - Michael Wolff (4/10)
    3. To The Back of Beyond - Peter Stamm (7/10)
    4. Love in the Ruins - Walker Percy (9/10)
    5. 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (10/10)
    6. Dark Matter - Blake Crouch (7.5/10)
    7. Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari (8/10)
    8. Empire of Cotton: A Global History - Sven Beckert (8.5/10)
    9. Why Does the World Exist - Jim Holt (7.5/10)
    10. Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe (8.5/10)
    11. Eviction - Matthew Desmond (9/10)
    12. Tribe - Sebastian Junger (7.5/10)
    13. Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner (9.5/10) - So good. Can't rate it above 100 Years as that remains one of the best books I've ever read. Can clearly see Faulkner's influence in that book. Was hard to read at times and had to reread stuff all the time, but worth it.
     
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  33. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    Missouri TigersSt. Louis CardinalsChicago BullsSt. Louis BluesEvertonBook Club

    1. Persepolis Rising (Expanse #7), by James S.A. Corey (10/10)
    2. Moscow Rules (Gabriel Allon #8) by Daniel Silva (8/10)
    3. Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, by Gordon S Wood (8/10)
    4. The Defector (Gabriel Allon #9) by Daniel Silva (6.5/10)
    5. Star Wars: Colbalt Squadron, by Elizabeth Wein (6/10)
    6. Iron Gold (Red Rising #4) by Pierce Brown (7/10)
    7. Thinking the Twentieth Century, by Tony Judt (6.5/10)
    8. Paradox Bound, by Peter Clines (7/10)
    9. American Radical: Inside the World of an Undercover Muslim FBI Agent, by Tamer Elnoury (9/10)
    10. The Rembrandt Affair (Gabriel Allon #10) by Daniel Silva (6.5/10)
    11. Portrait of a Spy (Gabriel Allon #11) by Daniel Silva (4/10)
    12. The Kremlin's Candidate (Red Sparrow #3) by Jason Matthews (9.5/10)
    13. Genghis Kahn and the Making of the Modern Worldby Jack Weatherford (9/10)
    14. Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs #1) by Richard K Morgan (7/10)
    15. Sometimes I Lie, by Alice Feeney (6/10)
    16. The Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi (7.5/10)
    17. Lonesome Dove (Lonesome Dove #), by Larry McMurtry (9/10)
    18. The Phenomenon, by Rick Ankiel (7/10)
    19. We Are Legion (Bobiverse #1), by Dennis E Taylor (7.5)
    20. For We Are Many (Bobiverse #2), by Dennis E Taylor (7/10)
    21. All These Worlds (Bobiverse #3), by Dennis E Taylor (6.5/10)
    22. The Feed, by Nick Clark Windo (5.5/10)
    23. Streets of Laredo (Lonesome Dove #2) by Larry McMurtry (8/10)
    24. Dead Man's Walk (Lonesome Dove #3) by Larry McMurtry (7/10)
    25. Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove #4) by Larry McMurtry (7.5/10)
    26. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (6.5/10)
    27. Between The World and Me by Ta-Neshi Coates (8/10)
    28. The Outsider by Stephen King (6.5/10)
    29. Star Wars: Most Wanted by Rae Carson (6.5/10)
    30. Factfulness - Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World and Why Things are Better than you Think by Hans Rosling (9.5/10)
    31. Into the Drowning Deep, by Mira Grant (7/10)
    32. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C Mann. (8/10)
    33. The English Girl (Gabriel Allon #13) by Daniel Silva (5/10)
    34. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Hurari (8/10)
    35. Homo Deus, by Yuval Noah Hurari (7/10)
    36. Cabin at the End of the World, by Paul Tremblay (7/10)
    37. Unsub (Unsub #1) by Meg Gardiner (9/10)
    38. Into the Black Nowhere (Unsub #2) by Meg Gardiner (9/10)
    39. Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, by S.C. Gwynne (9.5/10)
    40. Spinning Silver, by Noami Novik (8/10)
    41. The English Spy (Gabriel Allon #15) by Daniel Silva (8/10)
    42. Star Wars: Thrawn Alliances by Timothy Zahn (8/10)
    43. Into the Lion's Mouth: The True Story of Dusko Popov; WWII Spy, and the Real-Life Inspiration for James Bond, by Larry Leptis (9.5/10)
    44. The Black Widow (Gabriel Allon #16) , by Daniel Silva (9/10)
    45. Magpie Murders , by Anthony Horowitz (8/10)
    46. The Fifth to Die (4MK #2), by JD Barker (7/10)
    47. Relic, by Alan Dean Foster (4/10)
    45. Warcross (Warcross #1) by Marie Lu
    46. Binti Trilogy by Nendi Okafor (6.5/10)
    47. An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson (9/10)

    Binti -
    This book kept popping up in podcasts and hugo lists. I was underwhelmed. It's ok but not great. I dont get the hype around it tbh. Was just 3 short stories.

    Army at Dawn - This book was great and I learned a lot about how we built and trained our Army for WW2. Much of it on the fly.
     
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  34. Blackterno

    Blackterno Well-Known Member
    TMB OG
    Penn State Nittany LionsPhiladelphia Phillies

    1) The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive # 1) by Brandon Sanderson 9/10
    2) Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive # 2) by Brandon Sanderson 10/10
    3) Edgedancer (The Stormlight Archive # 2.5) by Brandon Sanderson 10/10
    4) Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson 9/10
    5) Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson 10/10
    6) Thunderhead (Arc of the Scythe #2) by Neal Shusterman 6/10
    7) The Midnight Line (Jack Reacher #22) by Lee Child 7.5/10
    8) The Boy on the Bridge by M.R. Carey 7/10
    9) The Kremlins Candidate (Red Sparrow #3) 9.5/10
    10) Agent in Place (Gray Man #7) by Mark Greaney 7/10
    11) End Game (Will Robie # 5) by David Baldacci 3/10
    12) Ready Player One by Ernest Cline -Reread - 10/10
    13) Iron Gold (Red Rising # 4) by Pierce Brown 7/10
    14) Operator Down (Pike Logan # 12) by Brad Taylor 7/10
    15) The Deceivers (John Wells #12) by Alex Berenson 7.5/10
    16) Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor #2) by Mark Lawrence 8.5/10
    17) The Terminal List by Jack Carr 6.5/10
    18) The Fallen (Amos Decker #4) by David Baldacci 6/10
    19) Overkill (Alexander Hawke #10) by Ted Bell 1/10
    20) Furies of Calderon ((Codex Alera #1) by Jim Butcher by Jim Butcher 7.5/10
    21) Academ’s Fury (Codex Alera #2)by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    22) Rules of Prey by John Sandford 6.5/10
    23) Cursors Fury (Codex Alera #3) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    24) Captains Fury (Codex Alera #4) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    25) Princep’s Fury (Codex Alera #5) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    26) The First Lord’s Fury (Codex Alera #6) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    27) Hunt the Viper(SEAL Team 6 #7) by Don Mann 4/10
    28) Power and Empire (Jack Ryan universe #25) by Marc Cameron 6.5/10
    29) The Other Woman (Gabriel Allon #18) by Daniel Silva 9.5/10
    30) The Outsider by Stephen King 5/10
    31) The Black Prism (Lightbringer #1) by Brent Weeks 8/10
    32) The Blinding Knife (Lightbringer #2) by Brent Weeks 9.5/10
    33) The Broken Eye (Lightbringer #3) by Brent Weeks 9.5/10
    34) The Blood Mirror (Lightbringer #4) by Brent Weeks 9/10
     
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  35. stexraider

    stexraider Fire Everybody
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    The Woman in the Window - A. J. Finn 10/10

    will be a movie released in late 2019 with Amy Adams as the lead - went from book to script to screen in about the shortest amount of time I can recall.
     
  36. Blackterno

    Blackterno Well-Known Member
    TMB OG
    Penn State Nittany LionsPhiladelphia Phillies

    1) The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive # 1) by Brandon Sanderson 9/10
    2) Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive # 2) by Brandon Sanderson 10/10
    3) Edgedancer (The Stormlight Archive # 2.5) by Brandon Sanderson 10/10
    4) Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson 9/10
    5) Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson 10/10
    6) Thunderhead (Arc of the Scythe #2) by Neal Shusterman 6/10
    7) The Midnight Line (Jack Reacher #22) by Lee Child 7.5/10
    8) The Boy on the Bridge by M.R. Carey 7/10
    9) The Kremlins Candidate (Red Sparrow #3) 9.5/10
    10) Agent in Place (Gray Man #7) by Mark Greaney 7/10
    11) End Game (Will Robie # 5) by David Baldacci 3/10
    12) Ready Player One by Ernest Cline -Reread - 10/10
    13) Iron Gold (Red Rising # 4) by Pierce Brown 7/10
    14) Operator Down (Pike Logan # 12) by Brad Taylor 7/10
    15) The Deceivers (John Wells #12) by Alex Berenson 7.5/10
    16) Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor #2) by Mark Lawrence 8.5/10
    17) The Terminal List by Jack Carr 6.5/10
    18) The Fallen (Amos Decker #4) by David Baldacci 6/10
    19) Overkill (Alexander Hawke #10) by Ted Bell 1/10
    20) Furies of Calderon ((Codex Alera #1) by Jim Butcher by Jim Butcher 7.5/10
    21) Academ’s Fury (Codex Alera #2)by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    22) Rules of Prey by John Sandford 6.5/10
    23) Cursors Fury (Codex Alera #3) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    24) Captains Fury (Codex Alera #4) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    25) Princep’s Fury (Codex Alera #5) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    26) The First Lord’s Fury (Codex Alera #6) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    27) Hunt the Viper(SEAL Team 6 #7) by Don Mann 4/10
    28) Power and Empire (Jack Ryan universe #25) by Marc Cameron 6.5/10
    29) The Other Woman (Gabriel Allon #18) by Daniel Silva 9.5/10
    30) The Outsider by Stephen King 5/10
    31) The Black Prism (Lightbringer #1) by Brent Weeks 8/10
    32) The Blinding Knife (Lightbringer #2) by Brent Weeks 9.5/10
    33) The Broken Eye (Lightbringer #3) by Brent Weeks 9.5/10
    34) The Blood Mirror (Lightbringer #4) by Brent Weeks 9/10
    35) Spymaster (Scot Harvath #17) by Brad Thor 6.5/10
    36) Bloody Sunday (Dewey Andreas #8) by Ben Coes 6.5/10
     
  37. CBH

    CBH Well-Known Member
    Donor
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    1. Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter #5) by J.K. Rowling 8/10
    2. Ring of Fire by Brad Taylor (Pike Logan Series #11) 7/10
    3. Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson by S.C. Gwynne 10/10
    4. 1984 by George Orwell 8/10
    5. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter #6) by J.K. Rowling 8/10
    6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter #7) by J.K. Rowling 9/10
    7. Pegasus Bridge by Stephen Ambrose 7/10
    8. Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot #10) by Agatha Christie 7/10
    9. Red Sparrow (Red Sparrow Trilogy 1) by Jason Matthews 8/10
    10. Germany in the Modern World: A New History by Sam Mustafa 7/10
    11. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins 6/10
    12. Animal Farm 9/10
    13. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry 8/10
    14. Charlie Mike by Leonard B. Scott 7/10
    15. Red Blood, Black Sand: Fighting Alongside John Basilone from Boot Camp to Iwo Jima by Chuck Tatum 8.5/10
    16. Catching Fire (The Hunger Games #2) by Suzanne Collins 8/10
    17. George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring that Saved the American Revolution by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger 6/10
    18. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch 8/10
    19. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson 10/10
    20. Use of Force (Scot Harvath #16) by Brad Thor 7/10
    21. Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King 8/10
    22. Black Site (Kolt Raynor #1) by Dalton Fury 8/10
    23. Where Ghosts Walked: Munich's Road to the Third Reich by David Clay Large 9/10
    24. Shattered Spaces: Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland by Michael Meng 7/10
    25. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 9/10
    26. Point of Impact (Bob Lee Swagger #1) by Stephen Hunter 8/10
    27. Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz 8/10
    28. Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr 7/10
    29. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Wen to War In 1914 by Christopher Clark 7/10

    30. The Kill Artist (Gabriel Allon #1) by Daniel Silva 8/10 Think I found a new series to read, enjoyed the characters and liked that the main character is not an American agent and that most of the books might take place in Europe.

    31. The Impending Crisis: America Before The Civil War 1848-1861 by David Potter and Don E. Fehrenbacher 8/10 Very detailed book about the period of 1848-1861 and the lead up to the Civil War. Tons of research and very good writing made it pretty easy to read other than a couple chapters towards the end.
     
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  38. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    Gabriel Allon series is outstanding. You'll love it. Im actually reading the last book right now.
     
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  39. Tangman

    Tangman Well-Known Member
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    1. We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families (Phillip Gourevitch) - 9/10
    2. A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hosseini) - 8.5/10
    3. The Warmth Of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (Isabel Wilkerson) - 8/10
    4. The Road To Jonestown: Jim Jones and The Peoples Temple (Jeff Guinn) - 9/10
    5. All The King's Men (Robert Penn Warren) - 9.5/10
    6. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Matthew Desmond) - 9.5/10
    7. Columbine (Dave Cullen) - 8/10
    8. Freakonomics: A Rouge Economist Explores The Hidden Side Of Everything (Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner) - 7/10
    9. Animal Farm (George Orwell) - 8/10
    10. Lincoln In The Bardo (George Saunders) - 8.5/10
    11. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir Of A Family And Culture In Crisis (J.D. Vance) - 5/10
    12. Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are (Seth Stephens-Davidowitz) - 8/10
    13. Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry) - 9/10
    14. Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind (Yuval Noah Harari) - 9/10
    15. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (David Grann) - 8.5/10
    16. Ready Player One (Ernest Cline) - 6.5/10
    17. Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman) - 9.5/10
    18. American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (Colin Woodard) - 9/10
    19. All The Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr) - 8.5/10
    20. Rules Of Civility (Amor Towles) - 6/10
    21. Little Fires Everywhere (Celeste Ng) - 6.5/10
    22. I'll Be Gone In The Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search For The Golden State Killer (Michelle McNamara) - 7/10
    23. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World (Stephen Brusatte) - 9/10
    24. Iron Curtain: The Crushing Of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 (Anne Applebaum) - 7/10
    25. Propaganda (Edward L. Bernays) - 8/10
    26. A Gentleman In Moscow (Amor Towles) - 8.5/10
    27. Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (Sam Quinones) - 9.5/10
    28. Magpie Murders (Anthony Horowitz) - 8/10
    29. All The Pieces Matter: The Inside Story Of The Wire (Jonathan Abrams) - 8/10
    30. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road To 9/11 (Lawrence Wright) - 9/10 -
    I'm sure most of you have read this already so I don't feel the need for much of a review. It's really good and Wright is a very skilled writer. This still feels very relevant in 2018. The reader will undoubtedly become angry at the bureaucratic nonsense between the CIA and FBI in the late '90s/early 2000s. Michael Scheuer still seems like a huge sack of shit. Read it if you haven't.
    31. Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President (Candice Millard) - 9/10 - Just a great piece of popular history. Really like Millard's treatment here and she does a commendable job weaving together the stories of James Garfield, Alexander Graham Bell, Charles Guiteau, and Joseph Lister. She leads the reader to wonder how our country might be different had Garfield survived (and he most likely would have had these events happened even 15 years later). Her inclusion of personal correspondence from most of the principal players really adds color to these people. Highly recommend this one to anyone even remotely interested in American history.
     
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  40. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
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    Tangman interesting re: Looming Tower -- that's one I'd have thought wouldn't be worth returning to if you missed it back when it was first popular
     
  41. Tangman

    Tangman Well-Known Member
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    I feel it's still relevant because it spends a good deal of time discussing guys like Sayyad Qutb, Zawahiri and like-minded folks in Egypt who helped usher in the rise of fundamental Islamism throughout the region and then further illuminates the origins of movements like Salafism and Wahhabism which color their actions. I'll admit that I'm fairly ignorant of Middle Eastern history so this was a good read for getting a better handle of where all this started from.

    Not sure you'd get much new from the US perspective if you paid attention to our media in the years after. Hope that makes sense.
     
  42. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
    Staff Donor TMB OG
    Alabama Crimson TideIndianapolis ColtsBook Club

    1. The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes #9) - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (6/10)
    2. Persepolis Rising (The Expanse #7) - James S.A. Corey (8.5/10)
    3. Strange Dogs (The Expanse #6.5) - James S.A. Corey (7/10)
    4. Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy #1) - Steven Erikson (9.5/10)
    5. Fall of Light (Kharkanas Trilogy #2) - Steven Erikson (9/10)
    6. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry (9/10)
    7. Dancer's Lament (Path to Ascendancy #1) - Ian Esselmont (8/10)
    8. Deadhouse Landing (Path to Ascendancy #2) - Ian Esselmont (9/10)
    9. Scourged (Iron Druid #9) - Kevin Hearne (7.5/10)
    10. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (9/10)
    11. I'll Be Gone in the Dark - Michelle McNamara (7/10)
    12. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain (8/10)
    13. Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist - Roger Lowenstein (9/10)
    14. Equal Rites (Discworld #3) - Terry Pratchett (8/10)
    15. The Outsider - Stephen King (8/10)
    16. Factfulness - Hans Rosling (8.5/10)
    17. The Little Book of Common Sense Investing - John Bogle (9.5/10)
    18. Mort (Discworld #4) - Terry Pratchett (8.5/10)
    19. Furies of Calderon (Codex Alera #1) - Jim Butcher (7/10)
    20. The Cabin at the End of the World - Paul Tremblay (6.5/10)
    21. If You Can: How Millennials Can Get Rich Slowly - William Bernstein (9/10)
    22. The Boglehead's Guide to Investing - Taylor Larimore (9.5/10)
    23. Academ's Fury (Codex Alera #2) - Jim Butcher (7.5/10)
    24. Bogle on Mutual Funds - John Bogle (10/10)
    25. The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham (10/10)
    26. A Random Walk Down Wall Street - Burton Malkiel (9/10)
    27. Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3) - Jim Butcher (8.5/10)
    28. Captain's Fury (Codex Alera #4) - Jim Butcher (9/10)
    29. Your Money and Your Brain - Jason Zweig (7.5/10)
    30. Magpie Murders - Anthony Horowitz (7.5/10)
    31. Princeps' Fury (Codex Alera #5) - Jim Butcher (8/10)
    32. Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik (8/10)
    33. The Grimoire of the Lamb (Iron Druid Chronicles #0.4) - Kevin Hearne (7/10)
    34. Clan Rathskeller (Iron Druid Chronicles #0.5) - Kevin Hearne (6.5/10)
    35. Kaibab Unbound (Iron Druid Chronicles #0.6) - Kevin Hearne (6/10)
    36. A Test of Mettle (Iron Druid Chronicles #3.5) - Kevin Hearne (6/10)
    37. Two Ravens One Crow (Iron Druid Chronicles #4.5) - Kevin Hearne (7/10)
    I really eenjoyed Spinning Silver, not sure which I enjoyed more between it and Uprooted, but I liked them both. I've liked the feel (atmosphere, if you will) she creates in her fairytale-esque novels.

    I've finished the main Iron Druid series which was fun as hell, now I'm finishing up all of the short stories that accompany them.
     
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  43. Blackterno

    Blackterno Well-Known Member
    TMB OG
    Penn State Nittany LionsPhiladelphia Phillies

    1) The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive # 1) by Brandon Sanderson 9/10
    2) Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive # 2) by Brandon Sanderson 10/10
    3) Edgedancer (The Stormlight Archive # 2.5) by Brandon Sanderson 10/10
    4) Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson 9/10
    5) Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson 10/10
    6) Thunderhead (Arc of the Scythe #2) by Neal Shusterman 6/10
    7) The Midnight Line (Jack Reacher #22) by Lee Child 7.5/10
    8) The Boy on the Bridge by M.R. Carey 7/10
    9) The Kremlins Candidate (Red Sparrow #3) 9.5/10
    10) Agent in Place (Gray Man #7) by Mark Greaney 7/10
    11) End Game (Will Robie # 5) by David Baldacci 3/10
    12) Ready Player One by Ernest Cline -Reread - 10/10
    13) Iron Gold (Red Rising # 4) by Pierce Brown 7/10
    14) Operator Down (Pike Logan # 12) by Brad Taylor 7/10
    15) The Deceivers (John Wells #12) by Alex Berenson 7.5/10
    16) Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor #2) by Mark Lawrence 8.5/10
    17) The Terminal List by Jack Carr 6.5/10
    18) The Fallen (Amos Decker #4) by David Baldacci 6/10
    19) Overkill (Alexander Hawke #10) by Ted Bell 1/10
    20) Furies of Calderon ((Codex Alera #1) by Jim Butcher by Jim Butcher 7.5/10
    21) Academ’s Fury (Codex Alera #2)by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    22) Rules of Prey by John Sandford 6.5/10
    23) Cursors Fury (Codex Alera #3) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    24) Captains Fury (Codex Alera #4) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    25) Princep’s Fury (Codex Alera #5) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    26) The First Lord’s Fury (Codex Alera #6) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    27) Hunt the Viper(SEAL Team 6 #7) by Don Mann 4/10
    28) Power and Empire (Jack Ryan universe #25) by Marc Cameron 6.5/10
    29) The Other Woman (Gabriel Allon #18) by Daniel Silva 9.5/10
    30) The Outsider by Stephen King 5/10
    31) The Black Prism (Lightbringer #1) by Brent Weeks 8/10
    32) The Blinding Knife (Lightbringer #2) by Brent Weeks 9.5/10
    33) The Broken Eye (Lightbringer #3) by Brent Weeks 9.5/10
    34) The Blood Mirror (Lightbringer #4) by Brent Weeks 9/10
    35) Spymaster (Scot Harvath #17) by Brad Thor 6.5/10
    36) Bloody Sunday (Dewey Andreas #8) by Ben Coes 6.5/10
    37) Hard Landing (Dan Shepherd #1) by Stephen Leather 7/10
     
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  44. CBH

    CBH Well-Known Member
    Donor
    Michigan WolverinesDetroit Red WingsEastern Michigan EaglesUnited States Men's National Soccer TeamBook Club

    Awesome I'd seen that a number of the people in this thread have read it so was hoping I would like it.
     
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  45. CBH

    CBH Well-Known Member
    Donor
    Michigan WolverinesDetroit Red WingsEastern Michigan EaglesUnited States Men's National Soccer TeamBook Club

    1. Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter #5) by J.K. Rowling 8/10
    2. Ring of Fire by Brad Taylor (Pike Logan Series #11) 7/10
    3. Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson by S.C. Gwynne 10/10
    4. 1984 by George Orwell 8/10
    5. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter #6) by J.K. Rowling 8/10
    6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter #7) by J.K. Rowling 9/10
    7. Pegasus Bridge by Stephen Ambrose 7/10
    8. Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot #10) by Agatha Christie 7/10
    9. Red Sparrow (Red Sparrow Trilogy 1) by Jason Matthews 8/10
    10. Germany in the Modern World: A New History by Sam Mustafa 7/10
    11. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins 6/10
    12. Animal Farm 9/10
    13. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry 8/10
    14. Charlie Mike by Leonard B. Scott 7/10
    15. Red Blood, Black Sand: Fighting Alongside John Basilone from Boot Camp to Iwo Jima by Chuck Tatum 8.5/10
    16. Catching Fire (The Hunger Games #2) by Suzanne Collins 8/10
    17. George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring that Saved the American Revolution by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger 6/10
    18. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch 8/10
    19. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson 10/10
    20. Use of Force (Scot Harvath #16) by Brad Thor 7/10
    21. Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King 8/10
    22. Black Site (Kolt Raynor #1) by Dalton Fury 8/10
    23. Where Ghosts Walked: Munich's Road to the Third Reich by David Clay Large 9/10
    24. Shattered Spaces: Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland by Michael Meng 7/10
    25. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 9/10
    26. Point of Impact (Bob Lee Swagger #1) by Stephen Hunter 8/10
    27. Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz 8/10
    28. Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr 7/10
    29. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Wen to War In 1914 by Christopher Clark 7/10
    30. The Kill Artist (Gabriel Allon #1) by Daniel Silva 8/10
    31. The Impending Crisis: America Before The Civil War 1848-1861 by David Potter and Don E. Fehrenbacher 8/10

    32. The War That Forged A Nation: Why The Civil War Still Matters by James McPherson 5/10 This book was surprisingly pretty boring, it's a collection of articles or reviews that talk about reinterpretations of the Civil War and its importance to America but is largely uninspiring and didn't add any new knowledge to the historiography of the Civl War.

    33. Beyond Berlin: Twelve German Cities Confront the Nazi Past edited by Gabriel D. Rosenfeld and Paul B. Jaskot 8/10 This book contains a number of very interesting articles about the way that the history of Nazism has been treated in different German cities following the war. Much of it focuses on the remembrance of buildings and sites and their preservation, but there is a lot of information about actions taken by the national as well as city governments as well.
     
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  46. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
    Donor
    Missouri TigersSt. Louis CardinalsChicago BullsSt. Louis BluesEvertonBook Club

    1. Persepolis Rising (Expanse #7), by James S.A. Corey (10/10)
    2. Moscow Rules (Gabriel Allon #8) by Daniel Silva (8/10)
    3. Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, by Gordon S Wood (8/10)
    4. The Defector (Gabriel Allon #9) by Daniel Silva (6.5/10)
    5. Star Wars: Colbalt Squadron, by Elizabeth Wein (6/10)
    6. Iron Gold (Red Rising #4) by Pierce Brown (7/10)
    7. Thinking the Twentieth Century, by Tony Judt (6.5/10)
    8. Paradox Bound, by Peter Clines (7/10)
    9. American Radical: Inside the World of an Undercover Muslim FBI Agent, by Tamer Elnoury (9/10)
    10. The Rembrandt Affair (Gabriel Allon #10) by Daniel Silva (6.5/10)
    11. Portrait of a Spy (Gabriel Allon #11) by Daniel Silva (4/10)
    12. The Kremlin's Candidate (Red Sparrow #3) by Jason Matthews (9.5/10)
    13. Genghis Kahn and the Making of the Modern Worldby Jack Weatherford (9/10)
    14. Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs #1) by Richard K Morgan (7/10)
    15. Sometimes I Lie, by Alice Feeney (6/10)
    16. The Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi (7.5/10)
    17. Lonesome Dove (Lonesome Dove #), by Larry McMurtry (9/10)
    18. The Phenomenon, by Rick Ankiel (7/10)
    19. We Are Legion (Bobiverse #1), by Dennis E Taylor (7.5)
    20. For We Are Many (Bobiverse #2), by Dennis E Taylor (7/10)
    21. All These Worlds (Bobiverse #3), by Dennis E Taylor (6.5/10)
    22. The Feed, by Nick Clark Windo (5.5/10)
    23. Streets of Laredo (Lonesome Dove #2) by Larry McMurtry (8/10)
    24. Dead Man's Walk (Lonesome Dove #3) by Larry McMurtry (7/10)
    25. Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove #4) by Larry McMurtry (7.5/10)
    26. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (6.5/10)
    27. Between The World and Me by Ta-Neshi Coates (8/10)
    28. The Outsider by Stephen King (6.5/10)
    29. Star Wars: Most Wanted by Rae Carson (6.5/10)
    30. Factfulness - Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World and Why Things are Better than you Think by Hans Rosling (9.5/10)
    31. Into the Drowning Deep, by Mira Grant (7/10)
    32. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C Mann. (8/10)
    33. The English Girl (Gabriel Allon #13) by Daniel Silva (5/10)
    34. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Hurari (8/10)
    35. Homo Deus, by Yuval Noah Hurari (7/10)
    36. Cabin at the End of the World, by Paul Tremblay (7/10)
    37. Unsub (Unsub #1) by Meg Gardiner (9/10)
    38. Into the Black Nowhere (Unsub #2) by Meg Gardiner (9/10)
    39. Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, by S.C. Gwynne (9.5/10)
    40. Spinning Silver, by Noami Novik (8/10)
    41. The English Spy (Gabriel Allon #15) by Daniel Silva (8/10)
    42. Star Wars: Thrawn Alliances by Timothy Zahn (8/10)
    43. Into the Lion's Mouth: The True Story of Dusko Popov; WWII Spy, and the Real-Life Inspiration for James Bond, by Larry Leptis (9.5/10)
    44. The Black Widow (Gabriel Allon #16) , by Daniel Silva (9/10)
    45. Magpie Murders , by Anthony Horowitz (8/10)
    46. The Fifth to Die (4MK #2), by JD Barker (7/10)
    47. Relic, by Alan Dean Foster (4/10)
    45. Warcross (Warcross #1) by Marie Lu
    46. Binti Trilogy by Nendi Okafor (6.5/10)
    47. An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson (9/10)
    48. The Hunt for Red October (Jack Ryan #1) by Tom Clancy (7.5/10)
    49. All The Wrong Stars (Axiom #1), by Tim Pratt (6.5/10)
    50. House of Spies (Gabriel Allon #17) by Daniel Silva (9/10)
    51. The Other Woman (Gabriel Allon #18) by Daniel Silva (8/10)
    52. Wildcard (Warcross #2) by Marie Lu (8.5/10)

    Hunt for Red October -
    The Jack Ryan Amazon series sparked my interest in reading these. Ive seen the movie, but not for a while. From what I remember, it was pretty close to the book. Liked it and Im sure I'll read more, but the other books are long AF and not sure Im too excited to catch up on all that.

    All the Wrong Stars -
    Cool premise, A space smuggling crew finds a ship from 500 years ago. One of the first deep space exploration ships Earth sent out. Pilot is still alive, in stasis. Aliens come into play, ect... Right up my ally. But - the story was pretty meh. Liked it but not enough to continue the series.

    Both the Gabriel Allon books are great. Glad to finally be caught up.

    WIldcard - Second book in a duology. You can tell it was inspired by RPO. Most of the real world is lived via a virtual reality or partial reality with really advanced Google Glasses type shit. This a great and liked it a lot. I didnt realize it was a duology so I was a bit confused when finishing it. "How is there gonna be a 3rd book after this" . Well, dumbdick... theres not.

    It was kind of a nice surprise. Wish there were more duologies. Everything is a trilogy or long series now.
     
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  47. One Knight

    One Knight https://www.twitch.tv/thatrescueguy
    Donor
    UCF KnightsTampa Bay LightningBig 12 Conference

    I can still remember my dad reading Red October and reading parts of it to me that he liked. That was the start of his fandom, a few years later I read Patriot Games and I was hooked. I've read all of them at least twice, and several of them about 5 times each. If you can give RO a 7.5, you should definitely give yourself a chance with the rest.
     
    Truman likes this.
  48. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
    Donor
    South Carolina GamecocksCarolina PanthersCarolina Hurricanes

    1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams (8/10)
    2. Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter -- Steven Johnson (6/10)
    3. Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious -- Timothy Wilson (9/10)
    4. Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley (8/10) *reread*
    5. The Horse and His Boy (Chronicles of Narnia #5) -- CS Lewis (10/10) *reread*
    6. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism -- Edward E. Baptist (8/10)
    7. The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently And Why -- Richard Nisbett (8/10)
    8. Mind Sculpture: Unlocking Your Brain's Untapped Potential -- Ian Roberson (8/10)
    9. The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape -- James Howard Kunstler (10/10)
    10. Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World -- Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden (9/10)
    11. The Silver Chair (Chronicles of Narnia #4) -- CS Lewis (10/10) *reread*
    12. Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency -- David Greenberg (6/10)
    13. The Death and Life of Great American Cities -- Jane Jacobs (7/10)
    14. The Story of Art -- E.H. Gombrich (8/10)
    15. The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone -- Brian Merchant (9/10)
    16. 2001: A Space Odyssey -- Arthur C. Clarke (7/10)
    17. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living -- Mark Manson (9/10)
    18. The Dharma Bums -- Jack Kerouac (10/10)
    19. On Looking: Eleven Walks With Expert Eyes -- Alexandra Horowitz (8.5/10)
    20. Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, And What The Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are -- Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (8.5/10)
    21. The Confidence Game: Why We Fall For It, Every Time -- Maria Konnikova (8.5/10)
    22. Fourth of July Creek -- Smith Henderson (8/10)
    23. The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom -- Don Miguel Ruiz (6/10)
    24. Your Brain At Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus and Working Smarter All Day Long -- David Rock (8/10)
    25. A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas (6/10)
    26. The Devil in the White City -- Erik Larson (10/10)
    27. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind -- Yuval Noah Harari (10/10)
    28. The Prince and the Pauper -- Mark Twain (7/10)
    29. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Won't Stop Talking -- Susan Cain (7.5/10)

    30. The Bonfire of the Vanities -- Tom Wolfe (9.5/10)
    I read "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by this guy back in the day and thought of him as a journalist, so I wasn't really expecting much from him as a "serious novelist." However, this proved to be one of the best novels I've personally read. The first thing to like about it is the pacing and the intricate plot -- it's just one long story with not a lot of "atmosphere building" scenes. Pretty impressive to carry that through nearly 700 pages. But the best overall thing about the book is the insider knowledge the author brings to Wall Street, the NYC criminal justice system, and the New York media of the 1980s. Besides the media, I don't know if Tom Wolfe ever had occasion to work in those other professions but he certainly makes you feel like it with all the lingo and tricks of the trade he knows. My favorite scenes are where he exposes the snobbery, classism and racism of educated "well-bred" people in plain language. It's like being a fly on the wall in that Park Avenue apartment with 14 rooms and green marble foyer you're never going to get to go in.
     
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  49. Blackterno

    Blackterno Well-Known Member
    TMB OG
    Penn State Nittany LionsPhiladelphia Phillies

    1) The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive # 1) by Brandon Sanderson 9/10
    2) Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive # 2) by Brandon Sanderson 10/10
    3) Edgedancer (The Stormlight Archive # 2.5) by Brandon Sanderson 10/10
    4) Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson 9/10
    5) Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson 10/10
    6) Thunderhead (Arc of the Scythe #2) by Neal Shusterman 6/10
    7) The Midnight Line (Jack Reacher #22) by Lee Child 7.5/10
    8) The Boy on the Bridge by M.R. Carey 7/10
    9) The Kremlins Candidate (Red Sparrow #3) 9.5/10
    10) Agent in Place (Gray Man #7) by Mark Greaney 7/10
    11) End Game (Will Robie # 5) by David Baldacci 3/10
    12) Ready Player One by Ernest Cline -Reread - 10/10
    13) Iron Gold (Red Rising # 4) by Pierce Brown 7/10
    14) Operator Down (Pike Logan # 12) by Brad Taylor 7/10
    15) The Deceivers (John Wells #12) by Alex Berenson 7.5/10
    16) Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor #2) by Mark Lawrence 8.5/10
    17) The Terminal List by Jack Carr 6.5/10
    18) The Fallen (Amos Decker #4) by David Baldacci 6/10
    19) Overkill (Alexander Hawke #10) by Ted Bell 1/10
    20) Furies of Calderon ((Codex Alera #1) by Jim Butcher by Jim Butcher 7.5/10
    21) Academ’s Fury (Codex Alera #2)by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    22) Rules of Prey by John Sandford 6.5/10
    23) Cursors Fury (Codex Alera #3) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    24) Captains Fury (Codex Alera #4) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    25) Princep’s Fury (Codex Alera #5) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    26) The First Lord’s Fury (Codex Alera #6) by Jim Butcher 9.5/10
    27) Hunt the Viper(SEAL Team 6 #7) by Don Mann 4/10
    28) Power and Empire (Jack Ryan universe #25) by Marc Cameron 6.5/10
    29) The Other Woman (Gabriel Allon #18) by Daniel Silva 9.5/10
    30) The Outsider by Stephen King 5/10
    31) The Black Prism (Lightbringer #1) by Brent Weeks 8/10
    32) The Blinding Knife (Lightbringer #2) by Brent Weeks 9.5/10
    33) The Broken Eye (Lightbringer #3) by Brent Weeks 9.5/10
    34) The Blood Mirror (Lightbringer #4) by Brent Weeks 9/10
    35) Spymaster (Scot Harvath #17) by Brad Thor 6.5/10
    36) Bloody Sunday (Dewey Andreas #8) by Ben Coes 6.5/10
    37) Hard Landing (Dan Shepherd #1) by Stephen Leather 7/10
    38) Soft Target (Dan Shepherd #2) by Stephen Leather 8.5/10
     
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  50. billdozer

    billdozer Well-Known Member
    Donor
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    1. Last Argument of Kings - Joe Abercrombie (8/10)
    2. Best Served Cold - Joe Abercrombie (7/10)
    3. Red Country - Joe Abercrombie (7/10)
    4. The Way of Kings (reread) - Brandon Sanderson
    5. Words of Radiance (reread) - Brandon Sanderson
    6. Edgedancer - Brandon Sanderson (9/10)
    7. Oathbringer - Brandon Sanderson (10/10)
    8. Scorched Shadows (Hellequin #7) - Steve McHugh (8/10)
    9. Snapshot - Brandon Sanderson (8/10)
    10. Elantris - Brandon Sanderson (9/10)
    11. Arcanum Unbounded - Brandon Sanderson (8/10) - Enjoyed all of the short stories
    12. Furies of Calderon (Codex Alera #1) - Jim Butcher (8.5/10)
    13. Academ's Fury (Codex Alera #2) - Jim Butcher (9/10)
    14. Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3) - Jim Butcher (9.5/10)
    15. Captain's Fury (Codex Alera #4) - Jim Butcher (9.5/10)
    16. Princeps' Fury (Codex Alera #5) - Jim Butcher (9/10)
    17. First Lord's Fury (Codex Alera #6) - Jim Butcher (9/10)
    18. The Princess Bride - William Goldman (9/10)
    19. Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (9/10)
    20. Dune - Frank Herbert (7.5/10)
    21. Dancer's Lament (Path to Ascendancy #1) (reread) - Ian Esselmont (8.5/10)
    22. Deadhouse Landing (Path to Ascendancy #2) - Ian Esselmont (9.5/10)
    23. The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth #1) - N.K. Jemisin (8/10)
    24. The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth #2) - N.K. Jemisin (8/10)
    25. The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3) - N.K. Jemisin (8/10)
    26. The Black Prism (Lightbringer #1) - Brent Weeks (9/10)
    27. The Blinding Knife (Lightbringer #2) - Brent Weeks (9.5/10)
    28. The Broken Eye (Lightbringer #3) - Brent Weeks (9.5/10)
    29. The Blood Mirror (Lightbringer #4) - Brent Weeks (8.5/10)
    30. Promise of Blood (Powder Mage #1) - Brian McClellan (9/10)
    31. Forsworn/Servant of the Crown (Powder Mage shorts) - Brian McClellan (9/10)
    32. The Crimson Campaign (Powder Mage #2) - Brian McClellan (9.5/10)
    33. The Autumn Republic (Powder Mage #3) - Brian McClellan (9.5/10)
    34. Sins of Empire (Gods of Blood and Powder #1, Powder Mage sequel) - Brian McClellan (8.5/10), plus various shorts
    35. Wrath of Empire (Gods of Blood and Powder #2, Powder Mage sequel) - Brian McClellan (9/10)
    36. The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentlemen Bastards #1) - Scott Lynch (9.5/10)
    37. Red Seas Under Red Skies (Gentlemen Bastards #2) - Scott Lynch (9.5/10)