What are you reading this week of August 6, 2017?

[hermetic]

I'm still reading Blue Labyrinth by Preston/Child. Actually haven't done much reading at all this past week. Had to take a road trip. Just got back last night and now I have to go return the rental car and get groceries. Y'all talk among yourselves here and I'll come back later and see what's new.

[underpants]

1. The Second Amendment A Biography by Michael Waldman

Actually it's for my beach read in 2 weeks.

[hermetic]

9. Vacay ahead

at the beach? Lovely. Hope you have a pleasant and relaxing time.

Your reading choice sounds quite interesting. "At a time of increasing gun violence in America (2015), Waldman’s book provoked a wide range of discussion. This book looks at history to provide some surprising, illuminating answers."

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. Two books at the moment.

In non fiction, The Radium Girls by Kate Moore, a heartbreaking story about the young women -- many just teenagers -- who were hired to paint the numbers on clocks so they would glow in the dark. Many of them died after truly horrific suffering. The companies they worked for tried to deny any responsibility whatsoever.

My current fiction book is Blackout by Marc Elsberg. Translated from the German. Some sort of industrial sabotage/terrorism shuts down virtually all power plants in Western Europe. It's February, and within a few days things get quite desperate. I'm not quite half way and so far it's quite good. It's a warning about the interconnectedness of so many things, which makes them quite vulnerable to anyone with a decent knowledge of how to hack into such systems.

[japple]

8. Oh my! Blackout sounds like something I would love to read and Radium Girls is also on my list.

Thanks for posting this.

[hermetic]

10. I agree with japple

Those both sound like really worthwhile reads.

[TexasProgresive]

3. Nearly finished with "Pillars of the Earth." I don't want it to end.

That's a good sign with a book when you can't stop reading but don't want to see the last page. My next book will also be a reread, Issac Asimov's Foundation. I hope to read the trilogy if I can find the books. I just found out there there were other Foundation books, so we will see. The Foundation trilogy was the only SciFi books I ever got my Dad to read and he enjoyed them. He was a psychologist and a historian by training and inclination. The idea of Psycho-History really spoke to him.

[hermetic]

12. Been a LONG time

since I last read a book I didn't want to end. Interesting how you and others who have commented here all really love this book. I also read some reviews that make it sound awful. Guess you just never really know until you try on a book for yourself.

Interesting story about your dad, too. Thanks for sharing it.

[TexasProgresive]

16. Something that is said where I live as an insult:

"There's not accounting for taste." I take as a truism. There are a few books that I just couldn't finish. 3 comes to mind; Don Quixote, Moby Dick and Dune The last one is constantly touted by a friend of mine. I doesn't matter how much she likes it I just can't do it.

About Pillars of the Earth, the book is long but it covers a lot of time (40 years) and people. There are plots and subplots with a constant theme that even with constant crisis good will out. And you can find a lot of bad actors to project on to certain current politicians.

Anyway, I finished last night and it was deeply satisfactory. If we lived close together I would lend you my copy and maintain your bike.

[Chasstev365]

4. Al Franken, "Giant of the Senate."

[underpants]

11. Ooh I may have to get that one.

Thanks

[hermetic]

13. I've heard that one

is really great. I hope to read it myself sometime soon.

[PoorMonger]

5. Long Black Veil by Jennifer Finney Boylan

For fans of Donna Tartt and Megan Abbott, a novel about a woman whose family and identity are threatened by the secrets of her past, from the New York Times bestselling author of She's Not There

On a warm August night in 1980, six college students sneak into the dilapidated ruins of Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, looking for a thrill. With a pianist, a painter and a teacher among them, the friends are full of potential. But it’s not long before they realize they are locked in—and not alone. When the friends get lost and separated, the terrifying night ends in tragedy, and the unexpected, far-reaching consequences reverberate through the survivors’ lives. As they go their separate ways, trying to move on, it becomes clear that their dark night in the prison has changed them all. Decades later, new evidence is found, and the dogged detective investigating the cold case charges one of them—celebrity chef Jon Casey— with murder. Only Casey’s old friend Judith Carrigan can testify to his innocence.

But Judith is protecting long-held secrets of her own – secrets that, if brought to light, could destroy her career as a travel writer and tear her away from her fireman husband and teenage son. If she chooses to help Casey, she risks losing the life she has fought to build and the woman she has struggled to become. In any life that contains a “before” and an “after,” how is it possible to live one life, not two?

Weaving deftly between 1980 and the present day, and told in an unforgettable voice, Long Black Veil is an intensely atmospheric thriller that explores the meaning of identity, loyalty, and love. Readers will hail this as Boylan’s triumphant return to fiction.

[PoorMonger]

6. Musical Suggestion ' Long Black Veil '

https://m.

This version of the popular song is by Mike Ness (of Social Distortion) and appears on his first solo album "Cheating At Solitaire" (1999).

[hermetic]

14. Whoo boy!

Another mystery, suspense, thriller. Sounds like a good one.

Ms. Boylan has another from 2015, I'll Give You Something to Cry About, which sounds really good, too. Sweet, comic, and exuberant, the novella tells the story of a transgendered adolescent as she comes to terms with her family, world, and sexuality.

Then there's Jenny's memoir, She's Not There, published in 2003. One of the first bestselling works by a transgendered American; until 2001 she published under the name James Boylan. I definitely want to read that.

[Number9Dream]

7. "Deep Six" by Clive Cussler - Good action & prophetic

An earlier Cussler (1984) in which the president is kidnapped by the Russians and a shipping empire, and is brainwashed. Upon his return, he starts by trying to get the U.S. out of NATO. Also other things helpful to Russia. Strangely prophetic having been written 33 years ago.

[hermetic]

15. Interesting

Mr. Cussler has written over 70 novels. Plus, he has explored the deserts of the American Southwest in search of lost gold mines, dived in isolated lakes in the Rocky Mountains looking for lost aircraft and hunted under the sea for shipwrecks of historic significance, discovering and identifying more than sixty. Fascinating guy. Strangely prophetic, indeed.

[cilla4progress]

17. All the Light We Cannot See

Beautiful writing. About 2/3 through.