What have you been reading?

[98 svt]

Being that my wife has her PhD in education and ran the gifted program at the Ivy League of the south - I’m told my comprehension of books is learned audibly and is indeed learning more than some that “read”.
TAKE THAT!

Wish I would have known this in school back in the 80s.

Lol I wasn't saying you aren't learning, I'm just saying it is not "reading". It wasn't meant to be a dig at anyone.

I doubt your wife got her PhD buy "reading" books on tape.

 

[EatonEggbeater]

Some other threads here for you, but since there will be additions to those lists, I have one for you I've found in the last year.

Donald Westlake; the Dortmunder books are funny as all getout. Before that, Lee Child's Reacher series.

http://www.svtperformance.com/forums/road-side-pub-17/743608-book-thread.html

http://www.svtperformance.com/forums/road-side-pub-17/602047-looking-new-author-suggestions.html

Robert Parker (Spenser for Hire) is hilarious, and in the fantasy realm, David Eddings, starting with "Pawn of Prophecy."

Also, what is your platform? I use a Kindle with an Epub reader.

 

[Nanner]

Lol I wasn't saying you aren't learning, I'm just saying it is not "reading". It wasn't meant to be a dig at anyone.

I doubt your wife got her PhD buy "reading" books on tape.

Reading is thinking - not just decoding which is the basic level.

There is a synthesis that happens when you read or listen which is learning. That’s the highest level of learning.

Guess who just told me that….

I sell empty boxes for a living. And out punted my coverage marrying her 5 years ago!!!

Edit - thanks for clarifying- all good brother!

 

[72MachOne99GT]

I don’t read shit anymore.

I struggle to find things that I enjoy. When I do, I blow through them.

No time with current kids sports schedules, work, and beer at the pool.

 

[Klaus]

Atlas Shrugged is a fair 150,000-wod novel, wrapped up in 350,000 words. Rand was out to prove a point: communism sucks, and she naiedl down every last point and aspect. Her other contention was that one day, workers, engineers, scientists, financiers, all those involved in any major endeavor, would just one day get tired of being robbed, and quit. And society would go straight to Hell. Because modern society thrives, and survives by innovation

She has a couple other major points: society was founded on energy, steel and transportation. You have to have energy to do anything, you have to have steel for the infrastucture to build cities, and you have to have transportation to move energy and material around as needed. Cut any one, and you're done. It's odd that she missed concrete, but, hey, she was trying.

Rand grew up as a girl in the Soviet Union. It took her family over ten years to get to the USA, and she was horrified at the inroads communism and socialism had already made into '50's-era US academia.

It's worth the read. Even if it is massively over-wordy!

It is a terrible book. Even if the message is valid it is truly bad.

 

[Klaus]

Not sure if listening to a "book on tape" is actually reading anything.

If you really want to plow through books you read them when you can and listen to them when you can't.

I sometimes go through 3 or 4 books a week via this method.

 

[98 svt]

If you really want to plow through books you read them when you can and listen to them when you can't.

I sometimes go through 3 or 4 books a week via this method.

Ah, the hybrid method!

 

[James Snover]

It is a terrible book. Even if the message is valid it is truly bad.

Anti-intellectual luddite!

I'd still buy the first round of drinks, though, if we ever meet. Your assertion is not without merit.

 

[IA Shelby]

Highly recommend.

 

[Fastback]

A Race to Freedom
The Mira Slovak story.

Mira Slovak was born in Czechoslovakia and endured both the Nazi occupation and the brutal Russian liberation. He joined the Czech Air force, rising to captain by the age of twenty-one. When he could no longer tolerate life under the Communists, he hijacked an airliner and flew across the Iron Curtain to freedom. He went to work for the CIA and was eventually sent to the US and given a job as Bill Boeing, Jr.'s personal pilot. When Boeing began racing hydroplanes in the late 1950s, Mira was his driver. During his ten-year career as a hydroplane driver, he won many races and two national championships. He met presidents and dated movie starlets. After a serious hydroplane accident, Slovak switched to airplanes, and won another national championship. When he retired from racing, he became a stunt pilot and public speaker and talked about the value of freedom and how we should value it above everything else. He outlasted Communism and when it collapsed in 1990, he returned to his home, only to realize that his true home was, and always would be, the United States.

 

[7998]

Props to OP for motivating me to start a new book last night.

Also If anyone is interested in Revolutionary war history, I highly recommend Memoir of a Revolutionary Solider by Joseph Plumb Martin.
Joseph Plumb Martin was a solider with the CT militia. At 16 y/o he joined up early in the war and he candidly talks about what it was really like for the men who fought. There's no romanticism, or revisionist garbage, or a view from the top. Just a soldier's account of how it really happened.

A Steinbeck and Hemingway man, you have incredible taste. Add True at First Light to your list. It is one of Hemingway's lesser known works but totally underrated IMO. Steinbecks Red Pony is in the same category.

I still have A Farewell to Arms and another Hemingway book to read. It's almost as if I'm saving them. I'll put True at First Light in my shopping cart. Thanks.

Atlas Shrugged is a fair 150,000-wod novel, wrapped up in 350,000 words. Rand was out to prove a point: communism sucks, and she naiedl down every last point and aspect. Her other contention was that one day, workers, engineers, scientists, financiers, all those involved in any major endeavor, would just one day get tired of being robbed, and quit. And society would go straight to Hell. Because modern society thrives, and survives by innovation

She has a couple other major points: society was founded on energy, steel and transportation. You have to have energy to do anything, you have to have steel for the infrastucture to build cities, and you have to have transportation to move energy and material around as needed. Cut any one, and you're done. It's odd that she missed concrete, but, hey, she was trying.

Rand grew up as a girl in the Soviet Union. It took her family over ten years to get to the USA, and she was horrified at the inroads communism and socialism had already made into '50's-era US academia.

It's worth the read. Even if it is massively over-wordy!

I've picked up Atlas Shrugged a few times and forced myself through a few chapters but I could never get into it.
It sit's on my unread shelf right next the The Perennial Philosophy by Huxley, which is another book I just can't get into no matter how much I want to.

 

[James Snover]

Props to OP for motivating me to start a new book last night.

Also If anyone is interested in Revolutionary war history, I highly recommend Memoir of a Revolutionary Solider by Joseph Plumb Martin.
Joseph Plumb Martin was a solider with the CT militia. At 16 y/o he joined up early in the war and he candidly talks about what it was really like for the men who fought. There's no romanticism, or revisionist garbage, or a view from the top. Just a soldier's account of how it really happened.



I still have A Farewell to Arms and another Hemingway book to read. It's almost as if I'm saving them. I'll put True at First Light in my shopping cart. Thanks.



I've picked up Atlas Shrugged a few times and forced myself through a few chapters but I could never get into it.
It sit's on my unread shelf right next the The Perennial Philosophy by Huxley, which is another book I just can't get into no matter how much I want to.

Don't feel bad. I can't do Huxley. Tried. It just bounces off the rocks in my head. Steinbeck is ok, love "To Have, and To Have Not." The movie is a pretty darn good adaptation, too. Hemingway? Blech. Oddly, though, I think Hemingway and I would have been great pals, except I'd always have been telling him, "Dude, stick to the fishing, your writing sucks!" Though, to be fair, it'd have been the same with Hunter S. Thompson. "Dude, stick to the sports page! This latest thing, "The Rum, Diary?" It's dreck!"

On the other hand I'll read any damn thing by Arthur C. Clarke, Heinlein (the Grand Master of American Sci-Fi!) Jerry Pournelle, alone or with any of his collaborators, Terry Pratchett, Mark Twain, Arhtur C. Doyle. etc, etc. Also add in Kenneth Robeson.

 

[aoc racer]

Honestly a bunch kids books. The most recent one “P is for Potty”