So, what are you reading now?

[finnbow]

"Black Wave" by Kim Ghattas.

A really good and imminently readable book on how the modern day Middle East changed dramatically for the worse due to three events in 1979 - the Iranian revolution, the storming of the mosque at Mecca and the Soviet-Afghan invasion.

[d-ray657]

With no baseball, I'm finding some great baseball writing a solid replacement. An online sports magazine - The Athletic - rivals the writing of Sports Illustrated in its heyday, when it had Dan Jenkins, Roy Blount, Jr., Frank Deford, and Curry Kirkpatrick. My favorite on the Athletic is Joe Posnanski, He just finished a list of his top 100 baseball players of all time, including an essay on each player - some of which were fascinating and others of which are moving. He wrote about the players, warts and all, but based the ranking on the quality of the baseball they played, It is a subscription service, but the Posnanski contributions alone are worth the price.

Having finished that list (which exceeded the word count of Moby Dick), I have four other baseball books going: a Roger Angell collection, Nine Innings by Daniel Okrent, Men at Work by George Will, and Right on Time by Buck O'Neil. Re-watching the Ken Burns baseball series motivated me to find the work of some of the talking heads. These make the quarantine a blessing in disguise, even if they do rob me of the discipline to focus on telework.

Regards,

D-Ray

[d-ray657]

Currently reading "The Accidental President" about Harry Truman's momentous first four months in office. Imagine having a President whose motto was "The buck stops here."

[BlueStreak]

Originally Posted by d-ray657

Currently reading "The Accidental President" about Harry Truman's momentous first four months in office. Imagine having a President whose motto was "The buck stops here."

Yes, a Trumper coworker recently posted a meme about "A Great Republican President!"...……… It was a quote from Harry S. Truman.LOL!

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by d-ray657

Currently reading "The Accidental President" about Harry Truman's momentous first four months in office. Imagine having a President whose motto was "The buck stops here."

If you want a deeper dive on Truman, I highly recommend David McCullough's Truman. I think it's the best book of this prolific, terrific writer's career, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.

Currently, I'm reading The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War by Ben Macintyre. Also highly recommended.

[d-ray657]

McCullough's Truman is in the queue, which is probably a year long. I decided on just having some fun with the next one - Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut.

[Dondilion]

A Course Of Pure Mathematics G.H.Hardy

A read of this famous undergraduate book was pure joy. The attention here to rigor at such an early stage in the education process is striking.

The first publication of this book. 1908.

This has been a good mental exercise...a plus at my age and in a time of virus.

The author, Hardy had a famous connection with the celebrated Indian mathematician, Ramanujan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_H_Hardy

[barbara]

Just finished "The Widow Spy" by Martha Peterson.

[Reason10]

Originally Posted by BlueStreak

Thought this might be a good companion to the music thread, so long as we can keep the arguments out. It might be difficult given the subject nature of some of the books, but I figured it was worth a try.

I just finished "Winner Takes All" an excellent book on politics as it relates to the economy of the last thirty years. Recommended for anyone who can take the truth, warts and all.

Next in the queue is "Someplace like America" by Dale Maharidge, This is a followup to his 1985 book "Journey to Nowhere". Dale and his photographer have been following a homeless Vietnam veteran and his brother, people displaced and disenfranchised by industrial decline and natural disasters (Katrina), their varied stories of desperation, hope, failures and in some cases success in overcoming difficulties. But, it's more about the journey than it is the outcome. It covers an America many of us have never seen.

After that, "The Closing of the American Mind".

Dave

Having just finished John Grisham's "A Time For Mercy" (part of the Ford County Jake Bergance series that this time really left us hanging) I'm about 1/4 through "The Law Of Innocence" by Michael Connelly.

Some of you might remember The Lincoln Lawyer, the 2005 movie with Matthew McConaughey. The Mickey Haller series included The Brass Verdict, The Reversal, The Fifth Witness, The Gods Of Guilt. Mickey is an LA defense attorney famous for getting a lot of killers off. In The Law Of Innocence, he has been framed for a heinous murder of a former client.

Those of you who might be following the Harry Bosch series on Amazon might want to note that Mickey Haller is Bosch's half brother.

[icenine]