What Are You Reading

[V.C. Brunswick]

Knott's Preserved: From Boysenberry to Theme Park, A History of Knott's Berry Farm
Picked it up at Knott's Berry Farm yesterday

 

[Lucky Girl]

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned but I recently subscribed to a magazine about vintage/retro life called Reminisce. I love it and I think all of you will too!

 

[this one guy]

"Selected Writings of Herman Melville"

I am pleasantly impressed with several of his stories that depart from sea themes.

 

[hatguy1]

Just finishing "Countdown to Valkyrie" regarding the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler. Quite informative. Far more detailed understanding now than just the movie gave me.

 

[Touchofevil]

Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo's The Man Who Went Up in Smoke.

 

[Hercule]

My latest batch of welcomed distraction:

At day's close : night in times past / A. Roger Ekirch
Sensory worlds in early America / Peter Charles Hoffer
The presence of the past : popular uses of history in American life / Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen
The last of the doughboys : the forgotten generation and their forgotten world war / Richard Rubin

 

[Hercule]

Deleted: double post.

 

[Harp]

Hamlet

 

[Touchofevil]

Day Keene's, Bring Him Back Dead. A vastly underrated pulp writer from yesteryear.

 

[tuppence]

Errol Flyns , 'My Wicked, Wicked Ways' found a second hand copy for $1.50 in an op shop.

 

[Smithy]

Errol Flyns , 'My Wicked, Wicked Ways' found a second hand copy for $1.50 in an op shop.

You'll love it. Bloody funny in parts too

 

[Late to the Party]

The Nile by Emil Ludwig. 1937
Translated to English
Pretty prose.

 

[jamespowers]

Colorado by William MacLeod Raine. "Drap that gun." lol lol

 

[Touchofevil]

Colorado by William MacLeod Raine. "Drap that gun." lol lol

Walter Brennan?

 

[John Boyer]

Collected Stories of Sherwood Anderson

Eugene O'Neill: Beyond Mourning and Tragedy by Stephen A. Black

 

[jamespowers]

Walter Brennan?

I said I was reading it not watching it. I didn't know they made a movie of it though. I think I might have seen it but it sure isn't like the book. And it was Gabby Hayes.

 

[DeeDub]

I'm in the last couple of chapters of At Dawn We Slept: The Untold History of Pearl Harbor by Gordon Prange. It's a long read, practically an hour by hour account of the year or so prior to the attack, followed by a thorough account of the several investigations by the Army, Navy, Congress, and others. A book like this could get bogged down in details, but it was written in a way that kept me going, hoping for some answers to the questions that kept coming up. In the end, it doesn't come down to a simple matter of one or a few people screwing up. There were systematic failures all over the place, any one of which wouldn't have been fatal by itself, but together these failures deprived us of every opportunity to put up a better fight from the beginning.

I started At Dawn immediately after finishing Day of Infamy by Walter Lord. This turned out to be a good choice. The first book was the briefing that prepared me for the second book. Lord included more stories of individual sailors, soldiers, and civilians during the attack and less of the investigations in Washington after. Both are enjoyable reads, but unless you're interested in all the intricate details of diplomacy and military preparations on both sides, Day of Infamy is probably the better choice.

 

[Fading Fast]

Hi, I just finished "Ripley Under Ground," which is the second in the Ripley series by Patricia Highsmith. Until my girlfriend gave me a copy, I had know idea that the Ripley books were a series. It's a fun, fast read, with some nice vintage / time travel feel to it: The challenges of making a transcontinental phone call to the fading-by-not-gone concern about unmarried couples checking into hotel rooms give you a bit of a trip back in time and remind you, again, of how much has changed. I also recently finished "Operation Storm," which tells the story of the Japanese Navy's attempt to build a submarine capable of launching a air attack on America in an attempt to both take back the offensive and be able, at minimum, to negotiate a better peace.

 

[cw3pa]

Finished "A Serpent's Tooth" by Craig Johnson last night. The latest Longmire mystery. Pretty good read with a few plot twists.

 

[Harp]

I'm in the last couple of chapters of At Dawn We Slept: The Untold History of Pearl Harbor by Gordon Prange. It's a long read...

Prange's work is considered the definitive account of Pearl Harbor; another good read is
Ladislas Farago's The Broken Seal;while Herbert O. Yardley's The Education of a Poker Player
is a tangent card-and-code memoir.