What Are You Reading

[greatestescaper]

A great reading list here! For me, as autumn sets in I always find myself reading the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy (currently I'm in the final pages of the Two Towers). In the midst of that I'm reading the latest Nkki Heat novel by one Richard Castle. All this while finishing the last pages of "The Searchers", which I can not believe has taken me this long to pick up. I normally try to keep it to no more than two books at a time, however, I've been all over the place lately, even grabbing for some Doc Savage and other pulp lately.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Just finished another John Dickson Carr, this one from 1958 though the action takes place in 1948: The Dead Man's Knock. One of the most neatly clued of all his works: An "impossible" murder takes place on a Virginia college campus on a summer night, and Dr. Gideon Fell, visiting to see some notes for a locked-room mystery that Wilkie Collins left behind, is in time to uncover the perp. Fun stuff. When I finished the explanation chapter, I immediately went back and skimmed through it again to see how Carr planted everything.

 

[DNO]

Just finished re-watching The Pacific, followed by Letters from Iwo Jima, so now I'm reading Eugene Sledge's With The Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa.

 

[Touchofevil]

James Ellroy's White Jazz

 

[AmateisGal]

Just finished re-watching The Pacific, followed by Letters from Iwo Jima, so now I'm reading Eugene Sledge's With The Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa.

Such a great book. Is this your first time to read it?

 

[DNO]

Such a great book. Is this your first time to read it?

No, I've read it before...that and Leckie's Helmet for my Pillow. as well as Gallant's The Friendly Dead about Iwo Jima. I've been wanting to read my volume dealing with Tarawa but I can't find it! Frustrating...I have far too many books in far too many nooks and cranies. Last year I gave 75 boxes of books to Goodwill, but it barely made a dent.

 

[DNO]

Now I've moved on to one of my favourite books: William Manchester's Goodbye Darkness.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Calling The Game," by Stuart Shea, a publication of the Society for American Baseball Research.

This is a book that's needed to be written for a long time -- a history of each major league baseball franchise's broadcasting operations from the 1920s to the present day. While there have been several overviews, this is the only book I've come across to discuss the topic on a team-by-team basis, and it's a decent effort. There are quite a few small errors I've noticed, mostly in terms of dates and sponsorships, which probably should have been caught in the editing process, but in general it's a good reference book on who called games for whom for how long, and how they were received.

Some teams' broadcast history is more complex than others, and some stories are told in more detail than others. There's quite a good analysis of the poisonous atmosphere in the Cleveland Indians' booth in the fifties and sixties, and of the backstage machinations that forced Red Barber out of Brooklyn and both Barber and Mel Allen out of Yankee Stadium. But the dirty dealing in the Red Sox front office that shoved Ned Martin overboard in 1992 goes unmentioned -- too bad, since no-longer-current Sox announcer Don Orsillio just experienced an identical public corporate shanking.

Still, if you like baseball, and broadcasting, and the combination of the two, this is a book that belongs on your shelf. Or in my case, on top of the tall stack of books in the bathroom.

 

[Fading Fast]

Just finished "Old School" by Tobias Wolfe. A typical but very well done New England prep school story set in the early '60s. The facade of culture, literature and educational ideals contrasts with the beneath-the-surface class snobbery, faculty members' failed dreams and student fears and aspirations. It not up there with "A Separate Piece" or "Catcher in the Rye," but still an enjoyable and well-written entry in the genre.

Hope to start (my reading time has been meaningfully and depressingly cut back recently owing to work and an apartment restoration project - both good reasons, but still, I miss my reading time) "Circling the Sun" by Paula McLain (author of "The Paris Wife"). It's a historical fiction set in British Colonial Africa focusing on the life of Beryl Markham. I snuck a read of the first chapter (literally, standing by the door dressed to go to a meeting as I knew I had a few minutes) and am very excited. I'll report back when finished.

 

[Harp]

"Calling The Game," by Stuart Shea, a publication of the Society for American Baseball Research.

This is a book that's needed to be written for a long time -- a history of each major league baseball franchise's broadcasting operations from the 1920s to the present day. While there have been several overviews, this is the only book I've come across to discuss the topic on a team-by-team basis, and it's a decent effort.

The Chicago Cubs are just gonna kick ass tonite. :eusa_clap

 

[LizzieMaine]

All good wishes from Sox Nation. I really hope you get to beat the Yankees.

 

[Harp]

... the Yankees.

Yogi's recent death remarks Ecclesiasticus 1:4-"one generation passeth away, and another generation cometh..."
Yogi, Mantle and Maris were among my boyhood baseball heroes. Today, the Yankees are out of contention this year,
while the Cubs are struggling against the Cards. And the inside Cubs bullpen talk is all about the pitching clinic given
Wednesday night by Arietta; whose acquisition in a routine bullpen trade contrasts gunslinger Lester's direct hire and his
less than stellar start against the Cards last night. Hopefully, the Cubs will rally and prevail.

....Last night I stopped for the game and a bite at a favorite Italian pub near LaSalle Street Station, and when Fowler hit
high center field I rose from my seat and dejectedly sat down. Some French tourists were seated near my table and remarked
about Americans and their baseball. I turned to the group and winked at the lone female and told her in French how beautiful
a rose she is, and her husband was none too pleased....

 

[Fading Fast]

Yogi's recent death remarks Ecclesiasticus 1:4-"one generation passeth away, and another generation cometh..."
Yogi, Mantle and Maris were among my boyhood baseball heroes. Today, the Yankees are out of contention this year,
while the Cubs are struggling against the Cards. And the inside Cubs bullpen talk is all about the pitching clinic given
Wednesday night by Arietta; whose acquisition in a routine bullpen trade contrasts gunslinger Lester's direct hire and his
less than stellar start against the Cards last night. Hopefully, the Cubs will rally and prevail.

....Last night I stopped for the game and a bite at a favorite Italian pub near LaSalle Street Station, and when Fowler hit
high center field I rose from my seat and dejectedly sat down. Some French tourists were seated near my table and remarked
about Americans and their baseball. I turned to the group and winked at the lone female and told her in French how beautiful
a rose she is, and her husband was none too pleased....

Good story

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Now reading Lee Child's Jack Reacher novel, "Personal." Pretty good read so far.

 

[AmateisGal]

Yogi's recent death remarks Ecclesiasticus 1:4-"one generation passeth away, and another generation cometh..."
Yogi, Mantle and Maris were among my boyhood baseball heroes. Today, the Yankees are out of contention this year,
while the Cubs are struggling against the Cards. And the inside Cubs bullpen talk is all about the pitching clinic given
Wednesday night by Arietta; whose acquisition in a routine bullpen trade contrasts gunslinger Lester's direct hire and his
less than stellar start against the Cards last night. Hopefully, the Cubs will rally and prevail.

....Last night I stopped for the game and a bite at a favorite Italian pub near LaSalle Street Station, and when Fowler hit
high center field I rose from my seat and dejectedly sat down. Some French tourists were seated near my table and remarked
about Americans and their baseball. I turned to the group and winked at the lone female and told her in French how beautiful
a rose she is, and her husband was none too pleased....

Hahaha! I love this.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Finishing Philip Macdonald's The Polferry Riddle (1931?), one of his Anthony Gethryn mysteries. It's a variation on the locked-room puzzle. His Warrant for X, a 1938 thriller-mystery in which Gethryn and the police try to prevent a crime rather than solve one after the fact, was dynamite as well.

 

[Hercule]

Next up:
All of this music belongs to the nation : the WPA's Federal Music Project and American society / Kenneth J. Bindas

 

[greatestescaper]

Finishing "Thunderhead", another brilliant novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child! Also, in the evenings, by candlelight and this soundtrack (to set the mood) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG76gIvzUeY , "Dracula"

 

[Hercule]

By candle light?!! Yikes, I'm getting a headache just thinking about it. You must have fantastic eyes.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Back from the dump with an armload of nineteenth and early-twentieth-century books deposited, apparently, by the heirs of someone who took very good care of their volumes. Quite a few books on nature, science, religion, and international affairs.

The one I'm looking at now is "Woman and her Diseases," by Edward H. Dixon, MD, the 1860 printing of a work first published in 1855. It was one of the most popular of the semi-scientific works focusing on "female issues," and while some of the basic medical information is interesting, considering what was known at the time, the chapter on "Hysteria," is, if you'll pardon the expression, quite hysterical.

I'm usually pretty forgiving in books like this, "context of the time" and all that, but this one's a real pip. "Well-directed and good-natured ridicule, from a person from whom she cannot escape, as a relative inhabiting the same house, is the best means of overcoming this morbid state."

Yessir, Mister Victorian Doctor, M. D., sir. You come right over here and try that. Come riiiiiiiiight overrrrrrrrr here.