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Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
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Dec 16, 2012 - 05:29pm PT
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I just got finished with this one:
Soldaten: On Fighting Killing and Dying
http://www.amazon.com/Soldaten-On-Fighting-Killing-Dying/dp/0307958124
Not so much another WWII history as an extended essay on autonomic geometrical violence and the psycho-social dynamics of mass murder in France, Poland and on the Ost Front. Just out in English this year.
Not too pretty what it suggests about homo sapiens as a species. Chilling, disturbing, unsettling. All these adjectives are merely euphemisms. All it takes is about 3 days of combat to turn a mild mannered office manager from Frankfurt into a killing machine who feels satisfaction at the way he can lay a column of refugees down in neat little rows with the MG34s on the wings of his Heinkel HE 111. It's his "work" and he's very satisfied when he does a good "job".
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Dec 17, 2012 - 12:30am PT
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Jack 1939
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Daphne
Trad climber
Northern California
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Oh please help!
I need a book of fiction that lets me dive in from the first paragraph. I need it to be smart and funny and while dramatic things should happen, I just can't read dark and dystopian. (I spend my work week in a room listening to the shitty things people do to each other that cause trauma.)
I don't want to be creeped out or scared. I want to be transported. I want to escape.
The writing style must be fabulous. I want excellent characterization, an imaginative sense of place and a plot that keeps me reading past my bedtime.
I love fantasy and sci-fi. But I'll cross the lines for the right story.
And, here's the real kicker, it has to be available in e-book form and not be part of an unfinished trilogy. (Anyone read Patrick Rothfuss? Do you think he will EVER finish?)
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Have you read
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline? Funny not too distant future sci-fi.
Supposedly Spielberg is making a movie from it.
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simian
Social climber
milan
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That is an excellent recommendation!!!
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Daphne
Trad climber
Northern California
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Wow, it has a 91% 4-5 star rating on Amazon! Consider it done. Thank you so much stevep and simian, you rock!
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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The Alexandria Quartet (Lawrence Durrell) should keep you busy the rest of the summer.
Available in Kindle.
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apogee
climber
Technically expert, safe belayer, can lead if easy
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I'm most of the way through 'Angle of Repose', by Stegner. Loving it.
A great infusion of character development and the history of western expansion in the late 1800's. Recommended.
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SC seagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, Moab, A sailboat, or some time zone
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^^^^. My all time favorite book. I probably reread it every few years.
I never STOP being moved by it.
Plus I'm very familiar with the New Almaden area where the quicksilver mines were.
Susan
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John M
climber
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Love Stegner.
What did people think of "Cutting for Stone" by Abraham Verghese? I really enjoyed it.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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snow crash neal stephenson
That recommendation of the Mahabharata will keep ya busy for a while.
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Daphne
Trad climber
Northern California
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Snow Crash is amazing.
I must investigate Stegner. He keeps surfacing on this thread.
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apogee
climber
Technically expert, safe belayer, can lead if easy
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Stegner's writing style is astounding. You have to pay attention, but when you do, you are richly rewarded.
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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I read mostly non-fiction
and this book is a real mind opener!!
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
by Jane Mayer
https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0385535597
Review
Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers?
The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against “big government” led to the ascendancy of a broad-based conservative movement. But as Jane Mayer shows in this powerful, meticulously reported history, a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system.
The network has brought together some of the richest people on the planet. Their core beliefs—that taxes are a form of tyranny; that government oversight of business is an assault on freedom—are sincerely held. But these beliefs also advance their personal and corporate interests: Many of their companies have run afoul of federal pollution, worker safety, securities, and tax laws.
The chief figures in the network are Charles and David Koch, whose father made his fortune in part by building oil refineries in Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany. The patriarch later was a founding member of the John Birch Society, whose politics were so radical it believed Dwight Eisenhower was a communist. The brothers were schooled in a political philosophy that asserted the only role of government is to provide security and to enforce property rights.
When libertarian ideas proved decidedly unpopular with voters, the Koch brothers and their allies chose another path. If they pooled their vast resources, they could fund an interlocking array of organizations that could work in tandem to influence and ultimately control academic institutions, think tanks, the courts, statehouses, Congress, and, they hoped, the presidency. Richard Mellon Scaife, the mercurial heir to banking and oil fortunes, had the brilliant insight that most of their political activities could be written off as tax-deductible “philanthropy.”
These organizations were given innocuous names such as Americans for Prosperity. Funding sources were hidden whenever possible. This process reached its apotheosis with the allegedly populist Tea Party movement, abetted mightily by the Citizens United decision—a case conceived of by legal advocates funded by the network.
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Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
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^^^ I wish Stegner hadn't cribbed so much of it.
Probably kept him from winning a Nobel Prize.
I'm a big fan of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. For me, it's the best novel I've read since Angle of Repose.
For space opera, I really enjoyed Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained by Peter Hamilton (recommended to me by our own Tom Lambert). I'm a longtime fan of Iain M. Banks's Culture series. Worth it for the ship names alone.
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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hey there say, brandon- and all...
here you go...
a link to my novels...
and the short story books, based on them...
YOU WOULD want to order the SIMPLEST EDITION...
meaning: not the portable, or preview-ones, or hard cover...
just plain title, in the list
there are a few pages, to click on, at the bottom of the
page, to view all the others...
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/neebeeshaabookwayreadjakeanddonate
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Hillbilly Elegy, A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.
J.D.Vance
This is a very important book. The more people who read it the better off we'll all be. Seriously, don't judge a book by your knee jerk reaction to the title. This one is deep.
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John M
climber
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I'm really looking forward to reading that one Kris.. I thoroughly enjoyed the interview you linked.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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The kids will like it if you don't.
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