Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
|
|
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel.
Literary post-apocalyptic fiction. Well-done and entertaining.
Around the start of the first World War, it's very hard to do better than Barbara Tuchman's classic, The Guns of August.
|
|
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
The Guns of August is a personal favorite, Stevep.
Barbara Tuchman does excellent history. I also strongly recommend her A Distant Mirror, about the 14th Century, the other one in human history whose misery seems to mirror the 20th.
|
|
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
|
Nov 23, 2014 - 07:14pm PT
|
Just got Kelly Cordes new one The Tower, about Cerro Torre.
It's rad. He did a great job.
|
|
MisterE
Gym climber
Bishop, CA
|
|
|
Nov 23, 2014 - 07:56pm PT
|
The Artist's Way.
Pretty good so far, but committing...
|
|
NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
|
|
|
Nov 23, 2014 - 09:46pm PT
|
Just finished Ken Follett's "Dangerous Fortune"
Also halfway through "Eye of the Needle" by the same guy. Both are entertaining fiction when you just want to relax and enjoy a satisfying story with no real mental commitment.
This morning I re-read a short book "Who Moved My Cheese?" which is a nice reminder when you find yourself getting lazy in life, resting on your laurels, or otherwise getting fat and weak with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement.
I'm in the middle of "The Sun Also Rises" by Hemingway, but I haven't picked it up in a couple of weeks. It's impressive how the style of writing perfectly reinforces the mood of the content. It's like a distinctive timbre of a musical instrument. When I was in high school I couldn't relate to the sort of angst and emptiness and futility the characters felt, especially in the context of romantic relationships because I had no personal experience as a frame of reference. Now I'm older than them and I see them as immature. Maybe it's a book best read in the 20s. It's still a good book to capture an era and a mood, but it's not a mood that I hold in high regard or want to immerse myself in. As a youngster it can seem romantic maybe, and looking from an older vantage point it just seems like a waste, a tragedy of lost young people and the lingering effects of war and disconnectedness and inability to create meaning for one's self.
|
|
Leggs
Sport climber
Made in California
|
|
|
Nov 23, 2014 - 10:11pm PT
|
David Sedaris "Me Talk Pretty One Day"
Wonderful.
Was just sent this book from a flight companion whom I did not ignore while flying. (I tend do that... to just get lost in the Sky catalog.)
He has turned out to be an excellent friend, and gives me GREAT advice in terms of the business world and what I want to do.
This book may not be up my alley, but I love to read, so I appreciate the suggestion.
:)
|
|
stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
|
|
|
Nov 23, 2014 - 10:15pm PT
|
Totally agree about A Distant Mirror, Greg.
The other interesting one I've read recently that combined WWI and climbing was Into the Silence by Wade Davis.
An account of the post-WWI British expeditions to Everest, and how they were influenced by the experiences that many of the members had during the war.
My current reading continues the literary post-apocalyptic theme:
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
That will be followed by One Day as A Tiger by John Porter, the Alex Macintyre biography, as soon as it makes it to me from the UK. Thanks to another thread here on ST for that recommendation.
|
|
Tobia
Social climber
Denial
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Nov 24, 2014 - 04:51am PT
|
"The Chrysanthemums" (John Steinbeck)
Never heard of it, how was it Sullly?
Currently reading Behind Barbed Wire by Lt. Morris J Roy. It is the stories of the young Allied pilots of WWII (ETO) who were shot down and spent the remainder of the war in Stalag Luft 1, Barth Germany.
Interestingly enough my PT's father flew a P-47 fighter and when he marched into Stalag 1, he eventually ran into one of his hometown pals, a friend of mine's father who was a bombardier on a B-17. There was one other local citizen there. They were all friends before the war.
I think I posted a pic of my friend's dad, the bombardier somewhere on the taco; but feel inclined to do so here.
|
|
NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
|
|
|
Nov 24, 2014 - 05:13am PT
|
Shadow of the Wind is a nice book- it was the first book my wife gave me when we were dating.
Sully, I'll definitely explore other Hemingway books- any disaffection I have with The Sun Also Rises is for the topic rather than the author.
|
|
Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
|
|
|
Nov 24, 2014 - 06:17am PT
|
RE hunger / wings, got it, Sully, interesting. Leads to thinking of more parallels...
Just got Periphals
Gonna reread, The Nose
|
|
MisterE
Gym climber
Bishop, CA
|
|
|
Nov 24, 2014 - 07:23am PT
|
Mom sent me "Mink River" by Brian Doyle, which I also started recently but am having a hard time with because of the writing style and sheer number and depth of characters. He seems to jump around a lot, throwing in elements that, although I appreciate the irreverence, I find confusing.
David James Duncan (whom I love as a writer) compares this book to Dylan Thomas' "Under Milk Wood" and Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" - neither of which I have read.
|
|
Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
|
|
|
Nov 24, 2014 - 08:17am PT
|
For Mother's Sake by Jimmy Carl Black. Not literature, but entertaining if you like the old Mothers.
|
|
FRUMY
Trad climber
Bishop,CA
|
|
|
Nov 24, 2014 - 11:42am PT
|
Jimmy Carl Black It's been at least 45 years since I saw him Play with the Mother of Invention.
Pacific Crucible War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941 - 1942.
|
|
MH2
climber
|
|
|
Nov 24, 2014 - 07:12pm PT
|
Going Solo by Roald Dahl. An account of his experiences in Tanganyika and the RAF before and during WWII. On the recommendation of a climbing partner. I was surprised that the library computer located the book in the Juvenile section. It now appears that that may be a way to keep the fragile adult mind safe from the horrors yet make them available to the more resilient child mind.
I also intend to read Boy by the same author if I still have the nerve.
|
|
Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
|
|
|
Nov 24, 2014 - 11:45pm PT
|
Disobeying Hitler (Oxford U.P.: 2014) by Randall Hansen, subtitled German Resistance After Valkyrie.
http://www.amazon.com/Disobeying-Hitler-German-Resistance-Valkyrie/dp/0199927928
Sounds as though the remnants of the Valkyrie plotters did their best to hand France over to the Allies. The Germans always did like the City of Lights as an R&R site away from the rigors of the Ost Front.
|
|
Ward Trotter
Trad climber
|
|
|
Nov 25, 2014 - 12:01am PT
|
Excellent book by a climatologist and former NASA space shuttle engineer who provides convincing evidence that the Earth could be on the verge of a coming Ice Age.
The sun goes through regular cycles called "solar hibernations" that produce either severe or relatively mild cold periods every 200 and 400 years, as well as extreme ice ages that occur every 11,500 years.
|
|
Arti
Trad climber
Vancouver, BC
|
|
|
Nov 25, 2014 - 11:01am PT
|
Lonesome Traveler by Jack Kerouac. Seems like an appropriate book for climbers.
|
|
Dickbob
climber
Westminster Colorado
|
|
|
Nov 25, 2014 - 11:32am PT
|
Has any one read a Narrow Road To The Deep North yet? It won the Mann Booker Prize this year.
|
|
john bald
climber
|
|
|
Nov 26, 2014 - 07:28am PT
|
Hell's Angels by Hunter S Thompson
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
|
|
Still plodding away on John Verdon's bizarre Holmesian Shut Your Eyes Tight.
I've been reading New Yorker articles, including one about the deployment of American drones in the Mideast. Very unsettling.
I've taken the New Yorker for about forty years and am continually amazed at the variety of intriguing articles (plus the wonderful cartoons!). I was introduced to the magazine by a graduate of the University of Chicago who was working as a car salesman and living in the rooming house - the home of an English professor at Roosevelt and his wife, an artist - where I stayed while a grad student at UC in 1958/59.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!