
I have been reading The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis. I am enjoying it. This is my first Michael Lewis book. What other book should I read from him?
What is everyone reading? Any good books lately?
For light reading I have been reading old mysteries, Charlie Chan and Lord Peter Wimsey.



My goal for this year is to read 100 books. I am doing far better than last year but behind schedule.
I started reading The Borrowers a few weeks ago – it’s a children’s series by British writer Mary Norton written in the 50s-60s and illustrated by one of my teachers in college, Beth Krush & her husband Joe. I’d never read them as a child – but they are so wonderful, just outstanding literature. Fantasy, but without the deafening CGI effects of today’s kid movies – I feel them spurring my own imagination in my work. And Beth & Joe’s artwork are outstanding as well.
Thanks, Pencil.
I find it is great to mix up my reading between the serious and the light. I am finding to my delight that a good book is a better use of time than a movie. It is great to have a Kindle and easy to get books now.
If you haven’t got one already, I suggest an Audible Account. That way you can have someone read the book to you while you do other stuff — run your hot dog stand for instance. I’m listening to one now, one I would otherwise not have read, called History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer. It’s full of interesting tidbits, for instance: Phillip II of Macedon married a Greek princess, Olympias (mother of Alexander the Great), about whom there was good news and bad. The good — she was one hot Greek tamale; the bad — when it came to bed partners, she preferred her pet snakes to her husband.
My public library has lots of audiobooks to check out. I’ve ‘read’ hundreds of books this way while bicycling.
I should explain, they are checked out over the interwebs and downloaded to my phone.
Well, there is always “Battleship Texas” and “Texas Shipwrecks.” You can get Kindle editions, too.
Seawriter
Thanks for the recommendations.
The Revenge of Analog.
After recently re-reading Chernow’s 700 + page book “Hamilton,” Kearns Goodwin’s “Team Of Rivals and Sowell’s “A Conflict of Vision,” plus Roger Stone’s new book “The Making of the President 2016,” I’m exhausted.
So I just bought “Charlotte’s Web” and “Harriet the Spy.” Loving them now as I did forty-five years ago. :)
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BTW, Pencilvania, you gave me a good idea.
So many members have kids. My mother was a teacher and taught me to read before I entered kindergarten. I used to get in trouble for reading “My Secret Garden” in first grade while I was supposed to be learning my multiplication tables.
Would you be interested in co-writing a post entitled “The Top Ten Books Your Grade-schooler Should Read?”
I think it would be both helpful and a whole lot of fun for the two of us!
Yes indeed Liz – would you like to start a post about one of your faves & we’ll alternate comments until we get to all 10?
Surely! What would be a convenient day for you to start this? I also think we should add one succinct line of commentary with each recommendation, no?
This is what I like about discussions. They lead in interesting ways.
OK, you know what, my 3 kids are coming home for this weekend, I can poll them too – could we start the list Monday?
@ Pencil: Monday sounds fine with me!
BTW, Dime, I challenge you to a read-off. I read 215 books last year, but will grant you a handicap as I am a bona fide insomniac. :)
“. . .a bona fide insomniac”
And not because you probably can turn the pages faster, having fingers and thumbs?
Girl, you bad. :)
215 isn’t that many. I average 5 a week – and that ignores the books I reference while writing a book.
Seawriter
Why does this always happen? Tome poisoning.
I don’t count the 250-300 pg mini books I pick up from Coulter and Hansen and MacDonald and my beloved Hirsi Ali so if we are counting those, I surpass you, you deplorable book snob! :))
Brent, coloring books don’t count.
How about “Hot Dog Stands for Dummies”?
Brent, do you have all those books?
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You gotta admit that’s funny.
Okay, he got lucky. It will never happen again.
I’d rather be lucky than a sock puppet.
Brent, any good books?
Yeah, Nathan’s Inc. is laughing all the way to the bank!
So… back to one of my favorite authors, Michael Lewis. I have read five of his written works et je les adore. My recommendations:
1. The Blind Side
2. The Big Short
3. Moneyball (I really learned a lot about the semi-mysterious game of baseball, especially about on base average).
4. Liar’s Poker
5. His NYT Saturday Magazine cover story in 2005 “Coach Leach Goes Deep, Very Deep.” He writes beautifully about sports, but this article was one of his finest; it also introduced me to fellow member and pal MLR who was similarly impressed by the topic!
Thanks, Liz.
Michael Lewis really has a gift to explain things without being boring. There is an energy in his writing.
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Have to share: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/magazine/coach-leach-goes-deep-very-deep.html
And this, which I consider one of the most interesting quotes a journalist has ever retrieved from a player:
“Cody Hodges, who has spent the last four years marveling at Leach’s in-game refusal to accept that his offense might have to be so conservative as to punt, says, “There’s been lots of times I’m on the sidelines, and I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, we’re going for it!’ We went for it on fourth and 5 on our own 23 — in the first quarter. We went for it once on fourth and 18 — and we were ahead.”
God bless the Old Pirate!
Dime, outside of the Bible I almost exclusively read very technical business books.
One book that may appeal to a larger audience is Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction.
Defending the Free Market by Fr. Sirico is a must-read classic.
I’ve also had Nassim Taleb’s book: Fooled by Randomness very highly recommended by credible sources.
In the adventure/light fiction category:
The Thirty Nine Steps – John Buchan
Rogue Male – Geoffrey Household
Dance of the Dwarfs (also called The Adversary – Household
Very readable history:
The White Nile (exploration of the source of the White Nile in late 1800s)
Cooper’s Creek – (story of the tragic Burke & Wills expedition that crossed Australia in the 1860s) – both by Alan Moorehead
The Guns of August (start of and early comabt in WW I)- Barbara Tuchman
Contemporary non-fiction adventure/compelling accounts:
A Voyage for Madmen (account of the Golden Globe, the first round the world non-stop solo sailing race [held in the mid 1960] and the men who raced in it) – Peter Nichols
(BTW – There is an excellent film about this titled Deep Water, that includes original footage of the race, including film taken by the racers from their boats rounding the Horn, etc., as well as interviews with some of the contestants and some of the contestants’ wives). The book and the film both do an excellent job of developing the haunting story of contestant Donald Crowhurst.
The Grizzly Maze – Nick Jans
Death in the Grizzly Maze – Mike Lapinski (both are the story of the life and death of Tim Treadwell, the self styled Grizzly Whisperer) –
Guilty pleasure reading:
Travis McGee series – John D. MacDonald
Harry Bosch series – Michael Connelly
Joe Pickett series – CJ Box
When I think of all the time I wasted on Ricochet when I could have been re-reading these books, I feel nauseous.
Good to see you, iDad. Thanks for the recommendations.
Travis McGee and Bosch are all time favorites. I keep meaning to try Box.
I haven’t posted for a while. I hope everybody is going well.
t seems like I always have several books going at any one time. Here are the ones I’m working on right now:
The Long Way Home
What Women Really Want
Praying Scripture for a Change
Humility: Wellspring of Virtue
Catholicism and Fundamentalism
Recently finished the following:
Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism
The Righteous Mind
Hope for the World
Welcome back, Jennifer!
Thanks!
Hi JJ! Wondering where you been girl.
Haven’t really been keeping up with all the political stuff, not that I ever did a great job of that anyway. Plus other things on my mind. Finished a small book, doing research about selling my place and moving to LV, and a lot of other stuff on my mind.
I popped in here a couple times over the past couple months to see how things were going. Seems like everybody is doing well so I’m glad for that.
@ JJ:
This sounds like an interesting read: “What Women Really Want.”
What is the point du vue?
I picked it up because Kellyanne Conway is a co-author. Haven’t gotten very far into it yet. Published in 2005.
Kellyanne Conway is the magic password! I’m off to Amazon as we speak. Let’s compare notes after we both finish the book. :)
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The best novel I’ve read during the past decade: Flashback by Dan Simmons
Just re-read the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson.
Highly recommended if you like historical fiction with a bit bawdy sense of humor and some math.
I may go back and reread Gravity’s Rainbow by Pynchon.
I also occasionally load a Heinlein juvenile into the kindle for nostalgia. Last one was Have Spacesuit, Will Travel.
I read Have Spacesuit, Will Travel last year. I’ve never been disappointed by a book of Heinlein.
I downloaded “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel” to my Kindle. Sci-fi is interesting because the story is in the future and in the “present” also. It is interesting to read a dated Sci-fi because there is a lot of smoking and coffee drinking in it.
There wasn’t much smoking in *Have Spacesuit, Will Travel*. It was one of Heinlein’s juveniles and the main character was a straight arrow. Now anything by H. Beam Piper? Smoking, coffee, *and* alcohol.
xey, I am not going to read “Starship Troopers” unless you ban it. What is the Xey’s List of Banned Books?
Read “Starship Troopers.”
It is so dated. It reeks of the patriarchy. Women were starship captains and not infantry!
What were they thinking? They should be both!! And men…men were… it had alcohol, too. The misogynist soldiers of this dystopian future would drink alcohol on leave, when they weren’t busy murdering aliens.
At the end of the book, the humans even attacked the alien’s home planet:(
This demonstrates how awful the past was, because instead of believing that war is an opportunity to improve the lives of the oppressed they plainly believed wars were to be won.
I mean, “won.”
Winning is an artifact of the patriarchy, which is bad.
No, wait, don’t read “Starship Troopers.”
Don’t!!
Dime, I officially ban the Heinlein hatenovel Starship Troopers. It describes a future where humans were disturbing the galaxy and settling new planets, potentially disturbing native lifeforms like lichens or the aliens who kill humans because of our innate racism.
I also ban another Heinlein hatebook called “Citizen of the Galaxy,” because in the book the idea that resistance to violence might be good is presented as an idea that should be taken seriously.
Hate speech, obviously.
In that hatebook, the protagonist fought against a practice of his native culture, which the colonialists of the future Western patriarchy that Heinlein hatemagined called “slavery.”
Eventually, Heinlein’s person of straw left and joined yet another of Heinlein’s misogynist and militaristic hate groups- in this example, an organization of space-misogynists who hatefully believed that they had an important objective in oppressing that Native groups’ practice of “slavery,” a status to which Heinlein’s protagonist would be in our more progressive times be called a “Dreamer.”
That is, he was brought to his new Homeland, where he was given the opportunity to work for the economy, much like our H1B visa holders today. In a shocking betrayal, he rebelled, eventually making his way back to his place of privilege, and continued his misogynistic crusade against “slavery.”
Banned!
“… a lot of smoking and coffee drinking …” Sounds like this morning’s breakfast.
Just couldn’t deal with the Baroque Cycle, but I did like Cryptonomocon a lot.
Currently reading Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. Loved the movie too.
Most recent books:
Wrong Side of Goodbye (Harry Bosch series)
Spark by John Twelve Hawks (thriller)
A Spy Among Friends (about Kim Philby and the Cambridge spy ring)
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
Spy the Lie (about how to detect deception by a couple of CIA analysts)
I was a bit disappointed in the C.S. Lewis book. The others were good for what they were: mindless entertainment, interesting history, and practical information.
I haven’t read Screwtape letters in years. I wonder why you were disappointed. It is famous in getting across points in the “negative” rather than “positive” way.
Books are interesting because they are like food. It depends what you are hungry for that determines how delicious something is.
Thanks for the Heinlein recommendation. I am almost done with “Have Spacesuit Will Travel”.