"The Price of Politics" by Bob Woodward - no comment for fear of locking up the thread
"Extreme Productivity" by Rober Pozen - a streamlined book looking at setting priorities in life and achieving those goals with a proper balance in your structure.
"Chicago and Northwestern Freight Operations and Equipment" by Pat Dorin. A photo book with brief captions describing the railroad's operations prior to the buyout by Union Pacific in 1994.
"Revenge" by Hugh Holton . A Chicago based detective novel which didnt do it for me.
"Liberty Defined" by Ron Paul. No comment, see above
"Burglers Cant be Choosers" by Lawrence Block. Block is one of my favorite authors. In the "burgler" series, he actually makes you like a criminal.

This is the seventh of the Roderick Alleyn mysteries. We're still in the 1930s, and the lifestyles, mores, and prejudices of pre-World War II England are almost as interesting to observe as the unfolding mystery.

Finished "Bull By The Horns" by former FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair and it's as revealing and disheartening as the other major books about the financial crisis and after. Bair is one of so many who saw it coming and tried to stop it, though she and her talented staff did win some key battles. An especially good chapter is "How Main Street Can Tame Wall Street," which starts out, "Financial concepts are not that difficult if you have a little time to study them." And don't we Bogleheads know that!

Editing to note that I've stayed away from Bair's differences with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, an important part of the book, to comply with forum policies re politics.

Next on my list is Secrets & Lies, Digital Security in a Networked World, by Bruce Schneier, which though not new, was on a fairly long waiting list from the library, possibly because of recent news stories about hackers and cybersecurity.

Last edited by Fallible on Tue Nov 27, 2012 11:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

I just finished Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon. I've read all of his novels and would rank this third, way behind Kavalier and Clay and slightly behind Wonder Boys. It is a huge improvement on his Yiddish Policemen's Union, which I did not enjoy.

I haven't been on this read for awhile. Looking at my kindle my last few books were:

Against the Gods by Peter Berstein

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. I can't recommend this story enough. It's the incredible true story of Olympic runner and WWII POW Louie Zamperini. It was hard to put down and left me inspired after reading.

Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy. I read this in high school and this will be my second reading.

Just finished Heads You Lose by Lisa Lutz and David Hayward. The best-selling author of several mystery novels decides to produce a collaborative novel with her ex-boyfriend, years after a previous failed collaboration. What could wrong with that? Lots.

The meta-story of their co-authoring is at least as important as the actual one. Each took turns writing a chapter at a time, with no previous outlines or even plotting agreements. Each chapter is followed by email traffic between the two, which grows increasingly rancorous as things move along. This includes blocking storylines one writer is attempting, sometimes by assassination of characters. Even the cat gets threatened.

Fallible wrote:Next on my list is Secrets & Lies, Digital Security in a Networked World, by Bruce Schneier, which though not new, was on a fairly long waiting list from the library, possibly because of recent news stories about hackers and cybersecurity.

Hi Fallible,

Great choice of a book!

Victoria

WINNER of the 2015 Boglehead Contest. |
Every joke has a bit of a joke. ... The rest is the truth. (Marat F)

Fallible wrote:Next on my list is Secrets & Lies, Digital Security in a Networked World, by Bruce Schneier, which though not new, was on a fairly long waiting list from the library, possibly because of recent news stories about hackers and cybersecurity.

I have been reading Jonathan Franzen's non-fiction works: The Discomfort Zone (memoir), How To Be Alone (essays) and Farther Away (essays). People might know Franzen from his novels, The Corrections and Freedom. His non-fiction is often sharp social criticism and dry humor. I like this guy's writing.

ruralavalon wrote:What do You care What Other People Think?, by Richard P. Feynman.

Includes an interesting discussion of the investigation of the space shuttle Challenger disaster.

I remember wondering what Feynman might have said about the shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, and whether he would've had many of the same criticisms of NASA in that investigation as he did in the Challenger probe.

Uh-oh... my suspended disbelief just crashed. The Racketeer, by John Grisham, p. 289. Tricky plot twists, entertaining page-turner, fifty pages to go and no idea where it's heading. But. The protagonist has a few million dollars in physical gold, cigar boxes full of domino-sized ingots, and is distributing them among safe-deposit boxes, ordinary safe-deposit boxes in ordinary bank branches:

"The lockbox is six inches wide, six inches tall, and eighteen inches long, the largest available when I leased it a month ago for one year, at $300 per."

$300 per year for a safe-deposit box of those dimensions? $22 a year at my bank.

nisiprius wrote:Uh-oh... my suspended disbelief just crashed. The Racketeer, by John Grisham, p. 289. Tricky plot twists, entertaining page-turner, fifty pages to go and no idea where it's heading. But. The protagonist has a few million dollars in physical gold, cigar boxes full of domino-sized ingots, and is distributing them among safe-deposit boxes, ordinary safe-deposit boxes in ordinary bank branches:

"The lockbox is six inches wide, six inches tall, and eighteen inches long, the largest available when I leased it a month ago for one year, at $300 per."

$300 per year for a safe-deposit box of those dimensions? $22 a year at my bank.

The largest available? Mine has a 10x10 for $60 a year.

i wonder if Grisham's bank charges him those big bucks for his box and that's why he saw nothing wrong with putting it in his novel. Ah, the rich...

nisiprius wrote:Uh-oh... my suspended disbelief just crashed. The Racketeer, by John Grisham, p. 289. Tricky plot twists, entertaining page-turner, fifty pages to go and no idea where it's heading. But. The protagonist has a few million dollars in physical gold, cigar boxes full of domino-sized ingots, and is distributing them among safe-deposit boxes, ordinary safe-deposit boxes in ordinary bank branches:

"The lockbox is six inches wide, six inches tall, and eighteen inches long, the largest available when I leased it a month ago for one year, at $300 per."$300 per year for a safe-deposit box of those dimensions? $22 a year at my bank.

The largest available? Mine has a 10x10 for $60 a year.

Your bank doesn't charge much for safe deposit boxes. The bank we just left charged $130/year for 6" x 6" x 18". Our credit union charges $60/year for one that's a fraction of the size and is just big enough to hold several business-size envelopes. Both banks have waiting lists of several years for boxes of any size. That's where my suspension of disbelief always kicks in. It's impossible to rent a safe deposit box anywhere in town without being on a waiting list for years. Longer if you want a box large enough so you don't have to fold your documents into teensy-tiny squares. I was on our credit union's waiting list for about six years before I was offered a box of any size. I have no idea how people with a sudden, urgent need to hide gold ingots do it.

Back to the discussion... Just finished John O'Hara's novel "Ten North Frederick," a 1950s National Book Award winner about a wealthy, small-town lawyer who wants to take a stab at politics but is thwarted and betrayed at every turn. Frankly I did not think it was worth the time.

I'm a huge mystery fan (sometimes it's the only fiction I read instead of watching junk TV) and very picky-- I only read American and current stuff. Some of my favorite authors are Grisham (couldn't quite figure out if I liked the 'Racketeer' or not), John Sandford, Michael Connelly, Harlan Coben, Dennis Lehand, Lisa Scottoline, Marcia Muller & Bill Pronzini, Lawr. Block (although he's gotten weird), David Baldacci, Robert Crais-my very favorite, James Burke (although he's getting a bit maudlin) and Chris Grabenstein. The $14.99 ebook prices for some of these authors are killing me--guess I'm going to have to stop being so picky!

The reason for this post is $.99 ebooks- Chris Grabenstein's books are set at the Jersey Shore, featuring John Ceepak, and for the month of December he's donating all the proceeds of his ebook sales ( Kindle and Nook- on the four of his books to which he holds the rights plus some of his self-published books) to THE COMMUNITY FOOD BANK OF NEW JERSEY to help them in their Hurricane Sandy. These ebooks are only $.99 and a great way to get an introduction to a new mystery series that also has a side kick with very, very droll humor.

These are the Ceepak novels @ $.99-TILT A WHIRL, MAD MOUSE, WHACK A MOLE, and RING TOSS-- you can buy them at either Amazon or Barnes and Noble; just search for Chris Grabenstein.

A classic noir detective story, with more plot twists than I had recalled.

And a twist from the movie, which is more satisfying, but darker.

And most of the other 8 are worth reading. Not Playback (?) the last one-- by that time Chandler, his wife dead and well steeped in alcoholism, had really lost his touch. He always wanted to be 'more' than a writer of popular fiction, and whilst critics at the time of course derided him, he's now recognized as part of the canon of 20th Century American Literature.

His collected short stories are also worth reading (collected under 'Trouble is my Business' in 2 volumes, I believe)-- you see the character that would be Sam Spade developing.

His use of language is exquisite. Raised in England (Dulwich College in South London for high school) he wrote that he was 'discovering the language as he wrote'. He had worked as an advertising executive, (in the oil industry?), and was a veteran of WW1-- it's interesting when embittered veterans pop up in his novels, and Spade's facility with violence and killing is occasionally connected to his war service.

Novels like The Long Goodbye, and The Lady in the Lake.

I have never found anything to match them-- not even Dashiell Hammett.

I don't think the plots always make sense, nor do the characters always gel. But the language, the scene, ohh the language and the setting of 1930s and 40s LA.

The BBC recently released the complete Raymond Chandler on CD- -the ones I did catch when broadcast were very good. There was also a radio play about Chandler struggling to write the script for The Big Sleep, with Patrick Stewart (accomplished Shakespearian actor and of course Cap Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek)-- missed that one alas.

Bungo wrote:Recently finished Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Not bad, but it certainly did not live up to the hype. Blood Meridian and the border trilogy are also in my to-read pile; apparently the consensus is that they're better than The Road.

Now reading Roger Lowenstein's Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist. I'm not very far into it yet - Buffett is currently taking a securities analysis class at Columbia, taught by Benjamin Graham - but so far it's good.

The Road is totally different from his other stuff. I did not enjoy it too much. Not bad, but sort of average IMO. Definitely Blood Meridian and Border Trilogy, also Outer Dark. Enjoy! I've read Border Trilogy 3-4 times, and it keeps getting better.

Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987 by Bob Woodward. All about the plots and counter-plots, intrigue, and subterfuge in the intelligence community. Theirs and ours. The book really is as much about Bill Casey as it is about the CIA.

gkaplan wrote:Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987 by Bob Woodward. All about the plots and counter-plots, intrigue, and subterfuge in the intelligence community. Theirs and ours. The book really is as much about Bill Casey as it is about the CIA.

If you haven't read Steve Coll's book on the CIA in Afghanistan, pre 9-11, is very good.

Finished "The Indiana Rail Road Company (2nd Edition)" by Christopher Rund, Fred Frailey and Eric Powell which is a comprehensive look at the regional railroad's history since purchasing the line from Illinois Central Railroad in 1986.

Then it was "Hit Parade" by Lawrence Block. Forum member runthetrail reminded me of the Keller series and I picked this one up. This is about a murder for hire hit man.

Just released....the latest novel by Nelson Demille...The Panther: The beginning and the end were classic Demille...funny, exciting, and interesting. Most of the middle was not good. I'm a big Demille fan.

Also just released Michael Connelly's Black Box. It was excellent throughout.

hudson wrote:Just released....the latest novel by Nelson Demille...The Panther: The beginning and the end were classic Demille...funny, exciting, and interesting. Most of the middle was not good. I'm a big Demille fan.

Also just released Michael Connelly's Black Box. It was excellent throughout.

Read-reading E. E. "Doc" Smith, The Skylark of Space. The Project Gutenberg version, based on the 1928 publication in "Amazing Stories." What I've read before was probably the later book version. Dunno whether I'll finish it or not, but the guy does have something--amazing how something so comically melodramatic can be so readable.

There's not too much investment-related content, although someone says, of the rich-guy-co-hero, as proof of his sanity and level-headness, "You know that he never invests a cent in anything more risky than Government bonds."

The avoidance of ess, eee, ex is remarkable, too. 1928? That would have been well after Elinor Glyn's Three Weeks (1907), James Branch Cabell's Jurgen, and James Joyce's Ulysses. In an early scene, the earnest young hero-scientist, Dick Seaton, is overworking himself, and his colleague says to his girlfriend,

"Your part will be hard. He will come to you, bursting with news and aching to tell you all about his theories and facts and calculations, and you must try to take his mind off the whole thing and make him think of something else. It looks impossible to me."

The smile had come back to Dorothy's face. Her head, graced by its wealth of gleaming auburn hair, was borne proudly, and glancing mischief lit her violet eyes.

"Didn't you just tell me nothing is impossible? You know, Martin, that I can make Dicky forget everything, even interstellar—did I get that word right?—space itself...

My friends, put aside our postmillennial sensibilities, and try to guess how she does it, if you don't already know. Answer below.*

I also noticed the striking similarity between the opening scene, and the opening of Isaac Asimov's early novel, Pebble in the Sky. In The Skylark of Space, an electrochemistry experiment releases "intra-atomic energy" and sends a copper steam-bath shooting violently into outer space. In Pebble in the Sky, a similar experiment releases a laserlike beam that burns a hole in the wall--and, unbeknownst to the scientists, continues on, expanding, and hits a man miles away and sends him into the future.

I suspect I last read this book before 1989, because this time I was also struck by the vague similarity between the electrochemical release of "intra-atomic energy" and Pons and Fleischmann's alleged "cold fusion." In the 1928 novel it is platinum, rather than palladium, that does the trick. It is known that the "atomic bombs" in H. G. Well's 1914 book, The World Set Free inspired Leo Szilard's discoery/invention of chain reaction; I wonder whether Pons and Fleischmann ever had read The Skylark of Space?

*She puts him to sleep by playing the violin.

She took down her violin and played; first his favorites, crashing selections from operas and solos by the great masters, abounding in harmonies on two strings. Then she changed to reveries and soft, plaintive melodies. Seaton listened with profound enjoyment. Under the spell of the music he relaxed, pushed out the footrest of the chair, and lay back at ease, smoking dreamily. The cigar finished and his hands at rest, his eyes closed of themselves. The music, now a crooning lullaby, grew softer and slower, until his deep and regular breathing showed that he was sound asleep.

The mystery: was "Doc" Smith consciously aware of the ludicrousness? Probably. Jack London was aware of the ludicrousness of an episode in The Sea-Wolf in which a couple, acknowledged "lovers," who have escaped from the evil Wolf Larsen and have literally been cast away on a small island, fashion two separate huts.

Last edited by nisiprius on Wed Dec 05, 2012 5:50 pm, edited 3 times in total.

nisiprius wrote:E. E. "Doc" Smith, The Skylark of Space. The Project Gutenberg version, based on the 1928 publication in "Amazing Stories." I've read it before, probably the later book version. Dunno whether I'll finish it or not, but the guy does have something--amazing how something so comically melodramatic can be so readable.

The avoidance of ess, eee, ex is remarkable, too. 1928? That would have been well after Elinor Glyn's Three Weeks (1907), James Branch Cabell's Jurgen, and James Joyce's Ulysses. In an early scene, the earnest young hero-scientist, Dick Seaton, is overworking himself, and his colleague says to his girlfriend,

"Your part will be hard. He will come to you, bursting with news and aching to tell you all about his theories and facts and calculations, and you must try to take his mind off the whole thing and make him think of something else. It looks impossible to me."

The smile had come back to Dorothy's face. Her head, graced by its wealth of gleaming auburn hair, was borne proudly, and glancing mischief lit her violet eyes.

"Didn't you just tell me nothing is impossible? You know, Martin, that I can make Dicky forget everything, even interstellar—did I get that word right?—space itself...

My friends, put aside our postmillennial sensibilities, and try to guess how she does it, if you don't already know. Answer below.*

I also noticed the striking similarity between the opening scene, and the opening of Isaac Asimov's early novel, Pebble in the Sky. In The Skylark of Space, an electrochemistry experiment releases "intra-atomic energy" and sends a copper steam-bath shooting violently into outer space. In Pebble in the Sky, a similar experiment releases a laserlike beam that burns a hole in the wall--and, unbeknownst to the scientists, continues on, expanding, and hits a man miles away and sends him into the future.

I suspect I last read this book before 1989, because this time I was also struck by the vague similarity between the electrochemical release of "intra-atomic energy" and Pons and Fleischmann's alleged "cold fusion." In the 1928 novel it is platinum, rather than palladium, that does the trick. It is known that the "atomic bombs" in H. G. Well's 1914 book, The World Set Free inspired Leo Szilard's discoery/invention of chain reaction; I wonder whether Pons and Fleischmann ever had read The Skylark of Space?

*She puts him to sleep by playing the violin.

She took down her violin and played; first his favorites, crashing selections from operas and solos by the great masters, abounding in harmonies on two strings. Then she changed to reveries and soft, plaintive melodies. Seaton listened with profound enjoyment. Under the spell of the music he relaxed, pushed out the footrest of the chair, and lay back at ease, smoking dreamily. The cigar finished and his hands at rest, his eyes closed of themselves. The music, now a crooning lullaby, grew softer and slower, until his deep and regular breathing showed that he was sound asleep.

The mystery: was "Doc" Smith consciously aware of the ludicrousness? Probably. Jack London was aware of the ludicrousness of an episode in The Sea-Wolf in which a couple, acknowledged "lovers," who have escaped from the evil Wolf Larsen and have literally been cast away on a small island, fashion two separate huts.

I used to read Amazing Stories many years ago. I always liked the stories.