Grateful Dead Music Forum

I'm turning into a bit of a book worm lately and been loving a few authors:
Michale Connelly - Harry Bosch series
Lee Child - Jack Reacher novels

Curious who else digs into paperbacks!

After spending 7 years or so in grad school I had read myself out - that kinda sucked the enjoyment out of it for a while. My wife is a voracious reader and goes through at least a couple of books a week. I am getting back into recreational reading again. I read Extremely Loud and Incredible Close and Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safron Foer - the movie of Illuminated is awesome and worth a watch. I also recently read American Gods by Niel Gaiman - it was very cool and well written. I'm also a history geek and just reread Grant's Memoirs and a book on the black migration from Mississippi to Chicago and Detroit in the early/mid 20th century - this migration brought McKinley Morganfield (Muddy Waters) and Chester Burnett (Howlin' Wolf) to Chicago among others. A nice look at how the invention of the mechanical cotton picker helped to create rock-n-roll. Just started another Gaiman/Pratchett book Good Omens. It's nice to get back into recreational reading again. I have a two and three year old so I read a lot of Curious George but kinda like Shel Silverstein's kids books - he also wrote "Cover of the Rolling Stone" the Dr. Hook tune which my band plays on occasion.

I just finished a PhD in history, so I'm a bit burned out on reading as well. I've been meaning to re-read the Lord of the Rings, but that's currently packed away right now. One author that I have read lately is Sebastian Barry. I'd recommend "A Long, Long Way." He's got some other good books as well. Another book on the same subject matter (Ireland & WWI) is Tom Phelan's "The Canal Bridge." I've been trying to catch up on some of the classics and just finished Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", and Kesey's "Coocoo's nest." Once this move is over and I get some of my stuff unpacked I've got some Joyce (Dubliners!) and others to read. I'd like to revisit the Hemingway's "Nick Adams" stories too. Gotta love Papa!

Lunchbox16 wrote:I just finished a PhD in history, so I'm a bit burned out on reading as well. I've been meaning to re-read the Lord of the Rings, but that's currently packed away right now. One author that I have read lately is Sebastian Barry. I'd recommend "A Long, Long Way." He's got some other good books as well. Another book on the same subject matter (Ireland & WWI) is Tom Phelan's "The Canal Bridge." I've been trying to catch up on some of the classics and just finished Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", and Kesey's "Coocoo's nest." Once this move is over and I get some of my stuff unpacked I've got some Joyce (Dubliners!) and others to read. I'd like to revisit the Hemingway's "Nick Adams" stories too. Gotta love Papa!

Small world! Where'd you get your doctorate? I got an MA in history at Virginia Tech though went into Instructional Technology for the doctorate. What's your area of expertise?

I earned my Ph.D. at Loyola University, Chicago. My specialty is modern Irish history, specifically World War I (which explains my interest in the aforementioned novels). Moving out to Denver in a week, and not really sure what type of work I'll end up doing (just finished in June), but I hope to be in higher ed. in some capacity at some point down the line.

Lunchbox16 wrote:I earned my Ph.D. at Loyola University, Chicago. My specialty is modern Irish history, specifically World War I (which explains my interest in the aforementioned novels). Moving out to Denver in a week, and not really sure what type of work I'll end up doing (just finished in June), but I hope to be in higher ed. in some capacity at some point down the line.

Excellent! I was a transatlantic world guy but wrote my thesis on a coal miner rebellion just after WWI in West Virginia. Good luck with the job search!

Bringing it back to GD content by accident... I happen to be reading Rock Scully's book at the moment. He does... um... veer slighly from Phil's, Blair Jackson's and Scrib's versions of events at times.

I read all the time. I teach, but I can't stop reading. Some of my favorites include:

Christopher Moore. He cracks me up. Try Bloodsucking Fiends and Lamb to get you started
Tim Dorsey: The poor man's Hiaasen. Only way better. Someday the movies will be classics, as well.
Jess Mowry: Start with Six Out Seven. Best African American author alive today.
Hubert Selby, Jr.: Everyone knows Requiem and Last Exit, but Willow Tree is really his best
HST: Sure Fear and Loathing is great, but I really enjoy his political stuff, especially Better Than Sex and Kingdom of Fear
Kesey: Sometimes a Great Notion is why I moved to Oregon
Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club got the press but I liked Survivor and Invisible Monsters and Choke better...not for everyone!
CD Payne: Frisco Pidgeon Mambo is his only good book
Paul Beatty: White Boy Shuffle is the funniest first novel I've read

I also read biographies and recommend the one's on Warren Zevon and Joe Strummer...

I want to make another try soon at Ulysses, and also Dubliners. I think I was like 19 when I first attempted Ulysses, and I just couldn't get a foothold.

Non-fiction: The Botany Of Desire was very enlightening. Recently produced as a PBS special... WW I content: last time I visited my P's, I started a re-read of All Quiet On The Western Front. Another lesser-known foot soldier's story is Guy Sajer's Forgotten Soldier, describing life on the ground in Germany's Russian campaign in WWII.

LOL, I re-read Lord Of The Rings, Hobbit and Silmarillion about every 3 years it seems like. Double LOL, I keep telling myself I'm going to turn Silmarillion into a screenplay, in an attempt to prevent Peter Jackson from turning it into an episode of Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles, but have only done the first couple pages.

I have been reading a ton of Music bio stuff. Conversations with Tom Petty is awsome. On the "real" book side of the house I read the Lost City of Z. Really interesting take on the search for the lost city of Eldorado. You might want to check it out. Got it at Borders for $10.00. I can give you more details but don't want to spoil it for you.

Fell out of reading regularly after we got a satellite so we could get TV. Just finished the 1st Carlos Casteneda book about his apprenticeship with brujo don Juan. Have the entire series and read them all as they were published, now the goal is to read them all until I'm done. Shouldn't forget too much that way. Lord of the Rings et al will probably be next, read those every 3 years or so.

Shel Silverstein also wrote Boy Named Sue and I'm My Own Grandpa. One brilliant individual.

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tigerstrat wrote: WW I content: last time I visited my P's, I started a re-read of All Quiet On The Western Front. Another lesser-known foot soldier's story is Guy Sajer's Forgotten Soldier, describing life on the ground in Germany's Russian campaign in WWII.

All Quiet is a personal favorite of mine. I liked it much more than Siegfried Sassoon. Although I did read All Quiet after I read Storm of Steel, by Ernst Junger, which is his actual account of serving on the western front. When I taught Global history this spring I had to be really careful not to mix the two when I was teaching All Quiet.

Also, Dubliners isn't hard, but I have no interest in Ulysses. I can only take certain modernist writers, and although I love Dubliners it might be the only Joyce I can handle. I think I have a copy of Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man so perhaps that will be doable as well. Time will tell.

It's a pretty biased account, but Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is something that everyone interested in the history of the American West should read. I don't mean to be an apologist, the things that Brown describes in his book are at times atrocious. But his work lacks the objectivity of truly great history. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating, and heart-breaking read. The HBO movie didn't do the book justice (although Adam Beach is a great actor).

The way to do Ulysses is use Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a kind of a launch ramp. They get you so into that world, Ulysses is just a great read. I think Finnegan's Wake is harder to read. I'm going to see if I can get it on tape, read by someone with a real thick Irish accent.

How about that Samuel Becket? He wrote most of his books in French, his second language.

Joseph Conrad was Polish, English was his second language but nobody wrote English better.

Speaking of French, how about Anatole France? All those classic French guys are great, even in translation.

Ditto the Russians; Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky never wrote a bad book either one of them.

I will never know why they try to get school kids to read that stuff. Once you've lived life though, those guys ring as true as Jerry's guitar.