I love a Good "Good Book" thread

ElOgro

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Dec 3, 2010
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ElOgro,

Re: Paul Theroux’s new book On the Plain of Snakes
Can’t remember if it was this thread or another (due to the messed up pages on long threads and shitty search function), but I want to say I remember you saying something along the lines of how it might be hard for an outsider to fully grasp Mexican culture/daily life/etc.
Was that you? If so, would you care to expand on that? Have you read the book? I’m almost halfway through the book and really enjoying it so far, but keep curiously thinking back to what was posted here.

Mahalo in advance.

I plan on reading Hotel Honolulu after.

Any suggestions for books about Hawai’i written by Hawaiian authors? Fiction or not.
Yes was me. I said that not having started the book, I’m almost done now. PT is as well traveled is it gets and he finds the same. The cops. The kindness/cruelty. Fatalistic mindset. The importance of trust (Mexicans don’t trust each other, why should they trust you?). The bonds of family. What people do to get by in rural areas when their daily income to support their families is less than what many Americans spend on lunch. El chorro (the screaming shits). Organized chaos. Mezcal from the tap. There’s a few.

I’ve read most of his books, the first I read was Heart of Darkness, but I’ve enjoyed all of them, both fiction and travel.
 
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afoaf

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Yes was me. I said that not having started the book, I’m almost done now. PT is as well traveled is it gets and he finds the same. The cops. The kindness/cruelty. Fatalistic mindset. The importance of trust (Mexicans don’t trust each other, why should they trust you?). The bonds of family. What people do to get by in rural areas when their daily income to support their families is less than what many Americans spend on lunch. El chorro (the screaming shits). Organized chaos. Mezcal from the tap. There’s a few.

I’ve read most of his books, the first I read was Heart of Darkness, but I’ve enjoyed all of them, both fiction and travel.
I didn't realize he wrote Mosquito Coast

I love that sh!t

to the gentleman that asked about books about Hawaii....do we consider Michener?

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afoaf

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this one is pretty interesting as he draws a lot of parallels between bushido and european chivalry

it's old so a lot of the ''contemporary'' analogies he uses are dated

 

Leaverite

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I just read Gettysburg by Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen. Forstchen is a military professor/author. It's an alternate history, a "what if". I liked it. Really well done.

Makes you think about just how close the balance was back then. A little more intelligence gathering. It could have gone the other way so very easily.

Two more books in the series. "Grant Comes East", "Never Call Retreat".
 

PRCD

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Feb 25, 2020
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Blood Meridian....Imagine these guys coming to torture you in ways you cannot fathom.....
"A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.
Pretty close to the truth about some of those raids and how the plains tribes treated each-other and settlers:

Good book. The Commanches were one of the few peoples to master fighting on horseback. They were similar to the Mongols. FIrearms could not defeat their archery and tactics until the invention of the Colt-Walker. Rogan had SC Gwynne on his show.

This is a great fiction series:

Anything by Tom Holland is good:

"Caesar's Legion" was good too:

Legio X was probably the deadliest military unit until the 1800s.
 
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Bob Dobbalina

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My dad was an engineer and a huge sci fi fan. By 2nd grade I was reading Frank Herbert. Probably the best connection I have with my dad, he turned 90 this year, is our common love for sci fi/fantasy. Really good Sci Fi/Fantasy. We have a acquired an enormous collection of books over the years. Possibly one of the best collections in existence.
I haven't been drawn to Sci-Fi in a while. I remember grabbing Deus Irae at the library when I was a kid and enjoying it. I'd probably like it even more now, along with most of Dick's cannon. Got any other suggestions by him (preferably stuff that has not been made into a film)?

Have you read much Octavia Butler? I read Kindred over the summer and have Parable of the Sower on my stack of books to read.
 
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Bob Dobbalina

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I've been working my way through a few at once. I just finished this novel and need to grab a new one.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Americanah. A story about relationships, both temporary, close, long term, and distant. A story of immigrants and expats and both. A story about Nigeria, England, and the US told primarily through an imperfect Nigerian woman who moves to the US, then back to Nigeria. I enjoyed some of it greatly. Not perfect by any stretch. I felt it had the potential to ben incredible but fell short. I did enjoy it.

Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Refugees. Currently enjoying these short stories.

bell hooks: All About Love : New Visions. I've been working my way through this. Sometimes insightful, sometimes pretty awful.

Richard Rothstein: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. This is fantastic. One of those books where you can picture who really needs to read it, but you know they wont. I love how it skewers the Bay Area right off the bat and repeatedly.
 
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afoaf

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I'm stuck on Walden

this guy rambles on and on

every third or fourth paragraph he drops a fkn bomb so you really have to keep sifting
so as not to miss them

I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
I dig it
 
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Leaverite

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I haven't been drawn to Sci-Fi in a while. I remember grabbing Deus Irae at the library when I was a kid and enjoying it. I'd probably like it even more now, along with most of Dick's cannon. Got any other suggestions by him (preferably stuff that has not been made into a film)?

Have you read much Octavia Butler? I read Kindred over the summer and have Parable of the Sower on my stack of books to read.
I've seen a couple of trailers for the new "Dune" movie being released. It looks good.
 
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ringer

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I'm gonna offer up "American Dirt" by Jeanine Cummins. It is a recent bestseller that has a lot of controversy because it is asserted that the author does not have the chops to write a novel about the authentic Mexican/Central American immigrant experience to El Norte. That may be correct, but the novel is well-written and exciting, and seems to be well researched. It is worth the read just as a book. Read the first 20 pages and then try to put it down.
 

Leaverite

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Frank Herbert wrote Dune back in 1965 and 55 years later we are still trying to bring his vision to cinima in an acceptable form. Not just Dune but Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune.

That is true Science Fiction. Herbert was a master. Besides Dune. The Santaroga Barrier. Hellstroms Hive. The Jesus Incident series. The Dosadi Experiment/Whipping Star.

That is vision. Yes, it's Science Fiction. But it makes Star Wars look like a preschool primer.

One of the interesting things is Frank's son, Bryan Herbert has written a dozen books of his own trying to fill in his dad's shoes where Frank left off upon his untimely death.

This is clearly a case where you can see that genius is not an inherited trait.
 
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