Distrust That Particular Flavor - reading

Finished "Distrust That Particular Flavor" by William Gibson. This was a collection of articles and addresses from the author, explained or expounded upon by the author. Some interesting stuff, some repetitive stuff, and some that proves Mr. Gibson is far smarter than I am.

Don't Know Much About History - reading

Finished "Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History But Never Learned" by Kenneth C. Davis, which discusses the "messy ripples of history," from the discovery of America to the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Technically, this is the 100th one I rated on GoodReads and I didn't finish until today, but I had a pretty good idea it was getting 4/5 stars from me.

Overall it was a very good treatment of history, though I thought the coverage of earlier history was better organized than the more recent events. Earlier history seemed to be in a more logical order, perhaps because it is so long ago and we've had time to sort through it more completely. One feature of the book that I will likely be cursing for a long time is that each major era referenced one or more "must read" books. I compiled a list of 53 of them and will likely make my way through many eventually.


That list (along with its Amazon star rating) is:

1. From Freedom to Slavery: Rebirth of Tyranny in America by Gerry Spence (4.7/5 stars)
2. Bush V. Gore: The Court Cases and Commentary by EJ Dionne Jr and William Kristol (3/5 stars)
3. Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election by Jeffrey Toobin (3.6/5 stars)
4. Maestro : Greenspan's Fed and the American Boom by Bob Woodward (3.3/5 stars)
5. A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President by Jeffrey Toobin (3.6/5 stars)
6. All Too Human by George Stephanopoulis (3.9/5 stars)
7. First in His Class: A Biography Of Bill Clinton by David Maraniss (4.6/5 stars)
8. Shadow: 5 Presidents and the legacy of Watergate by Bob Woodward (3.3/5 stars)
9. And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts (note: 20th Anniversary Edition available) (4.7/5 stars)
10. President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime by Lou Cannon (3.6/5 stars)
11. The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam (4.5/5 stars)
12. Vietnam: A History by Stanley Karnow (4.4/5 stars)
13. Our Vietnam by A.J. Langguth (4/5 stars)
14. Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK by Gerald Posner (3.4/5 stars)
15. The Fifties by David Halberstam (4.5/5 stars)
16. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality by Richard Kluger (4.9/5 stars)
17. The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower by David Caute (5/5 stars, one review)
18. Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case by Allen Weinstein (3.8/5 stars)
19. Truman by David G. McCullough (5/5 stars, one review)
20. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes (note: 25th Anniversary Edition available) (4.7/5 stars)
21. Whittaker Chambers by Sam Tanenhaus (rating not available)
22. No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin (4.6/5 stars)
23. Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage by Joseph E. Persico (4.1/5 stars)
24. For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush by Christopher Andrew (4.6/5 stars)
25. Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor by Robert B Stinnett (3.4/5 stars)
26. The Borrowed Years, 1938-1941 by Rob Ketchum (5/5 stars, one rating)
27. The Great Depression: America 1929-1941 by Robert S. McElvaine (3.1/5 stars)
28. Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg (4.2/5 stars)
29. J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets by Curt Gentry (4.3/5 stars)
30. The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 by Tim Madigan (4.3/5 stars)
31. At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America by Philip Dray (4.9/5 stars)
32. W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868-1919: Biography of a Race by David Levering Lewis (4.1/5 stars)
33. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris (4.1/5 stars)
34. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (4.8/5 stars)
35. Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt by David G. McCullough (4.3/5 stars)
36. The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 by David McCullough (4.7/5 stars)
37. April 1865: The Month That Saved America - Jerry Winik (4.0/5 stars)
38. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown (4.7/5 stars)
39. 500 Nations (Pimlico Wild West) by Alvin M Josephy (4.7/5 stars)
40. Undaunted Courage - Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of America by Stephen E. Ambrose (4.5/5 stars)
41. Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and the Future of America by Thomas Fleming (4.2/5 stars)
42. Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis by William C. Davis (4.5/5 stars)
43. A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution by Theodore Draper (4.8/5 stars)
44. The Winter Soldiers: The Battles for Trenton and Princeton by Richard M. Ketchum (4.7/5 stars)
45. The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin by H.W. Brands (4.6/5 stars)
46. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence by Pauline Maier (4.1/5 stars)
47. Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War by Richard M. Ketchum (4.6/5 stars)
48. Liberty: The American Revolution by Thomas Fleming (4.5/5 stars)
49. Patriots: The Men who Started the American Revolution by A.J. Langguth (4.6/5 stars)
50. The Creation of America: Through Revolution to Empire by Francis Jennings (3.1/5 stars)
51. A Delusion Of Satan: The Full Story Of The Salem Witch Trials by Frances Hill (3.9/5 stars)
52. The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America by John Demos (3.5/5 stars)
53. Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky (4.4/5 stars)

GoodReads 100

My last post prompted me to take a look at the books I have rated so far on goodreads. I am coincidentally at 100 books there and wondered how my ratings of books stack up against the rest of the goodreads community.

If you take the average rating and compare it to mine, I'm pretty much in line. Overall, goodreads average on these 100 books is 3.8 stars, and my average is 3.4 stars, making me a little pickier overall.

There were six books that I gave a one-star rating to (The Wailing Wind, Falling Awake, Treasure Hunt, Bloodroot, You Lost Me There and One Perfect Word). The average rating of these six on goodreads is 3.6 stars, so it's probably just me.

On the other end of the scale, there were 16 books I gave five stars to (No Ordinary Joes, The Good Soldiers, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Redwall, The Terror, War Dances, The Last King of Scotland, How I Paid for College, Interred with Their Bones, Hyperion, Snow Crash, Neuromancer, Dune and three from the Incarnations of Immortality series: #1 On a Pale Horse, #3 With a Tangled Skein and #6 For Love of Evil). Goodreads average on these is 3.9 stars, so I'm above that by 1.1 stars.

The highest rated of these 100 books according to goodreads is 4.49 stars, going to The Hunger Games, which I rated 2 stars.

Long story short (no pun intended), my taste in books is probably different than yours. :-)

Realmwalkers - reading

Finished "Realmwalkers" by E.V. Medina and Jack Shepherd. If you are a fan of Rachel Aaron's Eli Monpress series, you may also like this story. In my review of Aaron's work, I said the powerful characters stopped just shy of calling the king "dude." In Realmwalkers, Alain is so unbelievably powerful, and his companions refer to him as several versions of "dude." This grated on me. It doesn't help that he's homophobic, and for one of the good guys, seems pretty disrespectful to those around him. For example there was a missed opportunity for him to leave his "starblade" behind out of respect for the queen rather than being the only one to wear a weapon in her presence. There is also little element of actual risk in the story that it dulls the tension. Death is quite casual since you can be brought back from it.

Some of the other terminology could be owned better by the authors. Calling some characters "females" was awkward, as was the name of Alain's several powers, such as "white hand within measure at need." It didn't give me a good sense of what the power was, or that it grew organically in the world. It sounded more like it was being scientifically classified.

An epic battle was fought, but the details provided were not the details that would have excited, robbing the scene of its impact. When the goddess showed up, her presence was not revered by her faithful so much as she was held up as just another powerful being in the fight (but the focus was on Alain).

Overall I wanted to like Solita, her companions and her plight, and appreciate the world for what it was, but couldn't.

No Ordinary Joes - reading

Finished "No Ordinary Joes: The Extraordinary True Story of Four Submariners in War and Love and Life" by Larry Colton. This might as well have been a sequel to "The Worst Hard Time" (about the Great Depression) in that it tracked the lives of four sailors from growing up during the Great Depression - one of whom came from the area covered by the previous book - to joining the Navy and fighting in World War II. Their submarine was sunk by a torpedo dropped from a Japanese plane and the men were captured and taken as POWs to be held for two years, until the war ended. It then followed their lives as they returned home, grew old and, in some cases, died. I was torn between 4 and 5 stars as a rating, but I didn't want to put this one down until the end. Even then I did a bit of research on the ship and crew. Then I asked my mom about details about what my dad did while he was in the Navy since he's no longer around to tell me the stories.

Wishful Drinking - reading

Finished "Wishful Drinking" by Carrie Fisher. I wasn't expecting quite so much gossip in this one, though I'm not sure exactly what I *was* expecting. I feel like I didn't quite connect with Carrie's sense of humor, and the book fell short for me because of that since it was intended to have a lot of humor in it. Your mileage may vary.

The Worst Hard Time - reading

Finished "The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl" by Timothy Egan. First, let me say that I greatly enjoyed this, even though it clearly demonstrated the great harm ignorance can cause. These people didn't just survive the great American Dust Bowl, they (along with a persistent drought and typical high plains weather) created it. And yeah, some of the aspects of the story were repetitive, but then again, there were a lot of "dusters" who stuck around long after things went not just bad but ridiculously bad. The descriptions of the dust storms were vivid, bringing you right to the time and place, staring at a black wall as it flew mercilessly at you, all the while knowing it will choke the air out of you, your family and your livestock, and the static in the storm would be bad enough to kill the things you tried to keep growing despite the conditions.