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What Are You Reading Right Now?

To reply to the OP, I just finished “High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic,” God, we were weird in the 1940s-1950s.

Then just started “The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend,” about that great John Wayne film.

Both books by Glenn Frankel.
 

I recently finished 'Neptuns Inferno' by James D. Hornfischer. It is about the Naval battles surrounding Guadelcanal. And most especially the battle of Iron Bottom Sound. Most don't realize how the American Navy in the Pacific was so outnumbered and outclassed in the first years of WW2, by the Japanese fleet. But they, at Iron Bottom Sound, made it count, though through much losses on both sides.

A couple of other books I also have finished in the past 6 months: 1.) Wounded Tiger. It is the story of the Japanes leader of the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor. He is the one who cried Torah, torah, torah, letting his planes know they had taken the Americans by surprise and to attack. Intertwined in his story is his road to becomeing a born-again Christian later. It is by T. Martin Bennett. 2.) A Higher Call. by Adam Makos. A story of miraculous survival of a B-17 plane that was so shot up, it shouldn't have been in the air. A German fighter pilot spotted it, and could have easily shot it down....but didn't. Instead, he tried his best to see it got to safety. It is a great story.

Lees
 

I just finished the book 'Massacre on the Merrimack', by Jay Atkinson. If you like the movie, 'The Searchers', you should like this book. And this is a true story.

Lees
 
I’ve read A Higher Call by Makos. Absolutely one of most amazing stories to come out of WWII.
 
I finished Nightshade by Michael Connelly. It is a "stand alone" book as opposed to one featuring one of his popular protagonists like Mickey Haller, The Lincoln Lawyer, or his half-brother Harry Bosch the retired Los Angeles homicide detective. I may have read all of Connelly's books, including the more edgy stand alone books like The Scarecrow. I definitely follow him and keep up with what he is writing. I have been hoping for more books about the collaboration between Harry Bosch and the fairly new addition of Hollywood detective Renée Ballard.

Nightshade features a Los Angeles homicide detective who has been sent to Catalina to exile him due to some bad political moves he made within the police department. While in Catalina he lives a different lifestyle but still puts his detective skills to work. I found the book mildly enjoyable, but not compelling. I doubt that it can be made into a series.
 
I'm reading 'The Coming Wave' by Mustafa Suleyman. He's an important person in the development of Artificial Intelligence - owner of the software that first won a 'Go' tournament that included world champions and current CEO of Microsoft AI. I'm only 75 pages in, but I'm pretty sure that if you want to get a basic understanding of where AI is headed, this is the book you want to read.
 
Looks interesting, our library has it!
 
There was a similar quote in the book.
 
I read two "cozy mysteries" by Robert Thorogood in the Marlow Murder Club Mystery series: The Marlow Murder Club, and Death Comes To Marlow. I am currently reading the third book in the series, The Queen of Poisons. Some reviews have compared the author with Agatha Christie, which I think is unusual for books considered "cozy mysteries". They are quite readable.
 
I just finished reading 1861: The Lost Peace by Jay Winik. It is a worthwhile read for history buffs, especially Civil War buffs. I was not as overwhelmed as I was by The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800 or 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History, both by Jay Winik. I really wanted to learn more about what swung Virginia to secede, since it it my view that without Virginia the rebellion would have sputtered. Also missing was any real discussion about Maryland's remaining, or the spiriting of governmental papers to New York City.

On a more positive note he did a very good job of analyzing Lincoln's resistance to his bureaucracy's tendency to appease the South. 1861 was only a "lost peace" if odious surrenders were made to the Confederacy. This would have begat more and more surrenders. I did not realize how strong were the forces that Lincoln bucked in this regard. I am giving this a "four" even though it's really a "three and a half."
 
I'm currently reading The Mesopotamian Riddle about men in 1840's racing to be the first to decipher the oldest written language of Ancient Sumer and thereabouts. It's really interesting, although the detailed descriptions of the known ancient languages they had to go by is sometimes over my head. I haven't lost the storyline yet, though.
 
Just finished one of Forester’s Horatio Hornblower books, “Ship of the Line.” In keeping with the Napoleonic/Royal Navy theme, I am rereading a series that I was read to as a young’un, “Midshipman Quinn,” Showell Styles, author. It’s for younger readers, but holds up well for older readers.
 


After being pleasantly surprised as I was with the quality of the writing in the top rated Warhammer 40,000 series, I decided to dive back in with what many say is the best series of the bunch, the Ciaphas Cain series.

I've completed the Gaunt's Ghosts series, all of the Eisenhorn series (that's been released) and a good deal of the Horus Heresy stuff, and while this series is fun, I don't think it really stacks up.

It's very well written, has all the earmarks of a good action Sci-Fi series, but I don't think I really am buying into the character of Ciaphas Cain.

The first book drops you, in media res, into the career of Ciaphus Cain, the most decorated Commissar in the military. So decorated that he is dubbed "The Hero of the Empirium".

The stories of his exploits are told as memoire written by Cain in his retirement where is is essentially coming clean about how he is no hero. All of his greatest victories are accidents that resulted from mostly just sacrificing his own soldiers to save his hide. He's a callous self absorbed womanizer.

So far it sets itself up to be a rather fun angle for a novel. It gave me BLACKADDER vibes from the start, complete with his own slovenly side kick (Baldric for BLACKADDER, Yurgin for CAIN), but I guess what turns me off a bit is that it's not BLACKADDER enough. Cain is, it turns out extremely competent and a preternatural swordsman and tactician, so while he often excuses his own successes as a unintentional biproduct of his own cowardice, in the end it comes off more s a humble brag to down play physical and mental feats that far exceed the average soldier.

The added level of novelty in the series is that there are several meta narratives to the book series as it is shot through with editorial notes by an Inquisitor named Amberley Vail who was Cain's romantic interest on and off for what seems like a long time (Cain, at the time of writing his memoirs was maybe 200 years old?) , who adds her own commentary, and outside excerpts of other books to add color to Cain's self serving memoir. These can be rather funny because there is another woman in Cain's life, Col. Regina Kasteen, who herself went on to attain the role of General and wrote her own memoirs. It's funny because Vail includes these excerpts while it's clear she doesn't much like Kasteen or her writing style.

Anyway, it's a very interesting series so far and I'll keep reading it, and the format is certainly interesting, but Cain's "inadvertant heroics as a side effect of cowardice" schtick is getting a bit old.
 
I just finished The Guns of Antwerp by John Monaghan. It was on a list of books that supposedly everyone was reading right now according to "The New York Times". Since I never know what anyone is currently reading, I thought I would try it. It was gripping. The author is a former New York City policeman and he gets nothing wrong about about police procedure, including crowd control tactics. He also writes well; he has a good education. The plot is improbable, but if you like fast paced adventure stories, this is very good.
 



Just starting this.
 
Last night I finished Policing Saigon, by Loren Christensen. Christensen was an Army MP in Saigon 1969 - 1970. The book was much more than I expected. Christensen writes from his heart and is at times brutally honest about himself and the war. Each chapter is a story from the day before his departure to Vietnam to the day he returns. If you are interested in the war from a non-grunt perspective I highly recommend it. Christensen nails it in a well written book.

A good friend I grew up with went through the meat grinder in the Hill Fights at Khe Sanh on Hill 881 as rifleman in the 3rd Marines. The fact that he made it home after being shot in the head and in the side and having shrapnel rip through his abdomen from just below his navel all the way up his chest is a story in itself.

I am reading Last Stand at Khe Sanh, by Gregg Jones. The book is about the Hill Fights at Khe Sanh. It is detailed and graphic. US Marines have certainly earned the world's respect again and again in battle. Khe Sanh was and is one amazing example of their commitment and sacrifice. Great book so far.
 
I recently finished So Far Gone by Jess Walter, a book on the list of books everyone is reading published by "The New York Times". I never would have read it if I hadn't found it on that list, and I enjoyed it. It just isn't the kind of book I usually look for. I read the précis in the NYT story and it sounded weird and interesting, which it was. The characters were believable and the author had a sense of humor. The plot involved a mother who ran off and left her two young children with her elderly father who was living off the grid, only to have them pursued by her husband who belonged to a church of gun toting members of an odd Christian church in Idaho.

I am now reading another book from the same NYT list: the third book written by Bill Clinton and James Patterson: The First Gentleman. It is very long, but very riveting. I like the combination of Bill Clinton's inside knowledge of how the protocols around the presidency work and Patterson's writing ability plus Clinton's intellect and good grammar. It is nice to read a book where I don't have to encounter egregious grammatical and spelling errors. (I do, sometimes, have to change "like" to "as" in my head, though, or reword a sentence so as not to split an infinitive.)
 
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