What book are you reading?

Always impressed with the list of what's out there to be read!

Just finished up the third book in the the "Joe Pickett" series by C.J. Box: a game warden in modern Wyoming who always ends up in the middle of trouble. Before that, "Bad Luck and Trouble" by Lee Child, and prior to that the newest Destroyer adventure.
 
The Alex McCandless story about a kid/guy who walked into the Alaskan wilderness and died there.
 
I've got two going right now...


The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Teddy Roosevelt.


Links by Nuruddin Farah

From The New Yorker
This Somali novelist, who won the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1998, lives in exile in South Africa but, in his fiction, regularly returns to probe the "Dantean complexity" of his homeland. In his ninth novel, an exiled Somali dissident named Jeebleh goes back to Mogadishu after more than twenty years to search for his mother's grave and to settle old scores in the noxious hodgepodge of clan-based militias, warlords, and trigger-happy American soldiers. Jeebleh, now a university professor in New York with an American wife and two daughters, expects that his voyage will reinforce the great divide between his new life and the violent inhabitants of the "city of death." Instead, after the abduction of a friend's daughter, he discovers his own capacity for violence and his thirst for "justice, by any means possible."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker
 
T. Erdelyi said:
The Alex McCandless story about a kid/guy who walked into the Alaskan wilderness and died there.
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into the wild. excellent book. the story is told exceptionally well.

ive read it at least five times. i hear it is going to be a movie soon.
 
The Sword & the mind and Understanding Heiroglyphs, a complete introductory Guide by Hilary Wilson
 
I am reading "Map of Bones" by James Rollins. It is like Dan Brown's "DaVinci Code" combined with Tom Clancy. I am enjoying this book very much.
 
MORIMOTOM said:
currently, "terror at beslan", by john gidduck.

almost done, next is chuck palahniuk's new book. then "on killing" by grossman.
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I've actually got a signed copy of the latter, On Killing. Has some nifty information in it but Grossman's writing style made me put the book down about 2/3's into it.

MORIMOTOM said:
the drummer from rush?
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He's written a cuple of books if I recall. I have the one about him riding through Africa. I should re-read it seeing as I can't even recall enough about it to tell you what I thought of it. Was about 5 years ago I read it, got it for christmas.
 
My most recent book was Wolfkiller by my great grandmother Louisa Wetherill
and my brother Harvey Leake.
From the Inside Flap
Wolfkiller is the remarkable life story of a Navajo herdsman and plant-gatherer who lived in the Monument Valley region of Navajo country, along the Utah/Arizona border, from about 1855 until 1926. Raised by his grandfather and mother, Wolfkiller learned the ancient wisdom of his people. He grew up seeing the beauty in nature and discovering how to face the wind, storms, cold, and even death with optimism and courage. Through his embrace of the natural world, he developed both a rare depth of character and an understanding of human relations that guided him through times of adversity.
Wolfkiller's story was recorded and translated by pioneer trader Louisa Wade Wetherill, who met him after moving to his community in the early twentieth century. After listening to Wolfkiller describe the wisdom of the elders he had learned as a child and by observing his respect for all of life, Louisa proposed that these lessons be preserved for the benefit of future generations.
Photographs of Wolfkiller and the Wetherills and other historical images are included throughout the book to help illustrate the mode of life, types of personalities, and environment in which Wolfkiller's story took place. Louisa Wade Wetherill was born in a small mining town in Nevada in 1877. When she was two years old, her family moved to the town of Mancos in southwestern Colorado. There she grew up and married rancher and explorer John Wetherill. In 1900, Louisa, John, and their two small children left Mancos and moved to a trading post among the Navajos in northwestern New Mexico. In 1906, the Wetherills moved to an isolated area in southeastern Utah where they established their Oljato trading post. Among their neighbors was Wolfkiller, a man Louisa quickly came to know and respect. For more than forty years she devoted herself to studying Navajo culture and became an advocate for recording their ancient customs. Her Navajo friends called her Asthon Sosi, Slim Woman.
Harvey Leake began tracing the trail of his great-grandparents, Louisa and John Wetherill, more than twenty-five years ago in libraries, archives, and family papers, and by listening to the recollections of the family elders. He assists in the interpretation of historical documents and photographs for the Wetherill archive at the Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores, Colorado. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from Arizona State University and a Master of Arts degree in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary.
"If Mrs. Wetherill could be persuaded to write on the mythology of the Navajos . . . she would render an invaluable service. She not only knows their language; she knows their minds." Theodore Roosevelt, after visiting the trading post in 1913
"The ancient world and the American present meet in [Louisa Wetherill's] personality as perhaps in no other personality alive." John Collier, who later became U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs
 
I just finished up "The Worst Hard Time" -- book about the Dust Bowl... read it and you will find yourself complaining about life a lot less -- they had it hard :)

I just started "Continental Drift" by Russell Banks -- hoping it is good as I really enjoyed "Cloudsplitter"

Is the A. McCandless book you guys are reading the one by Krakauer? I read his -- I think it was called "Into the Wild" and I really enjoyed it. His other book, "Into Thin Air" is really good as well.
 
bammann45 said:
I just finished up "The Worst Hard Time" -- book about the Dust Bowl... read it and you will find yourself complaining about life a lot less -- they had it hard :)

I just started "Continental Drift" by Russell Banks -- hoping it is good as I really enjoyed "Cloudsplitter"

Is the A. McCandless book you guys are reading the one by Krakauer? I read his -- I think it was called "Into the Wild" and I really enjoyed it. His other book, "Into Thin Air" is really good as well.
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The Worst Hard Times is really a a very hard book to read. I found myself putting it aside and putting it aside because I just couldn't take it. But, I did finish it and I can say that this is one book that I honestly feel that I am a better person for having read.

And Continental Drift is as good as Cloudsplitter.

Krakauer's books, on the other hand, I can't stand. They're, IMHO, just stupid books about stupid people and reading two of them annoyed me.
 
Gollnick said:
Krakauer's books, on the other hand, I can't stand. They're, IMHO, just stupid books about stupid people and reading two of them annoyed me.
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Heh, I hear you. The Alex M wandering into the wilderness story does have naive idiocy as the root cause of his death. But I did enjoy reading about his desire to find something real at some undiscovered frontier-- even it if proved illusory and ultimately deadly for him.

I liked "Into Thin Air" because I do enjoy adventure traveling, plus you have to admit that the slow moving train wreck of the climb itself was pretty entertaining.
 
I've been reading a lot of World War 1 history in the last several years. Currently I'm reading The Somme by Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson. Very good book, but not an easy read.

It blames the British failure on poor artillery support and lack of tactical understanding in the higher ranks of command. Interesting stuff.

Before this I read Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour by Joseph Persico, a wonderful book about the last day of the war. And before that was The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman, about the war's first month, which I think is the best WW1 history I've read.

Up next I've got The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson.
 
Vivi said:
I've actually got a signed copy of the latter, On Killing. Has some nifty information in it but Grossman's writing style made me put the book down about 2/3's into it.
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i read "on combat" earlier this year, and had no issues with his style of writing. looking forward to "on killing".

also hoping to attend his seminar later this year, "the bulletproof mind".
 
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