What are you reading?

[maskaggs]

At the moment I'm reading The Sprawl by Jason Diamond, on the history and cultural meaning of suburbia. I have a review of the book in the works...

looking forward to reading it when you get a chance to post.

clive

Duly noted!

[John Rose]

I think my next book will be The Apostle by Brad Thor. Nothing like GIM to be sure. But there's nothing that puts me to sleep every night as fast as a good book. Out like a light.

Here ya go:

I had this as a text book at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. It was about how to be an effective supervisor, with many "what should you do in this situation?" examples.
At the beginning of the semester the instructor warned us that it was guaranteed to put you to sleep, and he was totally right.
It was spooky.

[Pauldog]

I've been spending a lot of time with two books lately, re-reading and pondering many parts several times over. One is fiction ("First Person" by Richard Flanagan) and one is non-fiction ("What is Reality?" by Adam Becker).

"First Person" is about a young, struggling writer who gets a break through a short, intense job ghost writing a book for a major con man who may also be a murderer. The young man gets entangled with the con man, and the experience ends up tainting his life. He becomes very successful in developing reality TV shows (which is something author Flanagan obviously despises), and he completely gives up on being a novelist. In the middle of this one, I learned that the novel was based on Flanagan's own experience ghost writing the memoirs of notorious Australian con man John Friedrich, though Flanagan didn't give up his art for television.

"What is Reality?" is about the foundations of quantum mechanics, centering on the Copenhagen Interpretation, the E-P-R thought experiment (which becomes a real-world experiment, with exciting results), Everett's Many-Worlds interpretation, David Bohm's pilot wave version of the Schrödinger equation, and Bell's Inequality. It goes heavily into the "sociology" and history of modern science, showing how a very strong personality like Neils Bohr can exert a huge amount of influence. For many years, it was career suicide to explore quantum foundations before becoming a tenured professor.

[brothers]

Hidden Order - Admittedly, this is just light diversional reading to take one's mind off the crazy times some folks are experiencing these days.

[brothers]

Code of Conduct

[brothers]

Just started the biography of Sam Houston. This author was selected by Houston, and the book was published in 1855. For the mathematicians, that's 165 years ago. The language and style takes some getting used to. I am enjoying the book, and the subject himself led an amazing life. He always seemed to know exactly what to do and always told the truth. Houston hated politics. He didn't seek fame or fortune, he just stood for what was right and didn't back down.

[brothers]

I just finished Marauder. Now I'm almost finished with The Ark written by a "new" author Boyd Morrison.

[Rufus]

“Fly Fishing for Trout, the next level” by Tom Rosenbauer. I’m hoping to get back to my favourite stream this year; couldn’t fish last year due to surgery and COVID-19.

[fallingwickets]

Last few books:

1) the things they carried (excellent read)

2) midnight in chernobyl

3) the book of lost names

4) the underground railroad

[fallingwickets]

the emperor of all maladies

decent read about cancer

clive

[jww]

A few months ago I grabbed the first Sister Fildema novel by Peter Tremayne -- been devouring them like popcorn since. Similar to Cadfael, with a somewhat repeatable model, but the addition of 7th century Irish politics makes them interesting reads.

[EL Alamein]

"After" by Dr. Bruce Greyson

Chris

[brothers]

The Vault by Boyd Morrison

[fallingwickets]

amazon unbound by brad stone

clive

[fallingwickets]

patrick keefe.... empire of pain

[brothers]

The Roswell Conspiracy - Boyd Morrison

[fallingwickets]

Deacon king kong by james mcbride

[drmoss_ca]

Having worked through the stack on the last page, I have devoured some more. Charles Murray's last two books, Human Diversity and Facing Reality, D.B.Baird's history The Hawken Rifle - The Mountain Man's Choice and Early Military Rifles by Németh Balázs (some of you may know him as the host of the capandball YouTube channel). Next up is Plagues and Peoples by William H. McNeill, and then I am ordered to read J.K.Rowling's The Casual Vacancy by 'er indoors.

[fallingwickets]

beneath a scarlet sky, mark sullivan

clive

[dosco]

Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett.

Hilarious(!!).