Reader’s Notebook, 5/28/20
Say Nothing – Patrick Radden Keefe My brother-in-books Sir David and I often share recommendations with each other. I don’t know that he’s ever pushed a book as hard as he did this one. I think he got a little nervous he had oversold it, but this turned out to be a great recommendation. Keefe provides a thorough but quick…
Reader’s Notebook, 5/11/20
Point B – Drew Magary God damnit, Magary has done it again! (I feel like he would like that opening line.) If you can’t immediately place the name, Magary is the all-around excellent writer responsible for things like his annual take down of the Williams Sonoma Christmas catalog, the best mailbag on the internet (once on Deadspin now on Vice),…
Reader’s Notebook, 4/23
I worked my way through my stack of library books a few weeks ago, so it’s down to the Kindle and re-reading a few books I have around until the physical library opens again. Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name – Vendela Vida With the transition to Kindle books, I’m finding recommendations in odd places. Someone on Twitter recommended…
Reader’s Notebook + The Masters Rewinds
The Second Life of Tiger Woods – Michael Bamberger There was a hole in Easter weekend: there was no live coverage of the Masters. Even in that long stretch when I didn’t have much interest in golf, the Masters was still must-watch TV. It was a sign that spring was close, the carefully manicured lushness of Augusta National giving hope…
Reader’s Notebook, 4/7/20
Well, I did it. I finished my pile of books I checked out from the library last night. I have a couple books on my Kindle that I’ve purchased to get through the next week or so. After that I guess I’ll start checking out ebooks from the library, which I kind of hate to do after learning about how…
Reader’s Notebook, 3/31/20
First off, in my last entry I mentioned that I had forgotten to include a book in my December updates. But I had also forgotten the book’s title, so I could not mention it at all. Fortunately the author of the book blurbed one of this entry’s books which jogged my memory. This is my official recognition that I read…
Reader’s Notebook, 3/11/20
An Honorable Man – Paul Vidich I’m on a bit of a Cold War kick right now; I believe reading about Chernobyl kicked it off. This is the first of several Cold War espionage thrillers I’m working my way through. It takes place in Washington 1953, in the midst of the Korean War and as the McCarthy hearings are getting…
Reader’s Notebook, 2/10/20
While reading one of these books, I had a memory of a similar book I had read recently. I looked into my Books Read list and could not find a match. I went back to reading, but the memory stuck with me. Soon I was checking again, and then looking through my Reader’s Notebook entries for the past few months,…
Reader’s Notebook, 1/23/20
I started 2020 off with two excellent reads. Midnight in Chernobyl – Adam Higginbotham This is, quite simply, one of the best works of non-fiction I’ve ever read. It is a highly detailed, yet brisk, accounting of the 1986 meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the then Soviet Union. Higginbotham provides quick summaries of just about everything that…
Reader’s Notebook, 1/8/20
Time for a final 2019 wrap up, this time the books I read last year. To start quick summaries of the final four books I read in December. Killing Floor – Lee Child I’ve seen the Jack Reacher books in airport bookstores, at grocery stores, and in other locations over the years that made me dismiss them as just another…