Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation – Steven Hyden One of two books I loaded onto my Kindle for our Italy trip, and the only one I really read much of, mostly on the train. This is Hyden’s take on the story of Pearl Jam, told through chapters that each center on one song selected from…

Five Decembers – James Kestrel I cheaped out when I bought my Kindle and got the one that has “special offers,” a euphemism for constant advertising on its sleep screen. All so I could save $50 or whatever. This book was often featured in those ads late last summer. I’ve found a lot of the books that Amazon pushes are…

The Stand – Stephen King I mentioned in my last entry I was working through a very big book. Nearly 30 years after reading the original version, I decided to read the “completed and uncut edition” of The Stand. Released in 1990, this version included over 400 pages cut from the original 1979 manuscript, and checks in at over 1100…

I am deep into the longest book I’ve read in years. My Kindle tells me I’m 54% through it after more than a week of work. Figured I better get to the books I read before I started it so I don’t totally forget what they were about. Italian Ways – Tim Parks Hmmm, a book about taking trains in…

I’ve stuck to a pretty brisk reading pace lately. Several of my latest batch of books have some common themes, so I’m going to pair them up to attempt to get through them quicker. Suburban Dicks – Fabian Nicieza The Damage – Caitlin Wahrer Two mysteries from first-time authors that were both very good. In Suburban Dicks a disgraced reporter…

After finishing nine books in July I didn’t finish my first August book until the 15th. And then I finished two more books in just over a week. I think I’m doing just fine. After the Fall – Ben Rhodes The latest book by former Obama staffer Rhodes, this one is about the current state of the world, how we…

July was one of my better reading months in recent memory. Nine books finished, and all were legit books. No graphic novels, manuals, photography collections, etc. mixed in. Here are some brief synopses. Phil – Alan Shipnuck The book that shook up the golf world when an excerpt was released earlier this year detailing Phil Mickleson’s thoughts about the Saudi-backed…

The Committed – Viet Thanh Nguyen I read, and loved, Nguyen’s The Sympathizer in 2015. His sequel did not quite meet the original’s standard. The Committed picks up a few years after The Sympathizer, with the main character living in Paris in the early 1980s, and attempting to start a new life in the Vietnamese ex-pat community. Once again he…

Midnight in Siberia – David Greene Interesting timing on reading this. Greene is a former NPR reporter who was the network’s Moscow bureau chief in the early 2010s. Late in his tenure, he took the Trans-Siberian Railway 6000 miles across Russia. In 2014, he returned to take the same journey and write about it. It is a fascinating read because…

Allow Me To Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution – Elie Mystal “Our Constitution is not good.” Thus begins a book that should infuriate anyone who reads it. Conservatives brave enough to take it on will be enraged by Mystal’s destruction of our most sacred document. Liberals will be maddened by how our entire republic was built upon…