Read Devolution, Max Brooks' 2nd book after World War Z. Not anywhere near as good as WWZ but it was still an entertaining quick read. Would recommend.
Post by Iron Mike Sharpe on Apr 27, 2021 15:33:21 GMT -5
Read True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee a month or so ago. Probably not a good read if you want to keep the idolized version of Stan Lee in your mind. Cliffs: Great at promotion, lousy at creativity.
Since then I discovered the library has all of the old 60's Marvel comics on the Hoopla app. Been reading through some of the titles to see how everything all started: Fantastic Four, Avengers, Capt America, Iron Man, and Spidey. The old comics were very verbose, a lot of dialogue and exposition. Also, they were poorly edited. A lot of times characters were called by the wrong name and other blatant errors. Many of the old villains, particularly the ones that didn't stick around, were very lame. Still good to read them.
Today I picked up: Nothin But A Good Time: The Uncensored History of the Hard Rock Explosion. It appears to be written in the oral history format.
Read Devolution, Max Brooks' 2nd book after World War Z. Not anywhere near as good as WWZ but it was still an entertaining quick read. Would recommend.
Read this too. This review sounds about right even though I don't really remember World War Z.
Read Dune and then the sequel (?) follow up (?) book 2 of 6 Dune Messiah
Dune was interesting/good. Definitely zero surprise to read after I read it that the author was all about psychedelics because there are a few too many tangents into basically the inner monologue of someone dropping acid
2nd book was ok. Way too much of the psychedelic tripping, especially since it was a shorter book. (Apparently Dune was originally 2 books combined into 1?)
Anyway, first one ended before I thought it was going to because there were 100+ pages of fucking Appendixes which is why I really can't get full on into sci-fi or fantasy books because you get GRRM or Tolkien of this guy Herbert throwing in like 50% of the info that makes the story make sense at the end in separate whatevers and just... why? I dunno, not a fan.
Still, cranked through them both in the past 2ish weeks so I'm still intrigued by the upcoming Dune movie.
This has been a haphazard, meandering review. Thank you.
Read Glory Days by Jon Wertheim about the Summer of 1984--pretty entertaining, quick read. It really is remarkable just how much "stuff" happened that summer. Some of it was a rehash of things I already was largely familiar with but overall I would recommend it. Only about 300 pages or so, kind of uses Jordan in the Olympics and coming into the league as the anchor, but mostly each chapter is a different topic from sports or pop culture.
Read Glory Days by Jon Wertheim about the Summer of 1984--pretty entertaining, quick read. It really is remarkable just how much "stuff" happened that summer. Some of it was a rehash of things I already was largely familiar with but overall I would recommend it. Only about 300 pages or so, kind of uses Jordan in the Olympics and coming into the league as the anchor, but mostly each chapter is a different topic from sports or pop culture.
Thanks for the report. I think I will pick that up. I was 14 that summer, so I remember a lot about it.
The Greatest Beer Run Ever---true story of a Vietnam vet who made it his mission to bring beer to guys from his neighborhood over there. Great premise (they're making it into a movie), starts off well enough, but it just kind of slogs along. Had really good reviews on Amazon which is why I picked it up, but I saw this review header and very much agree:
2.0 out of 5 stars Reads like a kids adventure story with imagined conversation.
It's a quick, light read but overall, I wouldn't recommend.
The Devil May Dance -- New book by Jake Tapper, sequel to his original which was pretty good. Tapper's a pretty good writer (though he should focus more on getting the news right, amirite??!). Historical fiction, brings in the early 60s Rat Pack, Kennedys, etc. Entertaining story. Ending seemed like he wasn't quite sure what he wanted to do with it, plus the limitation of historical fiction is that you don't have a ton of control over the ending. If your movie ends before November 1963, you can't surprisingly kill off Kennedy. Um, overall, solid mystery book, moves along really quickly, probably would recommend to most.
Post by Iron Mike Sharpe on Aug 3, 2021 18:34:36 GMT -5
The other night I read: The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
In the mid 80's some 20 year old in Maine just dropped out of society without telling family, friends, his job, etc. He set up camp in the woods like a mile away from a lake with summer cottages and also a summer camp for disabled kids around the lake. For the next 27 years, he survived by breaking into the cottages and summer camp to steal food, clothes, supplies, etc. He estimated he committed 40 break-ins a year.
The book opens with his capture and then backtracks to the beginning of his story and works its way forward through the resolution of his trial and the aftermath of that. A quick 200 page read.
The other night I read: The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
In the mid 80's some 20 year old in Maine just dropped out of society without telling family, friends, his job, etc. He set up camp in the woods like a mile away from a lake with summer cottages and also a summer camp for disabled kids around the lake. For the next 27 years, he survived by breaking into the cottages and summer camp to steal food, clothes, supplies, etc. He estimated he committed 40 break-ins a year.
The book opens with his capture and then backtracks to the beginning of his story and works its way forward through the resolution of his trial and the aftermath of that. A quick 200 page read.
How Lucky-- Will Leitch's novel. It was good. Well written, not what I expected at all, it's mostly a mystery about a missing girl but there are layers. Couple random Deadspin last names thrown in for characters. I went in basically blind with the exception of Stephen King tweeting that it was really good, I'd recommend the same if possible, so I won't talk to much more about the plot than that. Meanders a bit, but overall, solid book.
How Lucky-- Will Leitch's novel. It was good. Well written, not what I expected at all, it's mostly a mystery about a missing girl but there are layers. Couple random Deadspin last names thrown in for characters. I went in basically blind with the exception of Stephen King tweeting that it was really good, I'd recommend the same if possible, so I won't talk to much more about the plot than that. Meanders a bit, but overall, solid book.
