Category: books
-
marlowe
I had just finished re-reading Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely and was four chapters into The Lady In The Lake when the answer to a long-standing problem finally hit me. For years, I’ve wondered who could believably play Phillip Marlowe. So far, just about everybody who has played him in movies and television, with maybe… Read.
-
The Martian
Sean gave me a copy of The Martian for my birthday. I’d already read it, but it’s the thought that counts. “You’ve already read it too, right?” I asked Sean, who always reads the books he gives to me. “Of course,” he answered with a smile. Tim hadn’t read it yet, so I gave it… Read.
-
reading frenzy
I’ve spent the past two-three, maybe four – okay, it might be five weeks now that I’ve been reading Ian Toll’s Pacific Crucible: War At Sea In The Pacific, 1941-1942. In my defense, it’s a thick book. Also, I can’t stop myself from paging back to re-read parts of it. It’s possibly the most engaging… Read.
-
Wool
I’ve been reading a story called Wool, a hugely popular sci-fi novel set in a distopian future when the surface of the planet is so toxic that people have to live underground in hermetically sealed silos because one deep breath of the outside air makes people double over in stomach-cramping pain and die. The story opens… Read.
-
Boomerang
I couldn’t finish reading Boomerang, Michael Lewis’s book about how all the bankers in the world simultaneously became irresponsible jerks. Not that it wasn’t a good book; far from it, the book was easy to read and the author seems to know quite a lot about how the financial world works and why it went… Read.
-
Field Notes From A Catastrophe
-
The Astronaut Wives Club
It’s possible that the seven wives of the first American astronauts may have been boring people. I haven’t met any of them. It seems unlikely, though. What I’ve read about them (up until now) suggests that they were at least as interesting as most people. And being military wives, they’d traveled back and forth across… Read.
-
Frederick Pohl
Alas, Frederick Pohl We have lost another giant. Read.
-
morning quote
This: When the English stormed the Emerald Isle in the 17th century, they took everything that was worth taking and burned everything else. Thereafter, the Irish had no land, no money, no future. That left them with words, and words became books, and books, ingeniously coupled with music and alcohol, enabled the Irish to transcend… Read.
-
book snack
The only fit snack while reading is the olive in a martini. — P.J. O’Rourke Read.
This Is Drivel 