I have been working on that for too long. My bookmark is still in the first 100 pages.
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"Sea to Shining Sea" looks interesting. I've read (and keep) Lewis & Clark's Journals, including the newly discovered one in an attic in St. Louis (what's it been now, 25 years?). I've visited the (Brig Gen) William Clark family gravesite at Bellefontaine Cemetary in St. Louis (set in a sort of Stonehenge manner with Brig Gen Clark in the Center. He wasn't originally buried there, but moved there later by the family.) I, of course, have been many times with many people to Fort Clatsop (old one before it was vandalized and burnt to the ground and new one rebuilt and better), Lewis & Clark National Historical Park.
That whole period of 1790-1860 is fascinating. Original route finders like those in the Lewis and Clark party, John Fremont's expeditions (researching him led me to discover and uncover lost graves of two of his and Jessie Benton Fremont's children (they were next to their Grandfather, Senator Benton, a primary proponent of "Manifest Destiny") where time had made them disappear decades before I found them...it was very spiritual at the moment, giving me a chance to give something back to these great people who sacrificed so much for us,...through research I discovered they were both originally buried further north of St. Louis and later moved there), the pioneers who went across the West from 1840-1850, the first settlers of the "Indiana" area where Tecumseh tried to save. The fascinating stories of Tecumseh leave me feeling that he was one of the greatest of people of "The Enlightenment" period, strewn with greatness we haven't seen since.
Looking forward to reading "Sea to Shining Sea". I have a copy of "From Sea to Shining Sea", another histotical novel.
Just got "Grant", by Ron Chernow, while I have a dozen books I'm trying to get through as it is.
Just finished reading “Educated: A Memoir” by Tara Westover. One of the best books I’ve read in a long time, if not ever. Her story is absolutely fascinating. She grew up in a survivalist family in Idaho and never had any formal schooling or ever went to the doctor, etc... Her dad thought the medical establishment was controlled by the Illuminati and there were some real consequences to this belief. She had also had an incredibly abusive brother her parents refused to believe did anyth8ng wrong.
She wound up buying an ACT prep book and taking it multiple times to finally get a score high enough to go to college. She had never been in a classroom before and outside of teaching her to read, her parents did no schooling at home. In one of her first classes, she read the word “holocaust”, raised her hand and said she didn’t know what that word meant. That didn’t go over very well so she learned to keep her background to herself.
She eventually goes on to win a Gates scholarship at Cambridge, attends Harvard, and gets a PhD at Cambridge. She’s only one 31. How it all unfolds is absolutely fascinating. I can’t recommend this book enough.
I have just about finished Rogers Hornsby by Charles C. Alexander. I have read just about every book Alexander has written. So I like his books a lot and this one is very good too. Hornsby was certainly a complicated fellow. His two main interest in life were baseball and gambling. He seemingly had no other interest in life. He also seemed to have to have no real friends either. He could just could not get along very well with others and made life hard on anyone around him. It was too bad he was like that because I'm sure he had much knowledge he could have passed along to others but refused most times.
I've picked up Ready Player One again, and it does start getting interesting around chapter eight.
btw, The Buried Giant was fantastic. I wish I had read it instead of listening to it, though. Ishiguro's prose circles in on itself to the point that it takes effort, but this is also part of what makes his writing worthwhile. I found myself thinking about the book quite a bit after I finished it, particularly the question of whether memory can prevent peace. The ending was sweet and hopeful, in a sense. I want to read The Remains of the Day now, having never seen the movie.
I've been working my way through Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series which is about English Navy adventures in the early 19th century. I'm a little past half way through them, and find them to be very enjoyable.
This is an interesting link:
https://archive.org/stream/lifeworks...nuoft_djvu.txt
The Aubrey-Maturin books are among my favorite things in the world. After The Commodore, however, O’Brian seems to lose some steam. This, I think, corresponds to the death of his wife, who was also his de facto editor. But in general I envy you, having the experience of reading them for the first time.
Just finished the Russian trilogy by Tom Rob Smith: Child 44, The Secret Speech and Agent 6. Not the most uplifting things you’ll ever read, but incredibly suspenseful and highly recommended (especially the first and third volumes).
"We Die Alone", (1955), by David Howarth.
The true story of Jan Baalsrud, a Norwegian who escaped the Nazi's in 1943 with the help of Northern Norwegians. Howarth ran a spy ring himself during WWII.
An excerpt from page 90:
"When one's body is worn by a long effort at the limit of its strength, and especially when its function is dulled by cold, one's mind loses first of all its sharp appreciation of time. Incidents which are really quite separate become blended together; the present and the immediate past are not distinct, but are all part of a vaguely defined present of physical misery. In a person of strong character, hope for the future remains separate long after the past and present are confused. It is when the future loses its clarity too, and hope begins to fade, that death is not far away."
Howarth was speaking of Baalsrud, who at that moment had been lost in a blizzard for three days, stormbound, suffering from exposure, blind, and unsure if it was night or day.
But, that description of the body and mind is the best I've ever seen describing what it must be like to be living in the later stages of Alzheimer's. The sadness of Alzheimer's is that they aren't able to tell us what exactly they are going through, and this morbid description describes for me some of the constant fright they are unable to tell us that I feel they must be going through.
There's a 2017 Norwegian movie of Baalsrud's escape titled, "The 12th Man" (English translation).
I'm not big into fantasy, but a friend gave me The Name of the Wind to read, and I tore through it. It didn't have the same kitsch level of some of the other fantasy novels I've tried (and failed) to enjoy. Already hounding her about giving me the sequel.
I just finished the latest Paul Tremblay book, The Cabin at the End of the Worldand it's difficult to talk about specifically without spoilers, so I'll just say this: I have been reading Robert Aickman short stories for the last year and a half, and when I finished this, I wondered whether Tremblay is among those, like Neil Gaiman and Ramsey Campbell, who were influenced by Aickman. A quick search showed that Tremblay had worked with John Langan, who has written about Aickman, so maybe. The reason for this is that Aickman, like Tremblay, wrote what I think of as postmodern stories. In Aickman's case, there were very few actual endings, and often you had no idea what had actually happened. Kind of like this book.
Anyway, I liked this book, but I wonder whether that was largely because my recent reading had been along the same lines. If A Head Full of Ghosts played around with ambiguity, this one bathes in it.
My paper and digital reading right now consists of dissertation stuff, so that leaves me with audio, and the book I've just started listening to is fantastic so far: Dracul by J.D. Barker and Dacre Stoker, supposedly based on notes left behind by Bram. It's a prequel. So far, young Bram is discovering that his nanny sleeps in a bed of dirt and becomes an old woman and walks into the lake at night. Since I love Victorian vampire lore, I'm hooked.