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Read any good books lately?

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Read any good books lately?

Old 08-28-15, 08:36 PM
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Old 08-29-15, 10:27 AM
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Currently reading Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac".
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Old 08-29-15, 06:58 PM
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Just finished reading USA by John Dos Passos.

It's a massive modernist trilogy that attempts to capture the 'voice' of American history from 1900 through 1930 (from Dos Passos' leftist point of view, written between the years 1927-1936) with several different styles of prose and a dozen interwoven storylines. If you have any interest in the history and culture of the US from that period it's fantastic and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
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Old 08-29-15, 09:31 PM
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I'm a avid reader. My favorite author is Larry McMurtry. I haven't seen anything new from him lately. But I have read all his books. Currently resding the Money Changers by Arthur Hailey, author of Hotel and Airport which are good reads in themselves. Love Stephen King too but I couldn't stand his Buick book. Seems like someone else wrote it. What a bore that was. Threw it in the garbage after 125 pages.
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Old 08-29-15, 09:36 PM
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Taylor Park - Colorado's Shangri-La, by Eleanor Perry.
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Old 08-29-15, 10:02 PM
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OK bike book fans, here's a challenge. About 15 years ago I read a book about a bike ride across America and I'd love to read it again. I can remember 2 things about it. 1st is that it was a really good well written 1st person travelogue, and second is that there was a chapter where he meets another cyclist who used to be a pro. They ride a while, and it turns out the other chap used to be on a pro team, and was a barber in his other life. He gave up the cycling because it made his hands tremble and he took the decision to keep his long term career over his love of bikes. When they parted company he cut the hair of the writer to perfection.

Name that book...
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Old 08-29-15, 10:32 PM
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Just some thrift store gems.
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Old 08-31-15, 09:13 AM
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Originally Posted by Sir_Name


A good read, interesting insight into that world and time.
Agree, an amazing book. Ghost written but a very good job of it.

My bike book, on the other hand, is not ghost written, and is very much in keeping with the Classic theme of this forum.

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Old 08-31-15, 09:22 AM
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Still struggling to get through Swann's Way, by Proust. Gawd…it's dense stuff.

In the meantime, I read all of the Harry Potter books. Not something I'd normally be drawn to, but found the whole set at a yard sale for seven bucks, and found them mildly interesting. I finished them though. Kind of fun, but I wouldn't do it again.
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Old 08-31-15, 09:34 AM
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Originally Posted by Repack Rider
Agree, an amazing book. Ghost written but a very good job of it.

My bike book, on the other hand, is not ghost written, and is very much in keeping with the Classic theme of this forum.
A friend of mine was out at the Marin museum a week or so ago, had a great time talking with you(?), and brought back a copy of your book - I thumbed through it quickly and will be getting a copy for myself. Awesome stuff. Thanks.
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Old 08-31-15, 09:48 AM
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Originally Posted by rootboy
Right on, Rocket-sauce.

I'll add; try look at great paintings or photographs on a kindle.
Best in person of course, but good art books are treasures.
Yet, on an iPad paintings and photographs look incredible! Probably better than books.
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Old 08-31-15, 10:03 AM
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[h=1]The Short Reign of Pippin IV[/h]
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Old 08-31-15, 10:11 AM
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I am not an avid reader. Not really a reader either! I did purchase Team 7-Eleven: ... and completed it recently. An enjoyable read.

Currently working on Half Man Half Bike The beginning is more about the author than the Man or the Bike! Although I have been riding a bike since maybe the 50's, I never really paid attention to the whole race scene until I lived in Europe, '69-'71. I learned about Eddie then and still didn't pay much attention, just rode my bike a lot. Now that I am older and have a better appreciation of the sport and the bikes, I am trying to catch up!
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Old 08-31-15, 10:12 AM
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Originally Posted by Rocket-Sauce
Loved this. If you are a child of the 80s, you will too.

Looks fun, thanks! Just bought it for my Kindle.
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Old 08-31-15, 10:21 AM
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Originally Posted by RobbieTunes
Apocalypse Now was basically Heart of Darkness. When I said so in an essay in college (we were to watch the movie and describe it as an anti-war masterpiece), and came at it from a the perspective of a combat infantryman, my professor quite angrily threw all her anti-war leftist credentials at me, but I ducked and parried. Somehow, I found an interview with Brando in which he came at it much the same way, and she believed him, so she gave me an A.

To this day, I doubt she's even read Heart of Darkness. It may contain insights into the human condition that she prefers to avoid knowing. Then again, she was a lot smarter than I thought, so maybe she was just glad to have someone thinking outside the pre-programmed box. I imagine reading 100 essays that all say whatever the students think you want is fairly mind-numbing.
Hilarious! When I saw Apocalypse Now at the movies, I thought it was just a modern-day remake of Heart of Darkness.
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Old 09-01-15, 08:12 AM
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I just finished Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

It was so great, for so many reasons. It was a 'just what I needed' kind of thing, almost providential'.

I recommend it to anyone who likes a good, thought provoking read.
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Old 09-01-15, 09:52 AM
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Originally Posted by Sir_Name


A good read, interesting insight into that world and time.
Read it. Lots of smack talk, couldn't get into the pity side of it. We all make our own bed.

For those who read Half Man Half Bike, you might enjoy Reckless: The Life and Times of Luis Ocana

Matter of fact, if you only read one of them, you have to read the other.
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Old 09-01-15, 10:35 AM
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I'm reading C J Box now and have some Tom McGuane, Jim Harrison, and Barbara Kingsolver (and other C J Box books) in the queue. I tend to like western literature and mysteries.
Edward Abbey is always great too.
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Old 12-09-15, 05:50 PM
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Originally Posted by rootboy
In B&N looking for a new volume, I picked up a copy of ROAD TO VALOR, about Gino Bartali and his life and what he did during World War Two.
Surprisingly good! Well written and a great story. I knew who Bartali was, but just barely. I had no idea he was a bit of a hero during the war!
Great reading.
Bumping this thread to add a +1 to ROAD TO VALOR by Ali and Andres McConnor, which I, too, very much enjoyed. I knew very little about Gino Bartali before picking up this well-researched and engaging book, and came away with a great amount of admiration for the man and others of his era. I learned a lot about not only bike racing during the 30s and 40s, but also the war experience of Italian Jews; Italian politics leading up to, during and following WWII; and the role of sport in politics during this period in history.

Next up, The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien. I'll report back...
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Old 12-09-15, 06:21 PM
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I've been reading in Mike Burrows Bicycle design. Very interesting, pithy, opinionated, and(IMHO) very well reasoned. It's not enough to make me sell all my bikes and go full carbon yet, but some of the recumbent designs are super cool.
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Old 12-09-15, 07:15 PM
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The Bartali story is great, eh Gaucho? I watched the documentary the other night. Also quite good. What's it called? My Italian Secret? Or something like that. Worth a look.

Reading: I'm wading through German Expressionism: Documents from the end of the Wilhelmine Empire to the rise of National Socialism.
By Washton-Long. Interesting, and a bit dry. It was a fascinating period in art history.

Last month found an old paperback copy of The Man in the High Castle, by P.K. Dick. The first science fiction I'd read in about forty years.
Then saw on Amazon they had made a mini series of it. Not bad. One pf the pddest books I've ever read.
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Old 12-09-15, 07:19 PM
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Originally Posted by Pemetic2006
?..... and have some Tom McGuane, Jim Harrison.......
Two of my faves.
Though I've barely been able to bear Harrison's last several books. And I like him.
His Just Before Dark remains one of the top non fiction books on my list, along with McGuane's The Longest Silence.
The best prose ever written on fishing, IMO.
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Old 12-09-15, 07:54 PM
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The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine. Excellent read, tho the intro (not by the author) left me...

The Professor and the Mad Man, I don't recollect the author. About writing the Oxford English Dictionary, also an excellent read.
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Old 12-09-15, 11:22 PM
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Originally Posted by rootboy
In the meantime, I read all of the Harry Potter books. Not something I'd normally be drawn to, but found the whole set at a yard sale for seven bucks, and found them mildly interesting. I finished them though. Kind of fun, but I wouldn't do it again.
I got sucked into the HP series as well, but I'm a sucker for magic. I rolled my share of 20-sided dice as a kid. Read through the series when they came out and never thought I'd do it again either. But now I've got a young daughter and I'm on book 5, round 2.

Speaking of magic, and beyond the young adult genre, The Fifth Business by Robertson Davies is fantastic. It's the first book in the Depford Trilogy, though inexplicably I never went on to read the rest of the trilogy (note to self). Someone I didn't know very well gave me a copy. I was very much a book snob at the time, and probably took it like I would now take food from a stranger off the street--with every intention of tossing it in the next dumpster. It was an unexpected joy in many ways!

Originally Posted by rhm
I've been reading in Mike Burrows Bicycle design. Very interesting, pithy, opinionated, and(IMHO) very well reasoned. It's not enough to make me sell all my bikes and go full carbon yet, but some of the recumbent designs are super cool.
There's a different book by the same title you might enjoy: Bicycle Design: An Illustrated History, by Tony Hadland and Hans Erhard-Lessing (MIT Press). The prose is bit plodding and dry, but it is a trove of arcane and innovative bike tech over the entire history of the bicycle and its precursors, and complimented with an abundance of illustrations from patent drawings of early spoked wheels and baby seats (e.g. Batchelder, 1898), catalogs illustrations and advertisements from long-defunct companies (e.g. 1871 advertising card for Frenchman Eugene Meyer, credited with inventing the wire tension wheel and the high-wheeler), through Rebour drawings of classic Campagnolo components, and more recent advancements such as disc brakes and monocoque frames. After a few beginning chapters on the early mutations of the bicycle we know today, the book departs from a chronological history to focus of topics such as lighting, racks/luggage, braking, transmission, mountain bikes, etc. A fascinating and relatively exhaustive (I get the sense the authors could have turned in a much longer manuscript if not reined in by their editor) book.

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Old 12-10-15, 01:28 AM
  #525  
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The most interesting thing I've read lately is Do You Love Me? by R. D. Laing. Laing was a psychiatrist who wrote extensively about schizophrenia and other disorders, but this book is definitely a unique take on his area of expertise: it's a collection of poetry he wrote depicting mental health issues. Delusions, obsessions, senility, dementia, schizophrenia, "treatment," and more are depicted in verse form that's both engaging and instructive, sometimes amusing, and occasionally distressing. If you have an interest in either the subject material, or just want to read some 'crazy good' wordplay, I highly recommend seeking this book out.
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