City of Thieves Author: David BenioffCopyright: 2008Type: FictionFinished: September 7, 2019 Rating: ★★★★★ Image from Amazon I went from the pure escapism of Son of Tarzan to one of the grittiest, intense novels I’ve ever read, in City of Thieves by David Benioff. The protagonist, Lev, is a teenage watchman in his apartment building in …
The Son of Tarzan Author: Edgar Rice BurroughsCopyright: 1915 (Original)Type: FictionFinished: August 31, 2019 Rating: ★★★ Image from Amazon For a misogynistic, racist, and scientifically inaccurate novel, this is a fun read. Lord Greystoke (Tarzan) is living back in London with his wife and teenage son, Jack. They keep Jack in the dark about his …
Chances AreAuthor: Richard RussoType: FictionFinished: August 21, 2019Copyright: 2019 Rating: ★★★★★ Image from Amazon Lincoln, Teddy, and Mickey were college friends who worked together cooking and cleaning for a women’s sorority house in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Their paths diverged on the military draft night of December 1969. “Earlier, while serving the girls’ …
Where the Crawdads SingAuthor: Delia OwensType: FictionFinished: August 1, 2019Copyright: 2018 Rating: ★★★★ Image from Amazon This is a tale of a young girl – Catherine “Kya” Clark – who is abandoned by her mother, brother, and father to life in a marshy North Carolina cabin. From the age of six she has to learn …
The Order of TimeAuthor: Carlo RovelliType: Non-Fiction(Physics)Finished: July 5, 2019Copyright: 2018 Image from Amazon Carlo Rovelli opens his book by warning us there is no such thing as time. “We convetionally think of time as something simple and fundamental that flows uniformly, independently from everything else, from the past to the future, measured by clocks …
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics Author: Carlo RovelliType Non-Fiction (Physics)Finished: June 13, 2019Copyright 2016 Rating: ★★★ Image from Amazon Although brief in terms of pages, this book is not a breeze. Each lesson moves through the evolution of theories on the make up of the universe. Carlo Rovelli starts with Einstein’s work that proved “that atoms …
The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern WorldAuthor: Simon WinchesterType: Non-FictionFinished: June 11, 2019Copyright: 2018 Rating: ★★★★ Image from Amazon In the pre-industrial world precision was unneeded. It was easy enough to live one’s life without knowing exactly what time it was or exactly how far apart two places were. All manufacturing was essentially …
Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible VoyageAuthor: Alfred LansingType: Non-FictionFinished: April 14, 2019Copyright: 1959 Rating: ★★★★ Image from Amazon Ernest Shackleton was a product of his time – the late 19th and early 20th centuries – one of those men strong-willed men who did audacious things. He formed the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition to be the first to travel …
Work SongAuthor: Ivan DoigType: FictionFinished: April 7, 2019Rating: ★★★ Image from Amazon Meh. This story is narrated by Morrie Morgan about 10 years after his time in Marias Coulee in The Whistling Season. After travelling to the Southern Hemisphere he is back in Montana. “But an urge can spin the points of a compass as …
The Whistling SeasonAuthor: Ivan DoigType: FictionFinished: March 28, 2019Rating: ★★★ Image from Amazon As the novel opens, Paul, who is now the Montana state superintendent of schools, returns to the one room school house he loved and reflects on his seventh grade year that propelled his course in life. Paul is the oldest of three …