WHAT IS EVERYBODY READING NOW? Showing 751-800 of 2,886

[Faith]

Finished and reviewed Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France by Leonie Frieda (no author picture available.) Very much enjoyed it. Well-researched book about a fascinating woman.

Also finished and reviewed At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson. Fun, an easy read, constantly surprising and I recommend it. It's more of a history read than research book, but Bryson provides an extensive bibliography (21 pages) and comprehensive index (20 pages) for folks who want to follow up.

Currently reading Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende.HF, interesting so far.

Gave up on Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie (no photo available) and Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation by Margaret Mead. Both seemed to be good books but didn't engage me in first chapters. So many good books, so little time!

[Michael]

Just started reading a fantastic book that was recommended to me to help in my new role by Robert I. Sutton

Publisher Blurb
When the Harvard Business Review asked Robert Sutton for suggestions for its annual list of Breakthrough Ideas, he told them that the best business practice he knew of was 'the no asshole rule'. Sutton's piece became one of the most popular articles ever to appear in the HBR. Spurred on by the fear and despair that people expressed, the tricks they used to survive with dignity in asshole-infested places, the revenge stories that made him laugh out loud and the other small wins that they celebrated against mean-spirited people, Sutton was persuaded to write THE NO ASSHOLE RULE. He believes passionately that civilised workplaces are not a naive dream, that they do exist, do bolster performance and that widespread contempt can be erased and replaced with mutual respect when a team or organisation is managed right. There is a huge temptation by executives and those in positions of authority to overlook this trait especially when exhibited by so-called producers, but Sutton shows how overall productivity suffers when the workplace is subjected to this kind of stress.

[Patricrk]

Just finished by Gordon A. Harrison no author picture.
Read this on-line from the http://www.history.army.mil/html/abou...
If you like a high level view this book covers the American action up to the capture of Cherbourg. Seven chapters on planning and German opposition and three on the battle. One of the "Green book" series which I have liked.

Starting Edmund Morris This covers the years after he left the White House. Did you know he spent a year in Africa leaving seven weeks after the Taft inauguration?

[Bryan]

Patricrk:

The Morris book should be a good one. TR also went to the Amazon and nearly died. If you like Morris, read:

by Candice Millard

Edmund Morris

[Alisa]

I recently picked up a copy of this and am just about to start reading it. I've heard great things and looking forward to digging into it!
by Rebecca Skloot

['Aussie Rick']

I've just started reading; "The Twilight Warriors".



by Robert Gandt

[Veronika]

Just started reading Fitzgerald's translation of The Odyssey. Oh my gosh, why didn't I ever read this before?!

by Robert Fitzgerald

[Elizabeth S]

That's the translation I read as well, I think that is the "standard." I'd read various exerts of The Odyssey in various classes over the years, so I was surprised how exciting it was to read it all together.

by Homer translation by Robert Stuart Fitzgerald

(By the way, I love that we have a "picture" of Homer.)

[Michael]

Reading by Steven D. Levitt

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Hello Sandra,

We have certain rules for citation on this site. Please refer to rules and guidelines for the site.

You have cited the bookcover well, thank you. But you also need to cite the author's photo (when available) and always the author's link - which is the author's name in linkable text.

This is what it should look like. If you could go in and edit message 765, then I will delete this post.

by Natalie Haynes

In the case of the above book, there was no author's photo available but there was the author's link which I included.

Thanks for your cooperation in advance.

['Aussie Rick']

I am reading a book I purchased second-hand that I found in a nice old book shop in Freemantle, Western Australia in 2006. It's "Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and His Times" by Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally.

by Radu Florescu

[Elizabeth S]

What an interesting book topic. In fact, how the author picked the topic and did the research sounds almost as interesting as the book itself. How do you like it?

[Terri]

I am reading King of Ithaca . It is a fiction and steeped in Greek Mythology.
I was reading it recently but put it aside to do a Buddy Read in this group before I had finished it. Buddy Read over, I now return to Ancient Greece once more. :-)

by Glyn Iliffe

[Patricrk]

The historical novel Robert Harris An account of Rome as told by Cicero's Secretary (a real character who wrote a biography of Cicero which has been lost)

['Aussie Rick']

Elizabeth S wrote: "What an interesting book topic. In fact, how the author picked the topic and did the research sounds almost as interesting as the book itself. How do you like it?"

Hi Elizabeth, was this question for me and the book on Dracula?

I've finished it late last night and overall it was pretty good considering the lack of primary sources. The author's dug around in archives and libraries throughout Eastern Europe and used a lot of Romanian oral histories to put their story together but they did explain which sources they used and how reliable they judged them. Overall it was an interesting insight into a man who was considered the 'devil's son' but also seen by others a patriotic hero in his fight against the Turks and no worse than many of his contemporaries in history.

by Radu Florescu

['Aussie Rick']

I'm now reading a book that I have been wanting to read for some time; "Soult: Napoleon's Maligned Marshall" by Sir Peter Hayman. One of only six 'Marshal General of France' in French history.

(no cover) Soult: Napoleon's Maligned Marshall by Peter Hayman

[Elizabeth S]

'Aussie Rick' wrote: "...Hi Elizabeth, was this question for me and the book on Dracula? ..."

Yeah, it was. I should have used the reply button to make it more clear. Sorry! I guess I didn't realize that Dracula was a real historical figure, so the whole book topic intrigued me. Thanks for reporting on your read!

[Andrea]

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great DepressionAmity Shlaes
I have started this book and I found it overwhelmingly interesting even thought too right-sided.

[Bryan]

Hi Andrea:

Books looks good, thanks! Don't forget to add a book cover to your citation, then author link:

Amity Shlaes

[Alisa]

I recently started reading this book about a rescue mission to locate a lost submarine and its crew, in the days when there was limited developed methodology. A bit technical but good so far.
by Peter Maas

[Michael]

In to the swing of holidays. I started reading two books today, the first is:

by Rowland White

So far a really good book.

The second is on recomondation from the author of
by Robert I. Sutton

by Tucker Max

A disturbing but yet entertaining book by a classic subject of the above book :) The author is not someone I would like to have as a friend.

['Aussie Rick']

Hi Michael, I'd be interested to hear your final view on "Vulcan 607" as I have a copy sitting waiting to be read along with the author's second book; "Phoenix Squadron".

& by Rowland White

[Michael]

Will let you know 'Aussie Rick' should have it finished soon

[Terri]

I am reading Lords of the Bow by Conn Iggulden. The second book in his Ghengis Khan series.
I am trying to finish it quickly because The History Book Club Buddy Read of Gates of Fire starts on 1st of March. 50 pages down, only 430 to go...yikes.
by Conn Iggulden
by Steven Pressfield

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

I am not so sure you are going to make it unless you stay up all night. (gr)

[Terri]

lol.
When pressed, Bentley, I enforce a 100 pages a day rule for myself. :-)
Sometimes it doesn't work out and I do approx 70 pages.
50 pages in the morning if I get up early enough, and 50 pages at night.

Although, I am a bit busy lately and a bit sleepy at night and in the morning. I have failed my 100 pages rule already today. *sigh*

['Aussie Rick']

I've actually followed Michael and have just started reading my copy of "Vulcan 607" by Rowland White and so far it's been pretty good.


by Rowland White

[Alisa]

Something different for the mix, a kind of memior of life in the south. Just started it.
byRick Bragg

[André, Honorary Contributor - EMERITUS - Music]

Great House by Nicole Krauss

Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, October 2010: In each of the short stories that nest like rooms in Nicole Krauss's Great House looms a tremendous desk. It may have belonged to Federico García Lorca, the great poet and dramatist who was one of thousands executed by Fascists in 1936, when the Spanish Civil War began. We know that the desk stood in Weisz's father's study in Budapest on a night in 1944, when the first stone shattered their window. After the war, Weisz hunts furniture looted from Jewish homes by the Nazis. He scours the world for the fragments to reassemble that study's every element, but the desk eludes him, and he and his children live at the edges of its absence. Meanwhile, it spends a few decades in an attic in England, where a woman exhumes the memories she can't speak except through violent stories. She gives the desk to the young Chilean-Jewish poet Daniel Varsky, who takes it to New York and passes it on (before he returns to Chile and disappears under Pinochet) to Nadia, who writes seven novels on it before Varsky's daughter calls to claim it. Crossing decades and continents, the stories of Great House narrate feeling more than fact. Krauss's characters inhabit "a state of perpetual regret and longing for a place we only know existed because we remember a keyhole, a tile, the way the threshold was worn under an open door," and a desk whose multitude of drawers becomes a mausoleum of memory. --Mari Malcolm

I'm almost finished with this book.
Nicole Krauss did a reading a few days ago here in Hamburg and I went to see her.
Although I usually read books that are very different from hers I was hooked the moment I started it. The same goes for Nicole's personality.
The way she talks about her characters, their insecurities, her own life, thoughts and ways to deal with the challenge of letting go, both herself and the story/characters to see where they might lead her (and you as a reader) - I thought it was wonderful.
Some readers might find this book lacking a straight line (I never had a problem with that - did not even think it lacked such a thing since I don't think a book/story necessarily needs it to hold you)
But once you accept that Nicole Krauss will only let you look into her characters for a certain time, I'm pretty sure you will enjoy her writing as much as I did.
Nicole Krauss is a terrific writer and a master story teller.

['Aussie Rick']

I've just started reading a book that I purchased on a trip to Sydney in 2009; "The Gothic Wars" by Torsten Cumberland Jacobsen.


by Torsten Cumberland Jacobsen

[Jennifer]

Hello everyone ^,^

I am currently reading two books...

by Emil W. Haury(There is no photo of Emil W. Haury)

I am really enjoying this book, I'm at the overview section of the book that's giving the background of Emil W. Haury and his journey into Archaeology and his wonderful career in the field from the 1930's-1960's so far.

and...

by Diana Gabaldon

The second book in the series. It has a bit of a slow start but I have faith that it will get better. I was hooked on the first book, I could not put that one down.

[Jennifer]

Faith wrote: "Finished and reviewed Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France by Leonie Frieda (no author ..."

I love the book by Margaret Mead, it truly is a fascinating book. I love her, she really made it possible for women to make a name for themselves in Anthropology. A truly remarkable woman.

[Elizabeth S]

Just started reading

by Dava Sobel

I really like books like this that give the background and history behind some scientific achievement.

[Tom]

In the middle of 'Wired for War'. Interesting book so far. All over the place though: history, war, infomation technology, science fiction, politics.

by P.W. Singer

['Aussie Rick']

I've been reading my 1969 edition of "The Campaign of Adowa" and its been quite good for a book that was first published in 1902.

by G. F-H. Berkeley

[Michael]

Tom wrote: "In the middle of 'Wired for War'. Interesting book so far. All over the place though: history, war, infomation technology, science fiction, politics.

[bookcover:Wired for War: The Robotics Revol..."

Will be interested in your final view of the book Tom as I have this on my to-read list

[Alisa]

On a fiction diversion at the moment, legal thriller, new author.
by Reece Hirsch

[Terri]

I have just finished;
David Finkel

And I am now reading;
Bernard Cornwell

And am also about to start listening to;
Bernard Cornwell

[Barbara]

I just finished reading Pavilion of Women, by Pearl Buck. I was reading it for another book group and I have to admit it was better than I expected. I would call it almost a-historical fiction however. It tells the story of a wealthy Chinese family in one of the interior provinces who seem almost untouched by both WWII and the Communist Revolution. Lots of unacknowledged platonic thought as well.

[Alisa]

Barbara wrote: "

I just finished reading Pavilion of Women, by Pearl Buck. I was reading it for another book group and I have to admit it was be..."

Sounds interesting, thanks for sharing.
Don't forget to include the author link in addition to the photo. Thanks.


by Pearl S. Buck

[Barbara]

Sorry, I thought I had. My computer is extremely cranky today!

[Terri]

Computers are cranky all the time, Barbara. I share your angst. :-)

I am a little way into;
Bernard Cornwell
as mentioned a couple posts back, but I will be putting it aside (temporarily) in a few days to do a buddy read here in The History Book Club of;
Jim Frederick

[Jeffrey]

I'm currently reading Kate Clifford Larson for a historiography class. Previously, I read American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln ConspiraciesMichael W. Kauffman - which now has me reading extensively about the John Wilkes Booth Lincoln Assassination conspiracy.

[Alisa]

Jeffrey wrote: "I'm currently reading Kate Clifford Larson for a historiography class. Previously, I read [bookcover:American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and..."

Jeffrey, looks like a couple of interesting books there. Thanks for citing the books correctly, although you might try adding a space between the book and author link to make it easier to see, but not a major issue as long as you cite them together.

Will be interested to hear what you think of these.

[Jeffrey]

Alisa wrote: "Jeffrey wrote: "I'm currently reading Kate Clifford Larson for a historiography class. Previously, I read [bookcover:American Brutus: John ..."

I'm still new here. It will take a few posts to get up and running correctly. Please bear with me while I work out the kinks. LOL

[Alisa]

You will get the hang of it and we are here to help. ;-)

['Aussie Rick']

I've just started reading a very short book by Henry Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross. This book is his account of the event that led him to start that organisation, the Battle of Solferino which he witnessed as a young man. The book is; "A Memory of Solferino".

by Henry Dunant

[André, Honorary Contributor - EMERITUS - Music]

Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards in Afghanistan by Toby Harnden

['Aussie Rick']

Hi Andre, let me know how you go with "Dead Men Risen" as I have a copy on order.


by Toby Harnden

[André, Honorary Contributor - EMERITUS - Music]

Hi Rick, I will.
I just started so not much to say as yet. I thought the writing a bit heavy on the cliches, just the style, not the story/events - but hey, it's just the first pages. And there are lost of them... 512 (plus notes, personnel list etc.)