Play Book Tag discussion
March 2020: Journalism
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Announcing the tag for March

back later with some recommendations


I'm surprised this won - I was expecting relationships! However I'm glad it did.
After enjoying Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup last year, and Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients in January, I'm going with Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America. Hopefully the 5 stars will continue with this medical journalism book!
After enjoying Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup last year, and Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients in January, I'm going with Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America. Hopefully the 5 stars will continue with this medical journalism book!

A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal by Åsne Seierstad. Also her The Bookseller of Kabul.
The Gates of Damascus by Lieve Joris.

Since you mentioned Åsne Seierstad, I can also recommend To søstre/Two Sisters: A Father, His Daughters, and Their Journey into the Syrian Jihad, an account of two Norwegian girls turning extremists fleeing to Syria.
En av oss: en fortelling om Norge/One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway is also suppose to be very good, but I havenæt work up the stomach to read it (yet), hits to close to home (I'm Norwegian).
Basically, everything she's written is good, she is an extremely talented journalist.

I agree that she is a gifted writer! I definitely have another by her on my next by author shelf.


Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident
The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal.
Gales of November: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer
The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and India's Quest for Independence
Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone
The White Darkness

For those who haven't read it yet, I whole-heartedly recommend Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.

I would recommend:Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal which I read last year and The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl which I just completed.
thanks Joanne - just added to my wishlist!

Books by journalists I can recommend:
It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War
The Things They Carried
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
Fictional Journalists:
The Help
The Wind Is Not a River
The Truth ( a Discworld take on 'free press')
The Women of the Copper Country
I want to read several very current event books, but I'm also thinking of
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism
Depends on what I can get from the library.

I recommend:
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town
The Shadow of the Sun
The Zanzibar Chest
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
I second:
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

Born Survivors by Wendy Holden.
Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War by Helen Thorpe.
Becoming by Michelle Obama.
Any recs for those three or reasons why they shouldn't be included?

Though Jenny did remind about Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America which also sounds interesting to me.
Others that were five star reads for me:
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America
Anything by John Krakauer
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America aka the "other" Unbelievable
If I can do a 2nd I have these on my radar:
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town
In Cold Blood
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
Also recommending
Anything by Jon Ronson
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
For true crime lovers: I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer

Here's one, Books by or about a journalist from the Popsugar 2020 challenge, which turns up The Broken Girls, recommended to me by a library patron some time ago.
Journalism in Fiction is a hearty 194-book list, reminding me that I never finished Mira's Grant's Newsflesh trilogy, which follows a team of bloggers in a zombie apocalypse. And there are a few romances in the list too.
For the spec fic folks, there's Journalist Protagonists in Paranormal Fiction, including some graphic novels.
We also have Journalists and Reporters in Cozy Mysteries if that's your jam.

After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story / Michael Hainey

The Widow
The Child
The Suspect

I was, too! We usually choose the broadest topics, but it's nice to see a more narrow one make the cut this time!

Anything by John Krakauer..."
I'm going to second these recommendations!

I highly recommend either The Imperfectionistsor The Forever War.
Anyone else laugh at the irony (and odds) of "Journalism" following "Survival" as the monthly tag...

Parkland: Birth of a Movement by Dave Cullen
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
Highly recommend:
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Columbine by Dave Cullen
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster - John Krakauer
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond


Here's one, Books by or about ..."
That was my suggestion for Popsugar Challenge prompt! There are a ton of options for fiction either written by journalists (this month's buddy read of The Lost Vinyard) or about them (Paula MacLain's Love & Ruin about Martha Gelhart and Hemingway). It is kind of astounding really. As someone who isn't much into reading non-fiction, I gravitate to those.

Also The Paris Wife by Paula McLain because it does include a lot about Hemingway and his journalism, and journalism at that time.

On the one hand, I feel badly for Anita who loves essays, but on the other hand, I didn't vote for it since I usually prefer to read essays singly rather than in collections.
Anita - on page two of Journalism is a book called Lobsters and other Essays


I also would like to read de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" for the tag. It sounds like it would qualify as journalism, but no one tags it as such. Opinions?
Recommendations:
--fictional characters:
The Foreign Correspondent--Alan Furst
The Shipping News--Annie Proulx
The Quiet American--Graham Greene
Night Film--Marisha Pessl
Pereira Declares: A Testimony--Antonio Tabucchi
--non-fiction:
What I tag journalism involves traveling around interviewing people or digging into documents to elucidate a contemporary subject; often in the writing the result can overlap with travel, memoir, or essay tags,
Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel--Carl Safina
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History--Elizabeth Kolbert
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide--Nicholas Kristof
War--Sebastian Junger
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex--May Roach
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court--Jeffrey Toobin
Hitch 22: A Memoir--Christopher Hitchens
Slouching Towards Bethlehem--Joan Didion
Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill--Robert Whitaker
The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession--Susan Orlean
I also second "Beyond the Beautiful Forevers" as a great read.


Also recommend The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy: The Shocking Inside Story
if The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History comes in from the library (it should) I'll be listening to that

News of the World
Into the Wild - it fit every tag this year so far!
Seabiscuit: An American Legend
The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know
She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement
The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science
The Shipping News
I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
Also.. Just Mercy, Bonk, The orchid thief (I loved the movie Adaptation), and more.

I also would like to read de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" for the tag. It sounds like it would qualify as journalism, but no o..."
Great list Michael. I think de Tocqueville was considered a scholar (thinker and historian) rather than a journalist. That might explain the missing tag. I have a lot of nonfiction that wouldn’t qualify as journalism.

Just finished Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster which was interesting and was happy for more journalism books.
More books I thought were superb:
- Hiroshima
- In Cold Blood
- Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
- Selling Hitler
on the fiction front:
- Nights at the Circus can fit - as one of the main characters is a journalist interviewing the other
- Scoop (although I prefer other book by Evelyn Waugh - Scoop is worth reading
- I also enjoyed The Shipping News
I'm considering reading any of these:
- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (a copy of which I've found in the street
- Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
- All the President's Men
- Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
- And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic - I read a third, it was exceptional, but so so sad I had to stop for a while
- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (on my shelves and have been there so many years)
- The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (so long though)
- The Journalist and the Murderer

For March, I'm considering: Native: Dispatches from an Israeli-Palestinian Life. Also, Life Happens: And Other Unavoidable Truths. The second book is by journalist Connie Schultz whose writing and outlook I like.

Oh! I did not know that. I have it on the Tumbling Tower and it fits Polls!-Now to see if I can fit it into SRC!

Recommendations
And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
All the President's Men by Woodward and Bernstein
What I plan to read
Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion
The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks
Game Change by John Heilemann
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

My recommendations that I don't believe have been mentioned yet:
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
Detroit: An American Autopsy
I've got my eye on Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, which I own. And I'll be heading out later on this beautiful, sunny, 44 degree Fahrenheit, Michigan day to visit the beach, and then the library to look for:
Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy

On the one hand, I feel badly for Anita who loves essays, but on the other hand, I didn't vote for it since I usually prefer to read essays..."
Lol, I like journalism. I just had a good book for essays that I wanted to get to. And then someone kindly pointed out my book would also work for relationships.
So of course, we get journalism, but the many suggestions here are so good. I've got plenty of choices.

I highly recommend either The Imperfectionistsor The Forever War.
Anyone else laugh at the irony (and odds) of "Journalis..."
The Imperfectionists is a perfect fiction book for this tag if people are seeking a novel.

The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast-could take me all month @ 736 pages
13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi

I am taking a look at this one now. The title appeals to me, for sure! (This likely wouldn't be for next month, but may just be added to the tbr for sometime later on.)
Books mentioned in this topic
The Weight of a Moment (other topics)Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster (other topics)
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators (other topics)
She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement (other topics)
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Paula McLain (other topics)Jon Ronson (other topics)
John Krakauer (other topics)
Åsne Seierstad (other topics)
Lieve Joris (other topics)
One tag surged into the lead, and that was our member-nominated tag of:
journalism
Please share your reading plans and recommendations below.
Remember, for the regular monthly reads, the book can be shelved as journalism on Goodreads, or be a book that is not yet shelved that way but you feel should be.
One way to find books to read for this tag is to please visit:
https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/...
We encourage people to link to additional lists below if they find them.
Happy reading!