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I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the Gladwell book when you're finished.

His book Outliers was brutal. My kids had to read it for school. It is not a book I would normally read since I could smell from a mile away the pop culture b.s. it contained, but I read all the books my kids read for school so I persisted. Sure enough the book did not disappoint.

It was a contrived parsing of anecdotal bits and pieces attempting to support his flimsy claims. My kids who read it saw through the thin veneer of wannabe scholarship immediately. I think Gladwell's true strength is fleecing the pockets of the psuedo-intellectuals who laugh at the New Yorker cartoons they don't understand and look down on the plebs they disdain.

Sorry to rip on Gladwell. Hopefully Blink is better. But my son was just raging about that book and the author the other day and what now gets passed off as scholarship. That book and its reception really bothered him and occasionally he just erupts with vitriol for that guy.

But to answer the OP's question I'm currently reading different articles and excerpts from books my one son is reading in college. -tnscouter

All Tony Hillerman books. Fiction on the Rez.

April 1945, The Hinge of History by Craig Shirley.

about the last few months at the end of WW 2.

Another book I picked up at Costco...

That or Barnes and Noble is where I pick up most books I plan on reading...

Right now I am behind in my reading... got 17 new ones I've bought over the last 3 or 4 months that have interested me..

but been too darn busy this summer, taking care of "crap" around the house and for the family...

I’ve read Toll’s trilogy of the Pacific War twice. Once a year or so ago, then again this spring.
You’re right, it’s excellent reading.
I read a lot of Louis L’Amour’s books when I was in Jr High in the late ‘70s.
They had a rack full of them at Murphy Mart, and Mom bought one for me about every week.
I had a side cabinet of the bookcase filled with them.
My older brother borrowed them when he started driving truck, and by ones and twos, they all disappeared.
7mm

Not as harsh, but I've had a similar view of Gladwell. Quaint stories but misses obvious logical gaps. Can't remember if it was Blink or Outlier in which he discussed Ted Williams. Gladwell quoted a doctor who said nobody could see the stitches on the ball, so Ted was wrong. Gladwell didn't consider the possbility that maybe Ted had better eyesight than everyone else. I mean, compared to all the others who hit 400.

Catching back up on the Bowditch series by Paul Doiron. Kinda like CJ Box's series, except this game warden in in Maine.

Recently finished Rising Tiger by Brad Thor, the latest in the Scot Harvath series.

Also on the 5th book of the Jaka Mahegan series by AJ Tata. Lead character is a 1/2 Native American former Army Ranger that gets back into the business. Setting is mostly along the East Coast, specific the Carolinas.

New Longmire book out by Craig Johnson, iv read the rest.

Run With the Horsemen. Fiction, but in fact an autobiography of a kid growing up on a farm in central Georgia in the 1930's.

I am still going through 3 to 5 books a week. Some on the schedule this week are John Sandford's scifi book "Saturn Run', Robin Cook's "Host", Nigel Calder's "Einstein's Universe" and Patrick Wyman's "The Verge",( 1490-1530. Forty Years that shook the world). I'll finish up with Bernard Cornwell's "Sword of Kings"

The Return by Dick Morris.

Just finished April 1945.

Both good reads.

Virgil B.

Rereading "The Hill" by Leonard B. Scott (Col. USA ret.)

Absolutely one of my favorite books of all time

The author has painted vivid and accurate scenes of the battles of Dak To, the story seems to follow the same sequence of events as listed in the historical registers. Although, "The Hill' is fiction, yet, it is clear that the author called upon his own memories of these terrible times.

Corbett Collection, Rio7

The Science of Evil

Working my way through John Macdonald’s Travis McGee books. Entertaining and easy reading to pass the time.

Read two of them and Dennys Reitz’s Boer Commando while weathered in the tent moose hunting a couple weeks ago.

Helmet For My Pillow- Robert Leckie.
Chesapeake- James Michener.
I've read Chesapeake many times and try to reread it every couple of years.

Yeah, there's a not-so-thin veneer of the current fashionable correctness but he does go beyond it to some extent. The cases he presents are no doubt cherry-picked so by no means an exhaustive study, but the subject of the unconscious mind interests me. I'm listening to this one on library audio while working so if it's all blow and no show at least I haven't wasted other valuable time or any of my money.

I'm about 1/3 through it and so far I'd say, if you can look past the spin, the case he's making is correct; many if not most of the decisions and judgements people make are very much influenced by the subconscious mind. Sometimes that's a good thing--vital in fact--and sometimes it's not so good.

Mark Manson's consciousness car analogy is much more straightforward and useful IMO.

Not that most people who read either book will ever actually try to exercise their conscious mind in order to put it in the driver's seat. Embracing confirmation bias and bellowing into echo chambers seems to be much more popular among the unwashed masses and pseudo-intellectuals alike.

Its a tough read. Not because of the writing, or the length, but because of where the stories Solzhenitsyn tells take your mind.

I don't read a bunch of fiction but the Aubrey/Maturin series has me hooked. The amount of historical scholarship involved is complimented by great writing. I am also reading the Afghanistan Papers by Craig Whitlock which might prove to be a bombshell, I will update upon completion.


mike r

Should be required reading, especially for people who vote democrat.

Book about a mutiny on a Russian ASW destroyer written by the chief engineer after he immigrated to US. Supposedly the inspiration for the Hunt for Red October.

Mutiny: The Inside Story of the True Events That Inspired The Hunt for Red October. Hagberg, David; Gindin, Boris (2008).

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Charles Mann