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Chris Caniano
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Joined: 27 October 2015
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Posted: 05 January 2024 at 1:30pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

I actually have Blood & Thunder in my Amazon "Save For Later" list. 

I'm reading this at the moment:



Edited by Chris Caniano on 05 January 2024 at 1:30pm
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Peter Martin
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Joined: 17 March 2008
Location: Canada
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Posted: 05 January 2024 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Boomerang by Michael Lewis.

It's kind of like a follow up to The Big Short and is a fascinating series of essays on the various differing sovereign debt crises that followed the US subprime-instigated financial crisis of 2008. It looks at how Iceland, with its population of around 300,000 people, managed to borrow enough money to buy up a large amount of significant assets around Europe before imploding; how corruption and terribly lax tax collecting scuppered the Greek government (amazingly with no subprime exposure and with some supposedly impecunious monks thrown into the mix); how Ireland's banks took themselves down by lending with abandon to Irish property developers who then ploughed it into spectacularly overvalued real estate. Really enjoying it.
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Brian Floyd
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Joined: 07 July 2006
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Posted: 05 January 2024 at 3:11pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Volume 36. Reading it on my Kindle, and it says I've read 29% of it. Probably 3% actually in the bathroom.

(I'm a trivia nut.)
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Joe Smith
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Joined: 29 August 2004
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Posted: 05 January 2024 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

finished Thomas Perry’s THE OLD MAN last night.
I can see why they wanted to make it into a series. It seemed like the ending
to this book was tailor made for a sequel.
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David Allen Perrin
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Joined: 15 April 2009
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Posted: 06 January 2024 at 9:31am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

I just finished Look Out for The Little Guy by Scott Lang.  

Pretty wild entry for a first time author!  Superheroes can be pretty down to earth.  Lots of great advice on managing your daily struggles, being a divorced parent, surviving in a microscopic universe and riding on a flying ant!

I didn’t know that lemon juice was like acid to ants….

Cool book.


Edited by David Allen Perrin on 06 January 2024 at 9:32am
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Peter Hicks
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Joined: 30 April 2004
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Posted: 06 January 2024 at 4:48pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

Currently reading Here is Your War by Ernie Pyle.   Pyle was a US reporter in WWII who went to the front lines, embedded with combat troops.  Here is Your War discusses America’s first troop deployment in WWII starting with an amphibious landing in Algeria in late 1942.  The book covers the entire year that US a troops would subsequently spend in North Africa fighting the Germans.

Pyle went on to cover the war in Italy and France.  He then spent some months in the US trying to recover from PTSD.  He reluctantly agreed to go back in service and cover the Pacific War.  He was killed in action on Okinawa.
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Matt Reed
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Posted: 06 January 2024 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

PRAIRIE FIRES: THE AMERICAN DREAMS OF LAURA INGALLS WILDER, the 2018 Pulitzer Prize winning nonfiction book by Caroline Fraser.  Fascinating.  It’s the first deep dive into the life and times of one of America’s most iconic novelists.  I intentionally used “novelist” because what she wrote, contrary to popular opinion, was decidedly not nonfiction.  I grew up as a voracious reader and the LITTLE HOUSE books were among my favorites.  To read the true story rather than the fictional one about Laura’s life is a revelation.  So, too, is her contentious relationship with her only child, Rose Wilder Lane.  What makes this book all the more compelling are its parallels with modern day politics, what with the stance Lane (and to a lesser extent Wilder) took during the lead up to WWII.  This book is not only a biography of two women, but an examination of a place and time in American history.  It’s an often jarring juxtaposition of a woman who lived through not only traveling from town to town with her family by horse and wagon, but one who saw first hand the Industrial Revolution, WWI and the dust bowl era Depression.  I can’t recommend it enough, even if you only have a passing knowledge of the children’s books which have become so famous.  
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Craig Earl
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Joined: 13 July 2019
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Posted: 06 January 2024 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Great recommendation, Matt. That's definitely one for my list.

I've been enjoying KATE: Inside the Rainbow, which is a collection of career-spanning photos of Kate Bush with input from her photographer brother.

My admiration for this national treasure remains undimmed.
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Matt Reed
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Posted: 06 January 2024 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Kate Bush is amazing.  Have been a fan since her meteoric rise in the 80s.  I find it oddly satisfying that a new generation is only now discovering her music via STRANGER THINGS S4 and its use of “Running Up That Hill (Make A Deal With God)”.  Thanks for the recommendation, Craig!
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Joe Smith
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Posted: 07 January 2024 at 2:43am | IP Logged | 10 post reply




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James Best
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Joined: 02 March 2014
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Posted: 09 January 2024 at 5:11am | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Now starting THE WINTER FORTRESS: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb by Neal Bascomb.

I read a previously published non-fiction (non-WWII) book by Bascomb several years ago and really enjoyed it. So when I saw his name on the cover of this one at my favorite local used bookstore I snatched it up.

It is focused on how the commandos from Norway were assembled and trained in England/Scotland and then inserted back into their homeland to attack the German heavy water plant at Vemork. Very good so far. 


Edited by James Best on 09 January 2024 at 5:11am
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Rebecca Jansen
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Joined: 12 February 2018
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Posted: 11 January 2024 at 1:37am | IP Logged | 12 post reply

Don't know if Matt Reed still thinks I'm a ditz or whatever, but I just ordered the Laura Ingalls book... so very glad to learn about it! One great-grandmother, the one great grandparent I knew and got to talk to, was born into that place and general area (Minnesota and Wisconsin 1870s-80s).

The book I ordered with it is a collection of essays by James Baldwin. His writing and thoughts have improved my life (and soul) in many ways, a rare rare find.

Last book I've finished is the thick Nick Drake biography by Richard Morton Jack who has been running great CD and vinyl labels as well as publishing amazing album review guides (that put those Rolling Stones ones in the dumpster) as well as a thick magazine erratically.

Lately been reading mostly magazines about vintage comics (Alter Ego, Kirby Collector, Comic Book Marketplace) or else vintage magazines covering comics that were not vintage at the time they came out (in others words some '70s Comics Journals).
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