Books...What are you reading this Winter?

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DAKSY

DAKSY

Full Time RVer
Staff member
Dec 2, 2008
9,970
Wherever we're parked
I'm about 1/2 way thru "When Giants Walked the Earth -
A Biography of Led Zeppelin" (2009) by Mick Wall.
It's been a trip (so far) to the late 50s, early mid & late 60s
& into the 70s & thru the first 3 Led Zepp albums, their live
concerts, recording sessions & after concert partying. Major
flashbacks for this ole guy who's been a fan since I heard
"Led Zeppelin", their eponymous first album. Totally enjoyable.
So, what're the rest of you hearth-heads reading?
 
I recieved an ereader for Christmas. One of the free books was Bram Stoker's Dracula. It was pretty good. Now I'm reading Ken Follet's Fall of the Giants. So far, It's hard to put down.
 
Pretty eclectic mix here....

Fiction wise I love Sci Fi. I tend to get interested in a particular author and read everythign I can find then move on. Just finished one of Ben Bova's new novels "Leviathans of Jupiter"

Before that I had read Robert Mikesh' "Albatros D.Va: German Fighter of W.W.I" restoration book. This is an out of print volume by the National Air and Space Museum about how they restored their German WWI biplane thats in the museum. I read it as reasearch for a project I am doing (building a flying scale model of said airplane).


I am also always buying and reading old house ... or just plain house ... related books. A few Ive read through over the winter:
Bruce Harleys "Insulate and Weatherize" - read that one before we did the insulation upgrade project
James Gavin "A building History of Northern New England"
Jack Sobon "Timber Frame Construction"
 
Mine's pretty eclectic too:
Strange Encounters - Adventures of a Renegade Naturalist - Daniel Botkin
The Whole Truth - David Baldacci
American Lion - Jon Meacham
The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown

and I'm currently reading a couple books:
State vs Defense - Stephen Glain
At Home on the Range (George R. McIntosh, Western Everyman) - Robin Branstator
 
[quote author="jharkin" date="1328222002"
James Gavin "A building History of Northern New England"
[/quote]

Wow, that looks interesting. As the owner of a 150-plus-yo northern New England house, I'd love to have a look at this. Maybe I can get our tiny local library to request a copy through inter-library loan or something. Thanks!
 
just finished Olive Kittridge by Elizabeth Strout. It's set in Maine and won the Pulitzer for fiction. Sad to say I don't read many female writers but found this to be a good read -- more a collection of short stories with a unifying theme than a novel.
 
I got an Ipad for Christmas and I've been reading "The Final Frontiersman". It's about Heimo Korth one of a few trappers that lives in the ANWR portion of Alaska.. In addition to that I've been reading my Ifsta Hazmat tech book for work. Studying for that class will take up most of my reading time for the next two months.
 
Currently reading Chasing Fire by Nora Roberts. Good yarn.
 
I've read some magazines and have been reading a lot of old Reader's Digest but the only real book I've been reading is my old Bible. New King James Version.
 
gyrfalcon said:
jharkin said:
James Gavin "A building History of Northern New England"
Click to expand...

Wow, that looks interesting. As the owner of a 150-plus-yo northern New England house, I'd love to have a look at this. Maybe I can get our tiny local library to request a copy through inter-library loan or something. Thanks!
Click to expand...

If you want more suggestions send me a PM.. I have a whole bookshelf full of old house books & can send a list (rather than clogging up this thread)
 
The Bible every day New International Version and or English Standard Version .....Just started a book by Dr. David Jeremiah "I never thought I'd see the day" and next up Joel Rosenberg "The Tehran Initiative"
 
The Woodburners Encyclopedia
The Woodburner,s Companion
Wood Heat Safety
Jay Shelton's Solid Fuels Encyclopedia
;-P
 
Working on a 1000 pager for my diesel tech class. It's not too bad but it's not a Tom Clancy, that's for sure!
 
I am different
I can sit and read repair / technical manuals all day
can not sit and read a "book"
fills my mind with all sorts of information on how things work
not sure how practical
my wife says I have lots of useless information in my brain
can usually answer the mystical questions people ask
not computer related, only mechanical
 
NATE379 said:
Working on a 1000 pager for my diesel tech class. It's not too bad but it's not a Tom Clancy, that's for sure!
Click to expand...

Sadly Tom Clancy is not Tom Clancy anymore either. I used to LOVE his books... Red October, Patriot Games, Red Storm Rising, etc... Around about the time he wrote Rainbox Six I think he started to just crank them out to fuel the video game franchise and Ive heard now they are all written by ghost writers. I got one of his latest novels for Xmas but just gave it to the library..couldn't get past chapter one its so bad :(
 
I'm reading The Last Frontiersman right now. Prior to that, I read One man's wilderness, and Ghost in the wires.

Last summer and fall I was mostly reading pop fiction novels while I was traveling a lot for work.

Next up us Mark Twain's Roughing it.

-SF
 
Just read "The Hunger Games"...a little teenish for me, but a quick read and good...read it in about 2 days.
 
I'm currently reading an H.P. Lovecraft anthology that my wife got me for Christmas. He's the only author besides Stephen King that managed to write something down that was so creepy that I had to stop reading, put the book down, turn on the lights, and step out of that place. Good stuff. Other than that, I've been burning through China Miéville's fiction as fast as it's printed - your mileage may vary, but I haven't yet read one of his works that I didn't like (six books and one collection of short stories). It looks like he's got another coming out later this year (Railsea), which I'll be purchasing sight unseen.
 
Backwoods Savage said:
I've read some magazines and have been reading a lot of old Reader's Digest but the only real book I've been reading is my old Bible. New King James Version.
Click to expand...

Same here. I do a lot of reading, especially on this site, but I rarely read books, other than the Bible. My only subscriptions are to the local newspaper, Reader's Digest and Popular Science.
 
I am currently trying to read a book that I fell asleep reading last night, and can't find this morning. That is just strange. It's a science-fantasy book called "Terrorist of Irustan", which posits a mining planet colonized by Muslims whose politics make the Taliban look moderate. The terrorist the title refers to is a woman `medicant' who begins to strike back quietly at injustices . . . and it's a darn good read, but gone now alas.

I'm also `reading' (funny how slippery that term has become) a recorded book I checked out through my statewide library system called "Blink: the Power of Thinking without Thinking" which sounds all self-help-y and, well, dumb, but it's actually really interesting. It is about intuitive, instant, informed decision-making, and it led me to a term I'd never heard before, `coup d'oeil', which led me to the following http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/0511duggan.pdf, a long-ish article called `Coup d'Oeil: Strategic Intuition in Army Planning', by Michael Duggan, which is actually much more interesting than it might sound, and an article on a business planning philosophy that makes a lot of sense to me: http://toderash.net/articles-manifestos/the-rain-philosophy/.

Essentially, my reading plan looks a lot like a puppy going for a walk on a rainy afternoon . . . meander here, sniff there, pick up a promising stick here, drop it there . . .
 
I'm reading like crazy for school, but I love the stuff I'm plodding through. RIght now about 3 different books on evolution, 2 on history of scientific practice, plus the memoir of EO Wilson, who will be speaking at a conference I'm attending in March. I am looking sadly at my dusty bee and seed catalogs.
 
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