What'cha Reading?

[lorarobson]

Started reading Desert Star by Michael Connelly, and I like it. It's a crime book, so if someone is into crime/detective books, I can recommend this one

 

[Kephalos]

Tonight We Bombed the U.S. Capitol: The Explosive Story of M19, America's First Female Terrorist Group. William Rosenau.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan announced that it was "morning in America." He declared that the American dream wasn't over, but the United States needed to lower taxes, shrink government control, and flex its military muscles abroad to herald what some called "the Reagan Revolution." At the same time, a tiny band of American-born, well-educated extremists were working for a very different kind of revolution.

By the end of the 1970s, many radicals had called it quits, but six veteran women extremists came together to finish the fight. These women had spent their entire adult lives embroiled in political struggles: protesting the Vietnam War, fighting for black and Native American liberation, and confronting US imperialism. They created a new organization to wage their war: The May 19th Communist Organization, or "M19," a name derived from the birthday shared by Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, two of their revolutionary idols. Together, these six women carried out some of the most daring operations in the history of domestic terrorism--from prison breakouts and murderous armed robberies, to a bombing campaign that wreaked havoc on the nation's capital. Three decades later, M19's actions and shocking tactics still reverberate for many reasons, but one truly sets them apart: unlike any other American terrorist group before or since, M19 was created and led by women.

Tonight We Bombed the US Capitol tells the full story of M19 for the first time, alongside original photos and declassified FBI documents. Through the group's history, intelligence and counterterrorism expert William Rosenau helps us understand how homegrown extremism--a threat that still looms over us today--is born.

 

[Whoops the Ad Bot.]

Started reading The Alice Network
Very interesting historical novel

 

[Iron_Lord]

I'm almost finished reading Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. I enjoyed the book and it was interesting. Particularly the parts dealing with his chaotic childhood, Mongol war tactics, and the lasting effects of the empire to this day.

 

[Lexicon]

Just finished The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass. Brutal stuff. Same process as the others, switching between the physical books & audiobook.

I just attempted to start the audiobook for The Dark Tower V: Wolves of The Calla.
It’s so bad. Not the story, but the new actor doing the audiobook.

Apparently Frank Muller (original actor who’d done the 4 preceding novels) died before the series finished. What a loss for the world of audiobooks. Never heard a more engaging voice actor for an audiobook. Stephen King dedicated the 5th installment to him.

This new guy.. I don’t know his name. Or, I heard it, but forgot.
Fuck. He is awful. Limited inflection changes or dialect or tone shifts when reading for characters. And the spit. I can hear the spit gathering in his mouth when he speaks. It seriously gets gross after awhile. Apparently he’s done over a thousand audiobooks. Those poor sight-impaired people with no other options. I hate spitty speakers. I bet the mic was soaked after each recording session.

Just ugh. Maybe it’ll be tolerable in the car with the sound of the motor kind of blurring the spit. If not, it’s back to the hardcover completely for me.

I just finally finished The Dark Tower V: Wolves of The Calla yesterday. Switching between hardcover & audiobook. I started that around the end of September.

it felt like nothing really happened until the very very end of the book,but there could be something I’m missing. And I’ve certainly had a lot going on the past couple of months, which may have also unconsciously colored my experience with the story/writing in some way or another.
AND WTF WAS THAT EPILOGUE?! Stephen King inserted himself into the story— what in the Bastian Bux is that?!
...because it’s Stephen King, i find it bizarrely adorable, but if it were anyone else, I’d probably be more critical.

I didn’t dislike it, but it was difficult to get through, compared to the previous books. I may get more out of it on a second read, someday.

Next up, The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah

 

[Kephalos]

Nixon's Nuclear Specter: The Secret Alert of 1969, Madman Diplomacy, and the Vietnam War. William Burr, Jeffrey P. Kimball.

Beyond the mining of North Vietnamese ports and selective bombing in and around Hanoi, the initial DUCK HOOK concept included proposals for “tactical” nuclear strikes against logistics targets and U.S. and South Vietnamese ground incursions into the North. In early October 1969, however, Nixon aborted planning for the long-contemplated operation. He had been influenced by Hanoi's defiance in the face of his dire threats and concerned about U.S. public reaction, antiwar protests, and internal administration dissent.

In place of DUCK HOOK, Nixon and Kissinger launched a secret global nuclear alert in hopes that it would lend credibility to their prior warnings and perhaps even persuade Moscow to put pressure on Hanoi. It was to be a “special reminder” of how far President Nixon might go. The risky gambit failed to move the Soviets, but it marked a turning point in the administration's strategy for exiting Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger became increasingly resigned to a “long-route” policy of providing Saigon with a “decent chance” of survival for a “decent interval” after a negotiated settlement and U.S. forces left Indochina.

Burr and Kimball draw upon extensive research in participant interviews and declassified documents to unravel this intricate story of the October 1969 nuclear alert. They place it in the context of nuclear threat making and coercive diplomacy since 1945, the culture of the Bomb, intra-governmental dissent, domestic political pressures, the international “nuclear taboo,” and Vietnamese and Soviet actions and policies. It is a history that holds important lessons for the present and future about the risks and uncertainties of nuclear threat making.

Burr, William, and Jeffrey P. Kimball. Nixon's Nuclear Specter: The Secret Alert of 1969, Madman Diplomacy, and the Vietnam War. University Press of Kansas, 2015.

 

[citizen cane]

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

 

[Lexicon]

I just finally finished The Dark Tower V: Wolves of The Calla yesterday. Switching between hardcover & audiobook. I started that around the end of September.

it felt like nothing really happened until the very very end of the book,but there could be something I’m missing. And I’ve certainly had a lot going on the past couple of months, which may have also unconsciously colored my experience with the story/writing in some way or another.
AND WTF WAS THAT EPILOGUE?! Stephen King inserted himself into the story— what in the Bastian Bux is that?!
...because it’s Stephen King, i find it bizarrely adorable, but if it were anyone else, I’d probably be more critical.

I didn’t dislike it, but it was difficult to get through, compared to the previous books. I may get more out of it on a second read, someday.

Next up, The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah

On to Book 7.

Unwritten msg to Stephen King:

Thanks so much for that human-infant-hybrid-spider-baby at the end of Book 6. If I already never ever wanted to produce offspring before, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to now. More than never. Whatever more than never is.

I knew Mordred was gonna come out fucked... how did I not predict the particular form of fucked. Of COURSE it’d be a spidery thing.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

On to Book 7.

Unwritten msg to Stephen King:

Thanks so much for that human-infant-hybrid-spider-baby at the end of Book 6. If I already never ever wanted to produce offspring before, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to now. More than never. Whatever more than never is.

I knew Mordred was gonna come out fucked... how did I not predict the particular form of fucked. Of COURSE it’d be a spidery thing.

Well at least there isn't a clown thrown in the mix.

 

[The Cat]

Well at least there isn't a clown thrown in the mix.

or is there?

 

[SD45T-2]

Going Downtown: The War Against Hanoi and Washington by Jack Broughton

 

[Kephalos]

Covid-19 and Vaccine Nationalism: Managing the Politics of Global Pandemics -- Eric E. Otenyo

Description: Covid-19 and Vaccine Nationalism: Managing the Politics of Global Pandemics provides an in-depth overview of the complex nature politics played in vaccine production and distribution. The book ensures international and domestic politics, governance, and mechanisms of vaccine production and administration are understandable through insightful discussions. The book aims to solve several problems, including the essence of vaccine nationalism in a context of international politics, the discourse of vaccine nationalism outside popular media, historical documentation of the problem of vaccine inequality and low access of Covid-19 vaccines in developing countries of Africa, the Caribbean, parts of Asia, and more.

Otenyo, Eric E. Covid-19 and Vaccine Nationalism: Managing the Politics of Global Pandemics. Elsevier, 2023.

 

[SD45T-2]

Amazon.com: To the End of the Earth: The US Army and the Downfall of Japan, 1945: 9780593186886: McManus, John C.: Books

Amazon.com: To the End of the Earth: The US Army and the Downfall of Japan, 1945: 9780593186886: McManus, John C.: Books

www.amazon.com

It spends about 150 pages covering Luzon (and Corregidor), which isn't surprising considering how it was the largest and most costly land battle in the Pacific. What is kind of surprising however is Charles Willoughby's wild ineptitude as MacArthur's intelligence chief.

 

[Kephalos]

Kristin Roth-Ey. Moscow Prime Time: How the Soviet Union Built the Media Empire that Lost the Cultural Cold War. Cornell University Press, 2011.

When Nikita Khrushchev visited Hollywood in 1959 only to be scandalized by a group of scantily clad actresses, his message was blunt: Soviet culture would soon consign the mass culture of the West, epitomized by Hollywood, to the "dustbin of history." In Moscow Prime Time, a portrait of the Soviet broadcasting and film industries and of everyday Soviet consumers from the end of World War II through the 1970s, Kristin Roth-Ey shows us how and why Khrushchev’s ambitious vision ultimately failed to materialize.

The USSR surged full force into the modern media age after World War II, building cultural infrastructures―and audiences―that were among the world’s largest. Soviet people were enthusiastic radio listeners, TV watchers, and moviegoers, and the great bulk of what they were consuming was not the dissident culture that made headlines in the West, but orthodox, made-in-the-USSR content. This, then, was Soviet culture’s real prime time and a major achievement for a regime that had long touted easy, everyday access to a socialist cultural experience as a birthright. Yet Soviet success also brought complex and unintended consequences.

Kristin Roth-Ey: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ssees/people/kristin-roth-ey

 

[Lexicon]

On to Book 7.

Unwritten msg to Stephen King:

Thanks so much for that human-infant-hybrid-spider-baby at the end of Book 6. If I already never ever wanted to produce offspring before, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to now. More than never. Whatever more than never is.

I knew Mordred was gonna come out fucked... how did I not predict the particular form of fucked. Of COURSE it’d be a spidery thing.

I finished The Dark Tower back in June...

I loved Roland's ending. Or, beginning?

That final place in the Tower. That terrible moment of clarity. Had this unique, dread-filled catharsis I mainly encounter in cautionary tales, certain short stories. Not sure at the moment if I could describe that feeling better. Maybe I'll come back to it.

I also appreciated Mordred's somewhat abrupt end. It may not have been as exciting as many may have hoped for... but it made sense.

Same for The Crimson King. His impotent madness simply made sense.


And, if Ka is a wheel... perhaps those long-awaited epic showdowns already happened before?


I think, had I read these in real time as they were released, waiting years for the next installment, perhaps I would have received these parts differently. I had the privilege to consume it all at my own pace. Anticipation alters the flavor of our experiences, for better or worse.


I'm still pissed Oy died. The goodest of Oys.

I've moved on, & started/finished The Dark Tower: The Wind Through The Keyhole.

As with the others, I've jumped back & forth between audiobook (when driving or doing housework) & actualbook. Stephen King narrated this one. Apparently a lot of people dislike his reading. Maybe I'm a biased superfan, but I enjoyed it. He's no Frank Muller, but he's present. He's in there.

Some find the book unneccessary, or forgettable. What even is necessary? Again, maybe I'm biased, happy to fill the void with one last taste of Mid-World now that I've made my way out of the Tower.

I found it strangely sweet.



I think my next read will be Joyland. If, for nothing else- Stephen King takes inspiration from a small amusement park local to me, that I know & dearly love (& have visited quite recently).

 

[Lexicon]

I think my next read will be Joyland. If, for nothing else- Stephen King takes inspiration from a small amusement park local to me, that I know & dearly love (& have visited quite recently).

Burned right through this one! A very quick read (no audiobook this time). Not the most 'original' of ideas, but how many of those can we really even manage in a lifetime? The execution and imagery were still spot-on. I enjoyed the ride.

I may opt for another of his books, Duma Key, next. . .

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I may opt for another of his books, Duma Key, next. . .

Is that one about Russian parliament?

 

[Lexicon]

Is that one about Russian parliament?

Ha, nope... book jacket references some near-death experiences, & Florida...

 

[The Cat]

Ha, nope... book jacket references some near-death experiences, & Florida...

Florida is a near death experience.

 

[ceecee]

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv24w659z

If you want to know where the current white power movement came from (spoiler: Vietnam veterans', Boomers once again fucking up this country), Nazi resurgence, the completely warped and demented view of masculinity, the Evangelical church and it's responsibility for passing off this ideology as Christian doctrine - this is the book. I would imagine the author got all kinds of death threats from those manly right wingers and good Christians. Very well researched and written, not a great topic but timely and important.