What book are you reading right now?

Adamc said:
TED SIMON - JUPITERS TRAVELS
I read this book years ago and just came across it again after finding it in longtime storage.

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Read both his first book... and the second one where he retraced his journey on the BMW...pictured. Years ago while at Mid Ohio he gave a lecture on his travels.... afterwards I had a few minutes with him and told him I traveled some of the same roads in East Africa.... mud roads... knee deep river crossings .. 😎
 
toglhot said:
I only use a Kobo ebook now. Miniscule in size and holds thousands of books which you can download free online on various sites. As a kid I didn't read a lot, but like all kids I read the usual kiddy fairyntales: Jack and Beanstalk, Hansel and Gretel, Pinocchio, The Bible, Rumpelstiltskin, The Emperors New Suit. Now I read adult fairy stories by authors like: Paterson, Grisham, Baldacci, Cussler, Higgins, Follet. Follet and Baldacci in particular write well, I'm reading Cussler at the moment. Before the ebook, I'd buy a paperback, find it boring and throw it away, quite expensive when you read a lot. With the ebook, there are a plethora of sites where you can download books free, if you don't like the book, nothing lost, just delete it.
Get an eBook, you'll never look back!
When I have time I also indulge another hobby, adding to a memoir I'm writing of my 25 year career in defence. I wrote this some time ago, just been adding to it as my memory is jogged. Most of the stories have been posted on an ex defence site I frequent, my writings have been well recieved, simply because I have jogged the memories of others, rather than my writing skills, I suspect. I'm now arranging it in sections, chapters if you like: Postings, my three police dogs, boot camp and so on.

In any free minute - in transport, in the park or at home - I just open my library and enjoy reading. The choice of books is huge, and all this is literally in one device. Although until recently I hated reading and in general I can say that I hated everything related to learning. At the university, I just copied from everyone. Often looked for writing services, in this https://ca.edubirdie.com/assignment-writing-services helped me. But after literally a couple of years, I read 1 small book and my world turned upside down. Now I read 1 book every month. Moreover, with an e-book it has become incredibly convenient, especially if I want to read something new right now.
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I agree, with the e-book my life has acquired new colors. Everything has become much easier (searching for books and downloading them).
 
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Just finished "The Wide Wide Sea" by Hampton Sides. The subtitle sums it up: "Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook."

I knew pretty much zero about Cook before reading this (doubtless like most Americans). Yet, he is perhaps the most famous and celebrated of all explorers.
I have a thing for wooden sailing ship stories. This was good, but not as good as "The Wager," which I reviewed in post #98:
https://www.xs650.com/threads/what-book-are-you-reading-right-now.55483/page-5#post-806169
 
LEE CHILD - Jack Reacher - No Middle Name
I have read all the Lee Child Reacher books and enjoyed them; up until Andrew Child took over, read one of his - dont bother.
This is a collection of short stories covering the life of Jack Reacher from about 14 years of age to adulthood.

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RC4MAN said:
I read it after my own wife passed to cancer in 2008 and I started taking long rides. A great talent sadly gone too soon.
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I am sorry about your wife, god rest. I didn’t know that Neil had passed, when I was a kid working in the rock and roll industry we had stopped at his house for a drummer that I was working with, I didn’t realize that he was into cars at the time and was just floored when his garage opened.
I am enjoying the book like I haven’t in decades although it will ring a little somber now that I know he was taken from us.
 
Charles13 said:
I am sorry about your wife, god rest. I didn’t know that Neil had passed, when I was a kid working in the rock and roll industry we had stopped at his house for a drummer that I was working with, I didn’t realize that he was into cars at the time and was just floored when his garage opened.
I am enjoying the book like I haven’t in decades although it will ring a little somber now that I know he was taken from us.
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Neil passed to cancer 4 years ago, his GS BMW was recently listed for auction at Mecum
 
Just finished Rocket Boys think I read it one other time long ago. Well worth a re visit. From Wikipedia; October Sky is the first memoir in a series of four, by American engineer Homer Hickam Jr. originally published in 1998 as Rocket Boys. Later editions were published under the title October Sky as a tie-in to the 1999 film adaptation.
Synopsis; coming of age tale in 1950's hard scrabble Appalachia. A group of boys come up with an idea that changes their lives and the town where they live.

https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/october-sky
 
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Reminded me of my late wife's uncle, T L Greenwood. A young Texas farm boy during the depression with an interest in radio. Saved his penny's to build radios, repaired radios, taught himself Morse Code and when he graduated school joined the Merchant marine in the days prior to WWII. Traveled the world as Radio operator, had interesting stories about trips to Brazil and Germany before the war and utilizing radio signals for radio direction finding.
After meeting my wife's aunt, whom he married, took a land based job at a radio station, then applied for an took a job with Redstone Arsenal after the war. He rose to become head of electronics, was allowed to have patents in his own name and worked with Von Braun in the rocket program. In the attached photos he's to the left of Von Braun.
Also a dedicated Mixologist, ;) I remember him from family gatherings, he and his wife loved their after dinner drinks and he would always bring his leather bound travel bar. I can remember seeing him standing behind the kitchen island, the travel bar open in front of him, just the top of his head showing. You would hear things poured into a shaker, then see glimpses of hands and elbows gyrating around the edges of the cabinet, then out he would come with 2 Old Fashions or Manhattans for he and his wife.

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Really enjoying Fate is the Hunter by EK Gann, called the finest book on aviation ever written. I'm about 3/4 way through and flying with Gann on the wartime N Atlantic route, Labrador-Greenland-Iceland-Scotland. We're lucky enough to be flying a C-87 Liberator Express, cargo version of the Liberator. He hates it. Horrible cockpit, unreliable equipment, dreadful flying characteristics for the current job. Only big plus is four super-reliable Pratt & Whitney engines. A big comfort when you are making long flights over icy seas with no alternate landing field to the one you're headed for.

I say flying with him because Gann's narrative style really takes you right along with him in the cockpit. A really descriptive and atmospheric portrait of the lives of pilots in a long-gone age of flight. Apparently, they made a film of the book, but Gann disowned the film as nothing like the book.

Anyway, it's given me an insight into the lives of those men who flew in the middle years of the last century.
 
The Horse Soldiers
"Horse Soldiers is the dramatic account of a small band of Special Forces soldiers who secretly entered Afghanistan following 9/11 and rode to war on horses against the Taliban. Outnumbered forty to one, they pursued the enemy army across the mountainous Afghanistan terrain"

Embed with US soldiers thrown in with tribal forces in a country ravaged by years of foreign invasions.
 
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance and set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. In January 1915, after battling its way through a thousand miles of pack ice and only a day's sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization.
 

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