In the Heart of the Sea.

Essentially the true story of Moby Dick and about 100x more terrifying. Gives an unparalleled sense of how vast and dangerous the ocean is/was. Read it in one sitting. Engrossing doesn't even scratch the surface with this book.

Pretend the movie doesn't exist.

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Started "The Underground Railroad" by Colson Whitehead. Kind of a slow start but they just arrived to the Railroad so I think things will start to pick
up from here. Also picked up a paperback version of "Invisible Man" yesterday before leaving NYC. Always read it was a must read and good book so
I hope to get to that one later this summer.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen. It's great so far! Well, almost great. Some stock characters, Still fun. But I heard it turns into a goofy love story, so I'm afraid I'm headed for a disappointment.

Ain't seen the movie. Can't stand talkies.

Update? I started this too but haven’t made much progress

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

I finished The Underground Railroad a while back. I thought it had so much promise and the idea was really interesting but I felt it kind of fizzled out
and the ending was not very satisfying to me. Been picking away at "Invisible Man" but I haven't had a chance to really make a big dent in it. I'll
be travelling to NYC in a few weeks and should be able to knock it out between now and the end of that trip.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

That's a good one. Very dense.

Yeah I like to beat myself up with these egghead novels. Just finished up the chapter in which the main character gets through the big
boxing match. Glad to hear it is pretty good. I think once I get going on it I will hammer through it.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants

Very good light reading. Well-written and funny, the writer goes on tangents, but you'll know rat behavior (and how we have tried to exterminate them) fairly well after reading. The writer isn't a scientist, but he summarizes what biologists say and interviews the country's superstar exterminators (yes, there's a star system when it comes to pest control), in addition to offering the fruits of his own observations.

He's kind of a nut; he decided to sit and watch rats for a year in a little alley in New York City, and he sometimes brings his friends (a poet and a painter!) with him. Lots of eccentric characters and some interesting urban history make this a pleasant light read.

Been slowly making my way through Don Quixote - about 600 pages in. This will be the longest book I've ever finished. The Grossman translation is really easy to read. That Sancho, he cracks me up.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Reading Radical Candor, and while it borders on being extreme for the sake of being extreme, it offers a ton of interesting insights for new managers.

Currently working on Magic Tree House #4: Pirates Past Noon with my second-grader. Quite mysterious, dense with enigma. Who built the Tree House?

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Let me know if he likes it. I grabbed my old copy from my parents house the last time I was home. It was one of my favorites when I read it 30+ years ago. It’s sitting on my shelf of books that are collecting dust before I get to them or give them to a kid.

Aw snap! I went with that tree house to Rome and the time of the dinosaurs. Like Blagojevich, those bratty kids have got this thing and it's golden, but unlike Blago (I ain't spellin' that shit again), they don't know what they got. If I had that, I'd type in the coordinates to Zina Bash's haus sometime before she got married.

He did like it, and we still talk about it every once in a while. It's presents such a moral conundrum that it is something I still think about, too. It's amazing how often this happened in American history; the writer of Empire Moon suggests that thousands of people had similar experiences, and many people can relate to being pulled by two competing cultures. But yeah, the kid hates reading, but he liked this one.

My brother read it for school. Maybe same year as My Brother Sam is Dead but I can’t remember. It was one of those I grabbed off the shelf when mom told me to read a book because I dared say I was bored. It appealed to me greatly at the time (I was probably 11) but yeah, I do recall how unhappy of an ending it was which was something different for a young reader. It’s s story I gave thought of off and on over the years. Probably one of the few that resonated.

The Gift of Fear And Other Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence, by Gavin deBecker.

I can't even remember why I read this, and you can ask Cory what people in psychology make of it, but damnit, my chest burned with anxiety as I read this. Published in 1997, the Gift of Fear tells us to trust our intuition when someone seems a little off. Much of it deals with women and their experiences with rapists and murderers, and how some of the writer's interview subjects willingly let their rapist in their homes despite feeling uncomfortable about doing so. Trust those instincts, deBecker says; forget the politeness. Con men instinctively know that we don't trust our instincts and they take advantage of this. Simply put, some people don't listen to their instincts, and others don't know how to say no.

I don't think the writer ever addressed the issue of assertiveness or people with low self-esteem who can't seem to gather the energy or courage to be assertive. Often, people know that others are manipulative because they are listening to their instincts, but they still can't say no. There seem to be other issues he is leaving out, too. However, he does offer some templates for closing the conversational doors through which many bad people enter victims' lives.

As I said above, for a self-help book, this created a ton of anxiety in me. I mean, talk about stirring up fear! His case studies involve some disgusting people and the situations the victims find themselves in are archetypal. You'd think this book would be empowering, but it's just as likely to freak you out. It's also poorly written and deBecker comes off like a huckster, selling himself and his business (he basically does security for rich people, though he seems to pass himself off as a profiler or predictor of crime). And it's actually two separate books glued together: one deals with victims (mostly women and children) and another, shorter part deals with employees, and doesn't seem to fit in. There's useful stuff here, but it had the scent of pseudoscience.

I read that book when it came out. As I recall the point was when you are afraid, there is likely a good reason. Don't try to rationalize it away. Pretty good point.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

I got through about half of this novel and I had to put it back on the shelf. I just didn't care for it overall. There were chapters that I
really enjoyed and then others that I could barely get through. My uncle sent me a book that he just finished and I have been reading
that each night this week before bed. The other book I had to force myself to lay down and read it. The new book is called
The Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, and the Epic Age of Flight. Essentially a compressed biography
on these three famous pilots and their roles in WWI and WWII. It is a really easy read and since I don't know that much about any of them
it has been interesting. I should be able to get through it and pick up something else by the time I travel for Thanksgiving.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Made my way through this eventually. OK. I gave it 3/5 on Goodreads. Seemed like a hashup of Cormac MacCarthy and William Faulkner meets the slavery issue. Character development was poor. Many inneresting vignettes though. I read this to keep my white privilege in check. Shocked when I realized it was written pre-Trump. Can't imagine how depressing it would have been had he written it now.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

I wish I had half your mother's fortitude or timing. Once my sons stopped wanting the bribes of book store Saturdays, I lost.

Play Station3 was my Waterloo.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Along the same lines - “Endurance: Shackelton’s Incredible Voyage” was remarkable in terms of a true story involving man vs nature. Excellent and gripping throughout. The use of actual diary entries and pictures from the adventure really help you envision what they went through. Incredible.

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If we nominate Trump we will get destroyed & we'll deserve it.- L Graham
I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.- DJT 2016
MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!- DJT 12/25/23

Grant by Ron Chernow.

Not finished yet--stopped and went back--but my lord, this is a great book. Chernow also wrote a book about Hamilton that GoldenJet read.

This book is just magnificent. At a thousand pages, it's a big one, but there's a lot of story to tell.

Mom said jump and you jumped. Wish I had inherited that parenting ability. Although my kids do love reading do we got that going for us.

Very good author.

Reading "Five Families" by Selwyn Raab. Covers the history of the New York Mafia.

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Sherman remarked, "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" Grant looked up. "Yes," he replied, followed by a puff. "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."

Good call, Frank. I want to read that one, also. Pretty much the go-to for must read Mafia books.

I read Five Families. It is good, but it jumps around a bunch. I think he tried to organize it by family. By doing that you lose track of time period, and it can be confusing at points in the book. Some of the post script material was helpful. It is a lot to digest.

The scale of corruption in NY was simply outrageous.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Sounds like something Shakes needs

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

I'm starting Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein. I loved Nixonland, and want to explore Perlstein's whole conservative trilogy (these two and one on the Reagan years). With this cold snap coming up and what I suspect is a not-insignificant knee injury to deal with, there's no better time to dive in.

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Has anyone tried those O'Rilley,Killing... books? I tried the killing Japan one,stopped about 1/2 way. Goona try two that I might like more the SS and Patton ones.

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When I am stuck and need to figure something out I always remember the Immortal words of Socrates when he said:"I just drank what?"

Just finished Sapiens. Despite the generally strong reviews on Amazon, I found the book wanting. Glad I am done with it.

Just grabbed a new one about the hacker called Alien.

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Hawaii (fuck) You