What's Your 2015 Reading List?

[southwest88]

It's a topic I always enjoy reading about but it's hard to find an "objective" history.

Yah, history can be written from various POVs. & in the Spanish Civil War, there was no lack of factions. Still, the author has a rep - he's spent his career studying, writing, teaching, lecturing about Spain, especially the Spanish CW. He has a slew of publications, speaks Spanish & Catalan fluently, resides in UK academia, has various literary honors from the Spanish-speaking world (& English-, especially about Spain). He's written a definitive (albeit dull, per Kirkus) biography of Franco.

So I'm prepared to read him, to see what he has to say on the topic.

[Mister D]

Yah, history can be written from various POVs. & in the Spanish Civil War, there was no lack of factions. Still, the author has a rep - he's spent his career studying, writing, teaching, lecturing about Spain, especially the Spanish CW. He has a slew of publications, speaks Spanish & Catalan fluently, resides in UK academia, has various literary honors from the Spanish-speaking world (& English-, especially about Spain). He's written a definitive (albeit dull, per Kirkus) biography of Franco.

So I'm prepared to read him, to see what he has to say on the topic.

I have what I thought was a pretty balanced narrative. I will link to it later tonight. The Spanish Civil war pushes a lot of ideological buttons.

[southwest88]

I skimmed through Preston on the Spanish Civil War. Depressing reading - it seems balanced. But clearly the Republican government & the Left in Spain generally was fractured & ill-prepared to fight a civil war. The Left's leadership seems to have been relatively clumsy politically, & helpless, & the Rightists in general were much better @ plotting for a civil war, prepping their partisans & foot soldiers, amassing arms, training, etc.

Gmo. Franco & his forces & associates committed a lot of atrocities along the way. The Republicans & their partisans did too, although the numbers & the relative restraint of the Left leadership indicate that the Left parties mostly contained their fanatics. The Right essentially plotted to blow up the government, & bring on a slaughter of Freemasons, Jews, Communists. The Right won the civil war, & Franco managed to hang on until the Cold War brought the West around to anti-Communist caudillos.

[Standing Wolf]

Stephen King, Coontz and I reread book series like Nero Wolfe and Mike Hammer both detectives.

I gave up on King years ago, after 'Gerald's Game', and didn't read any of his stuff for years. Then he came out with the huge 'The Dome' and I gave it a try - best thing he's published since 'The Stand'. (Don't let that stupid t.v. series put you off...the book is golden.) I actually want to go back and read some of the King novels I didn't read, like '11/22/63', just to see if I missed any good ones.

Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer is a must read, and I've recently discovered Max Allen Collins' novels continuing the series, including some posthumous collaborations with Spillane (Mickey gave instructions for all his unfinished stuff to be given to Collins, saying "He'll know what to do with it.") One of those collaborations, 'Lady, Go Die!', is pure Mike Hammer and a pleasure. I want to dig out my old Spillane paperbacks and reread those for the first time in almost thirty years.

If you want to try reading a book for entertainment try reading one Rex Stouts, Nero Wolfe series that are unique about NYC in the 40s I would say. Nero wolfe is an obese Intellectual maybe a genius who never leaves the house, sits in a chair and can solve the most involved crimes. Really fun to read.

And as Stout revealed at some point, and most Sherlockians will acknowledge, Nero Wolfe is the son of famous Baker Street Detective and "The Woman". Speaking of which, I purchased an entire small shelf of Holmes continuation stories and pastiches, both novels and short story collections, from E.R.Hamiltion last year and I want to read as many of them as I can this year, including 'The House of Silk' by Anthony Horowitz. (His James Bond novel, 'Trigger Mortis', was first rate.)

I'm currently reading the ninth in the Hap and Leonard series by one of America's greatest, funniest, most versatile and unpredictable writers, Joe R. Lansdale, 'Honky Tonk Samurai'. He has other works "in the process", but he told me that a sequel to last year's spectacular 'Paradise Sky' is a possibility at some point. If you love good writing, this big novel about a former slave who becomes a legend of the old West will become one of your favorite books. I want to go back and read as much Lansdale as I can get my hands on.

Craig Johnson has two Longmire books coming out this year - a novella in the Spring, and a full-sized novel in the Fall. This is one of the few long book series that I have not fallen behind on reading. If Craig does a signing in your area, get there by whatever means possible. You'll thank me.

For anyone who has yet to read the late Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy about Lisbeth Salander, first do that; Larsson was a genius. This year, when I'm through with the latest Hap and Leonard book in a few days, I'm going to start on the much-anticipated and critically acclaimed sequel, 'The Girl in the Spider's Web' by David Lagencrantz. To truly deserve a place beside the amazing 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' and it's sequels, this book would have to be remarkable, and by all accounts it is that.

[Standing Wolf]

I know the feeling. Sometimes good books have a really boring, technical chapter you have to suffer through.

That brings to mind Carl Sagan's 'The Dragons of Eden'. The first few chapter consist of some pretty deep, intense tutorials on how the human brain works, but you have to get through and absorb what's in them to enjoy and appreciate the rest of the book - and of course you do. One of the half-dozen most enjoyable and enlightening science books I've ever read.

[Standing Wolf]

In between I want to re read the entire "Foundation" series for my Science Fiction fix.

I tried doing that about ten years ago, and didn't get very far. For a book series about future times, it certainly takes on board and incorporates a lot of misogynistic elements from the '40s and '50s in which it was written.

If you like the kind of adventurous sci-fi that E. R. Burroughs used to do, check out The Gandalara Cycle by Randall Garrett and Vicki Ann Heydron. I've just finished re-reading the first three (of 7) books. Swordplay, alien worlds, wizards.

I'd like to make time, sometime this year, to tackle all the Robert E. Howard 'Conan' stories, as he wrote them, before they were edited and changed around an added to by writers like de Camp and Carter.

[Mister D]

I have to buy a plane ticket tomorrow to visit my brother et al in Louisiana. I have a gift card one of our clients gave me for Christmas that I haven't used yet. I will spend it all on Amazon. I need some new books. I have one de Maistre title left: The Pope, Considered In His Relations With the Church. I sometimes search for translations of New Right articles, essays etc. but I'm almost out of lengthy material. Oh, and I need some more pu-erh.

[Green Arrow]

I have to buy a plane ticket tomorrow to visit my brother et al in Louisiana. I have a gift card one of our clients gave me for Christmas that I haven't used yet. I will spend it all on Amazon. I need some new books. I have one de Maistre title left: The Pope, Considered In His Relations With the Church. I sometimes search for translations of New Right articles, essays etc. but I'm almost out of lengthy material. Oh, and I need some more pu-erh.

Where at in Louisiana?

[Mister D]

Where at in Louisiana?

I will PM.