What are you reading lately?

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Maybe I should list the three books I am reading concurrently.

Score, Data-Driven Success for Your Advancement Team - Kevin MaacDonell and Pete Wylie
Donor Centered Fundraising, 2nd edition - Penelope Burk
An Executive's Guide to Fundraising Operations - Christopher Cannon

I doubt anybody will make a movie on these.

I am glad you posted. The Progressive Arkansas Women PAC is trying to expand donor base and increase donations. You’ll love our Twitter and web address: @ardameocrats.

[Northland10]

Maybe I should list the three books I am reading concurrently.

Score, Data-Driven Success for Your Advancement Team - Kevin MaacDonell and Pete Wylie
Donor Centered Fundraising, 2nd edition - Penelope Burk
An Executive's Guide to Fundraising Operations - Christopher Cannon

I doubt anybody will make a movie on these.

I am glad you posted. The Progressive Arkansas Women PAC is trying to expand donor base and increase donations. You’ll love our Twitter and web address: @ardameocrats.

If your team is looking to do more fundraising analytics to measure and expand your base, I would also recommend Fundraising Analytics by Joshua Birkholz.

[Addie]

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn, a novel about female spies stationed in France during WWI and WWII. Pretty good, I thought.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

[Shizzle Popped]

I'm currently reading "Leadership: In Turbulent Times" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. So far it's excellent. It follows Lincon, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and LBJ and discusses their leadership qualities and the impact their lives had on how they led and interacted with people. It's a very interesting take on the lives of some of our most influential presidents.

I just finished reading "The British Are Coming: The War for America" by Rick Atkinson. This is the first in a trilogy about the Revolutionary War and I highly recommend it. If you haven't read his Liberation Trilogy it's one of the best series out there about WWII in Europe and Africa.

[Foggy]

Marie Lu.

I've already read the Legend series a few years ago, but now I'm deep into Warcross and Wildcard (It's time for a rematch.)

She really is an excellent, amazing writer.

And I loved The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, and anything written by John Scalzi.

[Jez]

Just finished reading "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman. Now it makes me want to read more of his stuff.

I highly doubt I will watch the TV series (can't anyway, we don't get Starz), but I really did enjoy the book.

[Volkonski]

Linda Fairstein's Alexandra Cooper crime series. Up to book 5. Set mostly in Manhattan with side trips to Martha's Vineyard.

Martha's Vineyard sounds a lot like the North Fork. It even has a former Methodist campgrounds.

Interesting to see technology develop in the series. In the 1st 3 books set in the mid 1990's no one has a cell phone. In book 4 Alex has a "cellular phone". By book 5 set in 2002 cell phones have become fairly common.

[Volkonski]

"The Girl Who Lived Twice " the latest Lisbeth Salander novel, the 3rd by the new author David Lagercrantz.

Showed up in my Kindle library yesterday. I stayed up and finished it last night.

I think this is the best of the 3 novels by the new author.

There is a character loosely based on Trump.

[Addie]

I've been reading Olen Steinhauer's Ruthenia Quintet. These are his first books, all of them set in unnamed socialist republics in Eastern Europe, close behind the Iron Curtain in its early days, with plots involving the state security apparatus and the all too human individuals working in it. If you like spy novels, I think he's one of the best writing today.

On the non-fiction side, I'm reading The Accidental President, about Harry Truman.

[Addie]

With all the uproar about Trump and Sharpie Gate and the weather service, it seemed like a good time to boot this up. If you haven't read it, you should. Gawd bless the civil servants.

Michael Lewis's book about the Trump Administration, The Fifth Risk is not only about the Trump Admin, but about governing itself. The fifth risk facing the nation is identified as "Program Management" or what could happen if government programs are not managed properly or at all. Say if there's an administration in the White House that doesn't give a damn about things like science or terrible threats that diligent civil servants find every day, the discoveries that might have been if anyone was paying attention. This is a deeply researched and harrowing book to read. You might want to wait to do it until after the holidays. But read it.

ETA: Forgot to mention that the Obamas have an option on this book to develop as a Netflix documentary.

I'm in the early stages of reading this. An early impression was it was just a "Trump bashing". It may be but it's much more.
I found a good synopsis within the NYT review:

“The Fifth Risk” raises the most important question of the moment: Have we grown too lazy and silly and poorly educated to sustain a working democracy? We live in a moment when tribal bumper stickers — both left and right — pass for politics, when ignorance and grievance drive policy. The federal government exists at a level of complexity most people just can’t be bothered to understand. We have little idea what it does, only the vague sense that it doesn’t do anything very well. Michael Lewis has taken on the task of rectifying that misconception, and he has done so with refreshing clarity — and a measured sense of outrage — which makes this his most ambitious and important book.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/book ... -risk.html

There's more to it and I'm enjoying the perspective.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Anyone read this?

https://www.nationalmemo.com/amp/r-i-p- ... publicans/

R.I.P. GOP: How The New America Is Dooming The Republicans

Stan Greenberg 4 weeks ago

[Addie]

Not yet. I have it on my Kindle list.

Anyone read this?

https://www.nationalmemo.com/amp/r-i-p- ... publicans/

R.I.P. GOP: How The New America Is Dooming The Republicans

Stan Greenberg 4 weeks ago

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Not yet. I have it on my Kindle list.

Anyone read this?

https://www.nationalmemo.com/amp/r-i-p- ... publicans/

R.I.P. GOP: How The New America Is Dooming The Republicans

Stan Greenberg 4 weeks ago

Thanks!

[Clairez]

Reading " The Testaments", by Margret Atwood. The sequel of Handmaiden's Tale. Pretty good read so far.

[John Thomas8]

I've been reading the works of Eric Wittenberg, the authority on the American Civil War cavalry. He writes well and his research is impeccable.

[Maybenaut]

The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald. Non-fiction. About an FBI sting involving price-fixing at Archer Daniels Midland in the early 1990s.

The story is just bizarre. Dude goes to the FBI to report price fixing, agrees to become a cooperating witness all wired up. And while he’s doing that, he embezzles nine million dollars from his company. He’s shocked that ADM fired him when they found out about the wire (he thought the leadership would all lose their jobs and the board would reward him with appointment to CEO), and is shocked that the government withdrew from the cooperation agreement (which had an “I will only commit crimes specifically authorized by the FBI” clause) when the FBI found out about the embezzlement.

I’m about 3/4 of the way through. Recurring question for me is why the fuck did he go to the FBI in the first place? That hasn’t yet been satisfactorily answered. I really hope that question gets answered.

I’m really enjoying this book. I usually don’t read a lot of non-fiction, but I like Eichenwald’s writing style.

[voxpopuluxe]

This summer I've spent reading the stories of Lucia Berlin and the novels of Carson McCullers. (Along with several graphic novels and a few books of poetry.) Right now I'm about half way through Rachel Cusk's Transit, having read Outline, the preceeding volume, last spring. Neither of the books really go anywhere, but I like her prose and her observations on her characters' lives. Until not too long ago I usually read about 50/50 fiction/non-fiction, but fiction feels like a better way to stay sane these days. I did spend Labor Day weekend on top of a mountain with Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through, T Fleischmann's memoir/essay on Felix Gonzalez-Torres and that's about the nearest I've come to reading non-fiction of any length this year.

[Volkonski]

At my 50th HS reunion I learned that one of my former classmates had written a book. Naturally I had to buy a copy.

Amazon was out of stock but you can buy it here-

https://findingawaytoplay.com/ready-to-roll/

"Finding a Way to Play: The Pioneering Spirit of Women in Basketball" by Joanne Lannin



It tells the fascinating history of women's basketball. I enjoyed the book very much.

[Slim Cognito]

It's not what anyone would consider great literature but on the plane ride home I read Kristen Johnson's Guts, about her drug and alcohol addiction, the horrific GI trauma she developed from popping handfuls of pills washed down with wine, and finally recovery. I always liked her on 3rd Rock from the Sun, never realizing she was stoned out of her gourd during those tapings.

She's very funny (depending on how much was actually written by her) but she sounds exactly like her character in 3rd Rock and now Mom, which leads me to believe she's not so much acting as she's just playing herself*. The book is short and very, very funny, especially considering the subject matter. Great for an afternoon at the beach or, in my case, a plane ride. The Kindle version is only $8.

Off Topic

*This is not to insinuate she's not a talented actress. She apparently prefers theater to tv. And they said the same thing about Andy Griffith, whom I adored, especially his stand-up, pre his iconic show which, in my arrogant opinion, was much funnier the first season or two, when he was still doing the wise but heavily accented hick sheriff. Which leads me to Jim Nabors...

[pjhimself]

Just started (could be interesting given his start with Hitler and Castro as cases to consider):

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know
by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers -- and why they often go wrong.

How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true?

I've enjoyed Gladwell's other stuff.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

That looks GOOD, pj!

[Foggy]

Everything I can find by Len Deighton. On the recommendation of Sue Grafton.

[TexasFilly]

I am not a renaissance person like many of y'all. I am reading Crime In Progress. I have my highlighter near by at all times.

[DejaMoo]

Everything I can find by Len Deighton. On the recommendation of Sue Grafton.

I haven't read any of his fiction, but by golly I am impressed by his writing as an amateur historian. He's written one of the best overviews of WWII: Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II.