What book are you reading now

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Life In Letters of
William Dean Howells
edited by Mildred Howells Volume 1
First Edition, Doubleday, Doran & Company 1928
-----------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------

https://www.questia.com/library/lite...m-dean-howells

William Dean Howells

William Dean Howells, 1837–1920, American novelist, critic, and editor, b. Martins Ferry, Ohio. Both in his own novels and in his critical writing, Howells was a champion of realism in American literature. His education was gained by voracious reading as he worked for his father, a printer in various small towns in Ohio. Howells early turned to writing and to editorial work on the Ohio State Journal (1856–61). He wrote a campaign biography of Lincoln in 1860 and was given an appointment as consul in Venice in 1861. The first of his many travel books, Venetian Life (1866) and Italian Journey (1867), brought popular success and recognition. After his return to the United States in 1865, he worked for various periodicals. Settling in Boston, he was associated with The Atlantic for 15 years and later wrote the "Editor's Study" (1886–91) and the "Easy Chair" (1900–1920) for Harper's Magazine.

His first novels, Their Wedding Journey (1872), The Lady of the Aroostook (1879), and others, were moralistic comedies of manners that aroused only mild interest. However, when he turned to realism with A Modern Instance (1882) and The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), he became a leading novelist. In these two books, which are regarded as his major achievements, Howells portrayed with minute detail characters attempting to solve lifelike problems, often arising from social distinctions. His unromantic love story, Indian Summer (1886), was also highly popular. Howells' critical essays on the works of such realistic European writers as Tolstoy, Zola, and Ibsen helped to mold American taste, and he was a literary mentor to Mark Twain, Hamlin Garland, Thorstein Veblen, and Stephen Crane.

From the late 1880s on Howells spent much of his time New York City. During these years he became more and more concerned with social conflict and the problems of industrialization. Socialist thought is apparent in his novels A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), The Quality of Mercy (1892), and An Imperative Duty (1893), and even more forthright in his utopian works, A Traveler from Altruria (1894) and Through the Eye of the Needle (1907). He was an amazingly prolific author; besides his many novels he wrote plays ranging from blank verse tragedy to farce; critical works; several volumes of reminiscence; and short stories. The most notable of his critical volumes is Criticism and Fiction (1891). His books of reminiscences include A Boy's Town (1890), My Year in a Log Cabin (1893), Impressions and Experiences (1896), Literary Friends and Acquaintances (1900), My Mark Twain (1910), and Years of My Youth (1916).

See his life in letters (ed. by his daughter, Mildred Howells, 1928); biographies by E. H. Cady (2 vol., 1956–58, repr. 1986), K. S. Lynn (1972), and S. Goodman and C. Dawson (2005); studies by E. H. Cady (1956 and 1958, both repr. 1986) and as ed. with L. J. Budd (1993), G. N. Bennett (1973), K. E. Eble (1982), J. W. Crowley (1985 and 1999), and P. Abeln (2004); bibliography by V. J. Brenni (1973).

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright© 2016, The Columbia University Press.

[hjmick]

PATRIOT by Ted Bell.

[Abbey Marie]

This:






From Amazon:

GARY J. BYRNE served in federal law enforcement for nearly thirty years, in the U.S. Air Force Security Police, the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service, and most recently as a Federal Air Marshal. While serving as a Secret Service Officer, Gary protected President Bill Clinton and the First Family in the White House.

In this runaway #1 New York Times bestseller, former secret service officer Gary Byrne, who was posted directly outside President Clinton's oval office, reveals what he observed of Hillary Clinton's character and the culture inside the White House while protecting the First Family in CRISIS OF CHARACTER, the most anticipated book of the 2016 election.

[Abbey Marie]

Very good:

[Drummond]

In these days of doom & gloom, where a Covid-19 pandemic has occurred and a second wave of it is threatened .. what else was I going to do, but revisit an old favourite of mine, to 'perk up my mood' ... ??

Here it is ... a cracking read.

dtass.jpg

Plot 'spoiler' ....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_to_a_Sunless_Sea

The story is told in the first person by Jonah Scott, a British pilot for the fictional airline Air Britain who has arrived in New York City on his regular flight from London. The United States has collapsed after using up nearly all of its oil reserves and the collapse of the dollar.

During the night, Jonah and the apartment superintendent and guard, John Capel, must fight off armed burglars disguised as military police looking for the food Jonah and Senior Flight Attendant Kate Monahan brought with them. Capel is wounded but Kate demonstrates her basic medical skills in cleaning and dressing the wound. Jonah offers to help Capel and a newly orphaned girlfriend, Nikki, of one of his crew travel illegally to London aboard his aircraft, in order to escape the anarchy that has befallen America.

Shortly after takeoff from New York, Jonah is informed that Israel has attacked Beirut, Damascus, and Cairo with nuclear weapons in retaliation for their radioactive poisoning of Tel Aviv's water supply.

Israel's strike triggers a worldwide nuclear holocaust while the plane is en route to London, the Soviet Union and China attacking America and its allies. Four Soviet diplomats on board try to hijack the plane, only to be killed.

Unable to continue to Europe due to the fact that it has suffered nuclear attack, or return to also-attacked New York, the crew attempt to find a place to land their plane. They are granted landing rights at Funchal, but its airport is destroyed by the collision of an El Al flight and a desperate pilot disobeying instructions.

Jonah and his crew wonder whether to crash land on an island in the Azores chain with the help of Juan, a local resident who has contacted them via amateur radio. Jonah sights a NATO airfield, Lajes Field, which is mostly intact. Jonah and the nuclear scientists who are on board deduce that the Soviets needed Lajes intact and accordingly attacked it with a short-lived neutron bomb to occupy it. Jonah lands the plane at Lajes.

Although safe for now, rising levels of fallout from Europe require that they evacuate, and they decide to fly to Antarctica. They are not sure how many passengers they can bring and how many supplies they will need to bring. Jonah and the SAS soldiers on board manage to re-activate the base radar and use the teletype machines to make contact with a sheltered-in-place British naval officer in the Falkland Islands who is able to break cover and confirm with the McMurdo Antarctic base the existence of sufficient provisions, plus a nuclear reactor for warmth. He dies quickly.

A Soviet Antonov freighter aircraft lands at Lajes. Initially suspected of being a Soviet landing party to secure the crucial mid-Atlantic air force base, it turns out to be carrying two female Soviet Air Force crew and a large number of civilian refugees. Next morning both aircraft, fully fueled plus carrying as much extra fuel as possible, fly to Antarctica. When the Antonov cannot make the necessary altitude to overfly the worldwide belt of hot radiation (with the weight of cargo, passengers, and fuel), fifty Soviet volunteers sacrifice themselves by jumping from the plane.

Soon after the characters arrive at McMurdo, it is realised that the tilt of the Earth on its axis is being affected by the numerous nuclear explosions. There are two different endings of Down To A Sunless Sea which suggest either a radioactive death for all the survivors with a theological twist, or minus the polar advance of radiation, a chance for the almost one thousand survivors to rebuild the world.

[Kathianne]

​The Weight of Ink

[revelarts]

3 audio books


Miracles We Have Seen
America's Leading Physicians Share Stories They Can't Forget
"Publisher's Summary
This is a book of miracles - medical events witnessed by leading physicians for which there is no reasonable medical explanation, or, if there is, the explanation itself is extraordinary. These dramatic first-person essays detail spectacular serendipities, impossible cures, breathtaking resuscitations, extraordinary awakenings, and recovery from unimaginable disasters.
Among the extraordinary cases poignantly recounted by the physicians witnessing them:
A priest visiting a hospitalized patient went into cardiac arrest on the elevator, which opened up on the cardiac floor, right at the foot of the cardiac specialist, at just the right moment.
A tiny premature baby dying from irreversible lung disease who recovered almost immediately after being taken from his hospital bed and placed on his mother's chest.
President John F. Kennedy's son Patrick, who died shortly after birth, and whose disease eventually led to research that saved generations of babies.
Miracles We Have Seen is a book of inspiration and optimism, and a compelling glimpse into the lives of physicians."

Medical Apartheid
The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
"Publisher's Summary
Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge - a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how blacks have historically been prey to grave robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the 20th century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism were used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks.
The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit."

Undeniable
How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed
"Publisher's Summary
Throughout his distinguished and unconventional career, engineer-turned-molecular-biologist Douglas Axe has been asking the questions that much of the scientific community would rather silence. Now he presents his conclusions in this brave and pioneering book. Axe argues that the key to understanding our origin is the "design intuition" - the innate belief held by all humans that tasks we would need knowledge to accomplish can be accomplished only by someone who has that knowledge. For the ingenious task of inventing life, this knower can only be God.
Starting with the hallowed halls of academic science, Axe dismantles the widespread belief that Darwin's theory of evolution is indisputably true, showing instead that a gaping hole has been at its center from the beginning. He then explains in plain English the science that proves our design intuition scientifically valid. Lastly, he uses everyday experience to empower ordinary people to defend their design intuition, giving them the confidence and courage to explain why it has to be true and the vision to imagine what biology will become when people stand up for this truth."

[icansayit]

Primarily TOM CLANCY, Hunt For Red October, Red Storm Rising, plus...like many here. 1984 over, and over again. It's almost like reading the DAILY reports or hearing daily crap from PSAKI the Biden President of "LIARS-R-US".
ORWELL was right on almost everything...but in different versions of the Destruction of Man.

[BoogyMan]

Just finished book 13 in this series. Craig Alanson has done a wonderful job with these books.

Expeditionary Force: Columbus Day is the first in the series. Fun books to read and get really good about midway through book 1.

DC916334-ED75-4218-8480-C2956E8D6A6E.jpeg

[SassyLady]

I've read all 15 books in this series and really like this author. Reading another of his series, Odin.

Screenshot_20220109-144706_Kindle.jpg

[hjmick]

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel:

It takes place in the Great Lakes region before and after a fictional swine flu pandemic, known as the "Georgia Flu", has devastated the world, killing most of the population. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2015. It's been on my list since before COVID, came across it at Costco the other day. It seems they issued another edition due to the HBOMAX series.


Goodreads: Station Eleven

Amazon: Station Eleven

[SassyLady]

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel:

It takes place in the Great Lakes region before and after a fictional swine flu pandemic, known as the "Georgia Flu", has devastated the world, killing most of the population. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2015. It's been on my list since before COVID, came across it at Costco the other day. It seems they issued another edition due to the HBOMAX series.


Goodreads: Station Eleven

Amazon: Station Eleven

The Omega series I mentioned above is about exposing and eliminating the new world elites that are using technology for population control.

[revelarts]

"For years, émigrés from the former Soviet bloc have been telling Rod Dreher they see telltale signs of "soft" totalitarianism cropping up in America--something more Brave New World than Nineteen Eighty-Four. Identity politics are beginning to encroach on every aspect of life. Civil liberties are increasingly seen as a threat to "safety". Progressives marginalize conservative, traditional Christians, and other dissenters. Technology and consumerism hasten the possibility of a corporate surveillance state. And the pandemic, having put millions out of work, leaves our country especially vulnerable to demagogic manipulation.

In Live Not By Lies, Dreher amplifies the alarm sounded by the brave men and women who fought totalitarianism. He explains how the totalitarianism facing us today is based less on overt violence and more on psychological manipulation. He tells the stories of modern-day dissidents--clergy, laity, martyrs, and confessors from the Soviet Union and the captive nations of Europe--who offer practical advice for how to identify and resist totalitarianism in our time. Following the model offered by a prophetic World War II-era pastor who prepared believers in his Eastern European to endure the coming of communism, Live Not By Lies teaches American Christians a method for resistance:
• SEE: Acknowledge the reality of the situation.
• JUDGE: Assess reality in the light of what we as Christians know to be true.
• ACT: Take action to protect truth.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said that one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming totalitarianism can't happen in their country. Many American Christians are making that mistake today, sleepwalking through the erosion of our freedoms. Live Not By Lies will wake them and equip them for the long resistance."

[revelarts]

I don't read much fiction anymore (my fiction is usually via movies & comics... & CNN) but this caught my eye.
I'm almost done. it seems like the kind of thing some folks here might like.

from Amazon
"The Lost Order continues renowned New York Times bestseller Steve Berry’s Cotton Malone series with another riveting, history-based thriller.

The Knights of the Golden Circle was the largest and most dangerous clandestine organization in American history. It amassed billions in stolen gold and silver, all buried in hidden caches across the United States. Since 1865 treasure hunters have searched, but little of that immense wealth has ever been found.

Now, one hundred and sixty years later, two factions of what remains of the Knights of the Golden Circle want that lost treasure—one to spend it for their own ends, the other to preserve it.

Thrust into this battle is former Justice Department agent Cotton Malone, whose connection to the knights is far deeper than he ever imagined. At the center is the Smithsonian Institution—linked to the knights, its treasure, and Malone himself through..."

Apparently this "Lost Order" group was (is?) real, I'd never heard of it before.