Anyone read Aztec by Gary Jennings? Might try to tackle that as my next big historical fiction adventure.
I’m not familiar with that one.
I just finished “The River of Doubt” by Candace Millard. It’s the account of Teddy Roosevelt’s Amazon expedition. Very well written, extremely detailed and quite harrowing to read. Damn near killed old Teddy. I recommend it if you haven’t read it.
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That sounds good, I’ll have to check it out. I liked David Gran’s Lost City of Z, which covers Percy Fawcett’s ill fated Amazon expedition (which I’m sure is discussed up thread).
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I read Lost City of Z last week right after Silence. Loved it. Not quite as much as I loved Killers or The Wager, but still a great read. The Amazon sounds like hell on Earth to me, which makes it all the more fascinating that some people feel compelled to explore it.
I also finished Women Talking this morning. I thought it was pretty muddled through the first 2/3 but really came together toward the ending and finished strong.
That’s on my short list
I’ve been thinking about reading that for a couple of years. Millard’s book about Garfield was quite good.
Ah, thanks. I didn’t put the connection together. Destiny of the Republic is one of my favorite presidential biographies.
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Fight Night by Toews was one of my favorite reads of this year. Women Talking definitely my most disturbing watch.
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I read the book because of a strong recommendation I got for the movie, which I’ll watch sometime in the next couple of weeks. Probably one I’ll have to watch without the wife. The subject matter is horrific, but the framing in the book is extremely interesting, where the biggest gut punches come from the matter-of-fact way the characters talk about it all.
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Mrs banedoodle and I just returned from an epic road trip to the west. We made Bend, Oregon from Asheville, NC in three days of travel. Along the way we read:
The Wager
Billy Budd, by Melville
A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway
The Call of the Wild, Jack London
The Witching Tide, Margaret Meyer.
We also started an extraordinary 7th century historical fiction called Hild, by Nicola Griffin, which I’m really excited to get back to once I’ve finished War and Peace. Which, as long as it is, I’m really enjoying the hell out of. Someone has a blurb in there that says something along the lines of, If the world wrote novels, they would sound like Tolstoy.
Of The Wager, I have to say: If you loved that, try Patrick O’Brian. His Aubrey and Maturin novels (from which the wonderful movie Master & Commander was adapted) are exceedingly Wager-like. Napoleonic wars instead of Spanish, but, as Grann mentioned in the intro, O’Brian leaned on the Wager story for much of his source material. I saw a good deal of his Jack Aubrey character in David Cheap. And they are 20 and a half compulsively readable and enjoyable adventures.
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Have read the Aubrey Maturin novels three times and obviously find them enjoyable. Would also suggest listening to them on Audible narrated by the late Patrick Tull.
Reading “The Chill” by Ross McDonald. Damn fine writer.
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Just curious, I assume this means you listened to the audiobook versions of these along the way. I’ve had an ongoing argument with my wife that listening to audiobooks is “reading” so by this comment I assume you agree? (My wife doesn’t.) Is listening to a book the same as reading a book in your mind?
I’m firmly a physical book reader, but I think either way you’re consuming literature and that counts as “reading” a book, even if someone is reading it to you. It’s still the book.
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I know you didn’t ask me but I say no. It is not the same. The difference is in the intake though, not the story. You are listening to someone read a book. However, you can drive a car, rake leaves, walk in the woods, you can do all kinds of things while listening that you can’t do when reading.
We do a mix of both. I read the Wager aloud and much of Hild. I also read Billy Budd aloud. The others we listened to on Audible.
I definitely give a much closer read to a physical book, but I’ve also gotten better and better at listening. Frequently I’ll go back to a physical text after listening to it and flesh out the experience retroactively.
I do think that, like reading, listening to a narrative is an acquired skill.
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It’s a lot harder for me to read because of my ADHD and blepharitis, I get eye fatigue and am often compelled to stop reading a book to look up some tangential notion that came to me while reading. I used to read a lot more but now I probably listen to 5 books for every one I read.
Thanks for the replies, I was just curious what everybody else thought. For what it’s worth, my wife is a reading specialist, so I tend to give her the benefit of the doubt in the matter. I suppose it’s probably just the amount of comprehension that you get from reading the physical text versus listening, or it may just be semantics in the word “reading “. I am almost exclusively an audiobook listener versus a physical book reader these days.
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It’s interesting too because I don’t always listen to myself when reading aloud.
I am also a physical reader. I feel I comprehend much more reading than listening to the same words. Perhaps that’s just me, as I also feel I learn something better by writing it than by typing it.
On a side note, I once read “The Call of the Wild” aloud to my dog. He was a very attentive listener, and I think he got most of the story.
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Writing, for me, maybe only next to teaching, has been the fastest and deepest route to learning.
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