Every month we show what is on our reading table.

This month we added two new books.

NEW

  1. “The Mill on the Floss” (704 pages, paperback, 2003) by George Eliot: I stumbled across this before our Mediterranean cruise. I read it during that time. Great storytelling, great soap opera. And “George” is a great writer. From the Amazon description: “Drawing on George Eliot’s own childhood experiences to craft an unforgettable story of first love, sibling rivalry and regret, The Mill on the Floss is edited with an introduction and notes by A.S. Byatt, author of Possession, in Penguin Classics. Brought up at Dorlcote Mill, Maggie Tulliver worships her brother Tom and is desperate to win the approval of her parents, but her passionate, wayward nature and her fierce intelligence bring her into constant conflict with her family. As she reaches adulthood, the clash between their expectations and her desires is painfully played out as she finds herself torn between her relationships with three very different men: her proud and stubborn brother; hunchbacked Tom Wakem, the son of her family’s worst enemy; and the charismatic but dangerous Stephen Guest.”
  1. “Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them: A Cosmic Quest from Zero to Infinity” (352 pages, paperback, 2022) by Antonio Padilla: I bought this in the JKK airport on the way back from our Mediterranean cruise. There are lots of interesting stories about the background of the numbers. One disconcerting fact is that the author is English and uses obscure, for an American, references: for example, to and English game show. From the Amazon description: “For particularly brilliant theoretical physicists like James Clerk Maxwell, Paul Dirac, or Albert Einstein, the search for mathematical truths led to strange new understandings of the ultimate nature of reality. But what are these truths? What are the mysterious numbers that explain the universe?”

OLD

  1. “Exchanging Up” (258 pages, paperback, 2005) by Gary Gorman: This book was mentioned in “Commercial Real Estate Investing for Dummies” that we reviewed last month. Since we are involved in a 1031 exchange now, I bought it. It is an excellent book on the subject. The most interesting thing I learned is that you cannot exchange male livestock for female livestock or vice versa. Livestock exchanges must be “like kind”, female for female or male for male. Who would have thought? You cannot exchange a rooster for a chicken. From the Amazon description: “In easy-to-understand language, you’ll learn how to: Use the Six Essential concepts that are necessary for every exchange.”
  2. “Atlas of the Night Sky” (99 pages, paperback, 2023) by The Editors of National Geographic: We’ve mentioned our cabin on the East Verde River before. We are planning to expand the cabin and add an observatory.
  3. “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” (224 pages, paperback, 2018) by Cory Doctorow: I bought this book in the Phoenix airport on the way to Ridgecrest, CA to look at an assisted living facility that is ‘for sale’. It was listed for $9M. We thought more like $6.5M to $7M. He got two offers for $9M. We’re out. From the Amazon description: “Cory Doctorow’s debut cyberpunk science fiction that explores the scarcity of morality in a world that has conquered death and material insufficiency.”
  4. “On Cats” (128 pages, paperback, 2015) by Charles Bukowski: Michelle was reading and asked me if I had read Charles Bukowski, sort of. After we deciphered the name; yes. Lots of very dark material. But his ode to cats; poetry and prose is not dark. From the Amazon description: “Felines touched a vulnerable spot in the unfathomable soul of Charles Bukowski, the Dirty Old Man of American letters. For the writer, there was something elemental about these inscrutable creatures, whose searing gaze could penetrate deep into our beings. Bukowski considered cats to be forces of nature, elusive emissaries of beauty and love.”
  5. “A Darker Sea” (400 pages, paperback, 2018) by James L. Haley: This is the second book in the series recommended by Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com: “BACK TO NAVAL FICTION, I’m currently reading the Bliven Putnam series by James Haley and quite enjoying it. Early US Navy instead of Royal Navy, opening with the campaign against the Barbary Pirates. Well written and entertaining, highly recommended. Posted at 10:19 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Apr 15th, 2023”. From the Amazon description: “Prowling the South Atlantic in the Tempest, Bliven takes prizes and disrupts British merchant shipping, until he is overhauled, overmatched, and disastrously defeated by the frigate HMS Java. Its captain proves to be Lord Arthur Kington, whom Bliven had so disastrously met in Naples. On board he also finds his old friend Sam Bandy, one of the Java’s pressed American seamen kidnapped into British service. Their whispered plans to foment a mutiny among the captives may see them hang, when the Constitution looms over the horizon for one of the most famous battles of the War of 1812 in a gripping, high-wire conclusion.” Like the Alaric Bond British Fighting Sail novels, this is based on actual history of the US Navy and Marines.
  6. “The Schrödinger Paradox: Cataclysm” (139 pages, Kindle, 2023) by Holly Chism: Recommended by Sarah Hoyt on Instapundit.com on May 11th. From the Amazon description: “Unlucky jerk Tom Beadle was on watch at NASA when the collision alert sounded: a new asteroid, bigger than the dino-killer, headed for Earth. Big problem, but that’s why we have NASA, right? Except, after decades of budget cuts, NASA has no way to shove it off course. That job has to be contracted out. Will the private sector company his best friend from college works at succeed where the government option failed? Might be best to have a backup plan, just in case…”
  7. “Sea of Tranquility” (272 pages, paperback, 2023) by Emily St. John Mandel: I read her book “Station Eleven” and loved it. Why not try another? From the Amazon description: “The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space. A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.”
  8. “Meditations” (211 pages, paperback, 2016, but really 2,000 years ago) by Marcus Aurelius: This is a birthday gift (see above) from my good friend and bee partner, Gene. Let’s see if it works: Psalm 19:14 “May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.” From the Amazon description: “Meditations is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD, recording his private notes to himself and ideas on Stoic philosophy.”
  9. “As Time Goes By” (432 pages, paperback, 1998) by Michael Walsh: The Amazon description is: “You know what happens right after Casablanca‘s Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) walks off with Capt. Louis Renault (Claude Rains) into the mist? This novel. Walsh, a former crime reporter and Timemagazine music critic, can’t equal the beautiful relationships in the classic film, but he does give us a clever takeoff on the tale, with less romance but much more action. As Time Goes By is both a prequel and a sequel, fleshing out Rick’s mysterious life by flashing back to his 1930s New York gangland past and taking us with him, Ilsa, and Sam the piano man as they plot to kill Reinhard Heydrich, the Hangman of Prague. Rick Blaine started out as Yitzik Baline, who learned to shoot in the booze-fueled underworld of Tick-Tock Shapiro and Dion O’Hanlon. A fracas that made Walter Winchell’s column explains why Rick wound up in the Casablanca gin joint.” We will have an extensive Floating Book Review on this including an alternate plot.
  10. “Just Kids” (320 pages, paperback, 2010) by Patty Smith: I stumbled across my copy of Patti Smith’s song, “Because the Night”. I went down the rabbit hole and looked up the history of the song and Smith. I’m glad I did. She is an amazing writer. “Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists’ ascent, a prelude to fame.”

The song was started by Bruce Springsteen and finished by Patti Smith. ‘Just Kids’ is the story about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. But her completion of the song was inspired by Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, lead singer for the MC5 (Motor City 5) with whom she had two children.

  1. “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” (304 pages, paperback, 2019) by John Mark Comer: This book was recommended by DCE Maddie. Anxiety is a big problem in today’s world. From the Amazon description “Corrie ten Boom once said that if the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy. There’s truth in that. Both sin and busyness have the exact same effect—they cut off your connection to God, to other people, and even to your own soul.” From An Amazon review is: “Hurry to this, hurry to do that, hurry hurry hurry. The things I do and fill my life with aren’t even bad things. They’re, mostly, good things. This book isn’t about stopping doing those things but how to slow down, let my soul catch up with my body…”

Not pictured:

  1. “The One Year Bible” with help from the “Lutheran Study Bible“.