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TS601’s last login was Friday, February 24, 2012. « hide recent activity
TS601 is now reading The Book of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood.
TS601 has read Spec Ops.
TS601 has read And Another Thing : The World According to Clarkson Volume 2.
“ Just a collection of columns by Clarkson. The author is great in TopGear; the read might be great for a British reader. For others - it is a pass. ”
TS601 has read 11/22/63.
“ King at one of his best. A great, gripping story. ”
TS601 rated The Little Book of Humorous Quotes 4 months ago.
TS601 rated And Another Thing : The World According to Clarkson Volume 2 4 months ago.
TS601 rated 11/22/63 4 months ago.
TS601 rated Time Management for System Administrators 4 months ago.
TS601 added The Book of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood.
TS601 has read The Little Book of Humorous Quotes.
TS601’s last login was Friday, February 24, 2012. show recent activity »
Rated 5 stars
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Read the review for 11/22/63
Yes, I do know. I'm always forced to do "real" research to figure out what's right.
(eavesreading) I agree with Melby - I've learned a great deal from historical fiction if only from gaining the interest to go look up the actual history to find out how good the author was in his/her facts.
Well I mentioned Carl Hiaasen - he's really good and I think he has a lot of Wambaugh's style. He's a writer from Florida and writes all about Florida, mostly the greed of developers but his books are really good. My favorite is Sick Puppy. Read his earlier stuff (if you haven't already). I recently read Star Island and although I liked it, there were no "laugh out loud" moments like I experienced in his earlier books.
I wasn't saying you said they were garbage, goof, I was just saying, you **can** learn about all kinds of things, just from fiction novels. Especially historical fiction, but other things too. My point was that the only things that *don't* have anything worthwhile in them, is the stupid chick fluff. heh.Yeah, reading groups are nice if they last & work out. I tried two on LJ and both failed, and I tried making a forum to host one myself, but even though like 10 people expressed interest when I asked, only like 3 actually participated in reading, and only 2 made any real posts about it. (sigh) If I could actually find people who'd be interested and actually *do* it, I'd totally open it up again, but...
You're probably too young. Joseph Wambaugh was a retired cop and he wrote cop stories. The first one I ever read was "The Choir Boys" and I loved his edgy, humorous style. That was a NY cop team. Most of his later books were California cops and The Glitter Dome was my favorite of those. It's his humor that really makes the books and I absolutely loved them. He also wrote a couple of non-fiction; one of them "The Onion Field" was made into a movie.
Just because something is fiction, doesn't mean it has no value. You can learn tons of things from fiction books, there's no end to the various topics written about, and just because the specific storyline never happened, doesn't mean everything surrounding it is garbage, you know. Any author worth their salt does all kinds of research during their writing, about places, people, technology, science, etc etc. The only books I put in the -trash- category is romance and stupid chicklit fluff. Those are just idiotic and senseless and about absolutely nothing, I don't acknowledge those as being real writing anyhow.I know what you mean about research-type books though, I'm the same way. It's too dull, I can't focus on that for more than a page or two. There's nothing to make it stick in my head and just, blah. haha.
LOL. I've always been a huge bookworm. Back before finishing high school I went through at least a book a week, if not more, and then the first time I worked as a nanny, at 20, I had a bunch of time to read while he napped so I was going through plenty then. Once I started working at the daycare center though I was too busy and too exhausted, so for the past bunch of years I didn't read nearly as much. So then near the end of '09 I saw that "50 book challenge" thing and figured it'd be a good way to motivate me to get off my butt and read more, and then for 2011 I upped it to 75, and I think next year I'll make it an even hundred. ;D
Oh, and glad I was able to bring good memories back. Have fun with your Kindle. I love mine.
I think part of the problem is there are so many newer books...people have to stumble on the older authors to find them or rely on others to tell them about them. I am a huge fan of Carl Hiaasen (different type of genre if you haven't read him) and I often say he must have loved Joseph Wambaugh's books. I am always amazed at the number of people who have never heard of Wambaugh and yet, his books were all the rage at one time.
Hi Jonathan - I'm a big fan of Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe...some of my very favorite books! Jan
bahaha, well you could be if you wanted to! Are you on LibraryThing or Goodreads? I have accounts on them too, and, well, I don't really update them either, but I like to go on them more haha, and am *more likely* to update them than I am on here. =P Also, the place I do actually update with my readings is my blog - http://melbymonkey.com/books/ - in case you're ever curious, lol.
Welcome to the History Non-Fiction Group. There are a few group rules posted at the top of the group page. Please take a moment to review and if you haven't already done so, introduce yourself in our "Welcome and Introduction" thread and tell us what your interests are. Our group reads are done on a quarterly basis the selected book for the Jul - Sep quarter is: Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma and the Last Stand of the Aztecs by Buddy Levy. We hope you'll join us for the group read. Again, welcome to the group.Jan (Group Admin)
Hey you! ;)
