Good book recommendations?

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Edwin Lampert: Mealtimes With My Maritime Friends - Splash247

Nauryz kozhe is a broth that tends to be consumed in new year celebrations in Kazakhstan, the world’s largest landlocked country. Made with meat, kefir, rice, barley and noodles, the soup is meant to usher in good luck because it is considered a symbol of wealth and richness in the coming year...
splash247.com
 

DEN OF SPIES: the Secret History of the Treason That Stole the White House w/ Craig Unger​

Oct 24, 2024 #MoreFromThom

Trump wasn't the first president to steal the White House and Craig Unger has the secret history of the treason that got multiple men into the white house.

8:22

Den of Spies: Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason That Stole the White House by Craig Unger

Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign really did make a deal with Iran to delay the release of 52 American hostages until a...
www.publishersweekly.com
 

Podcast #1,035: A Bible for Heroes — The Influential Book Read By History's Eminent Men

In 18th century America, this book was second in popularity only to the Bible. It was a favorite of many thinkers and leaders throughout history, including Emerson, Napoleon, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and even President Truman. Yet, you probably haven’t read it. It’s Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. If...
www.artofmanliness.com

Plutarch: PARALLEL LIVES OF NOBLE GRECIANS AND ROMANS
 
I think I might just buy this one.

I visited every country in the world without flying​

As adventures go, it was never going to be anything other than colossal: travelling to all 203 countries in the world, without boarding a single flight. But such was the self-imposed task for Thor Pedersen in 2013 when, surrounded by friends settling down and his latest international engineering contract over, the idea just seemed to make sense.

His father had sent him an article about people pinballing across the world on a shoestring budget: he could do the same, he reasoned, and cross the finish line in 2018. Reaching the Maldives, his final destination, would not take the predicted five years, however, but 10. His odyssey was punctuated by otherworldly landscapes and unforgettable encounters, but “frustrations, disappointments, danger and hardship,” too. “A decade is a long time,” according to Pedersen. “It has been intense.”

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...S&cvid=9022626f08fa41ffa150008a87f5fa82&ei=39
 

Post in thread 'NBC News, Commentary & Survival Resources'

This one is a bit different. More along the lines of a book review by a guy who was a nuclear policeman.

Meet Matthew Okuhara, a British veteran turned adventurer - London Post

Clad in black armour, a samurai loads and prepares a heavy looking gun. The clouds of gunpowder create a silhouette that obscures the field and then suddenly, a loud roar as another shot is fired… Matthew Okuhara is a British veteran turned adventurer. ‘I did my time in the army and police’ he...
london-post.co.uk

‘I guarded Britain’s nuclear sites - our security can't cope with new mini reactors'

Matthew Okuhara, a former armed officer with the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, fears that current security plans will be inadequate to protect the UK's next generation of nuclear power plants
inews.co.uk

Civil Nuclear Constabulary | CNC | SEG

>A profile of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, an armed police force that protects the UK's civil nucelar industry.
www.eliteukforces.info

Nuclear Copper - Book Release Interview​

May 11, 2025
Nuclear Copper. The Secret World of Nuclear Policing.

Nuclear Copper is a true story that delves into the fascinating and covert world of nuclear policing, as seen through the eyes of PC...
 
This summer, I plan to reread the first two books by Tom Sharpe. "Riotous Assembly" and "Indecent Exposure". I have read all of Tom Sharpe's books but haven't read these two in a while. Savagely funny. Extremely nasty. He was arrested and deported from South Africa for writing them. You will laugh out loud and feel guilty afterwards for doing so.

Tom is best known for his Wilt series, as well as Porterhouse Blue, Blott on the Landscape, and The Great Pursuit.




I also plan to reread "A Pirate of Exquisite Mind" by Diana and Michael Preston. It is a biography of one William Dampier.

"Darwin took his books aboard the Beagle. Swift and Defoe used his experiences as inspiration in writing Gulliver's Travels and Robinson Crusoe. Captain Cook relied on his observations while voyaging around the world. Coleridge called him a genius and "a man of exquisite mind." In the history of exploration, nobody has ventured further than Englishman William Dampier. Yet while the exploits of Cook, Shackleton, and a host of legendary explorers have been widely chronicled, those of perhaps the greatest are virtually invisible today-an omission that Diana and Michael Preston have redressed in this vivid, compelling biography.

As a young man Dampier spent several years in the swashbuckling company of buccaneers in the Caribbean. At a time when surviving one voyage across the Pacific was cause for celebration, Dampier ultimately journeyed three times around the world; his bestselling books about his experiences were a sensation, influencing generations of scientists, explorers, and writers. He was the first to deduce that winds cause currents and the first to produce wind maps across the world, surpassing even the work of Edmund Halley. He introduced the concept of the "sub-species" that Darwin later built into his theory of evolution, and his description of the breadfruit was the impetus for Captain Bligh's voyage on the Bounty. Dampier reached Australia 80 years before Cook, and he later led the first formal expedition of science and discovery there.

A Pirate of Exquisite Mind restores William Dampier to his rightful place in history-one of the pioneers on whose insights our understanding of the natural world was built."
 

Building Wealth One House At A Time PDF​

In "Building Wealth One House at a Time," renowned real estate expert John W. Schaub shares his proven strategies for generating wealth through real estate, emphasizing the importance of …
 

Which Book? | Mark Rippetoe

We are often asked about books to read for information on the lifts and programming. I really hate to be this way, but if I thought there were valuable sources of information on strength training that presented an equally valid approach to our method, I'd tell you. But there aren't, and that's...
startingstrength.com
 
Something a bit different.

19 Facts Worth Knowing About George Orwell

And we’re off! As we start this summer’s book club, I want to explore the life of George Orwell and the context in which he wrote 1984. To begin, I’ll share a three-part series covering some of the facts and myths about Orwell and 1984. As a
bookclub.behavioralscientist.org
 



The Change Agent: How a Former College QB Sentenced to Life in Prison Transformed His World
 
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Review

The Wild Lives of Cargo Ships​

A capacious new history examines the remaking of the the global economy through the story a single barge.

Ships are a trip. Virtually everything we use or consume, from Apple computers to Chiquita bananas, makes its way to us by sea. Much of what we think of as Western civ was borne on a boat: imperialism, of course, but also epic poetry (The Odyssey), modernist literature (Moby-Dick), blockbuster cinema (Titanic), and even questionable reality TV (Below Deck, anyone?). When it comes to the rest of the world, ships are just as central:

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-wild-lives-of-cargo-ships/ar-AA1GlJze?ocid=socialshare
 
It didn't make him happy, though.

His suicide wasn't a sudden thing. He'd gone dry at the creative well for, IIRC, eight years. His world was slipping away...Cuba, his retreat of a few years before his death, taken away by the Communist takeover. I don't know what happened with him in Key West (beautiful area) but I expect it was simply that it became too expensive.

Ketchum, Idaho, wasn't really a substitute. It was probably part of his mental decline and withdrawal.
 
Quite a long list. And, unfortunately for me, most of them I have not read.

Hemingway...I've read some of his short stories. Started on a couple of his long novels - got interrupted and lost the copies, you know the drill. That was back when I was far busier.

The writing style, of his Paris-era work, was quite different and a bit hard to read. His later, modern short-stories, much different.

But I came to a few conclusions: Hemingway was a successful writer - a great literary contributor. But as a man, he was not successful.

I had also read a bit of the dynamic between Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, and others in the Paris clique. I have never read Ford, who was a British writer Hemingway thought was pompous for the sake of being pompous. But Ford was equally dismissive, talking of Hemingway as "that boy from Oak Park" (Chicago suburb) who wanted to pretend to be manly.

(EDIT: Just checked. While Hemingway was repulsed by Ford, who was asthmatic and had hygiene problems...it was co-Parisan-refugee William Faulkner who was so contemptuous of Hemingway's background.

Also...I see I've misspelled Hemingway, all my life...)

It was probably a true criticism. Hemingway did start out soft - from an easy background. In that phase of life he was pretending to be a man, aspiring to become one.

He did succeed, after a fashion. He became much the man he sought to be - ambulance driver during the war, correspondent, great literary output.

But again, he failed. He was, what, 62?...when he took his own life. IMHO, suicide is failure. It's the ultimate white flag. It can be an honorable end - death before dishonor, in war, or a quick end to a wasting disease; but to just go and kill yourself on your large landholding, because you're frustrated or fear your career is over...is just weak.
 
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247 Residents, One Award-Winning Library | Ten Sleep, Wyoming​

May 1, 2026 #Wyoming #WyomingPBS #TenSleep
In the tiny town of Ten Sleep, Wyoming—population 247—sits one of the most celebrated public libraries in America. This year, the Ten Sleep Public Library became the first public library in Wyoming to receive the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) National Medal, one of only five libraries nationwide to earn the honor.
Read more below the vid on youtbe.

247 Residents, One Award-Winning Library | Ten Sleep, ​

 
My brother-in-law gave me a few James Pattersons to try out. I recently read "The Writer" and it was quite the page turner with an unexpected ending.
 
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