What book are you currently reading?

[KingsFourMan]

Thought I’d resurrect an old thread for the summer at least.

For those who’ve seen and enjoyed the movie “The Blind Side”, you ought to read the book. I just finished it and learned a lot more about the story and about the real life of Michael Oher, the Touhey family, and the background info that was either omitted from or modified quite a bit for the movie. I usually read the book before seeing a movie based on the book so I’m often disappointed by the film but it’s interesting to reverse the process for a movie I enjoyed.

Great book and a great story. My father who was a poor farm kid from south Alabama went to Ole Miss on a basket scholarship so I'm intimately familiar with, and a huge fan of, Ole Miss. His name is engraved at the Ole Miss Letterwinners Walk outside of Vaught Hemingway stadium. And since it's Father's Day weekend, I'm going to brag about him some more...he was no dumb jock, he rose to the level of executive Vice President managing 5 divisions of an international Fortune 100 company headquarter in NYC. His life story should be a book.

Ole Miss and the town of Oxford are absolutely beautiful...and so are the women. You will never see so many beautiful women in one place in your life. It's known for that and lives up to it. So do football weekends there, tailgates in the Grove are legendary and a sight to behold, if you've never been, it's a bucket list thing to do. Friday night on the Square is like a Mardi gras.

I grew up in NJ, my best friend's parents were from MS. His father was a Mississippi State University and MIT educated Electrical Engineer phd who worked for Bell Labs in NJ. He was a pioneer in the field of digital speech processing. He was awarded the National Medal of Science presented to him at the white house by Bill Clinton. My best friend has lots of cousins that went to Ole Miss. One of them is a surgeon that has a football weekend house in Oxford which is where we stay. Many of his other cousins are also medical doctors or have a phd in something else. All of this flies in the face of the ignorant southerner stereotype. Stereotypes are just that, stereotypes.

A few years ago, we were down for an Ole Miss football weekend and then went down to his parent's hometown of Greenwood, MS on the delta. It was my first time to Greenwood. We were about 10 minutes from his aunts house and he said to me "have you ever seen the movie The Help?" I said no but coincidentally i'm about three quarters of the way through the book, why do you ask? He said i haven't either but a lot of it was filmed at my aunts house. His aunts house is a classic old plantation house on over a thousand acres. His uncle was a lawyer and a united states senator. His aunt also rescued about a dozen old sharecropper shacks, preserved them in a cluster, and added plumbing and electricity which are now open to the public to stay in. Great place to stay when checking out the Blues Trail which is another bucket list thing to do.

[newpylong1]

God Emperor of Dune.

[DES]

Thought I’d resurrect an old thread for the summer at least.

For those who’ve seen and enjoyed the movie “The Blind Side”, you ought to read the book. I just finished it and learned a lot more about the story and about the real life of Michael Oher, the Touhey family, and the background info that was either omitted from or modified quite a bit for the movie. I usually read the book before seeing a movie based on the book so I’m often disappointed by the film but it’s interesting to reverse the process for a movie I enjoyed.

Great book and a great story. My father who was a poor farm kid from south Alabama went to Ole Miss on a basket scholarship so I'm intimately familiar with, and a huge fan of, Ole Miss. His name is engraved at the Ole Miss Letterwinners Walk outside of Vaught Hemingway stadium. And since it's Father's Day weekend, I'm going to brag about him some more...he was no dumb jock, he rose to the level of executive Vice President managing 5 divisions of an international Fortune 100 company headquarter in NYC. His life story should be a book.

Ole Miss and the town of Oxford are absolutely beautiful...and so are the women. You will never see so many beautiful women in one place in your life. It's known for that and lives up to it. So do football weekends there, tailgates in the Grove are legendary and a sight to behold, if you've never been, it's a bucket list thing to do. Friday night on the Square is like a Mardi gras.

I grew up in NJ, my best friend's parents were from MS. His father was a Mississippi State University and MIT educated Electrical Engineer phd who worked for Bell Labs in NJ. He was a pioneer in the field of digital speech processing. He was awarded the National Medal of Science presented to him at the white house by Bill Clinton. My best friend has lots of cousins that went to Ole Miss. One of them is a surgeon that has a football weekend house in Oxford which is where we stay. Many of his other cousins are also medical doctors or have a phd in something else. All of this flies in the face of the ignorant southerner stereotype. Stereotypes are just that, stereotypes.

A few years ago, we were down for an Ole Miss football weekend and then went down to his parent's hometown of Greenwood, MS on the delta. It was my first time to Greenwood. We were about 10 minutes from his aunts house and he said to me "have you ever seen the movie The Help?" I said no but coincidentally i'm about three quarters of the way through the book, why do you ask? He said i haven't either but a lot of it was filmed at my aunts house. His aunts house is a classic old plantation house on over a thousand acres. His uncle was a lawyer and a united states senator. His aunt also rescued about a dozen old sharecropper shacks, preserved them in a cluster, and added plumbing and electricity which are now open to the public to stay in. Great place to stay when checking out the Blues Trail which is another bucket list thing to do.

I enjoyed this read, thanks for sharing KFM! And Bubba, I almost had a similar “not typical” reading event…skateboarding Thurs I saw my neighborhood book box had “The Guns of Navarone” by Alistair MacLean and I said to myself I’m grabbing that if it r*ins Friday. It did drizzle, walk across the street and the book was already gone. I don’t know whether I read it first or saw the movie first back in the 70’s, but I knew I liked it (so I read old Powder mags instead).

[KingsFourMan]

Anyone read this book? I just purchased it and can't wait to read it. I've seen a lot of documentaries about Woodstock and have read quite a bit about it but have never read this book.

I've always been intrigued by Woodstock which started 55 years ago this Thursday on August 15th, 1969. I was only 5 years old when it happened but it was still a fairly recent event when I was in my teens in the mid to late 70's and I very much identified with hippies at that time. Still do in many ways.

If you've never been to Bethel, NY to visit the site, it's definitely worth the trip. Has a cool museum and lots of miscellaneous events throughout the year and has a nice outdoor concert venue at the top of the original concert site. Saw Dead & Co there a couple of years ago which was hands down the best "Dead" show I've been to since Jerry died. Great vibe that day even though the Dead famously did not put on a great show back in 69.

It started with this ad, placed by Joel Rosenman and John Roberts as a way to find interesting work after college. It led Rosenman and Roberts to stage a gathering that changed the face of popular culture: the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in August 1969. Woodstock is rightly remembered as the pivotal event that united a generation, but the behind-the-scenes story is less utopian--and absolutely fascinating.

Rosenman and Roberts describe their shock as they realized, after a long struggle to find a site and placate area residents, that the festival was attracting a crowd ten times larger than expected, stalling traffic for miles around, and forcing thousands of ticket holders to be turned away. The instant the city of Woodstock created mind-boggling logistical problems for Rosenman and Roberts by pulling their permit: mud, shortages of food, water, and medical help, a death, births, bad drugs--and waking up their local banker in the middle of the night to get $15,000 for The Who and the Grateful Dead, who refused to go onstage without cash in their pockets.

By the time Jimi Hendrix played "The Star-Spangled Banner" at 6:30 Monday morning, there were "only" 25,000 people left, but Rosenman and Roberts faced a sea of mud and trash, irate neighbors, bad press ("Nightmare in the Catskills"), staggering debts, and some seventy separate legal proceedings against them. But the ultimate impact of that weekend was far greater-and far more triumphal for all involved. Young Men With Unlimited Capital is both an amazing and humorous story, and one that chronicles a defining event of 1960's America.

[Heywood jablowmee]

The Fall of The House of Asher……..goddamned capitalist pigs….

[twilkas]

Cyrus Ansary's- George Washington Dealmaker in Chief. Lays to rest what some historians have said, that he married into money.

[Bubba]

Having enjoyed reading The Blind Side having seen the movie first, I thought I’d try it again with the same author, Michael Lewis. I just started reading Moneyball today.

[easyrider16]

I recently read Going Infinite by Michael Lewis - the book about Sam Bankmen-Fried and the collapse of FTX. I found it riveting; couldn't put it down. It's such a wild story of this kid going from nobody to highly visible billionaire to bankruptcy to jailhouse in such a short time. Yet in the end, he didn't actually lose anybody any money. Definitely in the category of truth being stranger than fiction.

[TheRat]

Hot off the press: New Cold Wars[ Scary as hell. All about Russia, China, Ukraine hacking of our systems by Russia , China, Iran, etc. These actors could shut down our entire power grid, water works, whatever, if we don't get our act together.

[Bubba]

Having enjoyed reading The Blind Side having seen the movie first, I thought I’d try it again with the same author, Michael Lewis. I just started reading Moneyball today.

Moneyball is an excellent read, especially having seen the movie first. Now reading The Situation Room by George Stephanopoulos. The chapters on 9/11 and the hunt/killing of Osama bin Laden are spellbinding.

[KingsFourMan]

actionpark.jpg
Don't know why the picture is on its side, but I just finished this and it was a great read...I highly recommend it.

I just watched the documentary "Class Action Park" last night. Holy cow was that place f*cked up. That documentary is mind blowing. I knew that place was dangerous and messed up but I had no idea it was that dangerous and messed up. Untold serious injuries and numerous fatalities. It's unimaginable in today's world. None of the rides were designed by engineers, they were all designed in-house, mostly by the owner, and then usually made even more dangerous during construction. The owner was absolutely insane. Nobody would insure him, so he set up his own bogus insurance company in the Cayman Islands. He never settled any cases and let them all go to trial and won most of them as hard as that is to believe. Lawyers stopped taking cases because it wasn't worth it to them. Unbelievable story. Total lawlessness like a lot of things during that era but this was particularly crazy.

I grew up a little over an hour away from there and was in my late teens when that place was in its prime in the early to mid 1980's and remember most of those rides really well. From the time we could drive, me and my buddies all had season passes to Vernon Valley/Great Gorge ski resort where Action Park was located and went to Action Park in the summer on numerous occasions. Every kid I knew back then had a war story from that place. We knew it was messed up and dangerous but had no idea how insane it really was. Must watch documentary, you won't believe it, absolutely indescribable how nuts that place was and how crazy the owner was. I'm going to read this book now that I've seen that.

[ejrides]

actionpark.jpg
Don't know why the picture is on its side, but I just finished this and it was a great read...I highly recommend it.

I just watched the documentary "Class Action Park" last night. Holy cow was that place f*cked up. That documentary is mind blowing. I knew that place was dangerous and messed up but I had no idea it was that dangerous and messed up. Untold serious injuries and numerous fatalities. It's unimaginable in today's world. None of the rides were designed by engineers, they were all designed in-house, mostly by the owner, and then usually made even more dangerous during construction. The owner was absolutely insane. Nobody would insure him, so he set up his own bogus insurance company in the Cayman Islands. He never settled any cases and let them all go to trial and won most of them as hard as that is to believe. Lawyers stopped taking cases because it wasn't worth it to them. Unbelievable story. Total lawlessness like a lot of things during that era but this was particularly crazy.

I grew up a little over an hour away from there and was in my late teens when that place was in its prime in the early to mid 1980's and remember most of those rides really well. From the time we could drive, me and my buddies all had season passes to Vernon Valley/Great Gorge ski resort where Action Park was located and went to Action Park in the summer on numerous occasions. Every kid I knew back then had a war story from that place. We knew it was messed up and dangerous but had no idea how insane it really was. Must watch documentary, you won't believe it, absolutely indescribable how nuts that place was and how crazy the owner was. I'm going to read this book now that I've seen that.

I used to go there as a teenager too and remember the war stories well. Watched it with the Mrs a few years ago, we started off laughing pretty hard, but after a little while our mood turned very somber.

As far as recent reads, really liked The Last Traverse. Great read, especially if you have an interest in SAR