Reading Thread

Happy hour starts in 5 minutes
I've been on a long science fiction reading spree, but I'm also trying to work in some historical books to balance it out recently. At the moment, I'm reading The Great Influenza, a documentary about the Spanish Flu and what built up to it. I'm only a third through the book, but it's fascinating reading how far behind American medicine was compared to Europe until the turn of the century. No standard medical education requirements, few laboratories for research. It took benefactors making significant donations to rebuild medical education from scratch. All of that just beginning to improve and take shape when influenza struck in the middle of the Great War. The greatest American figures in medicine were assisting the military, trying to implement plans to avoid mass outbreaks of disease, and still got blindsided.

I'll probably need to read something more pleasant afterwards, but I'm at a loss for what that could still be educational to me.
 
Great thread.

Here are a few that I've read in the last few years that are fantastic:

The Ministry for the Future - Kim Stanley Robinson
The Overstory - Richard Powers [Maybe the best book I've ever read]
Between The World and Me - Ta-Nahesi Coates
Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Sellout - Paul Beaty
 
I am currently listening to Ordinary Monsters and really enjoying it. Think of it as a period peace about random people with magical skils, a.k.a "monsters," and an effort to collect them for a school in Scottland. Then there is the one who seems to have been corrupted and kills the gifted students. I can understand why it was an international best seller.

Before that, I read a series by Benedict Jacka which I thought was fantastic. Both of these authors have come up with new (to me) ways of envisioning magic and the worlds that result from them. The Jacka series has a lot of the humor I associated with Sanderson's Dresdin files where the protagonist at first seems to be a magical lightweight but quickly learns to punch above the wieght class the reader first assigns them.
 
The first one sounds like the X-Men ;)
 
I used this thread on ES for thoughts on what to read next as I try to make every third book or so something to learn from. I can't promise I will be available at a given time to talk about a given book, I will try to read/listen to it. I love hearing others' thoughts on books too.
 
Let's keep it at recommendations then - was certainly not looking to turn this into any form of obligation.
 
I only meant w 4 special needs kids, a full time job and working w my wife to foster animals for local shelter, my planned free time is very little. I listen to books while I run or clean at night, basically making it fit around my life because I enjoy it. I would join a book club, but my schedule is crazy.
 
For another fun book, I just finished Primal Hunter. It reads a lot like Ready Player 1 in terms of an entire book about playing a game. In this game, people are teleported into a "training" world where they level up, get classes and generally progress like a roleplaying game. So you have people who were accountants becoming warriors and al of that. People pick initial classes and then progress . It's a fun read.
 
My autobiography has finally been published.

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