College Reading Fall 2015 discussion

Recommend a great nonfiction read!

I am now reading Trout: An Illustrated History by James Prosek and it it really good. I recommend it to any fishermen.

I just finish reading The Wave it is a book where the Author travels around the world with big wave surfers to find the biggest waves crashing down. I think she does a great job writing about being in the waves and watching these surfers surf the giant waves that get up to over 100 feet.

I finished reading Manhunt by James L. Swanson. It was a great non-fiction book about President Lincoln's assassination and the 12 day chase for John Wilkes Booth. I recommend this book to anyone who likes history and action. Also, I learned a lot from reading this.

I am reading. Junk Food, Fast Food, Healthy Food by Lila Perl. I would recommend it for people who like to know more about diet and food in general. I like it so far, I am learning a lot about healthy diets and nutrition.

Chris wrote: "I just finish reading The Wave it is a book where the Author travels around the world with big wave surfers to find the biggest waves crashing down. I think she does a great job writing about being..."
I also just read The Wave. I recommend it to anyone who likes action, or the ocean. The freak and rogue wave hunting is really eye opening to how crazy the ocean can be. It is all about these big waves that range from seventy feet all the way up to one-hundred and twenty feet. It also shows the life of the people trying to catch these waves (surfers) and those who try to avoid them (ship captains). Definitely a good read.

I read The Complete Do-it-yourself Guide, by Reader's Digest Magazine, I would really recommend reading the instructional book if you have any interest in being handy around the house or even potentially becoming a carpenter yourself. It is very detailed and complex but done so in a way that is both easy to understand and leaves the reader with an in-depth knowledge on the particular fix that the reader was on.

I am now reading another nonfiction in "Monuments Men" by Robert Edsel and it is a book about 'the greatest treasure hunt in history'. It's set in WW2 where a special group of allied soldiers hunt down important pieces of art that the Nazi's stole. I would recommend it to anyone who has seen the movie and wants to get a little deeper into the storyline, or just anyone who is interested in WW2 and history. It's cool to get the story of the war from a different perspective.

I have finished the book "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson. This book is about the Chicago's world fair in 1893 and also the murderer who used to fair to lore his victims to him. It is astonishing the amount of detail put into the book, and the amount of quotations used from real peoples journals (I presume). This is the best nonfiction novel I have ever read, it is suspenseful and juicy, while still holding onto historical accuracy and detail. Would definitely recommend.

Right now I am about half through a biography about Al Capone written by Rick Hornung. It is about the life of one the biggest gangsters America has ever seen. I am not really a big fan of the book though, I feel it goes on and on about little stories or facts that I don't really care about. I wouldn't recommend it.

I just recently finished reading "Firehouse" by David Halberstam. It was an autobiography/biography about 9/11. It was a very interesting book seeing as the author tried to show you what it was like for the families of the firefighters that were affected during the attacks and tried to explain to you what the lives of the firefighters were like before these events. I would definitely recommend this book if autobiographies are something that interest you.

I'm reading a really interesting book called Memoirs of a Geisha. Basically, a former Geisha, or Japanese entertainer, is orally telling her life story to this guy who records it, translates it, and puts it in book form. I think this was a great way for the author, Arthur Golden, to tell this story because it is a first hand account of a woman who was basically sold in to slavery as a very young girl. I think the fact that it is told like she is speaking to you makes the book very personable and engaging. Although it is kind of getting off to a slow start, I think it will become more interesting as I read through the events of the famous Geisha's life.

I finished the book Al Capone it was pretty good but I found it kind of boring at parts. The book was just pretty much a summary of his life. I am now reading Larry Legend and it is very good. It goes into depth about his playing career and his coaching career.

I am in the middle of The Cruelest Miles by Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury. So far, the book is ok. It is about a diptheria outbreak in Nome, Alaska. Many children are dyeing and the prior request for anti-toxin was ignored. The fate of the children of Nome now rests in a large group of Dog mushers and dog teams racing across Alaska with a large, fresh batch of serum. The teams battle through extreme temperatures and horrible storms. The topic is very interesting but the book is rather repetitive and slow paced.

I just finished reading Seabiscuit: An American Legend written by Laura Hillenbrand. It is a story about a crooked legged horse who turns out to be one one the worlds most popular and fastest race horses of all time. Throughout this true story, there are many obstacles that the jockeys as well as Seabiscuit face such as terrible injury and the worlds opinion. This book is a great story about a legend.

I am pretty close to finishing my book Larry Legend by Mark Shaw. I really like it. The book is about Larry bird and it his life playing basketball in Indiana and in Boston for the Celtics. It also goes into in his rookie season of Coaching for the Indiana Pacers. Bird has a fascinating life and I really enjoy reading about it.

I finished The Journey Home: My Life in Pinstripes by Jorge Posada. This book is an autobiography of Jorge Posada, former catcher for the New York Yankees. The book goes into detail about how Jorge was raised, up until the present day. He talks about how his father instilled a passion for baseball into him that made Jorge strive for success. Through tough life lessons and many challenges, Jorge Posada became a great Yankees baseball player. This book helped bring insight to my own life. I understood some of the things that Jorge's father made him do when he was younger like move huge piles of dirt because my dad has made me do similar things. I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in baseball or the Yankees. I enjoyed reading it.

I'm reading Blue Blood, by Edward Conlon now. It's a memoir written about the author's life as a Harvard-graduate cop from New York who works his way up to the rank of detective and from there begins writing. It's a very well written book (as one might expect from a Harvard graduate) that talks not only about the professional life of a cop, but includes the essential pieces of memoirs with personal details and a whole storyline aside from work, overall it's an interesting book diving into the interesting life of Conlon

I just finished reading Seabiscuit: an American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand. It is about a racing horse in the 1930s during the great depression. Seabiscuit is one of the greatest racing horses of all time and probably the best horse to never win the triple crown. Seabiscuit over came a lot of obscales to be successful he had a problem with his leg, he was small, and early in his life was consider very lazy by his managers. I really loved this book and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a good read.

I just read Mindy Kaling's first book "Why is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (and other concerns)". Kaling shares stories about how she made it as a writer for The Office and her own show The Mindy Project. I personally love both of those shows which is why I wanted to read the book. It ended up being really funny and was a quick read because it was so enjoyable to get through. I'm reading her second book now that kind of highlights more of her life views and her current show.

Im currently in the middle of Man on Wire by Phillipe Petit. It's the popular book that was recently made into a movie, it goes into great detail about the man who walked across a tight rope between the twin towers. I would seriously recommend the book to readers of all genres simply because of how crazy it is that someone actually did all of the things Petit did and lived to tell the tale.

Alan's War was a god book to read if you are interested in history. It was about a young man named Alan who was in the army during world war 2 and he shares his experience when fighting in war. Not it was about warfare but also Alan talks about the different he met when he was in the military. I recommend this book to anyone who likes to read books that are about history and lively hood. But if you don't like to read books that are about historical events this book ties with different themes.

I am about mid-way thought the book October 1964. The book is about the 1964 Major League Baseball season and it mainly follows the Yankees led by aging legend Micky Mantle and the Cardinals led young stud Bob Gibson. This is really all that I read and I really liked reading the book so far. Guessing from the title I think the book will really go into the world series in October.

The Professor and the Madman:
A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

Wesley the Owl by Stacy O'Brien

The Men Who Stare at Goats Too Much by Jon Ronson

Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries by Molly Caldwell Crosby

Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Raiston

Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes by Mir Tamim Ansar

Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam byNick Turse

Escape by Carolyn Jessop

Escape from Camp 41: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Swimming to Antarctica by Lynn Cox

A Primate's Memoir by Robert M. Sapolsky

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clark
China Underground by Zachary Mexicio

Buy-ology by Martin Lindstrom

Banana by Dan Koeppel

Switching Time by Richard Baer