What are you reading?

[Miss Mary]

Well, I just finished reading the 9/11 book I mentioned in a previous post:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... 26-0856942

I've read a few of the survivor's stories but never in depth like this or to this extent. This book is very thorough. And very sad. You will cry, if you tend to read 9/11 type books. I hesitate to use the word 'enjoy', since you find no enjoyment about reading these stories. Well, the survivor ones are inspiring. But we've heard many of them before. Still, they need to be told again and again. But I don't recall reading so many stories about the ones that perished before. What they said to loved ones in their remaining hours/minutes alive. What I took away from the book is this:

1. If I'm ever caught in a fire or emergency, in a high rise or public building, I am getting out. ASAP.

2. I will investigate exits myself unless a police officer or firefighter say they're unsafe. A heavyset woman proceeded to tell many one stairway was too smokey and couldn't be used, in one tower. Prompting many to go back up, assuming they were trapped. The stairway was accessible, if you moved debris here and there as well. I know this woman meant well, but people believed her!

3. One stairway was open (could have been the one above) the entire time, but people trapped way above barricaded themselves in rooms, blocking smoke from under doors and vents, thinking they had no way out. Even when people used that staircase to get out and tried getting word out, word never reached police and/or firefighters. I hope now in a rescue situation, NYPD and NYFD communicate better.

Mary

[j]

Two books..I'm a very slow reader..I've been at these for over a year now!

1) Treason - Ann Coulter--very difficult reading, but eye opening about rampant communist infiltration during the Cold War, and Liberal blackballing of McCarthy for: God forbid, trying to uncover it. Turns out, McCarthy was right, and was proven so in 1995 when decrypted Soviet cables were released amongst other evidence.

A good read even if you hate Coulter. If you believe even 10% of her research, the left will scare you.

2) Faithful - Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan - Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season

[southerngale]

Well, I just finished reading the 9/11 book I mentioned in a previous post:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... 26-0856942

I've read a few of the survivor's stories but never in depth like this or to this extent. This book is very thorough. And very sad. You will cry, if you tend to read 9/11 type books. I hesitate to use the word 'enjoy', since you find no enjoyment about reading these stories. Well, the survivor ones are inspiring. But we've heard many of them before. Still, they need to be told again and again. But I don't recall reading so many stories about the ones that perished before. What they said to loved ones in their remaining hours/minutes alive. What I took away from the book is this:

1. If I'm ever caught in a fire or emergency, in a high rise or public building, I am getting out. ASAP.

2. I will investigate exits myself unless a police officer or firefighter say they're unsafe. A heavyset woman proceeded to tell many one stairway was too smokey and couldn't be used, in one tower. Prompting many to go back up, assuming they were trapped. The stairway was accessible, if you moved debris here and there as well. I know this woman meant well, but people believed her!

3. One stairway was open (could have been the one above) the entire time, but people trapped way above barricaded themselves in rooms, blocking smoke from under doors and vents, thinking they had no way out. Even when people used that staircase to get out and tried getting word out, word never reached police and/or firefighters. I hope now in a rescue situation, NYPD and NYFD communicate better.

Mary

Thanks...I just ordered this from Amazon.

[Miss Mary]

Kelly - let me know your impression after you read it. One of my remaining questions from 9/11 and mainly the World Trade Center collapse, was - are the Police Dept. and Fire Dept.'s communicating better now? They operated side by side, but with very little communication or relay info getting to the other dept. Their radio's and walkie talkies were very outdated and didn't even work well. I really hope hope both agencies work better together after 9/11.

Mary

[southerngale]

Will do. I'm not certain but I believe communications have improved quite a bit. At least I remember that being the plan. I can only assume they've handled it.

Good advice on simply getting OUT of a burning building...ASAP!

[W13]

The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy for the third or fourth time. It is truly a great book.

[azskyman]

Just started reading, "Our Brother's Keeper" by Jedwin Smith. He's the guy I went to school with...and whose brother (who I worked with) was killed in Vietnam.

Let you know if it is as good as the reviews seem to be saying.

[MSRobi911]

Blowfly. I was very disappointed.

Don't give up, read the next one by Patricia Cornwell....geeze I can't think of the name....its good.

Mary

[MSRobi911]

I'm starting "The Killing Club" by Marcie Walsh from One Life To Life....just bought my son Dante Alleghrti..the Divine Comedy...
he also liked Crime and Punishment...he had to read that for AP English and they both liked Animal Farm....AP English here requires some very intense reading....Candide and Their Eyes Were Watching God...which they both enjoyed.

I love Nora Roberts writing as JD Robb, futuristic cop, go figure..

And Catherine Coulter's FBI thriller series with Savich and Sherlock....they are very good.

I just love to read and so do my kids!!!!

Mary

PS I forgot about Janet Evanovich's series....if you want some belly laughs get her books, they start with One for the Money, Two for the Dough, Three to Get Deadly, Four to Score, High Five, Hot Six, Seven Up, Hard Eight, To The Nines.....can't wait for the next one....you talk about absolutely funny...I read passages to Robi and he cracks up!!!

[coriolis]

I didn't see this thread before! Since I started riding the bus to work, I finished Future Shock by Alvin Toffler (kind of disappointing), Plato's Republic, and now I'm reading a book called Top Dog/Bottom Dog, by Robert Karen. It's about power struggles in relationships.

[MSRobi911]

I forgot to mention in my other post about James Lee Burke and his Dave Robicheaux novels. These are all about a policeman in New Orleans who leaves the city and moves to a New Iberia and works for the local sheriffs department and his many heart breaks and pitfalls and tales of life in New Orleans and on the bayous of South Louisiana. One of his books was made into a movie....Heaven's Prisoners. Good books!!

Mary

[JenBayles]

Hey Mary - have you read A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole? It's a hilarious Pulitzer Prize winner and the author does a fantastic job of capturing the New Orleans accents and culture.

[StormChasr]

Reading the prequel to the "DaVinci Code." It is called "Angels and Demons."

[senorpepr]

Right now I'm reading Chechnya Diary. It's very good.

Here's an excerpt from Amazon.com about it...

Mortar fire booming in the distance, smoke pluming behind the hills and the just-out-of-camera-range repeat of machine-gun fire frustrate and enthrall freelance war correspondent Goltz as he chronicles his attempt to capture on videotape Russia's nearly decade-long war with the republic of Chechnya. Less an evenhanded exploration of the byzantine quilt of atrocity and retribution characterizing the post-Soviet conflict, this is more a personal tale of Goltz's relationship with one town (Samashki) and, in particular, one man: a fixer named Hussein who risks his life and, later, exile, in an effort to help the reporter (on contract assignment for ABC News at first) get the story. With a keen observational eye and an ear for characterizing detail, Goltz describes his encounters with the people of the small Chechen village, which suffered a brutal pounding at the hands of the Russian military in 1995. But the book's most compelling aspects are Goltz's ruminations on the impact he, as a Western journalist, has on the events that he set out to objectively report on. Citing as an epigraph a bit of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle-"the observer affects the observed"-the author proceeds to detail how his work with Hussein, and subsequent departure from Samashki right before a big Russian attack, helped cast him, in the eyes of the villagers, in the role of KGB agent and Hussein as a Russian collaborator. Details of his resulting trip to Hussein's home-in-exile in Kazakhstan round out the tale. Goltz's powerful conclusion: war leaves no innocents, let alone innocence.

[James]

I'm currently reading "The Catcher in the Rye" by J. D. Salinger.

[MSRobi911]

Hey Mary - have you read A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole? It's a hilarious Pulitzer Prize winner and the author does a fantastic job of capturing the New Orleans accents and culture.

I think I have heard of it, but will write down the name and author and pick it up next time I am at the bookstore!

Thanks,

Mary

[Dee Bee]

I've just finished Ancestors of Avalon, a pre-pre-pre-pre-prequel to Mists of Avalon ( one of my all-time faves); have started Dear Zoe and Good Grief; ; and have Codex and The Dante Club waiting in the wings. I've also ordered the new Susan Miller book Lost in the Forest, Alice Hoffman's The Ice Queen, and a fiction about a previously undiscovered scripture The Third Translation (for which I can't remember the author).

My hip/back recuperation has allowed me to make time for reading again!

[streetsoldier]

Just finished John Bevere's "UNDER COVER...The promise of protection under His Authority"; interesting read, if one wishes to delve into the difference between 'submission" and "obedience" in Christian life.

[JenBayles]

I've just finished Ancestors of Avalon, a pre-pre-pre-pre-prequel to Mists of Avalon ( one of my all-time faves); have started Dear Zoe and Good Grief; ; and have Codex and The Dante Club waiting in the wings. I've also ordered the new Susan Miller book Lost in the Forest, Alice Hoffman's The Ice Queen, and a fiction about a previously undiscovered scripture The Third Translation (for which I can't remember the author).

My hip/back recuperation has allowed me to make time for reading again!

Just finished The Codex - fun read! Kinda like Thunderhead that Preston wrote with Lincoln Childs. I can't miss any new book those two publish.

[alicia-w]

Currently reading Brimstone (same guys who wrote Thunderhead), Codex, Toast, Secret Life of Bees, and The Annotated Brothers Grimm. (wow, is that what that fairy tale really meant? Holy crap!)