Hi everyone! I recently released a novel, Irrevocable Consequence. It’s an ebook and available on Amazon and most places. Check it out if you like. https://www.amazon.com/Irrevocable-Cons ... ext&sr=1-1

I was thinking about the McCullough book, but...
My daughter and son-in-law gave me a audible.com one-year membership for my birthday. Through it, I am 'reaqding' John Grisham's "Camino Winds." I read "Camino Island" and enjoyed it.

Also, despite the over-hype, I got curious about "The Adventures of Captain Bonneville," largely because it was written by Washington Irving. I found a free e-book edition on Amazon, and decided to give it a try. So far it is interesting; the 19th century writing style takes some getting used to, but not a major problem. I will leave a more detailed opinion when I finish it.

Horror Books on Kindle by Christopher Bike
Reading Title "Conflict Darkness"

Dolls vs. Ghosts

The main part reveals your thoughts and ideas in more detail. Usually this block is divided into several paragraphs: each of them contains the answer to the question (or the rationale for the problem), which is raised in the text. It is like a discussion, when a point is discussed and considered from all sides, and in the essay the reader is invited to look at the situation from different points of view. In the main block of the essay, it is important to show how deeply you understand the subject, how well you know the topic. Support your conclusions and statements with logic, arguments, examples and the words of authoritative (in a particular field) people. If the questions you are considering in the essay span more than one paragraph, break each one into several parts. In this case, you can make several logically related paragraphs or a classic list of points-theses. essaywriter.org

Just finished reading "The Darwin Affair," a Victorian era mystery by Tim Mason, and have started "Normal People" by Sally Rooney. Also 'reading' an audio book my daughter recommended. "The Vagrant," by Peter Newman. It is fantasy, the first in a series. Jury is still out on this one.

I have really gotten into two mystery series, because I like their characterization. Both also make good use of a sense of place.

Martin Walker's Perigord series (featuring Bruno, Chief of Police: "Death in the Dordogne" is the first) features the area of Southern France with the cave paintings, but it focuses more on the region's relationship with food and its provinciality, both typified by Bruno. His main love interest is a career woman who cannot understand his attachment to the region. If you like France, and I do, this series brings out the reasons. And it's an excellent read - I am through 6 so far with no loss of interest.

Louise Penny's celebrated "Inspector Gamache" series is unrealistic in the number of murders in a small Quebec town not far from the American border, and as the number of volumes grew, Penny began to locate the murders farther afield, especially in Quebec City. No matter. Like the number of murders that Agatha Christie's Miss Marple found herself in the middle of (or Brother Cadfael), one learns to ignore such literalness and enjoy the poetic license. I love the characters in the small town of Three Pines (but my wife finds them wearing, even though she has read more Gamache books than I have). They banter, they tussle, they wonder about each other, but in the end they are friends. In each new book you get to see her skill sketching new characters with a few observations, a little back story (or not), some remarks and some somber thoughts. So far the plots have not disappointed me, but one reads Penny not mainly for the suspense or the whodunit revelations, but for the humanity of the interactions between the principals. It isn't easy to make one murder after another seem both interesting and novel. I am up to number 9, with one peek ahead.

I'm listening to The Plague by Camus.

35 years ago I was taking French in college and decided to write a report on this book which was in french... it was beginners french and I put it off as one does at that age to the point where I had to buy Cliff Notes and write a half-@$$ essay. It didn't work out so well.

I am enjoying the english audiobook this time around.

Moby Dick. I’ve been reading it for months now because it’s hard to read a lot at a time. 20 pages to go now.
I loved the start of the book through Ishmael’s eyes, especially meeting Queequeg for the first time but I feel that as the book went on, the narration became increasingly detached and I found it quite hard to keep myself interested through some parts. I also like to read light novels like shinka no mi novel online and still waiting for it new chapters.

I've had the same issue with completing Moby Dick (audiobook) . I start out well but my mind wanders and multiple pages become white noise in which I lose track.

Just finished Anna Karenina on audiobook. Maybe because I only listened while exercising, I did not have too much problem with wandering mind. It also helps that Tolstoy's obsessions match up well with my own.

I also listen to audiobooks while exercising. The story distracts me from my internal voice that says... "That's enough for today".

It's too bad that I don't read more fiction. It wasn't always that way. But I picked up again Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. It's such an entertaining set-up right off, as we see old, besotted Durbeyfield informed by a parson that he is the degenerated descendant of a noble family, the D'Urbervilles. Then there's no limit to his new self-esteem and strutting. Hardy shows such intimate and realistic detail of the lives and livelihoods of the country folk he writes about. All over the book there are passages this good: "The cow and horse tracks in the road were full of water, the rain having been enough to charge them but not enough to wash them away. Across these minute pools the reflected stars flitted in a quick transit as she passed; she would not have known they were shining overhead if she had not seen them there--the vastest things in the universe imagined in things so mean."

I heard about this series and recommended it to my wife, who reads mysteries all the time. She loves the series.

I'm currently reading The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. It was written more than ten years ago, but remains relevant today with the Black Lives Matter movement. She discusses the so-called "War on Drugs" which created a whole new undercaste in America, basically serving the same purpose that Jim Crow laws used to, even if that wasn't exactly the intent. It's a real eye-opener of a book.

I'm also reading The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly. I'll be reading more by this author.

I have been reading Erich Fromm: ‘The Art of Loving’ It had me from the opening line: ‘Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort,or is love a pleasant sensation,...’

For years I was drifting into misanthropy and it began to scare me. Disdain for people is an easy road to travel ‘all against all’ it’s horrible, but it seems this is the road too many would like to travel. It’s not for me. Hobbesian therapeutics seems to be the proscription of the day. I have recognized it in myself but moreover I see it in people everywhere.

We are not in a good place. I know that Pinker tells us that we are doing really well, Haidt tells us we have these impulses...

Phone call...later...

this book is beyond phenomnal

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B085C ... 7cf27381ca