re: What are you reading?

Remarkably Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt

Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver

Surrounded By Idiots - Thomas Erikson

The third book in the Jack Stern adventure series. FULL DISCLOSURE: the author, J.A. Baylor, is my son, but I reviewed this book on Amazon and goodreads.com:


This is the third in the Jack Stern adventure series, and I believe it to be the best. In this book, Stern (through various “legacies” in which he travels about the globe) is assigned to “touch” the nefarious Mr. Xu whom he has encountered in the two previous novels. Stern works for a mysterious, unnamed agency that takes on tasks neither the FBI, CIA, nor other clandestine organizations can handle. Here, Xu, through his lackeys, has developed a death ray that can kill from halfway around the globe. As in the previous novels, Stern encounters several incredibly beautiful women, some of whom are bent on his destruction, others of whom seek a more pleasurable rendezvous.

Amazon

Earth’s the Right Place for Love by Elizabeth Berg

Recursion by Blake Crouch

The Catcher was a Spy by Nicholas Dawidoff.


This is the biography of Moe Berg, sometimes called the most intelligent man to ever play major league baseball. He was a journeyman catcher who bounced from team to team over a period of 19 years. After his baseball career ended in the early 1940s he joined the OSS (predecessor agency to the CIA). He was sent into wartime Europe to meet Werner Heisenberg to determine the status of the German development of the atomic bomb.

Cryptonomicon - for probably my fourth time. Amazingly relevant still for a somewhat high tech nerd book from 1999. But funny as hell, something I didn't pick up on during the first, and maybe really the second read. Because the technology ideas are just so dense, and it jumps around so fast (a style I really do like). And it is a very irreverent take on WWII, something like Catch 22 in that regard. The high water mark for Neal Stephenson IMO, at least so far.

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I need to check out more of his books. I read The Midnight Library and really liked it.

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Midnight Library is my favorite from him, but I've also read How to Stop Time, Reasons to Stay Alive, The Humans, and The Possession of Mr Cave.

How to Stay Alive is a memoir he wrote. Gives some great insight into how he became the writer he is today and his struggle with his own mental health. The Possession of Mr Cave is dark, darker than I expected from him, but a good read. The Humans is about an alien who assumes a human's life. It's the funniest of his books that I've read, but has plenty of poignant moments as well. How to Stop Time is about a man who has lived for centuries, as long as he doesn't fall in love, but eventually does.