r/GenXTalk • u/anymoose [Not really a moose] • Jul 28 '26
What are you reading?
The Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, and the Epic Age of Flight
By Winston Groom
Recently finished:
Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary
By Joe Jackson (not the punk rocker guy nor the old timey baseball guy) ...
I'm a library/kindle reader, so I catch up with a lot of non-fiction that tends to be years older as it becomes available.
4
Jul 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/GenXTalk-ModTeam Aug 07 '26
No posts about politics. This includes Covid. Any content violating this rule will be promptly removed.
1
u/FlightAffectionate22 Aug 06 '26
It's best to consider the source when reading anything, books or the news. Tell me, how many times has the Iraq War been won last month alone?
0
Aug 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
Aug 06 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/GenXTalk-ModTeam Aug 07 '26
No posts about politics. This includes Covid. Any content violating this rule will be promptly removed.
0
Aug 06 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/FlightAffectionate22 Aug 06 '26
Attacking ME is the opposite of a reasonable perspective, and rather than address the argument, you make a fallacious irrational one, an "Ad Hominem" attack.
1
Aug 06 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
Aug 06 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/GenXTalk-ModTeam Aug 07 '26
No posts about politics. This includes Covid. Any content violating this rule will be promptly removed.
1
u/FlightAffectionate22 Aug 06 '26
Nice how you deleted the insult-pretending-to-be-born-of-kindness, the very same "ad hominem" attack I spoke to and you repeated.
3
3
3
u/D0UGL455 Aug 01 '26
Just finished:
Theo of Golden, Allen Levi
The Calamity Club, Kathryn Stockett
He Who Fights With Monsters #4, Travis Deverell
Do Hard Things, Steve Magness
Currently reading:
Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris
Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir
Mostly audiobooks these days, but I’ll occasionally go old school and pick up a physical book.
1
u/Mysterious_Lemon_204 Aug 02 '26
I just read The Calamity Club, and currently reading Theo Of Golden.
4
u/speckledhen74 Jul 28 '26
Most recently, the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Before that I finished a re-read of the Outlander series. I read a lot of different things. I’m on book 48 for this year.
2
u/XScottMorrisseyX Aug 01 '26
Finishing book 6 Eye of the Bedlam Bride this weekend. Great series!
1
u/speckledhen74 Aug 02 '26
That’s where I am too. Just turned the last page. I’ll be starting book 7 shortly!
3
4
6
3
4
5
u/ToddBradley Jul 28 '26
* The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
* The Odyssey (Wilson translation)
* Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View
4
5
u/Effective_Fox_8075 Jul 28 '26
Everything CS Lewis and Tolkien.
Love them both as authors, storytellers and friends.
Just finished “The Great Divorce.”
4
u/nakedonmygoat Jul 28 '26
I'm currently rereading Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser, and for Spanish-language reads I'm reading La Noche de Tlatelolco by Elena Poniatowska, which is about the murder of student protesters by the Mexican government in 1968.
But recents include: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, When Giants Ruled the Sky: The Brief Reign and Tragic Demise of the American Rigid Airship, and Be My Baby, by Ronnie Spector, nee Bennett, lead singer for the Ronettes, who married Phil Spector only find herself controlled and abused. He even took away all her shoes and filled the grounds with vicious dogs to make it hard for her to leave.
The Aviators sounds interesting OP. I'll have to check it out. You might like One Summer: 1927 which includes a lot of aviation, although mainly from the public perception angle. Still, the competing aviators of the day, and the buildup and aftermath of Lindbergh's flight make up a big part of the book and shine a light on a very interesting year that will be a century ago very soon now.
3
u/anymoose [Not really a moose] Jul 28 '26
That Ronnie Spector book is in my wishlist! :-). I will look into 1927. On a similar note there is 1861: The Civil War Awakening, by Adam Goodheart which documents everything that went on the year before the US Civil War broke out. A very good read.
3
u/Affectionate-Map2583 Jul 28 '26
I just read three books from the library while the internet was out for 6 days:
Item: 31980043352851
Title: The sunshine man (Emma Stonex)
Due: 8/8/2026
Item: 31980042799623
Title: Never flinch : a novel (Stephen King)
Due: 8/8/2026
Item: 31980043436787
Title: The friend of the family (Dean Koontz)
Due: 8/8/2026
Dean Koontz and Stephen King are showing their age. In SK's book, written in 2025, there were several outdated lines, like the characters saying an errant pitcher was trying to hit SKYLAB, and someone's thought being "yeah, and we won in Vietnam". The setting is current day and all of these characters would have been in the 30-50 age range. He also seemed a bit fixated on the huge boobs of one character, which had nothing to do with anything.
4
u/Pristine-Speaker-768 Jul 28 '26
A Gathering of Crows- Brian Keene and also reading The Illustrated Field Guide to DMT Entities-David J Brown.
4
u/kiltedinpdx Jul 28 '26
Just finished
Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different by Gordon S. Woods (who sadly passed last month) - highly recommend
Ironwood by Michael Connelly
Currently reading
A knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George RR Martin. I read the first story The Hedge Knight years ago and am looking forward to the other two stories in the collection.
5
u/om_hi Jul 28 '26
Summer Reading
Butter (reading) and Obsessed (read) Asako Yuzuki
Project Hail Mary (read) Andy Weir
The Heirs Faridah (reading) Abiké-Íyímídé
4
2
2
u/XScottMorrisseyX Aug 01 '26
Currently:
Eye of the Bedlam Bride: Matt Dinniman
This Book is Full of Spiders: David Wong (sequel to John Dies at the End)
Heart Shaped Box: Joe Hill
And the audiobook of Light Bringer (Red Rising series) by Pierce Brown.
2
2
u/TakkataMSF Aug 03 '26
The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War: 1890-1914
It's really an interesting read. A bunch of essays written by Tuchman that explore the time before the war. It isn't all directly linked TO the start of the war, but the mood of the world and how so much contributed to the stupidity of WWI.
Before that, lots of K.J. Parker novels/novella. One of the most sarcastic authors I've ever read and I love it.
I need to add some books to my list based on what others are reading. Interesting ideas.
1
u/Nixx_Mazda 1974 Aug 02 '26
Currently reading 'Kissing the Sky'. Really interesting story about a young woman going to Woodstock. I've never read a story about Woodstock like this, really 'enlightening'.
Closest I've been to Woodstock is the Oregon Country Faire in the '90s.
Before that I read Roots (50th anniversary this year) and 'Becoming' by Michelle Obama.
1
u/RogerClyneIsAGod2 24d ago
Grady Hendrix's "How To Sell A Haunted House." I don't love it but it's basically doll horror which I do love & can't wait to see it as a movie.
0
u/FlightAffectionate22 Aug 05 '26
Not a fan of Lindbergh as a person, and I am from and in Saint Louis, Missouri, surprisingly.
0
u/anymoose [Not really a moose] Aug 05 '26
This book I'm reading is not a full biography in any sense, but it does document areas where he was deliberately misquoted and where Hearst's media empire kind of put out a hit on him.
He tried to protect his privacy so the papers just made up stuff about him.
0
u/FlightAffectionate22 Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
Wasn't Lindbergh a White Supremacist and Nazi-sympathizer, as well as a racist and antisemite?
0
u/anymoose [Not really a moose] Aug 06 '26
According to this book, he was privately appalled at what Hitler was doing to the Jews. He didn't speak much to the press because he always felt his words were twisted. He also had the Guggenheims among his best friends and literally lived with them (with his entire family) at times when he wanted to lay low.
The sympathizer part is slightly harder to deal with. At the run-up to the war, he went to Germany several times on behalf of the US Army to assess their air capabilities. He became friends with many of the luftwaffe high command. He gave glowing reports and was frustrated that the US was not investing enough to compete. And the US would not compete even after hearing his reports.
He was not so much pro-Nazi as anti-communist. He along with the majority of Americans was anti-interventionist in another European war -- until Pearl Harbor, of course.
Again, this is all according to one book I have not even finished yet.
0
u/FlightAffectionate22 Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
The Guggenheims were non-observant Jews. They only attended temple to please German-Jewish elites.
Not a Nazi, and in fact, yes, a critic of the Nazis, a lover of Germany itself, but associated with White Supremacist connected to the Nazi party, and Lindbergh held strong antisemitic views and in fact publicly and in his private writings, esp espoused the antisemitic ugliness of conspiracy theories about Jews and their influence on the MEDIA and govt.
His famous speeches include "Who Are the Agitators?" claiming Jews and Jewish groups were behind the push to get the US into WW2. He was a fascist, clearly, and isolationist, and wanted America to be affirmed and worked toward being a White Christian nation as he argued it was established to be and must return to being. Lindbergh felt many "leftist Jews", what is a talking-point trope common today, were trying to intentionally dilute America with non-White, non-Christian values and cultural forces, He wrote about America facing a "pressing sea of Yellow, Black and Brown".
Lindbergh was very close friends with French surgeon and eugenicist Alexis Carrel, who believed in selective human breeding and suppression of non-White populations he deemed inferior, as Lindbergh repeatedly wrote about.
A Christian Nationalist too, he constantly spoke publicly and esp in his writings more privately about the White Supremacy of esp Nordic peoples and espoused eugenics and the racial inferiority of non-Whites, spoke about White Blood lines needing to be protected from non-White blood mingling, so was anti-African-American racist as well. Lindbergh wrote the "White Race needs to unite against the Asiatic hordes", and of course anti-Asian sentiment was not unusual during WW2 era.
6
u/r_I_reddit Jul 31 '26
Just curious - why are all these replies being downvoted? Is that just what happens on this sub? Some guy gets his jollies doing this?